155. Five Steps to Sure Success for All Bunco Artists, Con Men, and Hoaxers

     These shores have seen multitudes of bunco artists and hoaxers, or as we would say today, con men.  Just think of all the verbs we have for cheating or swindling: bamboozle, hoodwink, humbug, hornswaggle, flimflam, diddle, fleece, con, gyp, sting, chisel – and probably lots more that escape me now.  And New York, being a mecca for hustlers, has had more than its share of flimflam artists.  Here, as I see it, are their five steps to sure success:

1.    Find something that vast numbers of people need, or think they need.

2.    Offer a product or service to satisfy that need.

3.    Through grandiose speeches and gestures, whip the people’s interest up to a fever pitch.

4.    Get their money.

5.    Satisfy their need, if you can.  But above all, get their money.

Now let’s see these principles in action.

1.  Find something that vast numbers of people need, or think they need.

     Nineteenth-century Americans, like most people then and now, craved health and well-being.  But the medicine of that time had little to offer beyond tender loving care (tlc).  There was a vaccine for smallpox and quinine for malaria, but not much else.  Which left the field wide open for patent medicine men and their nostrums.

2.  Offer a product or service to satisfy that need.

     Let’s have a look at New York City in the 1860s.  EXTRACT  OF  BUCHU  said handbills distributed throughout the city.  EXTRACT  OF  BUCHU  leaped off the signs of sandwichmen marching up and down Broadway, or off big-print posters on the sides of horsecars, or asbestos curtains in theaters, or piles of bricks at construction sites, or booths in public lavatories.  Or, more genteelly, off the pages of such popular publications as Godey’s Lady's Book and Harper’s Weekly.  Or, less genteelly, off the soaring basalt cliffs of the Jersey Palisades, greeting the gaze of passengers on the steamboats plying the Hudson.  And with the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869, EXTRACT  OF  BUCHU  adorned the telegraph poles along the line, and appeared on seemingly inaccessible sides of mountains in the towering Rockies and Sierras, to the surprise and instruction – or outrage – of travelers by rail.

     And what did Extract of Buchu do?  Said an ad of the time, it

·      Cures Gravel

·      Cures diseases of the bladder

·      Cures diseases of the kidney

·      Cures dropsy

·      Cures general weakness

·      Cures all diseases arising from exposure

To which was added  JOY  TO  THE  AFFLICTED, and a list of symptoms that included dimness of vision, languor, temporary suffusion, loss of sight, etc., which, if untreated, could result in insanity and consumption.  But there was hope:

With woful measures, wan Despair,

Low, sullen sounds of grief beguiled,

HELMBOLD’S EXTRACT OF BUCHU gives

Health and vigor to the frame,

And bloom to the pallid cheek.

And all this for only $1 a bottle, or six for $5, deliverable to any address.

     Another ad called Helmbold a “Practical and Analytical Chemist” and showed Hottentots gathering buchu leaves in huge bundles addressed to the doctor in New York.  Another praised the Extract as standing “like the Doric column … simple, pure, and majestic, having fact for its basis, induction for its pillar, and truth alone for its capital.” 

     What, in fact, was this Extract of Buchu, and who was Henry T. Helmbold? 

Agathosma betulina

     The Extract was made of the leaves of the exotic buchu plant (yes, it really exists: Agathosma betulina), plus cubebs (also known as Java pepper), licorice, caramel, molasses, and a dash of peppermint.  Buchu was a plant growing in South Africa among the Hottentots, who had long used it as a medicine and cosmetic, rubbing the powdered leaves on their skin to impart a fragrance akin to peppermint.   It had reached this country by 1840 and was listed in the Pharmacopeia as a stimulant producing diuresis (in other words, it helped you urinate). 

Helmbold

     Henry T. Helmbold had begun his business career in his native Philadelphia as a retail druggist without even a degree in pharmacy and with capital, so he later said, of fifty cents.  His life changed one day in 1850 when, at age 24, he discovered buchu and, in a fit of inspiration, began producing his extract in a rented basement.  Advertising in local newspapers, he was immediately and even wildly successful and in 1863 transferred his genial presence from the City of Brotherly Love to the turbulent, growing, and infinitely exciting city of New York.

3.  Through grandiose speeches and gestures, whip the people’s interest up to a fever pitch.

     Let us join the crowds on busy Broadway on a morning in the late 1860s.  Among the flux of carriages, drays, stages, express trucks piled high with luggage, lager beer wagons, and milk carts with clattering cans, there suddenly appears a handsome barouche ornamented in gold and pulled by three high-stepping horses in tandem, the head of each adorned with violets.  Suddenly, at a command from the black coachman, the horses rear up on their hind legs together, a stunning sight to see.  Then, as the shiny black carriage approaches a palatial establishment at 594 Broadway, where crowds are waiting to witness its arrival, the barouche comes to a halt, and from its depths, attended by footmen in livery, steps a small, fashionably dressed man with a lustrous black beard and topped by a dark silk hat.  Nervous and energetic, he walks briskly toward the huge glass doors of no. 594, which open as if by magic to admit him to its sumptuous depths.  Henry T. Helmbold, king of the patent medicine men, has arrived at his Temple of Pharmacy.

     Yes, an obviously grandiose gesture, well calculated to seize the public’s attention.  But inside the spacious, high-ceilinged store the royal progress continues.  Passing uniformed clerks at their counters and attendants and bookkeepers and managers who greet him deferentially, the sovereign of the Temple of Pharmacy proceeds to the back of the store and a small private office with a sign above the glass door announcing SANCTUM SANCTORUM, inside which his desk awaits him, and a bust of himself in an exotic wood.  The door closes, silence; inside, the doctor is communing with his Muse, or whatever source inspires him in his tireless promotion of Extract of Buchu.

Helmbold's pharmacy at 594 Broadway.

     Always in pursuit of the grandiose, Dr. Helmbold (a self-imposed title) had spent a fortune building his Temple of Pharmacy, installing sarcophagus soda fountains, floor-to-ceiling mirrors, monogrammed gas globes, marble floors with his initials inlaid in brass, perfume-dispensing fountains, and canaries singing in their cages.  Atop the roof was a full-rigged ship, supposedly Helmbold’s own yacht dismantled and reassembled there, but in fact a dummy with masts, spars, and rigging.

     So “buchuful” an edifice on Broadway drew multitudes of citizens, among them such luminaries as Boss Tweed, robber barons Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, Commodore Vanderbilt (the richest man in America, known endearingly as “Old Sixty Millions”), John Jacob Astor III (there was a slew of moneyed Astors), and New York Herald publisher James Gordon Bennett.  Sightseers from the hinterland made a point of visiting the emporium, hoping as much to get a glimpse of the doctor himself as to revel in the luxury of his establishment.  In short, he dazzled the city and the nation.

4.  Get their money.

     He did, and in no small amount, for at the peak of his career he is said to have been earning a million dollars a year, and by 1869 he was spending $500,000 a year on advertising.  He lived in a residence at 156 West 14^th Street (though some sources say Fifth Avenue), where his entertainments of the press and drug trade were catered by Delmonico’s.  His stable at 142 West 17^th Street housed from 18 to 20 carriage and saddle horses, all Kentucky-bred.

     In 1868 Helmbold bought a summer residence in Long Branch, the nation’s summer capital frequented in season by President Ulysses S. Grant himself and members of his cabinet, and other stellar figures from the worlds of politics and finance.  Thereafter, the doctor’s elegant four-in-hand was at times graced by the cigar-smoking President himself.  But Helmbold also built a whole row of business houses on Ocean Avenue and Broadway, following which that location became known as Helmbold’s Block.  All in all, then, his was the life of a multimillionaire typical of the Gilded Age, but more flamboyant. 

5.  Satisfy their need, if you can.  But above all, get their money.

     Yes, he got their money, but did he satisfy their need?  Of course not, no more than any patent medicine man ever did.  In a signed affidavit he swore that his extract contained no narcotic, no mercury, or any other injurious drug, being purely vegetable in content.  So no one got genteelly high on his product, as they did on some other nostrums with a significant alcoholic content.  But even if buchu and cubebs had the medicinal value that tradition assigned them, there is no reason to think that Helmbold’s Extract of Buchu was in any way beneficial.  It did no harm, but neither did it do any good, except to Helmbold’s bank account.

     So much for Helmbold the con man, but there is more to his story.  One senses in his flamboyance, his grandiose gestures and fanatical promotion of his extract, a certain compulsiveness, even an obsession.  He became an alcoholic, though apparently a binge drinker who between bouts was rational and sane.  In 1871 he took his wife and children on a tour of Europe and the Orient, and in Paris on July 4, 1872, he invited all Americans in the city to be his guest at a reception said to have cost $19,000 for wine, flowers, and other incidentals.  Among the guests on that occasion was the Shah of Persia, who came to pay his respects.  But his lavish spending was accompanied by increasingly eccentric behavior and, finally, irrational outbursts of rage over the slightest trifles, and even an attempt to kill his wife.  As a result, the seer of buchu was confined to an insane asylum.

     Meanwhile back in America there was an attempt by his brother Albert L. Helmbold to get possession of his business.  What exactly happened is unclear, but on September 13, 1872, the free-spending Henry T. Helmbold was declared bankrupt, and the Temple of Pharmacy was padlocked.  In the words of an associate, Helmbold was “often crazy drunk,” and as a result he was declared insane and confined to an asylum, first in Paris and then, when he managed to return to this country, over here.  His brother Albert brought suit, claiming title to and use of the Extract, and furthermore alleging that Henry was a lunatic.  But in 1877 the Supreme Court of New York State denied Albert’s claim and found no hard evidence of Henry’s insanity.   In that same year of 1877 Henry, now at liberty, published a book entitled Am I a Lunatic? Or, Dr. Henry T. Helmbold’s Exposure of His Personal Experience in the Lunatic Asylums of Europe and America.  But the New York Times of May 2, 1878, announced in bold letters

HELMBOLD AGAIN RAVING; HE IS

ATTACKED BY DELIRIUM TREMENS

IN A STRAIT-JACKET AND STRAPPED

TO A BED IN BELLEVUE HOSPITAL.

     Obviously, Helmbold’s path back to sobriety was a long and tortuous one  with many relapses – seven, according to an associate – during which he was given to grandiose delusions, including the intention to get himself nominated as a candidate for President to run again Ulysses S. Grant.  But in 1881, when he was confined to a hospital in Norristown, Pennsylvania, his wife assured the court that he was perfectly sane and anxious to return to his family, having long abstained from alcohol and promised never to drink again.  In time, he was released.

     Even his end is a bit of a mystery.  According to associates, he died on September 12, 1892, at his home in Long Branch.  But a New York Times article of October 25 announced that he had died suddenly the day before in New Jersey’s State Asylum for the Insane, and that his body was at an undertaker’s establishment awaiting the orders of his family, who so far had failed to respond to the telegraphic notice.  All in all, an enigmatic and grandiose existence, hard to match except on the stage or in a madhouse.  But a forgotten one.  I have found no mention of him in The Encyclopedia of New York or Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, both of them voluminous sources.

     Should one include among the bunco artists and con men of nineteenth-century America the railroad men who, even as Helmbold was touting his Extract of Buchu, were busy promoting their enterprises?  Wall Street was usually where these schemes were hatched, but they inspired hopes and visions everywhere.  Let’s see how the promise of a railroad affected one small community some fifty miles north of New York City.  Here the emphasis will be, not on the often nameless promoters, but on the community itself, as recorded in old issues of the Putnam County Courier.

1.  Find something that vast numbers of people need, or think they need.

     In the mid-nineteenth century the village of Carmel, the county seat of Putnam County since the county's creation in 1812, found itself in the sorry state of being connected to the outside world only by stage lines, whereas the upstart village of Brewster, a mere five miles away, had mushroomed out of nowhere with the coming of the New York & Harlem Railroad in 1849, when a depot was built on the site.  Shrewd local speculators had bought up farmland, and on those lands houses, stores, and factories had sprung up, all made possible by the village’s connection by rail to that metropolis some fifty miles to the south.  In that exuberant age when the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869 had spawned a host of railroad projects in the distant and desolate West, how could the citizens of Carmel not dream also of a railroad to connect them with the rest of the nation, and most specifically with the city of New York?  Here then was a potent need waiting to be fulfilled. 

2.  Offer a product or service to satisfy that need.

     In 1869 word came that something called the New York & Boston Railroad was projecting a line from New York City north to Carmel and then to Brewster, where it would connect with the New York & Harlem line.  This, citizens were told, was a grandiose plan conceived by some “big-brained men” who “meant business.”  Monkey business?  No, real business, as was explained in detail to a meeting of citizens in a hotel at nearby Lake Mahopac, another community to be served by the railroad.  There, on August 14, four directors of the railroad described the projected route and invited subscriptions of stock.  The chairman of the meeting was the Reverend William S. Clapp, a respected Baptist minister and the most prominent clergyman in the county, while financier Daniel Drew, the local boy who had made good on Wall Street, was in attendance and informed the railroad that it could run through any of his farms in the area free of charge.  No one present doubted the success of the enterprise.

     The question now was whether or not other landowners would follow Daniel Drew’s example and give the railroad right of way across their land, for if they failed to do so, the hoped-for railroad might bypass Carmel altogether – the fear that always haunted communities yearning for a railroad.  But soon the Putnam County Courier could report that seven-eighths of the local landowners along the route had given their land to the company, prompting the paper to announce, “Such liberality is without precedent in the history of railroads.”

3.  Through grandiose speeches and gestures, whip the people’s interest up to a fever pitch.

     The railroad men had no need of the grandiose gestures of Helmbold, for the mere promise of a rail connection to the outside world dazzled the good folk of Carmel, who whipped themselves up to a fever pitch.  Prominent in the campaign was the Courier itself.

4.  Get their money.

    The railroad’s demands were substantial.  It required no less than $100,000, a sum to be raised by subscriptions of stock.  Nearly half that amount had been raised by mid-November 1869, when meetings of citizens were being held nightly, and committees named to urge immediate action by those interested.  If the railroad was to pass through Carmel, the full sum had to be obtained, and obtained quickly; another $37,000 was needed, and yet some big local property owners were holding back.  “Now or never!” declared the Courier.  Then, on November 24, another meeting of citizens was held in a Carmel hotel, and a resolution was passed to pay the railroad the amount subscribed in 10% installments, each when another tenth of the work had been completed, an arrangement that suggests that the citizens’ enthusiasm was being seasoned with a touch of practicality, or even canniness.  Fortunately, the railroad agreed.

5.  Satisfy their need, if you can.  But above all, get their money.

     Early in 1870 engineers appeared in the vicinity of Carmel to make a final survey of the route.  Then, on February 14, ground was broken for the line in spite of a pelting rain.  Flags flew along the main thoroughfare and from the dome of the Ladies Seminary, and church bells rang.  Rain or no rain, a procession marching to the site included the Carmel Brass Band, clergy, orators, journalists, company officers, engineers and their instruments, stockholders and citizens, and railroad laborers with picks and shovels.  After a solemn prayer, the Reverend Clapp was chosen by unanimous vote to break ground and remove the first shovelful of earth.  The Reverend, a hefty gentleman with a bushy walrus mustache, was more than up to the job, following which the meeting was adjourned to his elegant carriage house, where food was provided to all, as well as speeches by the Reverend and others.  Finally, the soggy participants gave three cheers for the New York & Boston Railroad.  Clearly, Carmel’s dream was coming true.

     The Courier of September 10, 1870, reported that 80% of the railroad was now completed in Putnam County, but on November 25, 1871, a whole year later, it could only report that work was continuing, with the new line due to commence operation the following summer.  Meanwhile the railroad was undergoing a bewildering series of name changes, becoming the New York, Boston & Northern Railway in November 1872, and then the New York, Boston & Montreal Railway in January 1873.  Happily, the Courier of May 4, 1872, quoted an ad from the New York Commercial Advertiser of April 26 reporting that work on the line to Montreal was under way, despite opposite from Commodore Vanderbilt, aka Old Eighty Millions, who wanted no competition for his New York Central line.  “These are indeed gigantic schemes,” said the Commercial Advertiser, “but they are no grander than the times demand….  Only a little longer can an old fogy generation seal up this metropolis….  It is manifest destiny – you cannot dam up the Bosphorus – you cannot dam up the Empire City.”  So little Carmel would be linked not only to New York City but also to distant Montreal; manifest destiny indeed.

What the citizens of Carmel longed for and finally got.

     Work on the railroad suffered a long interruption when winter came, but construction resumed in May 1873.  On the morning of September 4 the shrill whistle of a locomotive was heard for the first time in Carmel, as a train arrived from Brewster, signaling the completion not of the whole line, but of the all-important segment linking Brewster and Carmel.  A direct connection between Carmel and all other important points on the line was expected by the summer of 1874, at which point manifest destiny would finally be fulfilled. 

     Alas, destiny received a rude jolt in September 1873, when failures on Wall Street precipitated a financial convulsion that would come to be known as the Panic of 1873.  Stocks plunged, trust officers vanished into fairyland, bankruptcies multiplied, factories shut down, railroads failed, thousands were thrown out of work, and the whole nation was plunged into a six-year depression.  By late November the Courier reported that all work on the almost completed railroad had ceased, with hopes that the suspension was temporary.  But when, in August 1874, the railroad’s treasurer came to Carmel and announced that work would resume shortly, the Courier confessed to a faint memory of having heard this before.  More rumors followed, and more reorganizations.  In 1877 the New York, Boston & Montreal Railway became the New York, Westchester & Putnam Railway, the grandiose project of reaching Montreal having mysteriously disappeared.  Whatever its name, the long-promised and much-delayed railroad finally opened on December 23, 1880, with the first train carrying six passengers and thirty-nine cans of milk – a modest enough achievement for a line once projected to reach all the way to Canada.  Still, Carmel at last had its rail connection, a mere thirty-one years after Brewster got the same.  Destiny had, after a fashion, been achieved.

     For a while.  When, in the 1970s, I began researching a biography of Daniel Drew and needed to consult county records and the Putnam County Courier in Carmel, no railroad could take me there.  Instead, I had to take the Harlem line to Brewster and then continue to Carmel by taxi.  How could this be?  The answer became apparent when, at 5 p.m., having finished my day’s research in Carmel, I was ready to taxi back to Brewster, and witnessed in the center of Carmel a traffic jam every bit as bad as traffic jams in New York.  The automobile had long since supplanted the railroad. 

     Should the “big-brained men” who promised a rail connection to Carmel and hit its citizens for thousands of dollars be classified as bunco artists and con men?  No, they really meant to build their railroad, and that railroad, when it finally began operation, was a tangible thing of iron and steel.  This, I suspect, was the case with most railroad promoters of those giddy times prior to the Panic of 1873, even if no track was ever laid.  If they were con men, they were conning not just the public but themselves, and that’s the worst kind of con there is. 

     And who are the bunco artists of today?  Your guess is as good as mine.  Off the top of my head I propose the following:

1.    Hedge fund managers

2.    Big Pharma

3.    The military industrial complex

4.    Psychiatrists

5.    Politicians

     #2 and #4 often work together, inventing all kinds of new syndromes that #2 can allegedly treat.  As for #3, all these wars that never seem to end.  And for #5, conning the public – and sometimes oneself – is an inherent part of the game.  Am I being cynical?  No, just realistic.  And what are our needs that these good folk promise to fulfill?  Wealth, health, security, a better life.  We will always crave these things, and someone will always be on hand to promise them.  And rarely, very rarely, someone will actually deliver.

     A New York vignette:  Last Sunday, as I was lunching in a little Indian restaurant on Bleecker Street, out the window I could see these establishments across the street:

·      Caliente Cab Co. / Tequila Bar

·      Kumo Sushi

·      Fish / Raw Bar / Fish

·      John’s Pizzeria / Since 1929

·      Ramen Thukpa

The cab company is, of course, a Mexican bar.  The first four are juxtaposed along Bleecker.  Ramen Thukpa, visible in the distance across Seventh Avenue, was for me a mystery at the time, but now, thanks to quickie online research, I know it to be a Japanese and Tibetan restaurant.  Once again, diversity.  And that is truly New York.

     One more touch of New York:  As I looked out the window while lunching, a panhandler stationed himself on the sidewalk outside.  He was a bearded older man in a jacket and jeans, wearing a tassel-topped knit cap that said NEW YORK.  He accosted passersby while flaunting a sign:

VET  NEEDS  FOOD

AND  BUS  FARE  HOME

I  DON’T  TALK

DC

And he didn’t talk, though anyone who gave him some spare change was greeted with a smile and a thumbs-up.  At one point he noticed me watching from the restaurant and gave me also a smile and a thumbs-up.  I was going to give him something when I left, but by then he had disappeared.  There was a time when, like most people, I would have walked past without acknowledging him, but in my old age I’ve gotten soft; I’m now more likely to give than not to give, and to add a friendly “hello” as well.  But this is New York, so I’ll probably never see him again.  He looked authentic; I hope he’ll get some food and get home.

     WBAI and WNYC:  As followers of this blog know, I listen to both these listener-supported radio stations.  WBAI, having just failed to meet its goal in a fund drive, has immediately launched another fund drive – which is almost without precedent.  Soon it will have fund drives going year round, without interruption.  They are, of course, desperate.  Their loyal base of contributors is shrinking, and they’re constantly changing programs to hook more listeners, but so far it doesn’t seem to be working.  Some of the changes are good, but when you tune in, you have no idea what you’ll hear.  Last night I encountered a spiel for “neuro design engineering” and “transitional hypnosis.”  For a contribution of $150 you could be instructed in these mysteries, which will change your life.  In fact, you will be certified in them and can start your own consulting business charging $150 an hour.  Some of those participating have already snagged their first clients at that princely hourly sum – hurrah!  Which reminds me of those online ministerial schools that will give you a quickie ministerial degree allowing you to claim all the benefits of clergy – and there are many, including tax breaks – allowed by law.  When I’d heard enough of this exuberant spiel, I switched to WNYC, which is offering a series of very moving reminiscences by family members and significant others of all the pedestrians who died recently in traffic accidents in the city.  My personal conclusion: score one, and a big one, for WNYC.

     Coming soon:  Sotheby’s and Christie’s and Bunny and Andy, and Who Goes to Jail and Who Doesn't.

     ©  2014  Clifford Browder

      

154. West 4th Street Shops: Bongs, Gongs, and Thongs, plus a Killing

     West 4^th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenue, which I have often walked when toting wines home from the Lower East Side, has a rich, weird assortment of shops.  Starting from Sixth Avenue and heading west toward Seventh on the uptown side of the street, here is what I’ve found.  Omitted street numbers indicate residential buildings, which are interspersed with the shops.

     First, Tic Tac Toe at 161 West 4^th, with a sign outside showing one young woman paddling another with a hair brush.  Needless to say, this suggests a frothy mix of the naughty and sensual, and the suggestion is not so far off, since the store has been described online as a clothing store selling “adult lingerie” or, more bluntly, as a “sex shop.”  Well, okay.  Though I’ve never ventured inside (I’m not, in any way, into “adult lingerie”), I’m sure that frilly and abbreviated apparel await one within.  But there’s more than that, since a sign on the sidewalk with the same spanking scene lists these offerings:

·      BRIDAL/BACHELOR PARTY STUFF

·      ROMANTIC GAMES AND MASSAGE OILS

·      ADULT TOYS

·      FETISH ACCESSORIES

·      LINGERIE AND DANCE WEAR

·      MEN’S UNDER WEAR

Online reviews vary from raves to pans, the raves praising it for blow-up dolls, gag gifts, vibrating dolphins, and even “pasties” (whatever they are), while the pans decry the staff as slouchy, gossipy, immature, and rich in profanity; take your pick.  But the sign and window display provide a nice spicy start for our stroll toward Seventh Avenue.  (Further research reveals that “pasties” are adhesive patches to cover the nipples.)

     Burlesque at 163 West 4^th is seemingly a competitor of Tic Tac Toe, with more scantily clad sexy manikins in the window, plus the added enticement, “All costumes on sale.”  Yet when I check them out online, the reviews mention jewelry, gifts, hats, and bags.  A mystery.

     The Four-Faced Liar at 165 West 4^th is another mystery, since there is an array of liquor bottles in the window, but it is most definitely closed.  Going online, however, I find it described as a welcoming and unpretentious Irish pub, so maybe my afternoon walk was ill-timed; it may open later.  But I’m looking for shops, not bars.

     Next door is the Pink Pussy Cat, at 167 West 4^th, whose windows, featuring minimally clad manikins, proclaim it yet another competitor to Tic Tac Toe.  Here, without entering, we can have an inside look at a sex shop, thanks to the published account of a young woman who, recently arrived from Yugoslavia in 1989, was living in Queens on a rented mattress at $50 a week.  Needing a job, she got one at Pink Pussy Cat without even knowing what the boutique’s name implied or what “sexual paraphernalia” meant.  Paid $8 an hour plus commissions, she soon found herself selling sex toys like strawberry-flavored underwear, and a few others like mouthless masks and nipple clamps that were a bit scary.  The customers included happy couples, the men querying about the items while their wives or girlfriends pretended to be bashful, or callow youths from New Jersey who blushed crimson at the sight of black crotchless lace teddies.  But the hours were long – from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. -- and when she objected to working seven days straight through the holiday season, she was fired.

     Piquantly juxtaposed with the Pink Pussy Cat is Music Inn at 169 West 4^th, a store with bins of old music books and records for sale out in front, plus chairs in desperate need of a paint job but inviting visitors to sit, and windows displaying guitars, chimes, and even a laundry board, plus a sign reading  EXPERT  INSTRUMENT  REPAIR.  In addition, its website offers a wide range of instruments including electric zarods – whatever that may be – as well as Music Inn T-shirts and comics.

     Shisha International at 171 West 4^th is what’s known as a smoke shop, with the most amazing window display on the block, featuring a rich mix of accouterments comprising what I take to be glass water pipes (bongs) and hookahs, vaporizers, a smoke odor exterminator, and cigarette lighters, with a few grinning skulls interspersed that may or may not be sending a message.  If I linger here, it’s because the display fascinates and baffles me; a nonsmoker, I have no idea what all these objects are, least of all the water pipes (?), skinny totem poles of glass bulbs often two feet high, and one that towers up to an astonishing five feet.  For an added touch of atmosphere, a wooden cigar store Indian stands by the entrance, and another taller one greets you just inside the door.  Online reviews hail Shisha as a mecca for smokers and describe the staff as knowledgeable and friendly.  And one review tells how a friend of his bought a high-end glass hand pipe for $130, took it home, and then discovered, as he and his buddies passed it around, that it was in fact an anatomically correct penis pipe!  But they smoked it anyway and had a fine evening.

Hector Garcia

     Also located at 171 West 4^th is Juice Generation, which advertises smoothies, juices, cold pressed açai bowls (again, I plead ignorance), and “shots and boosts.”  Among the items listed on a menu brochure available outside are Supa Dupa Greens, Tropical Lust (“watermelon, pineapple, apple & ginger”), Red Dragon Fruit, Mucho Mango, Multi-V Squeeze, Protein KnockOut, Ginger Fix,  and Vital Shot.  As for the “açai bowls” just mentioned, a quick bit of online research reveals that the açai palm grows in the swamps and floodplains of Trinidad and northern South America, and that the fruit, a small, round, black-purple berry, is eaten or made into a beverage.  In fact, the berries are now hailed by some as a superfood with anti-aging and weight-loss properties, which may explain why they have made there way into West 4^th Street, though Juice Generation makes no such claims.  What is does offer includes Almond Butter Bliss, an açai bowl whose ingredients include açai, banana, almond milk, almond butter, coconut, and hemp granola, and Amazing Green, an açai bowl with spinach and kale.  The store’s message of the joys of juicing is a welcome contrast to the smoke shops and sex shops all around it, and further proof that this one short stretch of West 4^th Street endeavors to satisfy all our cravings, licit and illicit alike.

A grove of Açai palms in Brazil.

You can even do it to yourself, if
you're careful.
Bjorn Bulthius

     Village Four Nails & Spa at 175 West 4^th features manicures ranging from $8 to $45 (French Color Gel Manicure, $45), artificial nails that top out at $100 for “UV Gel Permanent French,” pedicures ranging up to $60 for a “Honey Silky Milk Spa Pedicure,” waxing of various body parts (“Upper Legs with Bikini, $45”), and special treatments that include eyelash tinting ($25), ear candling ($30) (??), 10-minute reflexology for $13, and eyelash extensions ($40 and up).  (Ear candling, I have now learned, is an alternative medicine procedure meant to improve health and well-being by lighting one end of a hollow candle and inserting the other end in the ear canal.  Which is all right, I suppose, as long as the practitioner doesn’t reverse the candle by mistake.)

     But that’s not all that Village Four offers.  How about a 60-minute Hydrolifting Facial for $90, or a 70-minute Deep Prone Clearing Treatment for $110?  All of which, to this ignorant male, sounds pretty overwhelming.  And I learn online that Village Four aestheticians (yes, that’s what they call them) often begin an appointment with a complimentary glass of champagne (Moët & Chandon, let’s hope).  And after all this, reinforced by a smoothie at Juice Generation, one is certainly ready for Tic Tac Toe or the Pink Pussy Cat.

     At 177 West 4^th we come to another smoke shop, Smoking Culture (“For all your smoking needs”), with more glass pipes and houkahs and other handblown glass contraptions in the window.  Recently it became known for much more than the products it sells.  Tipped off by an irate girlfriend and the shopowner, on July 28 of this year two federal marshals and a New York City police detective entered the store to arrest Charles Mozdir, an employee wanted on child molestation charges in California.  Confronted, Mozdir whipped out a handgun and opened fire, wounding all three law officers amid a rain of shattered glass, before their return fire killed him.  Outside, West 4^th Street emptied quickly as pedestrians fled the scene, and the street was roped off for hours as the police investigation continued.  Protected by their bullet-proof vests, the officers survived, as did Smoking Culture itself.  But in Mozdir’s pockets the police found twenty more rounds.

     Next door is Village Cuts, a barbershop at 179 West 4^th Street (haircut $21), promising whatever look the customer desires.  “Walk-ins welcome,” a sign indicates.

     At 181 West 4^th there are two establishments, one upstairs and one down.  Upstairs is Ramen-ya, which I took for a Japanese massage parlor or something similar.  But no, going online I learn that it is a tiny hole-in-the-wall Japanese restaurant and noodle house with excellent reviews.  I shan’t linger, since I’m not surveying restaurants or bars.

     Downstairs at 181 is Okuyama Bodywork, offering massages for deep-tissue, neck, and lower back pain, as well as stress relief and sports injuries, and reflexology.  “Therapies range from basic energy to potent yet careful and exquisite stretches that incorporate a variety of respected techniques,” it explains online.  Privacy and strict etiquette are promised; this isn’t one of those places.  Reviews, including one by a reviewer who says “I don’t normally right reviews,” are excellent, emphasizing the personal attention you receive, the sustained effort by the masseuse to get to the root of your problem.  So here’s another leap toward health.

     Passing two residential entrances, at 187 West 4^th we come to the Patisserie Claude, a small pastry shop with Parisian-style pastries and coffee.  There are only four little tables in front, plus a counter displaying their wares, but when I pass by there’s usually at least one or two seated patrons nibbling goodies.  It looks tempting, and far more relaxing and casual than the crowded Magnolia Bakery (see post #153), but it’s usually close to noon when I pass it, and I can’t afford to spoil my appetite for lunch.  Online reviews are unqualified raves, extolling the “chocolate Moose cake,” croissants, éclairs, tarts, and quiche.  Claude is evidently the baker in charge, but what his “Moose cake” tastes like, I can’t imagine.  But then, I’m a vegan, so what does it matter?

Gâteau à base de mousse au chocolat, which translates as
"chocolate mousse cake."  And not an antler in sight.
Lionel Allorge

     Passing a cleaner and tailor at 189 West 4^th, we come to Considerosity at 191, featuring the “Art of Thoughtful Gifting,” with what seem to be large fans (not the electric kind) in the window.  By now we’re nearing the end of the walk, so I haven’t lingered here.  But online I learn that the store is crammed with handmade jewelry, artisanal home accessories, candles, cologne, bottles, handbags, mugs, bowls, you  name it, and at reasonable prices.  Gifts for everyone, it appears.  A nice note to almost end on.

     The end of the walk comes at 193 West 4^th with Petite Optique, which claims to be “the most exclusive European eyewear boutique in New York.”  They boast a collection of frames that is truly unique.  Click on “Collections” on their website and you will be offered a host of designer names from all over the world – BOZ, Cutler & Gross, Factory 900, ic Berlin, Lindberg, Mykita, RAPP, Theo, and many more.  Never heard of them?  That’s the point: these are exclusive designers from all over the world, not available elsewhere in the city.  And if you click on any one of the names, you will be shown a photo of an attractive model wearing the frames in question.  You may not look like the model, but the frames are certainly distinctive.  A nice upgrade note to end our walk on, as we come to the Sheridan Square Viewing Garden and Seventh Avenue. 

     Now that we’ve seen a lot of New York shops, what can we say distinguishes them, regardless of what they offer?  Something rare, unique, not to be found just anywhere.  It may be houkahs, zarods, açai bowls, a Hydrolifting Facial, a “chocolate Moose cake,” adult lingerie, or glasses frames by BOZ, but the chances of your finding the item elsewhere in the city are slim.  (One exception: adult lingerie seems to abound, though only in a certain kind of shop.)  And in the past?  Were there shops with unique offerings back then, too?  Let’s go back to the 1860s and take a quick glance.

     Tiffany’s was flourishing then too, but only beginning to be a big operation with international renown.   Located at 550-552 Broadway, with a carved wooden Atlas above the door shouldering a huge clock, the store offered a cluttered window display of Victorian objets d’art: bronze figurines, silver teapots, vases of every size and shape, necklaces draped over bowls and jewel boxes, Chinese carvings, goblets, jeweled clocks, paperweights, and fans – just the kind of stuff that the residents of brownstones used to clutter up the mantels and whatnots of their parlors. 

     The founder of the store, Charles Lewis Tiffany, had never intended it to be a mecca for the wealthy; rather, he courted a mass market for his wares.  Always on the lookout for unusual items, he snapped up diamonds dumped on the market by fleeing aristocrats in the wake of the 1848 revolution in Paris, and later, even Marie-Antoinette’s girdle of diamonds, which he broke up into pieces to sell, so as to avoid embarrassing questions about just how the girdle had been acquired.  In 1856, having bought a perfect pink pearl from a New Jersey farmer who had found it in his dinner mussels, Tiffany  sold it to the Empress Eugénie of France.  As news of the sale spread, it prompted a rush throughout the country to rake the brooks in hopes of another such find.  But in his shop, mass market or not, he forbade the customary haggling; each item was tagged with its price, and that was final.

Tiffany's at Union Square, circa 1887.

     Tiffany’s today can hardly be called a quaint little shop, yet its store at  727 Fifth Avenue still features the wooden Atlas above its Fifth Avenue entrance.  I have never set foot in it, but long ago my partner Bob went there to buy a gift for his mother, and for $25 – a tidy sum, in those days – acquired a sterling silver letter opener that adorns his desk today.  Its design is the soul of simplicity, and only with a magnifying glass can you make out the tiny inscription:

TIFFANY  &  CO.

 STERLING

Discretion, not flamboyance, is the rule today.

Matthew Brady, circa 1875.

     One other shop of the 1860s merits attention: Matthew Brady’s National Portrait Gallery at 785 Broadway, near 10^th Street, the fourth and last of his New York studios.  There were many daguerreotype studios in the city by then, but Brady’s was the finest.  To his spacious establishment, its walls and tables displaying square and circular frames ranging from the small to the huge and monumental, visitors flocked, the rich and famous and the not-so-rich-and-famous, Americans and foreigners alike, to indulge in that novelty of the age, having one’s features immortalized in a daguerreotype, the pioneer photograph of the age.  Portrait painters must have suffered a steep loss in commissions, as people embraced the new technology and sat for their portrait, yet all was not lost, for Brady collaborated with artists who copied his photographs onto canvas to make painted portraits.  Another product of the age that Brady offered was the carte de visite, a small calling card bearing one’s photograph; such cards  became all the rage and were produced by the million on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Brady studio on Broadway, circa 1850.

     But Brady also had a keen sense of history in the making, and as a result managed to photograph many prominent men of the day, including every president or ex-president from John Quincy Adams to William McKinley, with the exception of William Henry Harrison, who died after only a month in office.  When the Civil War broke out, Brady, known up till then chiefly for his portraits, sent out teams of photographers to document the war.  Photographers of that day couldn’t catch soldiers in action, but they could photograph quiet poses of soldiers and their leaders, forts and camps and, most memorably, battlefields littered with the bodies of the dead, scenes that brought home the realities of war to the public, who up till then had known only the heroic representations of artists.  Having spent over $100,000 on plates, Brady hoped the government would buy his war photographs once the war ended, but it refused to do so, forcing Brady to close his New York studio and declare bankruptcy.  He finally managed to sell a large collection of negatives to the War Department and got $25,000 from Congress, but he remained heavily in debt.  In 1896 he died penniless in the charity ward of a New York hospital.  But thanks to him our Civil War is the first war in history to be documented in detail by photography.

     So ends my glance at New York shops then and now.  It’s been an adventure and I’ve learned a lot.  Do you have any favorite New York shops not mentioned here?  If so, let me know.  I may do another post on shops in the future.

     Coming soon:  Five Steps to Sure Success for All Bunco Artists, Con Men, and Hoaxers.  A look at the forgotten genius Henry T. Helmbold, king of the patent medicine men, and some “big-brained” railroad promoters who “meant business.”

     ©  2014  Clifford Browder