Odd how I had missed out on this one, since I’m a candy store aficionado (though I limit purchases to once or twice a year, lest I become a bigger man) but this Polish candy store had held down the fort at Meserole and Manhattan Avenues for several years and it was written up in books such as Nosh New York. Stodycze Wedel unfortunately closed in April 2013, but rents are so high that the space has not found a taker since. Gracenotes has a good review, as well as photos from inside the place.
What FNY Correspondent Gary Fonville noted, though, was that the awning sign letters are carved out of a block of wood! Not to many of these around. Eventually the space will be rented and this relic will disappear… but that’s why there’s Forgotten New York.
9/21/15
15 comments
This store closed in May of this year. My son and I bought stuff on the day it was closing. The astronomical rent increases are tearing the heart and soul out of my beloved neighborhood. It’s well on its way to becoming just another bland vanilla theme park for the utterly useless, interloping, shallow me-monkeys. Like I told a friend, “Take a good look around you. Our neighborhood has changed into an unrecognizable, dystopian nightmare. Nothing but strangers everywhere you go. We are all George Bailey.”
Some red bearded Mast Brothers clone wearing a two sizes too small lumberjack shirt said that this neighborhood was a post-industrial wasteland until creative types brought it into the 21st Century. Yup, Greenpoint was a post-industrial wasteland; but, it was my post-industrial wasteland. I pray that the Dow nosedives to 6,000, wiping out the retirement accounts of the parents who subsidize these flyover state urban pioneers.
Hey, my main income the past 3 years has been from the stock market, I don’t need any further crash
Ah, you’re not looking at the bigger picture, Kevin. A small price to pay in order to make sure neighborhoods like Greenpoint don’t actually become “Forgotten NY” because they disappeared. If that happens, you won’t have anything left to photograph and we’ll all be the worse for it.
Joe:
Please take a deep breath & compose yourself. Please realize that what you miss isn’t a neighborhood but a place in time, The 20th century, especially mid-century, was a great time to be an American. The 21st century, so far, leaves much to be desired. Enjoy your memories & be glad you have them because our children & grandchildren will never know what America used to be. I don’t appreciate your reference to “fly over states”. The American heartland is where the spirit of the restoration you seek is alive & well.
I’ve been in NYC since I was a kid and also hate to see places like this close. That being said, things change especially in NYC. They always have and they always will. Your post comes across as more entitled than the people you are slamming. You sound like a miserable person.
Miserable person? Not anything close, Eamonn. I enjoy life and everything it offers. Change takes place all the time. It bees that way. Change for its own sake, however, isn’t necessarily a good thing. Transforming areas like North Brooklyn and western Queens into carbon copies of Manhattan, replete with monolithic 40 story monstrosities set up like a giant fence blocking out any and everything isn’t progress. It’s hyper-gentrification which accomplishes nothing except eradicating all traces of individual character and identity which made New York so unique.
Hyper- gentrification has, and continues, turning this city into another bland, vanilla flavored destination for those flyover state refugees who want so hard to escape the whitebread sameness of the Midwestern housing tract communities from where they spawned. They make their reverse pioneer trek here so they can get their street creds and impress their stay behind friends with tales of life in the big city. Yet, they tend to bring their their pedestrian tastes and sensibilities and attempt to recreate here what they couldn’t stand and left in the first place.
@NY2AZ, you can take all the offense you want regarding the term “flyover state”. There is no restoration which I seek from the “Heartland”. The “Heartland” offers only homogenization; a boring, scary sameness that blots out any differences and variety. “Heartland” is just another term which defines this trend toward a cookie cutter society. The only things that come to mind whenever I hear it used are cardboard covered with ketchup and shredded American cheese passed off as pizza, mega-malls the size of Delaware filled with chain stores and that annoying, antiseptic sameness. You couldn’t be more wrong if you think it was a place in time that I miss, as opposed to a neighborhood where I live and am part of the community. Waxing nostalgic has nothing to do with the reality of dismantling and gutting the neighborhood that I, and other natives and long time residents, call home.
Can you explain the difference between living in a neighborhood and being part of a community? Anybody can move into a neighborhood and live there. That’s what is occurring in a majority of circumstances when talking about the massive number of “artists” and “urban pioneers” moving into BushPointBurg. They aren’t moving into the neighborhoods, per se, they want to live within particular zip codes which have become a major factor in the way an area is determined to be kewl, hip and edgy and its proximity to the city below 14th St. also plays into it. They don’t bother with trivial matters like getting to know the people living in the apartment across the hall or the others on the block. Getting to know your neighbors is part of developing a sense of community. These interloping transplants make no attempt to assimilate into the fabric of the community; they want to transform it outright. One can observe the condescending attitudes and disdain reserved for the locals. There is a self-important sense that they are bringing civilization to the unwashed, primitive natives. The main reason for moving to a particular place is that there is something unique about it which attracts someone. There’s nothing unique or different about living in a glass enclosed hipsterrarium because there a lot of music venues and bars nearby. Not wanting to familiarize with, and befriend, the locals and appreciating what the neighborhood and community offer because, using your shallow narcissistic reasoning, you feel it’s beneath you to do so. This is a smug attitude which smacks of self-perceived elitism. Brooklyn in general and Greenpoint, in particular, don’t require any rebranding as if that legitimizes them in the eyes of small town cretins who think they discovered a previously undiscovered world and are ready to shape it in their own image. News flash! Greenpoint and Brooklyn were here long before you arrived and they’ll be here long after you move back to Culdesacia. Muskegon beckons you. There’s a severe latte foam sculptor shortage and you are needed.
Hear, hear, Eamonn!
Well written, Joe!
I live in Seattle and have to explain to people just what “candy stores” stores were in our context
That simple, self-explanatory concept seems to be beyond their collective comprehensional skills. Tell’em to stop spending so much time in coffee shops. There is life outside of a Starbuck’s. Do they have an equally difficult time trying to figure out what a stoop is?
Joe Fliel: Historian, philosopher, God’s own gift to NYC. You & the neighborhoods you define & idealize stand above it all. You are the very personification of the classic New Yorker cover (A New Yorker’s View of The World). I’m sure the neighbors you say you cherish just love hearing you rant & rave. Warning to Joe’s neighbors: Don’t deviate from his standards or else he will lecture you indefinitely. Gentrification is annoying but so is your attitude. I didn’t leave NY, it left me. Hipsters are annoying but attitudes like yours are worse because at least the hipsters reverse urban blight instead of wallowing in it. And now here’s a parting serenade for you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pupVjQBwASo
WOW!
Kevin, I don’t think I’ve ever seen an FNY entry generate so much controversy and flaming. Seems you’ve stirred up some passions extremely well. Keep up the great work!!
I was born and raised in Greenpoint,(1952-1969).I lived on Freeman St between Franklin and West . I went to PS31 when it was on Dupont St. JHS 126, and then Brooklyn Tech I then joined the Navy and while I was in my family moved to Queens. I went back a few times but friends were also leaving, so I never returned. Until 2 years ago, and OMG what happened to this place, what happened to Brooklyn!? Its been “hipstered” those bearded, fedora wearing, me-monkeys destroyed my home. Sure its cleaner and has speciality shops and coffee venues and looks beautiful but like all of Brooklyn it has lost its identity. No longer is it grit, blue collar, dirt under the finger nails tough. English is spoken there not Brooklynese you don’t hear des, dems, and doos, its these, them, and those. Yeah its not Greenpoint, its not Brooklyn…Just call it Kings County, it is unworthy to be called BROOKLYN.
I can remember that corner having a diner located there. Dont remember the name. I would frequent The Swiss Cottage Diner located across the street. I Would say that was late sixties to at least 73 when I left for the Army. Ive been out of Greenpoint now since 79 and whenever I go back for a visit I like to walk “THE AVENUE” just to see if there is anything left from my day. I work.ed at HAPPINESS FLORIST 746 Manhattan Ave from 67 thru 72 so I spent alot of time on that street. It seems all we have left are the memories. Thank you FNY a wonderful job.
My first Apt was 165$ a month on driggs ave, same apt is now 2k$ a month without any real upgrades to the apt building itself. My Mortgage was 900$ in Moriches Ny. between the crack epidemic and Low wages in NYC I left..