East Village landmark and storied punk retailer Trash & Vaudeville has announced it plans to move on from its location on St. Mark’s Avenue, where it’s been located since 1975. According to its owner, Ray Goodman, it will reopen on 96 East Seventh Street this fall. Goodman says he thought long and hard about the move, realizing that the block holds a special place. In an interview with EV Grieve, he stated:
“I love St. Mark’s Place. There’s no doubt it. There’s something magical about it. This just isn’t any block. The decision wasn’t something that I took lightly. From a business perspective, we saw a shift in the clientele. The block is not as conducive for fashion shopping as it once was. Now it seems as if it’s all food — fast food — and bongs. Even stores that aren’t bong stores sell bongs.”
Goodman says rising rent was also a factor but the bigger issue was the shift to fast food and tourist bong shops plus planned expansion of a nearby building that would put his store “in a construction zone for the next five years.”
Really, it’s a credit to Goodman that he kept the store for as long as it did on St. Mark’s. Like many New York City blocks that start out as enclaves of coolness, they are populated at first with hip, cutting edge boutiques–as St. Mark’s once was, which are eventually replaced by giant corporate chains and then collapse under the weight of their own basicness, a phenomenon which is beginning to occur on lower Broadway in SoHo. Probably St. Mark’s has been past its prime in terms of cool factor for at least five years.
While Trash & Vaudeville is just one store, it provided a certain anchor to the East Village’s once very cool past. Without it, probably in a few years even the bong shops will be swept away, too, replaced by tony restaurants and whatever else is the flavor of the day for the upper income folks who reside there and in nearby neighborhoods. It’s a sad fact of life for the freaks who once found a refuge there, but this is the nature of the ever-changing New York City real estate scene.
The image above from Trash & Vaudeville’s Facebook page shows storefront signage from the ’80s and includes a Michael Basquiat “Samo” tag.
