The Station Cafe in Woodside, Queens—one of the greatest, rottenest dive bars in the city—has a brand new awning.
The former awning was faded, ripped, listing and brick red, like the bar's old metal facade. The new one is a stark black and white number. Not unhandsome in its way. Certainly not one of these faux-posh forest green numbers you see everywhere, thank God. But it certainly makes the Station seem less wondrously divey than it was.
One other thing. The old awning said Station Cafe on the front. A strangely quaint name for the place. Which was why the name was so great. The new awning offers the more prosaic Station Bar.
The old awning must have fallen down or something. I can't imagine the owners of the Station making the switch unless they were forced to.
The old awning developed a massive hole over this past harsh winter, to the point that it ceased to have any meaningful functionality as an awning at all. There is a picture of it in that condition here:
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It was indeed sad to see the old awning go, but I doubt very much that even if the proprietors left it up out of some combination of nostalgia and indifference that the city would have let it remain hovering over such a high traffic spot in that condition.
Mingusai: I looked at your old torn awning, looks very beaten like a drunk drowning his last, glug...glus...glug. But I'm sure that bar will fill drinkers bellies rather quickly that they won't even see the changes above the doorway.
ReplyDeleteIt certainly seems a lot safer now that the awning has been replaced. Wonder if they plan on redoing the whole storefront for Station Cafe?
ReplyDeletePerish the thought!
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