Photos of Mid-’90s Newsstands Are a Throwback to a Bygone New York
May 11, 2015 | Liam Mathews
The 1990s weren’t even that long ago, and yet these photos of newsstands show just how much things have changed in that time. For the very young who might not know, newsstands were (and are, to much lesser extent) small kiosks on city sidewalks where people could pick up a magazine or a pack of cigarettes (which only cost $2.30). Interestingly, there were even fewer newsstands in the mid-’90s – the lowest number the city ever reached was around 280 – than there are now, around 300. In 1994, during that nadir, photographer Moyra Davey began documenting them as a symbol of vanishing New York. The photos are striking, with the newsstands appearing as graffiti-covered totems of the Bad Old Days. Here are a few, with more at New York magazine.
Next time you hit up one of New York's newsstands, take a moment to look at the prices of the goods spread out before you. Besides the stand's raisons d'être--newspapers and magazines--as well as MetroCards, phone cards, and cigarettes, you'll notice that all of the prices top off conspicuously at…
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It's hard to imagine Times Square before it became the Disneyfied, Toys-R-Us-bag-toting-tourist-and-kiddie-infested postcard of Capitalist America that we hate so dearly today. Luckily, we've come across the photo collection of Gregoire Alessandrini to remind us that those days were more than just folklore. While attending a local film school in…
