Bergie’s

Date: 1984
Place: Fifth Avenue and 58th Street, New York City
Modus operandi: Looking at store windows
Weather: Gorgeous
Time: 11:00 am
Gear: Pentax ME Super, 28mm Takumar
Medium: Kodachrome 64
Me: Gorgeous location, superb architecture, the poshest store in New York – what could be better?
My age: 33

For many years two of the finest women’s clothing stores in mid-town Manhattan were catty corner (English translation: Diagonally opposite) one another on Fifth Avenue: Bonwit Teller at 56th Street and Bergorf Goodman at 57th.

Bonwit’s no longer exists, pulled down in the middle of the night in 1981, before the City could place a restraining order on him, by that crass vulgarian, Donald Trump. With it went those gorgeous sandstone friezes that decorated the facade. In its place we got the gauche Trump Tower, replete with glitz to attract Eurotrash.

Bergie’s (no one calls it Bergorf Goodman), on the other hand, survived, and thrives on The Ladies who Lunch to this day.

I could never pass either store on my walk to work from my luxury high rise apartment (meaning infested rat trap) on 56th at Eighth, to what was then the Citicorp Center on Lex and 53rd, without stopping to gaze in their windows. And what windows they were! Never less than perfectly arranged, the best of European designers’ work was to be found there. St. Laurent, Givenchy, Ungaro, Marc Bohan (then at Dior). No, not Tommy Hilfiger. The polyester set could shop elsewhere.

This particular day I had detoured north of 57th and was making my way west along 58th Street, a rather mysterious passageway betwen Bergies and The Plaza, with that nice cinema near Fifth which remains there today. Having long been fascinated with the great school of 1930s American high rise architecture – perhaps best seen in Chicago – I was really looking forward to eyeing the Pierre and the Sherry-Netherland, in much the same way that one might a beautiful woman. Much to look at and dwell upon. A feast for the eyes and senses. A corner here, a bit of mystery there, never has architecture been so much fun.

Just before turning right on Fifth I glanced up at Bergie’s window, the one fronting onto 58th Street and there they were – the two grand hotels of New York City. But the real magic happened when those two ladies joined the reflection in Bergie’s window.

Can you say ‘click’?

Note: On this occasion I was using my ‘disposable’ Pentax ME Super rather than the M3. New York streets were seriously dangerous at this time and the theft of the cheap Pentax would not stir the soul as deeply as were I to lose my precious Leica. In the event, that preciously engineered and very compact Pentax turned out to be a wonderful street worker during my New York years (1981-87), only finally moving on when the LEDs in the viewfinder started to play up. Needless to add, it was never stolen.

Keep Left

Date: 1982
Place: Lexington Avenue, New York City
Modus operandi: Wandering around the streets aimlessly
Weather: Gorgeous
Time: 10:00 am
Gear: Leicaflex SL, 21mm Auper-Angulon R
Medium: Kodachrome 64
Me: Enjoying this little bit of whimsy
My age: 31

Until modern Western quality control techniques were imposed, you could pretty much bet that anything from China was going to be schlocky when it came to execution. And that didn’t just go for their consumer goods. The Chinese applied the same low standards to their businesses and buildings, as this snap attests.

All of this is made so much the funnier when I relate that, at the time I took this, the newly opened representative office of the Bank of China in New York was a client of mine. I was advising them on installation of financial management systems which was sort of tricky when their default approach was to stuff the branch full of Chinese workers who spoke no English and showed remarkable facility with the abacus. Who needs IBM mainframes?

Anyway, after struggling with this insanely frustrating client for months (these people redefined, in 1982, resistance to change, and just hated to pay their bills) I felt I owed them one, and here it is. The missing letter in their cheap signage had been like that for ages, though I constantly pointed it out to the manager of the office. As you can see, the Chinese’ sense of style and decorum leaves a lot to be desired.

Only a very wide angle lens could capture all of this scene’s elements, and the 21mm Super Angulon R, for all its ridiculous bulk, was as good as they got in those days. The Leicaflex SL remains at the zenith of mechanical SLR design, with easily the best manual exposure meter I have used. It remains a fine and affordable user for those who like film, and comes with the best viewfinder you will find on any SLR, film or digital.

Hewitt’s

Date: January 1, 2005
Place: Main Street, Templeton, CA
Modus operandi: Tripod, warm coat, hat, gloves, scarf, the whole megillah
Weather: Freezing cold at a time when the streets are deserted
Time: 7:00 am
Gear: Rollei 6003, 40mm Distagon
Medium: Kodak Portra NC160, scanned on a Nikon Coolscan 8000 and processed in Aperture
Me: A pleasant memory of a great place
My age: 53

There’s a class of apologists in the US which thinks that freedom brings with it entitlements. They would have it that great American corporations like WalMart and Home Depot are driving the “….poor small local businessman out of business”. How many times have you heard that tripe? The reality is that you can choose lowest price with useless service, or service at a decent, if not the lowest, price. The latter attributes are found in the local hardware store.

In my case the store is Hewitts, and it’s on the Main Street of the small town of Templeton where I live, in central California. Hewitts employs half a dozen people and has premises some 10,000 square feet in size. WalMart is 2 miles distant to the north, Home Depot three to the south. Hewitts has been around since 1899 and remains vital and prosperous to this day. Far from glitzy inside, Hewitts boasts no superannuated greeters who failed to save for their retirement, no asinine ‘Hi! I’m Joe’ lapel badges. Yet there’s nothing there that you cannot find to fix problems in the home or garden. Why? Because the best thing that Hewitts has to sell is the knowledge base in the heads of the three owners, all in late middle age.

Hewitts, and thousands of businesses like it, make no apologies or excuses for the WalMarts and Home Depots of the world. Rather, they thrive because of them. Why? Simple. It’s called an informed sales force that just happens to own the store. No contest.

Case in point. The other day I was stumped by a plumbing issue – a dripping tap. The clearance to remove the body of the tap was so narrow that even a thin-walled plumber’s socket would not work. So I did the natural thing. I dropped in on Rory at Hewitts and described the issue. “Why not bring in a 5/8 inch hex socket and let me turn the wall thickness down on my lathe?”, Rory suggested. “That should get you in there.” I dropped off the socket and a few hours later got a call asking for the exact machining dimensions I thought might work. A day later, I had the socket and the tap was dismantled for replacement of the faulty O ring which was the cause of the leak.

The fruits of Rory’s labor. Price? My return business.

While at Hewitt’s I bumped into another of the owners, Leonard, and had a nice chat about Churchill and William Manchester’s splendid biographies. (Winston Leonard Spencer Chuchill – his folks liked WSC as much as I do). Leonard graduated as a chemical engineer, is an authority on military history and, like his colleagues, has superb analytical skills he can bring to bear on any home hardware problem. Now let me assure you, you will not find the likes of Leonard or Rory at the big stores. So you make your choice – price or brains.

This snap, taken in brutal cold early on New Year’s Day (that’s 28F/-2C in California-speak for those of you in the mid-west), with no traffic (my tripod was in the middle of the road and I needed the ultrawide lens to make the background recede), is a tribute to small retail businesses everywhere. Long may you prosper.

And yes, a big print of this snap is hanging in Hewitt’s for all to see.