One of my holiday rituals is to visit Myers of Keswick for stocking stuffers. The Greenwich Village store is filled with British specialty items. No nonsense Frank Cooper’s orange marmalade. Homemade bangers and sausage pies. And most importantly from my point of view — one of the most impressive assortments of Cadbury chocolates outside the British Isles.
I usually combine the visit with lunch at Mary’s Fish Camp; a nearby restaurant that serves a lobster roll the equal of anything I’ve sampled in Maine, if at an exorbitant price. I comfort myself that it’s no more than a semi-annual indulgence. But when I checked their hours — I had a doctor’s appointment uptown and feared I wouldn’t be able to make it the Village before lunch service ended — I discovered that Mary’s closed its doors in April of last year. Could it be that long since I visited?
Patronizing restaurants that no longer exist is a painful phenomenon that I associate with age. You turn the corner, your appetite fully whet, only to discover that a restaurant that supplied tasty food and ample memories across decades has vanished forever. I suppose more surprising are those vintage establishments that soldier on long after time seems to have passed them by. I don’t know why I should be shocked when they go under. They’re no less mortal than their owners and probably more so. But they take a bit of me and their other loyal customers along with them when they go.
Their demise raises an adjacent and more alarming question. Am I also becoming obsolete as well? Has the city where I was born, grew up and lived for most of my life left me in the dust? I received another scare when I decided to drop by Bauman’s, a rare book seller on Madison Avenue. Bauman’s is unaffordably priced but I always enjoy picking up their holiday season catalogue. It makes me feel prosperous. I own some of the titles they sell and its fun to think they might fetch anything approaching their price tags.
But, again, when I arrived at the store it was gone. Before turning west to join the Christmas tree-gawking crowds at Rockefeller Center — approximately 97% of them seemed to be tourists — I performed a brief Internet search while standing in front of Bauman’s former storefront and discovered that the book seller hadn’t expired. It had merely moved a couple of blocks south. Their new location is more modest — the conceit that you’ve entered a book lover’s Victorian library doesn’t quite hold up — but at least they haven’t perished. I bagged a catalogue before continuing on.
It’s not as if the city is dying. Quite the opposite. It appears to be thriving. A building boom is occurring in my neighborhood accompanied by the high-end restaurants and retailers that cater to their residents’ fancy expectations. Who all these real estate buyers are that want to live in generic luxury high-rises, let alone can afford their astronomical prices, remains a mystery to me.
At the same time the planet seems to be barreling towards climate collapse. (Hold on, I’ll be getting to the redeeming holiday cheer in a moment.) American politics, currently characterized by gleeful cruelty, doesn’t give one much cause for comfort. The world feels less stable than it has at any moment since the 1930’s. The Atlantic magazine titled a piece by journalist and historian Anne Applebaum about the Trump administration’s new national security strategy targeting Europe, not China or Russia, “The Longest Suicide Note in American History.”
And yet. My grandchildren are applying to nursery schools, their parents attending more screenings and auditions than seems justified considering that the pipsqueak candidates aren’t yet three and desire nothing more than to don princess dresses and butterfly wings and dance around the apartment.
And my other daughter and son-in-law just opened a restaurant in Brooklyn that has lines out the door. It seems that Millennials and Gen-Zers, or Zoomers as they’re called, ultimately want the same thing that Boomers did and still do: dependable food at a fair price served by friendly people in an inviting setting. While it’s almost an hour away from our apartment by subway I’m thinking of dropping by and taking a seat at the counter. Gracie is too busy to chat as she takes orders and rings up customers. But I’m not there for the conversation.
It’s that sense of belonging that increasingly seems to elude me in the city. I don’t feel the least bit self-conscious as the oldest person in the restaurant and not just because my daughter runs the place. There’s a peculiar bliss not just in knowing, but in watching, life go by.
It’s not entirely dissimilar from taking a walk through a hushed forest. You’re being included in something larger and more profound. Even amid the insanity of this city it’s still possibly to discover subtlety among the dazzling holiday decorations, to bathe in humanity, and to hope that subsequent generations will soon stumble upon the solutions that eluded their parents. Or just muddle on. Happy Holidays!
Ralph Gardner Junior is a journalist who divides his time between New York City and Columbia County. More of his work can be found in the Berkshire Eagle and on Substack.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.
