Kubrick Self Service Stores

[Kubrick Self Service Store, 1267 40th Street, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

I was taking a virtual walk down 13th Avenue, Boro Park, c. 1939–1941, and decided to turn down 40th Street. And there I found this sharp photograph. The name of course struck me. But I don’t think there’s a connection: Stanley Kubrick grew up in the Bronx, where his father was a homeopathic physician. The photograph holds up on its own.

I like the retail density: signage at jaunty angles, canned goods and packages stacked high in the windows, and pyramids on crates. Those pyramids would have to come down each night, but it doesn’t look as if the window displays will be coming down anytime soon. I like the unimaginable prices: 16¢, 23¢, 2 for 25¢. The bicycle doesn’t appear to be for deliveries: no basket. I’m not sure that a self-service store would offer delivery anyway. Remember Mr. Potter, the druggist in Orson Welles’s The Stranger? “All your needs are on our shelves.” I like and don’t like the carriages outside the store, because I suspect that mothers out doing the marketing in this world left them unattended. You couldn’t navigate a carriage and do the marketing very easily. But only the Dead End Kids would make off with a carriage for kicks. I think there’s a movie in which they do just that.

I also like the Wes Anderson-like symmetry. And those curved E s.

Kubrick Stores were a chain, limited, it seems, to Brooklyn, headed by Solomon Kubrick. In 1940 there were three more stores at 1411 Avenue J, 4904 Church Avenue, and 6619 18th Avenue, all wih the same “Kubrick Self Service Stores” sign. A store at 4911 13th Avenue (nine blocks from the 40th Street store) appears to postdate the tax photos. There’s a tantalizing snippet about that 13th Avenue store in Google Books. From The Progressive Grocer (1943):

This is how manager Milton Schwartz, of the Kubrick Self Service Food Store, 4911 13th Ave., Brooklyn, N. Y., went after the booming cereal business right after point rationing began.

End of snippet. But how? How? Inquiring minds still want to know.

There’s little information about Kubrick Stores online. DuckDuckGo and Google have nothing. Brooklyn Newsstand has a couple of robberies, a number of Help Wanted listings, and a single appearance in a group advertisement directed at shoppers (Ajax Cleanser, 2 for 23¢). No obituary for Solomon Kubrick at Brooklyn Newsstand or The New York Times. The most recent glimpse of 1267 40th Street in Google Maps shows — what else? — a mobile-phone store.

Coming soon: the buildings that flanked 1267. Stay tuned.

Thanks to my brother Brian for turning up helpful information on Kubrick Stores.

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