[EVG photo from January]
After eight years at 74 E. Seventh St. between First Avenue and Second Avenue, North Star Tattoo closed at the end of 2015.
And, as this photo via EVG correspondent Steven shows, workers have erected the new sign today for the incoming business...
Cupcake Market.
We don't have any other info about the proprietors right this sec.
Anyway, apparently the cupcake trend lives on... and a block away from Butter Lane Cupcakes.
Ugh, I thought cupcakes were over.
ReplyDeleteWhy not integrate? Cupcakes 'n' Tats. Makes as much sense as anything else these days.
ReplyDeleteMissed the wave?
ReplyDeleteHmm maybe it's just called Cupcake Market and doesn't have anything to do with actual cupcakes...that could be an interesting twist.
ReplyDeleteI don't have a sweet tooth so I am not the best perspective but a.) aren't there tons of bakeries already? b.) how can cupcakes make rent? Do the cupcakes that aren't sold go work second jobs?
ReplyDeleteI'll take businesses that will fail in two months Alex...
ReplyDelete@Anon 1:52
ReplyDeleteExactly. It could well be a brothel for retired pornstars.
It's not like we're short on cupcake markets OR tattoo parlors.
ReplyDeleteOh for fuckssake. ANOTHER cupcake shop? How 2004.
ReplyDeleteA Late Quartet: The first violinist (Mark Ivanir) is having an affair with the teenaged daughter (Imogen Poots) of the violist (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and the second violinist (Catherine Keener). Her apartment is immediately above the tattoo parlor on East 7th Street, and when Mom sees that his car is parked out front, she gets suspicious. So he has to climb out the fire escape above the North Star.
ReplyDeleteOr only tattoos OF cupcakes. A Cupcake Tattoo District, if you will.
ReplyDeleteDid I miss something? Isn't Butter Lane cupcakes just a few doors east on East 7th Street? Did I miss something in my classes on capitalism at MIT's business program that explained cupcake competition (stores practically next door #73 for the cupcake market and #123 for Butter Lane)? Commentators on this site have vast knowledge, perhaps someone could explain the advantages of opening a business with the expectation of failure. Where is a dry goods and notions store when you need one? Of course what we are probably talking about (CCM) is yet one more coffee shop with the allure of specialty cupcakes. Will they offer baking classes a la Butter Lane?
ReplyDeleteWhy would anyone go anywhere but St. Mark's Place for a tattoo?
ReplyDeleteExcuse me, I stand corrected, Hoffman played the second violinist. He's already frustrated because he never gets to the play the first violin parts, and when he hears that his daughter is fooling around with Daniel (Mark Ivanir) he punches him out during a rehearsal. This gets the cello player (Christopher Walken) very upset, and he walks out on the others, and contemplates suicide.
ReplyDeleteCatherine Keener also played Hoffman's wife in the extraordinarily bleak film, "Synecdoche," and treated him even more awful in that film than she did in Late Quartet. Hoffman's character hires an actor to play him in the movie-within-the-movie, and that character also commits suicide, jumping off a ledge of the Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx. I'm still upset about the death of such an irreplaceable actor, and the scenes from these movies are all around us! Walken (the cellist in Late Quartet) got his start in a 1963 episode of "Naked City," playing the troubled teenage son of Eddie Albert, a liquor store owner. Okay, that's enough crap from me -- I'm returning control of the horizontal and the vertical to other EVG bloggers.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe this is Trash and Vaudeville's idea of a practical joke.
ReplyDeletePretty much sums it up doesn't it.
ReplyDeleteEven if Cupcake Market were the one that opened here 8 years ago, it'd still have been too late by then.
ReplyDeleteBut guys, stop being babies and stop whining and griping, be positive and embrace change. NYC is all about change. Change. Leave the babies to the cupcakes and the cupcakes to the babies. Change.
When it closes next month, I'm opening a bar that only serves Cosmos.
ReplyDeleteNew York City is about change! Can you spare change? I need Liquiteria! And WiFi! And cupcakes! Give me change!!!
ReplyDeleteCool. Retro twee.
ReplyDeleteIf I post anything slightly not in favor of tattoos it will not appear here.
ReplyDeleteMy guess is that this is another example of a would-be entrepreneur falling for a pre-packaged business plan. Among some ethnic groups (Gujarati Indians & Chinese in particular) business ownership, no matter how humble, is considered more prestigious than almost any kind of wage-earning job. Admirable, yes, but we see time and again in the EV so much money squandered on late-to-the-game, low-barrier-to-entry/low-barrier-to-competition businesses. Businesses, usually, of no use to the people who actually live here.
ReplyDeleteOf course, CM might be a college-y white person with a dream, too, but either way - I give it a year tops.
@4:57 PM: I think it is like any other idea. You see some other people doing it, then more people doing it, and you figure it must be a good idea, or why else is everyone doing it? Cupcake shops generate interest in cupcakes, which generate more shops, which generate more interest, and everyone is happy--until the interest starts to plateau, or wane, and you have more cupcakes than people want to buy, particularly if you are paying EV-style rents and have to charge $4 a cupcake. So then there's the shakeout. Then maybe a few years pass, and someone starts to wonder, where have all the cupcakes gone...and we might see another cycle of cupcake shops. Remember when every Korean market had a salad bar? Forget the cupcakes, let's bring back the salad bars, this time with organic fruits and vegetables, ancient grains, and kim chi.
ReplyDeleteSomeday millennials will look back fondly and tell their kids about this place. Back in those days the village was full of cupcake shops! And there was frozen yogurt everywhere! People were handing out bottles of cold pressed juice on almost every corner!!!
ReplyDeleteAnonymous 12:08 hit the nail right on the head. Capitalism tends towards over-production. Regarding placement, someone once told me that the way it should work is that similar shops space themselves apart, in order to share the market, but they don't. They place themselves as close to one another as they can, to take the other's market share. Capitalism is illogical and wasteful.
ReplyDeleteI'll have what ever Felton is having.
ReplyDeleteMaybe an egg shop will open on this block. Open only on Thursdays.