We South Slopers anticipate drinking our $14 glasses of wine from hand made ceramic mugs.

Two for four.
We lived, it was just the two of us back then, for five years in the early Nineties on Eleventh Street, just above Sixth Avenue, in a sunny two bedroom railroad apartment located on the second floor of a three family brick walk-up. In nineteen hundred and ninety four, the three of us moved farther south down to Sixteenth Street just below Eighth Avenue, and have been there ever since.
I walk by our old Eleventh St. place almost daily now on my way to Steve's C-Town on Ninth Street to shop for groceries. They always have good prices on apple juice, two for four dollars regardless of the season.
Today on my usual route I noticed a little something had changed. There was a display of hand built ceramic vessels forming a miniature city scape in a wooden store front's bay window. Without the big "PRINTING" sign covering the entire window, it's easy to forget that this was once the home of the recently, dearly departed, Henington Press printing shop.

Movable Type
In the window an old manual type writer is displayed, upon a single sheet of white paper, someone has written these double spaced lines:

Yes, we are changing...

Yes, we are keeping the window...

491six.com

A reference to the address, 491 Sixth Avenue no doubt, which can take you to this sparse web site *click* that informs you this space will, coming this Fall, be reincarnated as a... mystery solved...wine bar. You can also register to be placed on their snail mail-ing list here *click*.

























"He had a blood alcohol level of .491, that's 6 times the legal limit!"

When I saw that enigmatic window display it took me back to a time when McSweeney's Bookstore operated out of the same type of architecturally antiquated storefront-stage on Seventh Avenue, before they pretended to move to Fifth and go into the Super Hero Supply business. At the time they were one of the only places in the South Slope selling aphrodisiac/taxidermy supplies... glass eyes, potent bird beaks, talons, and the like. I purchased my paperback copy of Caring for Your Miniature Donkey there. Nobody knows more about trimming donkey hooves than Bonnie R. Gross. She saved me hundreds in farrier costs! Something that comes in handy when you're the father of Rosemary's Baby.

Today 429 Seventh Avenue is the home of the Hand of Glory tattoo parlor. That's were I got my Dave Eggars tramp stamp. (Father's Day is June 21st!)

Jeremiah's Vanishing New York Blog laments the closing of Hennington Press after ninety six years (three generations) at the same address, and directs us to this touching video and radio interview produced by WNYC radio.




























She's gone... Kluge has left the building.