My partner turned me on to Shopsin's a couple years ago, a little space in the Essex Market complex, located off of Houston Street in NYC. I didn't really know of the history behind the food but my partner was a big fan so we went to dine there. If you've ever been to these kind of eating spaces they're pretty common in certain well to do parts of cities. Basically it's this big space in the lower levels of an entertainment complex where a bunch of restaurants and street vendors pay a certain amount of money to have a booth selling their wares. So you'll overpay for some easy to prepare ethnic food (your arepas, your doner kebabs) and have a nice contained friendly area for out of towners to stop through and try something new.
Now Essex Market itself has a long history attached to it, so I don't want to make it out to be the gentrification machine I'm painting here. But the fact of the matter is that's the form it has taken on today, a tourist trap that acts as a one stop shop to the bustling New York City streets of old. And that's how I took in Shopsin's the first time I ate there. I loved the food, it's classic diner gut busting fare served with flair and maybe one too many ingredients. It's a nice date spot, or a good stopping point when you're halfway through a day sightseeing and need to sit down for a moment. But there definitely is the sheen that's attached to a well run machine, a cartoon of what New York looked like in a nostalgia haze with the edges sanded off.
So it was to my surprise that I later learned Shopsin's was a former Village institution, as shown in the documentary I Like Killing Flies. More then that, Shopsin's was the kind of anti gentrification mainstay that locals love to eulogize. The diner was known for it's eclectic menu, it's grimy/endearing slightly too small location, and the personality of owner and head chef Kenny Shopsin, who delighted in berating and throwing out customers for whatever reason he saw fit.
The documentary is a fly on the wall look at Kenny as he goes through his daily routines, filled with swearing, half baked philosophy, and good old New York City charm. The title comes from, of course, Kenny's habit of swatting the flies that are in his diner. Throughout the movie Kenny drops little pieces of his life and philosophy when it comes to making food and working the way that he does. As the movie continues, we see Kenny lose the building the restaurant is in due to rent hikes, and his transition to renting a spot at the nearby Magic Carpet restaurant.
Shopsins is a family affair, with his wife and his kids pitching in to help keep the place running, but there is no doubt that Kenny is the de facto leader of the organization. He is not only the biggest personality, sucking up all the oxygen in the room whenever he is on camera, but also is by and large the central appeal of a place like Shopsins. It is not the corporate owned entity that has a "service with a smile" kind of policy. Kenny fashions himself as an artist, a wild gun when it comes to how he runs his business and his food. Like many artists, Kenny is not one who fits well in boxes. He has his own rules and rituals and is more then happy to throw out any customer who doesn't follow them. More than four people to a table? Goodbye. Want a substitution? Fuck you, get bent. He likes to argue, and strangely he found a way to make that a part of his restaurant's brand, similar to a place like The Wieners Circle in Chicago. This is treated as part of what makes places like his indispensable to the character of any city.
The film itself, directed by Matt Mahurin, basically turns the camera on and points it at it's subject, letting Kenny run his own show. As is perhaps unsurprising considering his reputation, he is a pretty huge asshole. At one point in the movie he is berating his son for getting a parking ticket while grabbing an order. The camera is placed behind the counter, half of the frame obscured by menus, incognito, and we see that Kenny treats his employees/family the same way he does his customers. He isn't cruel, necessarily, but he is used to bullying his way through getting what he wants. Maybe that's what he always needed to do, and that's the only way he was able to carve out his little slice of the city. Of course, bluster will only get you so far once the ground underneath you is worth more then the people above.
The second part of the movie details the family moving from it's original location to a cohabitation with a nearby restaurant, The Magic Carpet. When purchasing the general store that makes up the decor of his restaurant we learn that while Kenny bought all of the chotskies in the original store, he didn't purchase the property itself. So unsurprisingly as the Village went from artist's colony to some of the most valuable real estate in the world, he loses that spot. In one moment when Kenny is touring the spot in The Magic Carpet that will be his home, the owner starts to get frustrated as he insists on changing the space to fit his needs. "We were offered thirty fucking thousand after we gave it to you! You...you ask too much!" he stutters in a fit of frustration. In one of the few parts of the movie where he backs down, Kenny admits that he was wrong and moves on. Clearly he is an iconoclast, but like any artist at the end of the day he will paint on the canvas that he can find.
Which brings me back to Essex Market. Kenny Shopsin is now dead, but his name and his restaurant live on, albeit in a different form today. The menu is still extensive, and it's naming conventions hold to Kenny's goofy style. (Though in a world where a restaurant named eggslut is a popular international eatery, I am not sure if it carries the same shock value.) But I'm reminded a little of Chef Gusteau's image in Ratatouille being used to sell frozen meals. This isn't really Kenny's version of Shopsin's, just a facade used to build off the reputation and idealization of the pre gentrified Manhattan. It's sad and indicative of the way that what was once home to the unique and special turns glorified food court fodder at the end of the day.
But then again, Kenny was not the beginning and end of that spot either. He never actually owned the building, purchasing instead a general store that he later made into a restaurant after a rent hike all the way in 1982 forced him to find a more profitable venture. Before that, the store was just one of many anonymous corner stores that are everywhere in New York, a place you run into to grab a quick soda on your way home from a long day of work. So the nostalgia here is really about more than just rent, but about the idea (perhaps a false one) of community being fostered in a place as anonymous and lonely as the big city. Before it was a chain you would find in a strip mall, T.G.I. Fridays was a NYC destination. Shake Shack used to be a fancy hot dog stand, now it is global. All of these places are after the same game, it's just a matter of how they sell themselves and if they are able to survive.
In the movie's closing moments, Kenny monologues to Mahurin about how everyone is actually an asshole looking out for number one, from himself to the man behind the camera. "The first duty of everybody in life is to realize they are a piece of shit." He goes on that everyone makes their moral sacrifices, whatever it may be, to do the things that they want to do. "Once you realize you're a piece of shit it's not that hard to take, cause then you don't have this feeling that you're a good person all the time." It certainly encapsulates his view on how he runs his business and his life, but it is also applicable to his patronage as well. There's an old joke that the last person to move to the neighborhood becomes the first person to complain about it's changing character. But change is inevitable, good or bad.
The entire movie is available to watch on YouTube.