Gem Spa, the beloved corner store in Manhattan’s East Village, has shut down
a pair of lines from an Allen Ginsberg poem ; the back cover of the New York Dolls’ first album; the title of a 1982 Jean-Michel Basquiat painting; Lou Reed’s song “Egg Cream.” The works traced a timeline of the East Village that both belonged firmly to the 20th century and remained top of mind.
“We’re walking away from a very big mess, and we fought really hard to stay,” Patel said. Her family had fielded plenty of offers over the years to sell the store. “We never wanted to leave.”Carlina Rivera “I would be in Gem Spa one minute,” Rivera added. “I would be window shopping in the Gap across the street—I know that’s not as bohemian, but this is the type of thing that we would do. And then eventually I was like: You know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna get my belly button pierced today.”, a writer who grew up on St. Marks Place, is generally less pessimistic than familiar city doomsayers.
The reading selection was also partly what brought Smith to Gem Spa, she said in a phone interview on Monday. InSmith wrote about how she and Mapplethorpe got an egg cream at Gem Spa when they first met in 1967. She remembered crowds converging outside at night, and developing other interests at the shop: “I had never seen French cigarettes,” Smith said. “Gem Spa used to have every kind of foreign cigarette.
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