Hidden Video Store Signage on Seventh

Photofaction has been developing photos and selling camera equipment on Seventh Avenue between Carroll and President Streets since 1974. For a twelve year window during the 80s and 90s, however, an independent video rental store also operated out of the storefront, called Video Action. From the sidewalk there's no indication that it ever existed:

But if you take a peek under the awning, though...

Video Action lives! Wish I could say the same for the Brooklyn 212 area code.

Business of the Week: Triangle Sporting Goods, 182 Flatbush Avenue

Ask anyone who's lived in the neighborhood for a while what they think the oldest store in Park Slope is, and Triangle Sporting Goods will invariably come up in the conversation. While it isn't (that distinct honor goes to Neergaard Drugs on Fifth, open there since 1886), it's easy to see that this store has been here for a while. If walking through the old wooden doorway into the impossibly narrow space and taking a look around doesn't give it away, one glimpse at the framed photos to the left of the counter will. They span nearly six decades of operation, starting the year the store opened on the triangle of land surrounded by Fifth Avenue, Flatbush Avenue, and Dean Street in 1916.

Matriarch Betsy Shapiro stands in front of her store in 1916	.

The store's earliest sign boasts army shoes and raincoats. A dentist once occupied the second floor. This looks to be from the early 1920s.

Triangle in the 1930s. Fifth Avenue begins at right; note the elevated tracks (they took a right turn on Fifth from Flatbush).

By the 1940s the sign had gone neon and Deco, and the owners decided that guns and tackle would bring in more shoppers than raincoats. The store had expanded to the second floor by this time.

The neon sign's still there in what appears to be the late 1960s. Note the old name: Triangle Sport and Army Goods. This view is looking down Flatbush. 

The neon sign has been replaced, but other that that the building is completely intact, still occupying a prime corner of land.

The interior has been spruced up piecemeal over time, and most likely hasn't been fully renovated in decades. The first floor sells general purpose clothes like sweatshirts, jeans, and Carhartt jackets, and the second floor (up an ancient staircase) sells specialized supplies like baseball bats and fishing rods. The salespeople are helpful and have a good knowledge of the merchandise. 

The staircase from the second floor

The tiny building will soon be overshadowed by the Barclays Center directly across Flatbush, and as it's in not a part of the Park Slope or Prospect Heights Historic Districts, the structure isn't landmarked. If you haven't had the opportunity to shop here (or at least take a look around), it's certainly worth checking out.

Triangle Sporting Goods, 182 Flatbush Avenue Brooklyn NY 11217. 718-638-5300.  

Photos Courtesy of Triangle.

Then & Now Thursday: Fifteenth Street

After the Fifth Avenue Elevated was torn down in the early 1940s, a part of the neighborhood that was once shrouded by darkness suddenly saw the light of day for the first time. This photo, taken most likely around 1945, looks northeast from Fifth Avenue and Fifteenth Street. 

The stretch of Fifth just south of Ninth Street was still one of Brooklyn's premier shopping districts at this time, and a couple large stores are visible, including John Mullins Home Furnishings and Michaels Brothers, which sold radios and later TVs. Both had large wall ads and towering vertical neon signs. The corner building was most likely constructed as a bank in the 1920s, but its ground floor had already become home to a food market and a liquor store by the time the photo was taken. There's also one of the ubiquitous "LUNCH" signs, as well as the even more common trolley tracks and overhead wires.

The Mullins building is no longer standing and Michaels is now Mandee, but the former bank and the rest of the buildings on the block are still there, looking only slightly the worse for wear.

Top photo via BPL.

Business of the Week: Record and Tape Center, 439 5th Avenue

This article was first published on Patch.

There's a musical time capsule in Park Slope, and it's called The Record and Tape Center. It's been holding court on 5th Avenue between 8th and 9th Streets for forty years, and although it's cramped, musty, and ancient, it's still one of the finest places in the city to hunker down and sift through stacks of wax. 

"I started collecting records when I was about 14 years old," says owner Tony Mignone, 74, who grew up in the neighborhood but now lives out on Long Island. "I started selling records in 1965, a few blocks down, and I haven't stopped." The first store was on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Sixth Street, and Mignone moved it into the current space in 1971. 

It's fairly obvious that nothing has changed since. There's a Mork and Mindy poster on the wall, and you get the feeling that if it were removed it would crumble to dust and the wall behind it would be a few shades darker. The small room is stacked floor to ceiling with records, CDs, audio and video tapes, and DVDs, most of them second or third hand, and the two narrow aisles leave just enough room for two people to squeeze past each other. 

Mignone has an encyclopedic knowledge of music (as anyone who's owned a record store for 45 years would), and he's usually humming or singing a song to himself, feeling right at home in the shop.

While the collection in the store is vast and expansive, it's well-organized alphabetically and by genre, and if you can't find what you're looking for Tony can. As more and more artists begin releasing their albums on vinyl LPs, he makes sure to keep the latest vinyl records in stock. "People are finally starting to realize that turning on a record is a great way to listen to music," says Tony.

His in-store collection is just the tip of the iceberg, though. "I've got 40,000 more records at home," he said. "I was thinking about putting them all on eBay, but I don't know who can afford all of them!"

The small store has made the news before, most noticeably in May 2009, when the landlords decided to shut the store down and annex the space to the deli next door, which they also own. Thankfully the deal fell through, and The Record and Tape Center survives as one of two record stores in the neighborhood (the other is Music Matters, on Seventh). When asked about his relationship with the landlord, Tony replied, "It is what it is. I'll be here for at least another couple years."

We should be thankful for that. Even if you're not a vinyl aficionado, it's easy to appreciate the dusty old shop and its friendly, soft spoken owner. As music continues its transition from physical to digital, and music megastores like Virgin shut down, these old shops and their owners are the holdouts of a vanished era.

Record and Tape Center, 439 5th Avenue Brooklyn NY 11215. 718-499-8483.

Then & Now Thursday: The Ansonia Clock Factory

The predictable streetscape of Seventh Avenue is broken between 12th and 13th Streets by the imposing block-long Ansonia Clock Factory, once the neighborhood's largest employer along with Methodist Hospital. That's right: a giant clock factory, right in the middle of Park Slope.

By the late 1830s, brass had replaced wood and iron as the predominant metal for clock movements, and in 1844 Phelps-Dodge mining magnate Anson Phelps started the Ansonia Brass Company to supply clockmakers. Six years later Phelps decided to get into the clock business himself, and in 1877 the the clock-making operation moved to New York from Connecticut. The company became known for figurine clocks and other novelties, and became so successful that Thomas Edison visited in 1878 to attempt to collaborate on a clock-powered phonograph, to little success. 

In 1879 the factory was moved to the present location, but it burned down the following year (note that the article refers to the neighborhood as South Brooklyn, its previous moniker). A far larger, 300,000 square foot factory complex was rebuilt on the site in 1880, and throughout the decade Ansonia employed 1,500 workers and could churn out 10,000 clocks and watches a day. 

Ansonia became renowned for its dollar watches and novelty clocks, but as competition mounted the owners decided to lower the prices of their merchandise to near the cost of production, which destroyed the business. By 1929 most of the clockmaking machinery (and skilled workers) were sold to the Russian government, and in 1930 Ansonia closed up shop. 

The factory complex was home to light industry and sweatshops until the 1970s, and in 1982 work began to convert the buildings into loft apartments. Today the old factory is a 71-unit co-op. 

By the way, if the name Ansonia sounds familiar, it may be because of Anson Phelps' grandson, William Earl Dodge Stokes, a multimillionaire who developed much of the Upper West Side and in 1903 opened the opulent Ansonia Hotel, New York's first air conditioned building, still standing at 73rd and Broadway.

Top photo: Merlis and Rosenzweig, Brooklyn's Park Slope: A Photographic Retrospective. 1999.