NYC was passable when John-John Lindsay was mayor.
There are still parts of the city that are O.K.
There are still parts of the city that are O.K.
Top B&M Shops in New York?
- Thread starter pcfdave
- Start date
as a former born and raised Brooklyn bred native
'Stay the f**&# outta New Yawkk city - its a reey'al shithole'
but in all honestly with Nat Sherman forever transformed and the City becoming such a police state with vehement anti smoking positions - there's really no reason to 'tour NYC' for the purpose of tobacco IMHO
to add, heck, Wilke moved away aeons ago
'Stay the f**&# outta New Yawkk city - its a reey'al shithole'
but in all honestly with Nat Sherman forever transformed and the City becoming such a police state with vehement anti smoking positions - there's really no reason to 'tour NYC' for the purpose of tobacco IMHO
to add, heck, Wilke moved away aeons ago
"they mostly come at night...
mostly..." - Newt
I live on Ludlow St. smack dab in the middle of Hell's Square New York City on the island of Manhattan. The Lower east side. It's a spectrum here.
Where I live is a lot of fun actually - low buildings so lots of light - new, creative and self owned small businesses are popping up as well, next to old favorites like Katz's famous deli, Economy Candy, Babes and Toylands sex shop, Arlene's Grocery (its a music hall/bar) all sit next to the new exotic flavors Snack foods, Round Two sneakers, and a two hour line for A OK! a Korean corn dog shop, theres a lot of fun things going on...
But... a couple blocks in any direction from me and it's a wasteland! Boarded up shops, homeless encampments and long stretches of empty unpatrolled streets.
New York is mutating like it always does. And while NY was actually getting pretty boring over the last 15 years or so, its kind of coming back alive. A lot of artists and small businesses were priced out under Giuliani/Bloomberg and now with plummeting prices of real estate, a lot of interesting businesses and projects are starting up...
That said, if you have children you need to get out long before sunset, and I wouldnt stay out til the bars close unless you really wanna know why its called Hell's Square...
Also, yeah, Barclay Rex and Davidoff are all that are basically left of the old mahogany mens club feeling tobacconists like Dunhill, Nat Sherman, etc... At least that I know of.
Berman
mostly..." - Newt
I live on Ludlow St. smack dab in the middle of Hell's Square New York City on the island of Manhattan. The Lower east side. It's a spectrum here.
Where I live is a lot of fun actually - low buildings so lots of light - new, creative and self owned small businesses are popping up as well, next to old favorites like Katz's famous deli, Economy Candy, Babes and Toylands sex shop, Arlene's Grocery (its a music hall/bar) all sit next to the new exotic flavors Snack foods, Round Two sneakers, and a two hour line for A OK! a Korean corn dog shop, theres a lot of fun things going on...
But... a couple blocks in any direction from me and it's a wasteland! Boarded up shops, homeless encampments and long stretches of empty unpatrolled streets.
New York is mutating like it always does. And while NY was actually getting pretty boring over the last 15 years or so, its kind of coming back alive. A lot of artists and small businesses were priced out under Giuliani/Bloomberg and now with plummeting prices of real estate, a lot of interesting businesses and projects are starting up...
That said, if you have children you need to get out long before sunset, and I wouldnt stay out til the bars close unless you really wanna know why its called Hell's Square...
Also, yeah, Barclay Rex and Davidoff are all that are basically left of the old mahogany mens club feeling tobacconists like Dunhill, Nat Sherman, etc... At least that I know of.
Berman
I find it fascinating that you enjoy the LES - I couldn't stand that neck of town - the grime and filth lingers
I lived in Old soho for a while
I have been told tobacco has high taxes in NY State, almost as if it was here in Scandinavian countries..
My wife lived in Greenwich Village from the 70's until the early two-thousands on Waverly Place. She was finally shouldered out of her apartment when it was bought to remodel into a single family dwelling. It stood vacant for years and presumably was finally sold. Usually these places are picked up by hedge fund types or foreign nationals, since before the pandemic they went for millions. Basically, the music/arts community has been pretty well run out of Greenwich Village. Tourists come to see what used to be there, and restaurants and businesses rely on that traffic, but the young people, writers, scholars, etc. Have moved elsewhere in the city, if they can afford it, or simply left town for Chicago or Kinston, N.C.
75% + 8-8.25% sales tax depending on location.
When were you here? Its only really the last few months, since the outdoor seating really that things have started to come alive...
how long have you lived in NYC?
I lived in Manhattan from 2008-2012 - Brooklyn all the rest of my life
I moved here Fall of 99, lived in the upper east side til 2003, and have lived here in the les since
you remember Pianos and the electroclash misshapes scene - strokes, yeah yea yeahs scene
did you enjoy that? early gentrification
I enjoyed that - it was dirty but lively
I think the last tin I bought at barclay rex was a 2oz of Balkan Sobranie Winter 2019 and it was like 37 bucks...
Ill goto Barclay Rex and give a scouting report, stand by...
So the "East Village" sounds like it's rather like it was 40 years ago, but with new players, new restaurants, etc.
I quite like Manhattan. I have worked there before, and used to travel quite regularly for meetings till early parts of 2020. Most of the times I used to drive, so it was fun looking into the different neighborhoods, while stuck in traffic.
I took my family to the touristy bits again (Earlier in the Spring, 2021) to the Hudson Yards area. Looked the same to me, compared to my work visits in the Hudson Yards Area. (A little less crowded though)
I took my family to the touristy bits again (Earlier in the Spring, 2021) to the Hudson Yards area. Looked the same to me, compared to my work visits in the Hudson Yards Area. (A little less crowded though)
With the exception of a couple rattray's, and a St. Bruno flake (only thing I bought) not much too rare here. The staff said they just ran out of Balkan Sobranie and they do get a good bit of Esoterica in each drop...
Prices are insane. I bought the St. Bruno flake for 36 bucks (30 euro), and goes for 16ish online... The Three nuns was the same price, $35.93...
They have house blends (some dating back to 1911) going for about 14 bucks for 2oz.
They had one costello pipe, some rare 1960s recently found Barclay Rex pipes, and were supposed to be get getting some new stanwells? I think soon.
Also, they said they are going to be getting some new rare Seattle Pipe club offering in the next few days...
Prices are insane. I bought the St. Bruno flake for 36 bucks (30 euro), and goes for 16ish online... The Three nuns was the same price, $35.93...
They have house blends (some dating back to 1911) going for about 14 bucks for 2oz.
They had one costello pipe, some rare 1960s recently found Barclay Rex pipes, and were supposed to be get getting some new stanwells? I think soon.
Also, they said they are going to be getting some new rare Seattle Pipe club offering in the next few days...
Another reliably polarizing topic, I fear, is New York. But one I cannot resist.
My first experience of New York was a trip from California as a child staying at the Warwick on 54th Street and 6th Avenue (a sentimental favorite of my father's for its long past theater world associations). In the years since, I lived with my parents on the upper east side for five years (commuting to the Bronx High School of Science for my freshman year); returned for Columbia College; worked on Wall Street in the 1980s; and ultimately, on my return from a decade in Europe, I moved into an old loft building on the Brooklyn waterfront, where I still live (some twenty years and counting).
A reductive and facile summary to be sure, but I've always felt New York was a terrible place to visit and quite a decent one to live. Like other large heterogeneous cities it takes a couple of weeks to get one's blinders on, and to ignore the squalor and see the beauty.
It is also very much a place with cycles of boom and bust (during which your own fortunes strongly affect your perceptions).
But then, to be a "real" New Yorker it is essential to complain constantly about everything.
And equally important to be wildly competitive even when making small talk. If someone has something good to say about a restaurant, a shop, or a neighborhood they've recently discovered, for instance, one must one-up them immediately by saying they should have seen in X years ago in its heyday (waxing eloquent with a few salient details).
Its draw for me, however, has always been the extraordinary diversity of bipeds--from everywhere in the world and with ambitions of every imaginable kind. Which is to say, it is probably best experienced as a place you come to to work. And I sometimes say that New York feels most like home for people who have no home.
Indeed, I very fondly recall the comment of a stunningly beautiful Italian girl, in her early twenties, I once knew in Florence, just after she'd just come back from her first visit: "I'd always heard people say 'there was everything in New York,' and I assumed that meant everything good. Now I understand what they meant was Everything."
But to return to the question posed by the OP, insofar as I know, Barclay Rex and a couple of small Davidoff outposts (which of course cannot import their fabled Cuban cigars) are pretty much the alpha and omega here. Local taxes on tobacco products became punitive early in Michael Bloomberg's tenure as mayor, and of course rents on well situated commercial spaces are extortionate. So, no more a paradise for pipe smokers than it is for outdoorsmen, gun lovers, or motoring enthusiasts. But other attractions endure. And one has more reason than not to presume the cycle of renewal and adaption will continue in future much as it has in past, and we'll emerge from COVID eventually.
My first experience of New York was a trip from California as a child staying at the Warwick on 54th Street and 6th Avenue (a sentimental favorite of my father's for its long past theater world associations). In the years since, I lived with my parents on the upper east side for five years (commuting to the Bronx High School of Science for my freshman year); returned for Columbia College; worked on Wall Street in the 1980s; and ultimately, on my return from a decade in Europe, I moved into an old loft building on the Brooklyn waterfront, where I still live (some twenty years and counting).
A reductive and facile summary to be sure, but I've always felt New York was a terrible place to visit and quite a decent one to live. Like other large heterogeneous cities it takes a couple of weeks to get one's blinders on, and to ignore the squalor and see the beauty.
It is also very much a place with cycles of boom and bust (during which your own fortunes strongly affect your perceptions).
But then, to be a "real" New Yorker it is essential to complain constantly about everything.
And equally important to be wildly competitive even when making small talk. If someone has something good to say about a restaurant, a shop, or a neighborhood they've recently discovered, for instance, one must one-up them immediately by saying they should have seen in X years ago in its heyday (waxing eloquent with a few salient details).
Its draw for me, however, has always been the extraordinary diversity of bipeds--from everywhere in the world and with ambitions of every imaginable kind. Which is to say, it is probably best experienced as a place you come to to work. And I sometimes say that New York feels most like home for people who have no home.
Indeed, I very fondly recall the comment of a stunningly beautiful Italian girl, in her early twenties, I once knew in Florence, just after she'd just come back from her first visit: "I'd always heard people say 'there was everything in New York,' and I assumed that meant everything good. Now I understand what they meant was Everything."
But to return to the question posed by the OP, insofar as I know, Barclay Rex and a couple of small Davidoff outposts (which of course cannot import their fabled Cuban cigars) are pretty much the alpha and omega here. Local taxes on tobacco products became punitive early in Michael Bloomberg's tenure as mayor, and of course rents on well situated commercial spaces are extortionate. So, no more a paradise for pipe smokers than it is for outdoorsmen, gun lovers, or motoring enthusiasts. But other attractions endure. And one has more reason than not to presume the cycle of renewal and adaption will continue in future much as it has in past, and we'll emerge from COVID eventually.
A graduate of BHSS? My Father was class of 1953.