> Their story began in Missouri where they found a gorgeous barn that needed a second chance. They dismantled the barn and brought it to NYC and rebuilt in in their loft in SoHo.
>So one day two guys drive up with a van, park it at a loading dock, go into the warehouse and start loading the van with coffee. They even got help from some workers.
Oh goddammit, I went there when I was a young child and always wanted to go back but didn't know the name (and my parents forgot.) Now I finally learn the name and find out I can't go back..
> but I figure there must be thousand of these hidden spaces scattered in every big buildings, and we will never hear about them.
Most likely. This story reminds me that as a kid in the 90's we figured out that the walls under the bottom floor of every building in the neighborhood led to a hollow space big enough to be called a small room.
It didn't take long for most blocks to have a hole in them with a sheet of plywood to hide the easy access.
I was lucky that the one in my friend's block was mostly occupied by other kids and had pastel drawings on all the walls. Rumor had it that some of the other blocks were used for less reputable reasons.
I always wondered what happened to those spaces. I tried to go there once, but the buildings now have locked doors.
Had we been adults, it would have been very easy to add furniture and perhaps even electricity.
Missing context: I believe the building referred to as "The Josh" is the Gluck+ affordable housing development Van Sinderen Plaza. [1]
Compare the colorful panel surfacing to the description "Our new neighbor is a classic 5-over-1: retail on the ground floor, topped with several stories of apartments one wouldn’t want to be able to afford... We spent the summer certain that the caution tape–yellow panels on The Josh’s south side were insulation, to be eventually supplanted by an actual facade. Alas, in its finished form The Josh really is yellow, and also burgundy, gray, and brown."
The coy phrasing about "apartments one wouldn’t want to be able to afford" is a disguised reference to the fact that the apartments are reserved only for low-income residents; the author would not want to live in Brooklyn on the poverty-level income required to be eligible for the housing development.
The pictured sculpture the author dislikes is "Waiting" by the artist KAWS (Brian Donnelly). [2]
I didn't realize there were such a thing as an abandoned McDonalds.
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