Everybody Needs a New Clock!
While listening to the radio the other day, an ad came on which captivated me, one I had never heard before, one which evoked a New York I had almost forgotten existed. “Hurry,” the announcer said “down to the once-in-a-lifetime clock sale at Piano Piano’s Midtown piano showroom. Discounts are high, and the time has come, for the clock purchase you’ve been waiting, perhaps planning, to make!” I’ll repeat that last bit; it’s almost too good to be true: “The time has come for the clock purchase you’ve been waiting, perhaps planning, to make!”
I was suddenly transported to a world in which people, New Yorkers, would actually go out and purchase a clock or clocks, not plastic alarm clocks or digital CD-playing clocks, but real honest-to-god, made-to-be-treasured clocks for the living room, or dining-room sideboard. I was tempted to hurry myself down, but feared I might succumb to a wily clock sales pitch, or worse, a pity purchase. I imagined the affluent elderly stocking up for the households of their progeny, and purchasing wedding presents, but was unconvinced by my own imaginings.
Skeptical, I began to think a bit more about the stranger branches of commerce in this river of retail that we call home. At the edges, past the chain stores and clothing stores, cosmetics emporia and cell phone outlets, I remembered the strange, unmapped islands of super-specialized stores, each one less likely to succeed than the one before. There was the needlepoint store on Madison Avenue where a kit for a do-it-yourself Christmas stocking could set you back $150 to $200 — and you still had to make the thing. On the street where my father lived for most of my youth is Tiny Buttons, which sells buttons. Just buttons. Granted, some are antique, and wildly expensive, but they are all buttons. In the same general area Rita Ford Music Boxes sells — you guessed it — music boxes, and has done since 1942. They also service music boxes, doubtless a lucrative sideline, but still…
And I realized that I had hit upon yet another reason why this city is better than other places. You might never need a bourgeois super clock, or a music box in the shape of a flower pot, or a framed set of early 20th-century buttons that look like tiny cigarette packs, but if you do…
Hurry on down
