Comics and New York City Candy Stores!

[Silver Surfer]

Harry!

[burntboy]

...would love to know how many hours of my youth and how much of my hard eaned money were both spent there...

 

But from your writeup I'd say it was time and money very well spent!

 

 

Perhaps we should replace egg cream with milkshake. If you couldn't get a handmade milkshake, it wasn't a real candy store.

 

7-11 type stores don't make the cut.

 

Right you are! No 7-11's allowed!

 

Here's a candy store that's been operating in the Borough Park area of Brooklyn for well over 75 years:

 

 

 

 

 

Wow a Candy store for Adults, too - Lottery Tickets and Beer...

[shadroch]

The store of my youth used to sell hot chocalates for 20 cents. It was a tough choice. A cup of HC and a nickel bag of potato chips or two comics. Both were available for the same quarter.

When we moved back, comics were 20 cents, but the mother tried to collect sales tax on them. five comics for $1.05. The son never charged tax.

Then one day the comic delivery guy showed up with 100 page comics costing 50 cents each. Before too long came the treasury sized books at a buck a pop.

By then a cup of HC was around 50 cents and potato chips were a quarter- but the bag had grown.

[ChicksCosmiComics]

Many of these sorts of places still exist and I would bet many would be happy to carry some comics....

 

Ahhhh, but do they have a lunch counter as well? That's the key defining characteristic of the old fashioned candy store, the newstand and tobacco store combined with the lunch counter. That's what makes it tough.

 

 

Really i would say the key defining characteristic of an old fashion, Candy store, /Smoke Shop/ Newsstand was actually the were fronts for Gambling on the numbers, and book making especially in the North East. One stop shopping..

 

Be cool to do a story on "Candy Stores" and comic books plus all the other goings on.

[Hepcat]

Really i would say the key defining characteristic of an old fashion, Candy store, /Smoke Shop/ Newsstand was actually the were fronts for Gambling on the numbers, and book making especially in the North East.

 

These days though it's governments that run the numbers racket.

 

 

 

[Hepcat]

Perhaps we should replace egg cream with milkshake.

 

Speaking of egg creams, here's a picture of one at the Lexington Candy Shop:

 

 

 

[Hepcat]

Below this huge rack were the stacks of newspapers (I'm guessing the Newark Evening News, Newark Star Ledger, NY Daily News, NY Mirror, NY Herald Tribune, NY Journal American, NY Times, WSJ, and even a Philly Inquirer...) I would sell these all for Sid outside the front door on Sundays to keep the Inside less crowded.

 

So how many newspapers do you think you sold over how many hours? What was your commission per newspaper?

 

[capt hook]

Perhaps we should replace egg cream with milkshake.

 

Speaking of egg creams, here's a picture of one at the Lexington Candy Shop:

 

 

 

Strange, I have lived in NYC for over 20 years and I never new this place existed, until last Thursday, when I ambled past it. Now it shows up on the Boards. I guess It's a sign telling me I should stop on by.

[burntboy]

Below this huge rack were the stacks of newspapers (I'm guessing the Newark Evening News, Newark Star Ledger, NY Daily News, NY Mirror, NY Herald Tribune, NY Journal American, NY Times, WSJ, and even a Philly Inquirer...) I would sell these all for Sid outside the front door on Sundays to keep the Inside less crowded.

 

So how many newspapers do you think you sold over how many hours? What was your commission per newspaper?

 

 

I think I worked from 8:00am to noon and got around $5 , although I do remember having to count the papers that were left at the end of my shift, so a penny or 2 a paper would make more sense. Most of the customers were coming out of Sunday mass at the Catholic Church across the street.

 

BTW; I will make it my mission to visit that Candy store on Lex next time I'm in the city and have an Egg Cream... (thumbs u

[goldust40]

Great thread - would like to hear more stories.

[Hepcat]

I think I worked from 8:00am to noon and got around $5 , although I do remember having to count the papers that were left at the end of my shift, so a penny or 2 a paper would make more sense. Most of the customers were coming out of Sunday mass at the Catholic Church across the street.

 

So that would be 250-500 newspapers you sold in four hours! Boy, those were the days when people read! Contrast that with the number a convenience store/newstand would sell these days.

 

[nwpassage]

...would love to know how many hours of my youth and how much of my hard eaned money were both spent there...

 

But from your writeup I'd say it was time and money very well spent!

 

 

Perhaps we should replace egg cream with milkshake. If you couldn't get a handmade milkshake, it wasn't a real candy store.

 

7-11 type stores don't make the cut.

 

Right you are! No 7-11's allowed!

 

Here's a candy store that's been operating in the Borough Park area of Brooklyn for well over 75 years:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Without investing a dollar in upgrades appaently.

[burntboy]

I think I worked from 8:00am to noon and got around $5 , although I do remember having to count the papers that were left at the end of my shift, so a penny or 2 a paper would make more sense. Most of the customers were coming out of Sunday mass at the Catholic Church across the street.

 

So that would be 250-500 newspapers you sold in four hours! Boy, those were the days when people read! Contrast that with the number a convenience store/newstand would sell these days.

 

 

Well, when you think about it, there wasn't that much else besides some radio and minimum TV coverage. There were no TV morning news shows that I can remember back in the 50's. And there were no afternoon news broadcasts either.

 

As I recall the afternoon show on CBS for example was the Early Show (Which was a 90 minute old movie format) and it went right into network programing afterwards. It was the BIG NYC Newspaper strike of 1961-1962 that generated afternoon news on TV. IN FACT wabc fm radio switched to a 24 hour newsformat during the strikes 4 months. Then in 1972 NJ's biggest paper (The Newark Evening News) got hit with a year long strike and eventually shut it's doors.

 

And it's all been downhill since then...

[Hepcat]

Here is a picture of Almond's Ice Cream Parlour in the English Bay neighbourhood of Vancouver, British Columbia circa 1920:

 

 

No comics, but a nice place to buy your ice cream, peanuts, popcorn and cigars anyway!

 

[Hepcat]

Great thread - would like to hear more stories.

 

Okay. I found some really good pictures of the London, Ontario that was during my formative years. Unfortunately the only thing they lack is me!

 

Here's a picture of the Arena Dairy Bar on York Street sometime in the fifties:

 

 

Sadly I have no memory of this old time dairy bar but it must have been located right by the old London Arena a few blocks away from our house. I have really fond memories of going to the London Arena for the Labatt Brewing Company's employee Xmas party with cake, ice cream, cookies, a magician and finally Santa Claus with a specially wrapped present for each and every kid in attendance!

 

 

The London Arena also featured roller skating and wrestling with grapplers such as Whipper Billy Watson, Johnny Valentine, D*ck "the Bulldog" Brower and Sweet Daddy Siki in the fifties and sixties. I also attended a concert by Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention in the London Arena in 1972.

 

Robb's Dairy Bar was located two very short blocks away from where my card collecting buddy Tony lived. Drat, but it closed sometime in the late fifties and I don't remember ever seeing it.

 

 

One of the things that I do remember from those early years and sorely miss is milk delivery in returnable refillable bottles!

 

 

I remember Borden's, Silverwood Dairy, London Pure Milk Company and Mark Ayres Dairy delivery vehicles prowling London's leafy streets:

 

 

 

My home town dairy, Silverwood, grew by acquisition to become the largest dairy in Canada by the late sixties and still provided home delivery service in certain markets well into the seventies(eighties?).

 

Both Silverwood Dairy and the London Pure Milk Company still had horse drawn milk wagons wending their way along London streets until sometime in the mid-sixties. It was back in 1963-64 that my mother and I saw that the train car being backed into the Labatt Breweries plant had somehow collided with a Silverwood's horse much to the detriment of the latter. Her uncharitable comment at the time was that Labatt didn't want people to drink milk.

 

Here are a couple of pictures of Silverwood's milk wagons:

 

 

 

Here's a picture of a more modern sixties state-of-the-art London Pure Milk Company wagon:

 

 

We also had home bread delivery from London's own Lewis Bakeries for a while when we lived in Manor Park on the edge of London in the fifties. Many a housewife's household budget was blown succumbing to the pastry temptations proferred that day by the bread man! Best of all though my buddy Dave had a job helping the Jackson's Bakeries bread man make his deliveries Saturday mornings. Talk about a marriage made in heaven! All the delivery man had to do was drive since he had a young boy doing most of the work for him, and Dave got to ride around in a very cool bread delivery truck and run to each house on the route carrying bread in a basket! I'll have to ask Dave whether he received anything more than free tarts and other pastries for his efforts....

 

I also have a hazy memory of having journeyed to the beach with my mother and sister on the London & Port Stanley Railway one summer day in 1957(?). It would have been on an interurban car like this beautifully restored one that's part of the collection of the Hallton County Radial Railway Museum:

 

 

 

On the extreme right hand side of this picture of the main Richmond Street and Dundas Street intersection of London from 1960 or so the United Cigar Store sign is visible. I bought many of my comics in that store.

 

 

Look at the riot of neon in this picture looking west along Dundas Street circa 1960!

 

 

Here's a picture of the Kresge store in downtown London circa 1952, the year of my birth:

 

 

That was the store where I first saw a Marx Great Garloo in 1961 and discovered the Aurora monster model kits a year or so later. Just beyond it the Metropolitan(Met) store can be seen. The Met's lunch counter did such a thriving business that they had a satellite take-out counter at the front of the store where office workers could quickly grab a hamburger, hot dog, French fries, coffee, donut, etc. to go. Across the street to the left in the picture was a Woolworth store. Directly to the right of the camera man was a Zellers store.

 

My mother used to take me in tow and haunt them all. I lived for hitting her up for a steel bowl of ice cream at one of the lunch counters after she was fully shopped out.

 

Finally, here's a picture from the fifties of Cowan Hardware on Dundas Street where I used to go to admire toys and model kits.

 

 

Cowan's was also where I raced my Monogram Ferrari slot cars after a slot car track was installed upstairs in 1965(?). Good times! Just out of the picture was the Ontario Conservatory of Music where I lugged my accordion on the bus for my weekly lessons. Not entirely good times....

 

[RCheli]

I grew up in Bethlehem, PA, and my newsstand of choice -- Matz -- didn't have a lunch counter, but they did roast peanuts and other nuts. The smell walking up to the place was unbelievably wonderful.

 

I have to admit, however, I never once ate the peanuts. I had a limited amount of money, and I spent it all on comics.

 

It was a great newsstand otherwise, although they never carried DC annuals. I had to go down the street to Tocci's (which was a mob front with a gambling room in the back) to get those.