Vintage New York on Steinway Street

In a New York in which the new continually replaces the old, the area surrounding Steinway Street between Broadway and 28th Avenue in Astoria is – at least for the moment – an estuary of the ages. Young mothers pushing babies in strollers pass old men in caps that have seen the neighborhood in its various stages of transformation.
While the street is now dotted with cell phone dealers, a Starbucks, and other franchises that have, of late, become synonymous with the urban landscape, Steinway is still home to quite a few mom and pop shops that proudly cling to the cement, creating a satisfyingly vintage air of tradition in the midst of such a modern tableau.
No better place exemplifies this than Madeleine’s Hosiery, started by owner Michael David and his wife Madeleine 37 years ago. At his 30-14 Steinway storefront David greets patrons by name like a seasoned veteran, having been indoctrinated into the art of customer service at a time when one-stop-shops and quick turnaround were a mere figment of the franchiser’s imagination.
After welcoming someone who had just walked through the door, David, who emigrated from Belgium (though he jokingly instructed me to note his place of origin as France “because a lot of people don’t know where Belgium is”) offered me a cookie from a box delivered weekly by a former employee who now works at a bakery on Ditmars Boulevard.
The cookie was perfect. Watching me devour it, David said, “These are fresh. You’ll never get something like that off the shelf. She [my former employee] knows that we’re experts.”
In a business world increasingly geared toward rapid service, Madeleine’s Hosiery provides “a personal touch,” according to David. “I’m a landmark here,” he exclaimed, noting that many of the old shops in the area have closed their doors.
“Yeah, that’s true,” his manager, Kleopatra Pistikos, chimed in, explaining that Madeleine’s is not in the business of just selling a product – that they take pride in their custom tailored service. As she spoke, a regular walked in with a satchel, asking an employee to fill it with thongs.
“She needs size six. Anything, just fill it with size six,” the man said, turning on his heels and walking out the door.
As Pistikos offered a cookie to another regular, she praised Astoria for maintaining its quiet feel despite the fast-paced world it is now a part of.
The man declined the cookie and Pistikos looked at me knowingly. “See, he’s a diabetic. No cookies for him,” she said, smiling.
I got the sense that the staff of Madeleine’s Hosiery not only know the sizes and tastes, and in some cases the medical conditions, of their clients, but that they empathize with those in the community who are nostalgic for the time when all the shops around this part of Steinway were the same unique blend of service, comfort, and local watering hole that Madeleine’s takes pride in being.
Luckily, there are still a few.
Just off Steinway, at 37-11 Broadway is K & T Quality Meats, a family-run business that has been owned by Astoria native Peter Petratos for thirty-two years. Prior to Petratos’ tenure, the butcher shop was run by his uncle, under whose 40-year ownership it was called Klein and Teaser’s before Petratos abbreviated the name.
Petratos has seen the neighborhood change hands, as other nationalities and cultures have joined the mostly European and Jewish Astoria of his youth.
“But they’re pretty good meat eaters too, these new customers of ours,” Petratos said laughing. “Here, people can talk to us, get advice on how to work with various meats and find out the best cuts for certain things. If we don’t provide this type of service, people won’t need us. They’ll just go to supermarkets and grab the pre-packaged meat out of the showcases,” he said.
Petratos’ cousin, Michael Biancaniello, a butcher at K & T, remembers when “there used to be 50 or 60 butcher shops in the area in the 1950s and 60s.”
A few buildings down at 35-17 Broadway is Walter’s Hardware, in existence since 1922. According to Bob Shapiro, who has owned Walter’s for thirty years, they used to sell hardware to Astoria Studios, producers of World War II propaganda films.
Shapiro thinks his store and other local shops are important because they offer the same prices as the large “box” stores yet provide unparalleled customer service and recycle money back into the community.
“Once there are no more independent stores, the chain stores can charge what they want and the consumer is stuck,” he said, noting that while Astoria has seen the departure of many local merchants, it has seen the arrival of many new ethnicities, making it “truly, the melting pot of the world.”
“If [local merchants] hang in there long enough, I would hope the new generation would smarten up” and support independent stores, Shapiro said, adding, “young people are a breath of fresh air when they walk into my store.”
As I walked along Steinway I passed street food vendors, a Fabco Shoes (“The #1 Family Shoe Chain in New York”), a hand-painted sign advertising tuxedo rentals on the cheap, a man welding a shop’s cellar doors and people on their way to doctors’ offices and beauty salons.
I even met a young man, clad all in black, waiting for the crew of his short silent film to arrive. “Only in New York,” he said, chuckling at the sound of his aptly unusual reason for being there.
In the ever-evolving New York of ours, Steinway Street certainly exudes that “only in New York” feel.