But first, some creative signs pasted to the windows of the old Starlight Diner, and whatever it was that was next door.

On Broadway in the low ’80s, the competition for cupcake dollars intensifies:

After you’ve fattened them up, have their photos taken at Amsterdam & 79th:

Occupying what was once half of Avventura (other half still there), food grown from live organs, or perhaps organisms or organizations.

Opening tomorrow, a boutique espresso machine and pod shop moving into where recently you could buy boutique tea.

Hmmmmmm… Something(s) is (are) wrong with these signs. Can you find it (them)? Answers posted August 13, 2019.

Scooter vs. e-bike.

Newsstand.

For today’s photos, we used artsy filters.

79th, between Broadway and Amsterdam.

Pigeons swoop dramatically across the world-famous Gateway McDonald’s Arc de Triomphe  in Washington Square.

…I don’t feel much lately like snapping photos of closed storefronts anymore. They’re still popping up or popping out and staying empty for a long time, too. People continue to walk by giving me the blurry person effect I like so much. I just don’t take the shot very often any longer, and when I do I often delete them. Perhaps these four disconnected images should have been deleted.

Sometimes photos make their way from the SD card onto the laptop, and from there it’s only a matter of some clicks and drags and typing and here they end up. I like the rust in the first shot.

I get a lot of junk mail and you can do whatever you want to try to stop it, but it can’t be stopped. You can impede it for awhile, but it comes back in increasing volume. Here’s a typical two- or three-day accumulation. The pile on the left is unwanted catalogs and things to be shred without being opened. The pile on the right: bills and a magazine or two. Shred, recycle, repeat. I found the prospect of the never-endingness of this cycle so dispiriting that cropping or fixing anything about the image was never a consideration.

However, I do like finding old signs faded into brick.

A bicyclist barrels down Columbus Avenue early one morning.

The tile floor from the entrance to Manhattan Diner remains for now.

Clark Kent works construction now that print media is dead.

Tourists exit bus and approach Central Park.

A few of the last day’s customers.

People coming and going Friday.

The penultimate bag: four poppies, four sesame.

Bagelrista: We have to get out.

Me: Are you moving to a new location?

Bagelrista: We don’t know. They’re trying to work something out. $1.40.

I paid her for the bagel. There you have it. This is completely unconfirmed with any other sources, so hold a candlelight vigil at your own risk.

According to the West Side Rag, all of the store’s tea has been shipped to another store. The NYC store has also been removed from TeaGschwendner’s web site.

This small jewelry store on Broadway and 80th is on the way out.

Is H&H doomed?

The signs and the awning are gone, but the doors are open and the bagels are still there. Is the original H&H at 80th and Broadway doomed or just getting a facelift?

Santo on right, guy in all the photos on left.

The rest of the block…

Rumor is, a 22-story apartment building will be erected on this site, connected to the building that went up over the comedy club on 78th. What stores will replace the shuttered businesses on this block? No doubt at least one bank, three mobile phone stores, a Seattle-based coffee purveyor, a nail salon, a Duane Reade or two…