Thirteenth Avenue Retail Market

[Thirteenth Avenue Retail Market, 3910 13th Avenue, Boro Park, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. As seen from 40th Street and 39th Street. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click either image for a much larger view.]

The Thirteenth Avenue Retail Market (WIndsor 8-8788) was one of seven New York City markets built in the interest of sanitation, removing pushcarts from the streets and placing them indoors, with the benefits of air conditioning, screening, and hot and cold running water. Two photographs dated 1939 — 1, 2 — show Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in the Thirteenth Avenue Market. I think the following paragraph clinches it: the market must have opened in the second half of 1939:

[“Food Distribution on Wartime Basis Is Mapped by City.” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 28, 1941.]

But years later, pushcarts were still a problem. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (May 20, 1952) has an article titled “Pushcart Solution: More City Markets.” A photograph of life inside the Thirteenth Avenue market accompanied the article. The caption:

THE SANITARY WAY — The 13th Avenue Retail Market, pictured here, replaced a neighborhood pushcart market and brought the peddlers inside. Here the food is kept free from dust, dirt and flies. Moreover, the enclosed market is easier both to clean and keep clean than the street.

You can see a non-murky version of the still-under-copyright photograph that went with the caption via the Brooklyn Public Library.

And here are two photographs of the market as seen from Thirteenth Avenue:

[Thirteenth Avenue Retail Market, 1951. Photograph by Walter Albertin, New York World-Telegram & Sun. From the Library of Congress.]

[Thirteenth Avenue Retail Market, 1965. Photograph by Phyllis Twachtman, New York World-Telegram & Sun. From the Library of Congress.]

I have dim memories of the Thirteenth Avenue Retail Market, always known as “the market.” It was relatively dim inside, and noisy. Produce was available, of course. I think there were cheap toys for sale, but that might be wishful thinking. My most vivid memory of the market: the red letters announcing its name.

When I was a boy in Brooklyn in the 1960s, there was at least one pushcart still at work on Thirteenth Avenue, on the wide sidewalk at the southeast corner of 39th Street. That spot belonged to Whitey the banana man. Yes, a guy who sold nothing but bananas. They were displayed on a pushcart with plastic grass covering the shelves. And that of course is where we bought our bananas. If I had been older, say, Holden Caulfield’s age, I would have wondered where Whitey went in the winter.

The Thirteenth Avenue Retail Market still stands — now doing duty as a Kosher supermarket.

Bonus: you can see the Bronx’s Arthur Avenue Retail Market (also still standing) in the opening credits of Marty (dir. Delbert Mann, 1955).

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August 5: At least three newspaper articles document the market’s opening on Tuesday, October 5, 1939. Here’s one from The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. And two articles — 1, 2 — from The New York Times. Details: the building, a WPA project, replaced a pushcart area between 39th and 42nd Streets. The market housed 137 stands, and was designed in the shape of a T, “a monster T.,” according to the Eagle. It had heat and air-conditioning and a basement for storage. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, quoted in the Eagle: “I think that you people, just the same as those living on 5th Ave. and Park Ave., are entitled to do your buying in stores.”

Related reading
All OCA Boro Park posts (Pinboard) : Kubrick Self Service Stores (Next to the market) : More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives : Thirteenth Avenue Retail Market, in color (Forgotten NY)

Spoilers vs. foreshadowing

Today’s Nancy.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

Joyeux anniversaire, M. Proust

Marcel Proust was born on July 10, 1871.

We talk too much about serious things. Serious conversation is intended for people who have no intellectual life. People like the three of us, on the contrary, who have an intellectual life need frivolity when they escape from themselves and from hard inner labor. We should, as you say, talk about all the little things and leave philosophy to solitude.

Marcel Proust, in a letter to Sydney Schiff, May 1922. From Letters of Marcel Proust, translated by Mina Curtiss (New York: Helen Marx Books / Books & Co., 2006).

As “Stephen Hudson,” Sydney Schiff (1871–1946) translated Le Temps retrouvé into English.

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)

Today’s Saturday Stumper

The Newsday crossword has been inaccessible at its usual location, at least for me (out of order? behind a paywall?), so I solved today’s  Saturday Stumper at GameLab. Doing so reminded me of what it’s like to look at webpages without an adblocker — GameLab requires that any blocker be disabled. Ugh. And when you’re done, it’s not possible to scroll back through to see clues. For that, I had to download the puzzle as a PDF. (Thanks, Daily Crossword Links.)

Anyway —

Today’s Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, felt more difficult than it is: the unpleasant interface made it hard for me to, as the IBM slogan says, THINK. But THINK I did.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

3-D, three letters, “First name of the only member of the Inventors and Rock and Roll Halls of Fame.” A fun fact.

5-A, five letters, “Certain high school functions.” Do you see the trick?

7-D, fifteen letters, “How oxygen is formed from supernovas.” If you say so. There’s something wonderful about having this answer cross with the down-to-earth 34-A.

16-A, ten letters, “Olympians’ emotional epsiode.” I didn’t know that there’s a name for it.

19-D, six letters, “Out cast.” Slightly awkward.

34-A, fifteen letters, “Request for a monologue.” I'm surprised to see that the answer is far more common than what still seems to me the usual phrasing.

45-A, eight letters, “Melodramatic misses.” CLOSEONES doesn’t fit.

47-D, four letters, “‘When You Rise, We Shine’ sloganeer.” But the slogan is clearly not meant to influence the everyday riser.

49-A, five letters, “You’d expect it to flop in the art world.” Heh.

53-D, three letters, “Item on US soldiers’ ration list in WWII.” Huh. It’s true, at least sort of.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

[A note to Newsday : For a non-Long Islander, subscribing to the paper doesn’t make good sense. My guess is that many crossword solvers would be happy to pay for a puzzle subscription. Hint, hint.]

Kenward Elmslie (1929–2022)

Kenward Elmslie, “Routine Disruption,” in Tropicalism (Calais, VT: Z Press, 1975).

The New York Times has an obituary. And here are nine short films about Elmslie and friends and collaborators.

[This poem seems to me a variation on Lewis Carroll.]

Yoink

Yoink is a nifty utility ($8.99) for macOS and iOS. It simplifies dragging and dropping files — not a complicated task, but a tedious one, as anyone who has tried to navigate from folder to folder to subfolder can probably attest. Yoink can do much more than drag and drop, as these tips make clear. I’m a happy user sticking (at least so far) to the basics — I especially like using Yoink as a place to stash stuff for the near far future.

Mystery actors

[Click for a larger view.]

Do you recognize them? Leave your guesses in the comments. I’ll drop hints if needed.

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Strangers on a . . . TV farm.

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Oh well. The answers are in the comments.

More mystery actors
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“All them terrible movies”

Leon Russell:

“You know how people come up to sometimes when you’re sort of a celebrity and they say real strange things to you? I met Elvis up in Vegas and he called me backstage, so I was so excited about meeting him and everything. I walked up to him and I shook hands hello, and then I said ‘Elvis, how come you ended up in all them terrible movies?’ Why did I say that?”

See also Jonathan Schwartz meeting Frank Sinatra for the first time.

And John Ashbery: “I once said to Kenneth Koch, ‘What are you supposed to say to Auden?’ And he said that about the only thing there was to say was ‘I’m glad you’re alive’ (Paris Review interview, 1980).

[Why all those terrible movies? The Colonel knows.]

“Mike, hi!”

I was attending a high-school reunion. I assume that the reunion was for my graduating class, but I recognized no one. And then I saw Mike Evans, the actor who played Lionel Jefferson on All in the Family and The Jeffersons.

“Mike, hi! I’ve only ever seen you in black and white!” I said, meaning that I’d only seen him on television. He laughed and I laughed.

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All OCA dream posts (Pinboard)

A letter to our representative

It would be disgraceful not to write:

The Honorable Mary Miller
1529 Longworth House Office Building
United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Congresswoman Miller:

Given the recent carnage in Highland Park, we want to ask:

You insist that the right to bear arms “shall not be abridged.” You repeat that phrase without regard for the rest of the sentence in which it appears, and without regard for what the word “arms” could have referred to when the text was written.

Antonin Scalia, as you may know, thought that the Second Amendment applies to hand-held weapons. No cannons for personal use! Are hand-held rocket launchers permitted under the Second Amendment? He said that would be a case to decide very carefully.

So here’s a question for you:

Do you believe that hand-held rocket launchers are permitted under the Second Amendment?

And if not, why do you believe that other weapons of war are?

And if we’re talking about rights that shall not be abridged, what about the right of a small child to attend a Fourth of July parade without losing both parents to a person wielding a weapon of war?

It seems to us that your willingness to protect life begins and ends in the uterus.

Sincerely, &c.

We don’t expect a reply. We had no reply to our last letter, asking what Miller had done or would be doing to encourage vaccination against COVID-19. Our congressional district still has the lowest rate of vaccination in the state.

If we get a reply, I’ll report back.

Related reading
All OCA Mary Miller posts (Pinboard)