Table For Two?

In a previous post I mentioned this location as a place where once there stood a small table and two chairs. Today, this is a Pax restaurant. Back in the early 90s, it was a small deli/bakery-type place. Back then, Times Square was still Times Square, but it was changing. People called it Disneyfication because Disney was moving into the area — the Disney Store, the New Amsterdam Theater — and the area was being rezoned to drive out the X-rated movie theaters.

So the owners of this former deli/bakery-type place decided to take advantage of and contribute to the changing surroundings by putting a table and chairs out onto the sidewalk. You can see here that there isn’t much room, and if you sit here you’re pretty much isolated from the store inside. I used to pass by this place from time to time. The trees weren’t there then and it was dirtier and dingier. You can see it’s nowhere to eat.

I don’t want to give the impression that it was popular with patrons of the store — I’m sure it wasn’t. After all, it would have been only tourists who ate there, and tourists didn’t really go to Times Square then, and even those who did would have smelled the stench and seen the stains on the sidewalk beneath the table. What’s important is that some store owner thought it would be a good idea to put a table there and, as a result, some people ate at it. Barbarians, all.

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