EMBRACING TREASURES: THE ART OF SURVIVING

Ten years ago, Our Time Press christened three blocks on Malcolm X Blvd., between Halsey Street and Decatur Street, “Antiques Row.” 

Our Time’s effort and intention was to help MXB antiquarians pick up business from the October 1999 “Come On Home to Bedford-Stuyvesant” Brownstone Tour.  It did.

Within two years, the corridor had extended from Anthony Smith’s Odd Things’ Collectibles at Decatur and MXB to Morton’s Antique Memories at the northwest corner of Putnam Avenue.  Clarence Barber, veteran of them all, and Paul Tyner and Greta Niles, who rented a space inside Tyner’s place, across from Barber’s, enjoyed steady traffic.   

Dalton Taylor’s The Victorian on Tompkins Avenue South, Ken William’s high-end Mercantile on the corner of Fulton Street and Irving, and Eddie Hibbert’s cave of a treasure chest on Myrtle, attracted collectors from all over the city. 

All of the furniture dealers had a common goal: to keep business going, and to prosper.

Now only Mr. “C” survives on the original Antiques Row.  Greta may be in Florida, site of her dream Antiques emporium.  Tyner and Morton have not been heard from, although Morton may be residing nearby. Mr. Smith is retired to stately Savannah, GA, his Odd Things replaced by the high-scale Thompson’s Interiors – hardly a place, now, for stuff. 

Taylor and Hibbert are still around, plying trade amidst salvaged architectural gems, from pier mirrors, painted wood mantles and victor-victrolas to brass hinges, old Ebony and National Geographic magazines, spinster’s diaries and framed photos of high school class pictures of the 50′s, and tons of other bits and pieces.

Business is slow.  “All small businesses are suffering because of the economy,” Taylor told us.  “Nearly 40 antique shops along Atlantic Avenue (site of 1999′s real Antiques Row) have closed their doors for good.  If you can keep the doors from closing, you’re doing OK.”

Plus a lot of folks are accessing their shopping via the Internet and selling their secondhand things for first-class prices on Craig’s List.   But these stalwarts are hanging in there.  Not because they love the business.

The answer to why Taylor, Hibbert and Mr. C are still around walked into The Victorian last week.  She asked to see Taylor’s doors.  Turned out the doors he showed her were too small to fashion a 6-ft dining table out of one of them.   Taylor advised that she visit Eddie Hibbert, where she would find exactly what she wanted. After all, Eddie is the door king.  Particularly antique and old one’s.

“Eddie sends three to four people a day over to my shop,” says Dalton. 

Small businesses are being forced to create commercial alliances to stay afloat. It commands integrity and respect and an understanding that sharing customers is the only way to go.  “It’s a buyers’ market, and people are not buying.”

It doesn’t hurt, either, that Taylor strips furniture, makes repairs, refinishes and executes a range of other artisan skills, including wainscoting and crafting moldings. He knows that in today’s economy, it pays to be multifaceted. 

Mr. C’s been a fixture on the avenue for close to 40 years, and admits that real estate investment and stock market tinkering has a lot more to do with it than the occasional sale of a rare, vintage mahogany mantle or a junked lamp.

Hibbert’s super-rare finds are stored in and sold from an open, easy-access warehouse situation at Greene & Gates, the heart of Clinton Hill’s brownstoner neighborhood.  He oversees the work of a Class A wood-stripping team, and he is known for his almost-uncanny ability to “attract” great pieces of furniture and unusual finds – the kind you see oil-polished in House & Garden.  Or that you used to see in the now-defunct H&G.

In 2001, Mr. Hibbert introduced us to Jomo Oliya, a cabinetmaker who said that antique dealers, “have a soul connection with nature, and with the builders and carpenters of the past.  They hold a piece of wood.  They understand it. They respect it. They know it was shaped from the heart.  They have a special knowledge.”

Mr. Taylor shared “knowledge” about brownstones, the final havens for much of Hibbert, Mr. C’s and Taylor’s objets d’art: “They are extraordinary treasures.  Like living within a work of art. And sometimes people fail to see that the beauty of them also is in the fact that they are always being fixed up, repaired, nurtured; they are living things.  They were made when craftsmanship was king.  They can never be replaced or built ever again.”
(Note:  Please see Our Time Press Business Directory for location and contact information for The Victorian and Eddie’s Treasures.)
- Bernice Elizabeth Green

The Brooklyn That Can’t be Bought…

 

Mike Bloomberg’s first thoughts the morning after Mayoral election night might have wavered seamlessly between “ I won!” and “I almost lost!”  A bittersweet victory/defeat for the richest man in New York City, who lives in a world where powerful egos have no patience with almost losing.  He won 557,059 expensive votes to Democrat Bill Thompson’s low-cost 506,717.

 

That morning, our friend Robert Taylor woke up to a world that eludes the city agencies.  He was at peace padding his way from Brevoort Place to Clinton Hill’s Grand Avenue, as he does every morning.  “If it snows, I pick up a shovel and clean the streets for a few dollars. I just keep moving, but I keep coming back.”  Virtually homeless after losing his apartment on the avenue just after 9/11 due to escalated rents; Robert is accustomed to “street guy” references.  But he also knows how to train horses; he does not bet on them.  He sometimes entertains small crowds, outdoors, with his phenomenal classic music playing, when a used piano is dropped off at his friend Eddie Hibbert’s Antique warehouse down the street.

Mr. Taylor informed us that the Mayor shelled out about $200.00 per vote  for each of the more than half million votes he received, compared to his Democrat opponent Bill Thompson’s $14 each for almost the same amount of votes.  “But, remember, it’s not always about the money; it’s about what you want that money to do. When the stakes are high, you cast high bets to win at any cost.  He now has a lot of work to do to make true on those promises he paid for.”

On the north easternmost edge of Brooklyn, Mr. B., a block association president and former corrections officer agrees, but he still thinks arrogance, not money interfered with Mr. Thompson’s sure shot.  At his election site, the lever for DeBlasio was stuck, and the pollworker told him gruffly,  “Don’t worry ‘bout that, it’ll count.”  After putting his strength on that lever to bring it to its place, he informed everyone present what was going on.  “This ‘kiss-my-ass’ attitude – on the part of a lot of folks connected with the political process, including local elected officials, only succeeds in keeping voters away.  And it may have pushed votes away from Thompson.  People are turned off, they don’t want to participate. 

“At the community board meeting this week, a guy stands up and asks about construction jobs that are going to other ethnic groups who don’t live in the neighborhood; a weatherization official announces that it doesn’t make sense for owners of 2-family homes to apply for special funding, ‘especially,’ he said, ‘since you don’t use that much hot water anyway’, plus we learn about 75% of the program’s $10 million is available to owners of multi-family dwellings, well – that’s not us; then there’s these rezoning issues and whether or not certain areas of Bedford –Stuyvesant will be rezoned in accordance with the special interests of other ethnic groups in other areas.  Point is … if local politicians are servants of the public, they should come out of their comfort zones and get into the neighborhood and go to the people. Explain to them what’s going on.”

The 45-year-old block association president was recently stopped by police in Herbert Von King Park and asked to show ID because he was walking through the park at night, three nights before the election.  Officers apologized profusely after they discovered he was a retired Corrections Officer. “This is the way it is.  But attitudes across the board must change if they are to get the support from all of the people.

“Some of the young Turks seeking election against incumbents could have gotten a lot of mileage out of putting their weight solidly and visibly behind Mr. Thompson. There are so many lessons to be learned.”

It’s still no excuse for such a low turnout, says New York City Parks worker Earl Williams.  “When I went to P.S. 305 at 4pm to vote, there was no one there except the poll workers.”

It was chilly and dry the day after the election, and everyone had something to say abouthow Thompson should have won. Except, of course, the mainstream press, stunned that their polls didn’t get it right, and perhaps numbed by the same thinking as Taylor, Mr. B., Mr. Williams and Mr. Bloomberg: if Black people had turned out, in force, Thompson, who earned 50.9% of Brooklyn votes to Mr. Bloomberg’s 45.3%, would have enjoyed the landslide of the century.  For pennies on the dollar.  Lessons to be learned, indeed.