Pam’s Pictorama Post: Last weekend’s trip, which started with our holiday nostalgia train ride as memorialized in yesterday’s post, was largely a shopping venture. I had a few places I wanted to investigate and it was time to pick up coffee from my favorite establishment. Porto Rico Importers has been in business since 1907 with three New York City locations (Bleecker, St. Marks and Essex Street) and I became a true devotee a couple of years ago. I frequent the St. Mark’s one although I guess the Bleecker is the original site.

Located next to my eyeglass store (Anthony Aiden Opticians – I have worn transitional lenses for years and I swear by them for the care they take in executing my prescriptions), on St. Mark’s I make periodic trips and buy several pounds of coffee at a time and freeze it. After much experiment I have settled on the Danish blend. I bought four pounds and one will come to Jersey next week. There was a long line out the door of their tiny outpost last Sunday, but it moved quickly and I was undeterred. There is a bench out front and the weather was good so Kim read his book there.

One can purchase their coffee online and have it shipped. If you have enough space in your freezer, free shipping starts at orders of $75 or more. I do not and I have the option of occasional trips downtown to purchase it. If you are curious their website can be found here.

Another of my goals was to visit the John Derian store on 2nd Street. Pictorama readers might remember several months ago when I posted about a great stuffed cat I purchased from Target which was part of a Derian/Target collaboration. I thought it was worth a trip to the source. It was a bit crowded and I purchased a few small gifts including notecards of said same black cat. However I largely found it out of my price range. In some ways I think Mr. Derian is a brother from another mother, as our collecting sensibility is remarkably similar. He however then takes these items and repurposes them by reproducing them for sale. I can attest to paying less for some of the original items that his copies are made from.

I had a plan to stop in a hat store, a small independent designer by the name of Esenshel. It didn’t open until afternoon so Kim and I popped into Pageant prints and maps which I had no idea resided on East 4th Street. It turned into a goldmine of gift acquisition and I grabbed up three pages, neatly excised from The Book of Bow-Wows, and the original cover to boot. While I don’t really approve of the slicing and dicing of this old book, the pages nonetheless make great gifts for a few of my colleagues at work.

A quick look tells me that you’ll pay up if you want the full copy of this book – as Kim pointed out, I could however, purchase a coverless copy! Illustrated by someone only known as Tad I cannot seem to find further tracks on him. The author, Elizabeth Gordon, seems to be better known for her Bird Children and Flower Children which were illustrated by other people. Those have seen more recent reprinting, however they are a little saccharine for my taste. The Book of Bow-Wows was written in verse and I have shared the now framed (thank you Amazon!) pages I chose for my gifts. (I am laboring under the impression that none of the people I purchased for are readers – apologies on the surprise thing if you are!)

Last, but in no way least, is this book litho illustration. Titled, La Morale en Images the line at the bottom roughly Google translates to: between the child and the animal a close intimate relationship had been established. At the bottom it also read, (La chien de Lord Byron).

Also, in the end yes, I did purchase a hat. It is a wool variation on the Russian wool hat my dad’s father wore. Lunch was had at Phebe’s Tavern, an establishment I have not entered in several decades. My main memory of it was that when I was in my 20’s they sold an extremely inexpensive pitcher of beer and there is a lingering memory of a hair of the dog Sunday afternoon there once. That notwithstanding, Kim bought us a lunch of excellent burgers before making our way back – this time on a regular modern subway uptown.