Many locals pine for the old New York, but a couple of Lower East Side shutterbugs are actively doing something about it.
What looks like a beloved old luncheonette, deli and bodega are actually jumbo photos in a four-sided sculpture.Stefano GiovanniniKarla and James Murray have been photographing New York’s storefronts for the past 25 years, preserving on film, and in several books, the gritty landmarks of the city’s fast-changing neighborhoods.
Their latest work is a four-sided sculpture in Seward Park (at Essex Street and East Broadway) with a different storefront on each side: a bodega, luncheonette, newsstand and delicatessen. Except for Katz’s Deli, they are all gone.
Children, the couple notes, have been prone to grab at realistic-looking bags of chips in the photos of the installation set between two playgrounds. “An old man had a dollar out and tried to buy a bag of Doritos for his grandson,” says James Murray, 54. “The kid looked so disappointed, he touched it to make sure we were telling the truth.”
“Mom-and-Pops of the L.E.S.,” which will remain up till July 2019, is built to withstand the elements. The jumbo, 8-by-12-foot photos are printed on panels of dibond (an aluminum composite that will protect the work from wear and tear), and were made using UV-cured ink to resist fading and finished with a graffiti-resistant laminate. The roof is wavy green polycarbonate, a nod to the old-school bodegas and their awnings that because of skyrocketing Lower East Side rents are getting harder to find.
“We knew the structure had to be as rough and tumble as the neighborhood,” Murray tells The Post. “It had to be able to take anything that was thrown at it. Just like the businesses down there.”
The ambitious work is a community effort — lumber for the projects was stored on the roof of Veniero’s, the couple’s favorite neighborhood pastry shop. When Karla dropped a heavy leveler on James’ nose during construction, a tattoo artist from Daredevil Tattoo around the corner bandaged him up.
The couple, who’ve spent 22 years in the same East Village apartment, believe tourists should spend less time wandering around Times Square and more time soaking up the city’s sights and smells, say, of a local pork store.
Barring that, the Murrays tell The Post, “We hope people will see this [installation] as a celebration, like an Irish wake.”
East Villager Paul Abreu, 45, says that when he saw the reproduction the other day, he tried to go inside.
“I was hoping I could get a water in there,” the Juice Press executive says of the Chung’s Candy and Soda Stand storefront. “I wish there was still a place where I know everybody and everybody knows me.”
