Thursday, September 10, 2009

Coming soon...

Vesuvios (Birdbath?)
"Vesuvio/Birdbath (2009)," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

This morning I published the post below. Then I went into the city and ended up on Prince St. having a coffee & reading my New Yorker. Looking up, I noticed Vesuvio across the street -- the same store front (as photographed by Jim & Karla Murray) I had used 2 hours before to illustrate my post! No, this was not necessarily a Twilight Zone moment, but in a city as big as ours... c'mon. It may bear mentioning, BTW, that, being from Brooklyn, I had no idea where Vesuvio was located (I would have guessed, vaguely, the East Village). Of course I had to rephotograph it.

Approaching with my camera, I realized that -- as though to specifically bear out the Murray's contention that we live in "... a city with an unmercifully fast pace and seemingly insatiable need for change" -- Vesuvio had closed. The paint was faded & chipped, the front door had been tagged, & a sign on the window told passersby that a new tenant, "Birdbath / a neighborhood green bakery" would move in soon.

I googled and here's the latest story I could find. Perhaps not so bad -- this time.

3 comments:

Christine (CA) said...

and, you know, the only image more "beautiful" to me than a storefront of a working business is a storefront of a closed business.....you know, that sad, nostalgic romantic stuff.

I love this image, Tim!

Chris Bonney said...

I agree with Christine. Nothing like melancholy to get us waxing romantic.

I had a somewhat similar thing happen in your city years ago. I'd taken a picture of the A. Zitto bakery down in the Village. I posted it on Fotolog and received a number of people who'd shopped at Zitto's for most of their life, but who were mourning the fact that it had closed down just after I took my picture.

Nancy said...

it's stories like this that persuade me there are still Einstein-like principles waiting to be understood
( that would explain coincidences and serendipity and psychic moments..)