We can't help but be nervous when we see things like surveyors at work outside Billy's Antiques on Houston... What are they surveying? What godawful thing is coming/happening next to this region near the Bowery?
Now we know: After 25 years, the tent is coming down at Billy's Antiques to make way for a two-story brick building, The New York Times reported.
Proprietor Billy Leroy confirmed that his store will reopen in the new building. But, you know. Per the Times:
[W]ith the disappearance of the tent, Mr. Leroy and his employees said, another vestige of the neighborhood’s history will vanish. It is a prospect that some of them anticipate with gloom.
“It’ll be part of that final transition to a landscape of Pottery Barns and Starbucks,” said Jesse Sommer, a member of Mr. Leroy’s staff.
Should have known when the skull blew down in August.
[Photo circa 1991 by Clayton Patterson, courtesy of Billy Leroy]