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End of an era... last Tool Dealer to leave Canal St.....

rivett608

Diamond
Joined
Oct 25, 2002
Location
Kansas City, Mo.
"Absolutely right! 2 of this bunch, Home Depot & Staples, now anchor a strip mall where once Fairchild Republic Aircraft stood. I was told when I worked there in the late 70's that they employed as many as 20,000 during their heyday. The between Grumman, Fairchild, and the smaller job shops, the local aerospace industry moved a lot of machinery thru the decades. I'm sure some of it passed thru Canal Street."...... a strange and sick way to think of is all that old iron from those machinetools is still there.... right on the same location....... it went from machine tools to junk, to scrap, to China and came back to the US as cheap tools and products sold at HD......
 

JST

Diamond
Joined
Jun 16, 2001
Location
St Louis
Before writing off everything......

Between 1929 and late 1941, the populace was electing rabid pacifists, flirting with communism, and out of work. There was open gang warfare in teh streets of major cities, and small towns on occasion. Companies were folding left and right, throwing more folks out of work. We even had the "yellow peril", who were a threat in a different way, but a threat just the same.

Organized crime was big. Corruption in government was big. It likely looked a lot like now.... in many ways.

It was the middle of a big shift from farm to city, on top of everything else.

It changed then, and it will change again. It didn't change for long, but most of that is due to the 1950's and 1960's version of yuppie MBA's. They sold everyone down the river, eventually.

Their offspring are selling us down the river now, and telling us to like it.

The same stuff went on in the late 1800's.
 

Milacron

Super Moderator
Joined
Dec 15, 2000
Location
SC, USA
You guys waxing nostalgic seem to be completely ignoring Billy Boy's post, which is really my impression of the Canal St situation. I can't speak from actual experience of Canal St in particular, but I visited with a number of the old time dealers in Philadephia in the early and late 1980's and presume Canal St was a similar situation judging from observing their ads in trade publications over the decades.

Seemed to me mostly older junky machines with slathered on porch paint, fake way scrapings, and outrageous prices. Nice for entertainment and ambiance, but not so nice for actual purchases.

Besides a drill press or small tooling piece here and there, who did these guys actually sell their major machines to ? Probably "locals" already used to paying high prices for everything in the big city who got a new order and were desperate for a certain machine NOW is all I can figure.
 

X-Y-Z

Aluminum
Joined
Sep 21, 2005
Location
NEW HAMPSHIRE
I did not forget the origin of the post, although I may have ran too far with it. I think it all ties together, Industrial areas are IN FACT being overrun and replaced with retail "feel good" malls and consumer gotta have shops. Thats what happened.
OK, I have not been to this particular location, but its a nationwide scene.
There was a comedian on the other night, joked about us going to war with China, but we could not bomb their factories until they finished production on our bombs....Not so funny to me, I have been thinking this for years.
What happens when we hit the point where the USA manufactures nothing and imports everything? We can't all pour coffee and flip burgers!
Yes I am dramatizing, but I look at the ridiculas rise in cost over the last few years on Insurance, fuel, real estate has tripled....and I am making little more than I was before the increases, am I alone here?
(Sorry, I didn't mean to steal the soapbox here.)
 

Milacron

Super Moderator
Joined
Dec 15, 2000
Location
SC, USA
There was a comedian on the other night, joked about us going to war with China, but we could not bomb their factories until they finished production on our bombs....
LMAO ! :D That wasn't Bill Maher by any chance was it ? It's actually of some comfort to me that comedians are picking up on this problem as is signals more and more awareness of the issue by the general public, which has to be a good thing.
 

Ferrous Antiquos

Titanium
Joined
Mar 23, 2004
Location
Lawn Guylin, Noo Yawk
OAKNH,
No you're not alone. My salary has been fairly static for the last 5-6 years, except for my whopping 3% "cost of living" adjustment. I find that quite the joke, considering that gasoline has doubled, my property taxes doubled (last year, in one fell swoop :mad: ) various insurances have escalated well beyond that percentage, etc and so forth.

Regarding the move by Grand Mchy to Long Island, they must either already own industrial space out here, or are getting some sweet deal to settle in. From what I see, there is not a lot of local industrial business left to warrant support, the cost of doing business here in general is astronomical, and the traffic getting into and off of this overgrown sandbar is generally horrendous at any hour of any day. I woulda gone to Joisey. :rolleyes: Of course, they could be changing their entire business model and customer focus.

BTW, 10-20 years ago there were still plenty of the old-school machine hawkers that Joe Michaels described out here, who opened satellite offices, and ended up doing pretty well riding the Reagan military aircraft boom into the 80's. Most all gone now, but they certainly were characters.
 

X-Y-Z

Aluminum
Joined
Sep 21, 2005
Location
NEW HAMPSHIRE
A little closer to the original post:
I was working as a forklift mechanic in the late 80's, one place we sub-contracted to was Century Brass in Waterbury Conn. Any one who has been through Conn. on 84 knows it. This place was awsome...thats the only word for it. Multiple stories,millions square feet, dip tanks 4 stories deep, stamping machines that were so large they were cast in place, they had a division within the building to make anything and everything they needed.
The place was being thinned out by a holding company the time I was there, machines and tooling were going into scrap dumpsters as fast as the forklifts and loaders could move them (scrap was not worth much at the time). I mean you name it...Vertical mills, Horizontal mills, screw machines, lathes, grinders, new USA bits, end mills taps/dies, rotary tables...EVERYTHING.
I was only 19, so the whole scene just baffled me, I was driving a Dodge Colt at the time, believe me, I crammed that sucker full each night from the dumpster, had to take back roads home because the bumper would drag on the highway bumps. The first couple times the gate guard stopped and looked at what I had, after that he was just amused at how much I could leave with!
Cruising through the abandoned parts of the factory on a cushman is something I will never forget, a true time trip, tools and machines set like the workers just went home in the 40's and never came back, wash rooms with GIANT wash bowls and hundreds of lockers, you could see the progression from abbondon flat belts to antique wiring to semi-modern power systems. The things I saw, and more so, the stories I got from the old timers that were left were priceless.
Tward the end they made brass make-up lipstick tubes and such. During WWII, all they made were brass ammo shells, they say it was a top target for the Japs at the time, and it was built accordingly.
Take a look next time you drive by, you will recognize the spot, its the biggest mall in town.
At least the building put up a fight...it was built to withstand a blast, the prints were destroyed on completion, the designer was long past, it took a long time to take that sucker down chip by chip.
Yeah I know, old antiquated useless stuff that needs to be gone right? Well to me its wrong.
 

X-Y-Z

Aluminum
Joined
Sep 21, 2005
Location
NEW HAMPSHIRE
D. Thomas,
No I'm not a Bill Maher fan, so was not him....I don't know who it was I have a killer cold, maybe it was a NyQuil trip, and I made it up, but pretty sure I heard it on TV.
Going back to my reply a few back...Have you heard Lewis Black do the joke about: crossing the street in order to get to Starbucks, then come out only to notice a Starbucks accross the street? Yup....It aint a joke no mo.
 

wilbilt

Hot Rolled
Joined
Feb 20, 2005
Location
Honcut, Ca. USA
What happens when we hit the point where the USA manufactures nothing and imports everything? We can't all pour coffee and flip burgers!
Look to the public school systems. It's working for me...union wages and full benefits.

We are manufacturing the next generation of slackers. No cracks about making tolerance, please... :D
 

Too_Many_Tools

Stainless
Joined
May 5, 2003
" There was a comedian on the other night, joked about us going to war with China, but we could not bomb their factories until they finished production on our bombs.... "

It was Jay Leno.....and unfortunately he is right.

Some components used in today's weapons are only produced in China.

TMT
 

John in MA

Titanium
Joined
Apr 14, 2005
Location
MA, USA
I seriously started wondering about this country's future when I bought a paid of military surplus socks and they said "made in China". This was probably over ten years ago.
 

Bob-O

Hot Rolled
Joined
May 27, 2004
Location
Long Island, NY
Don,
You want to know who these guys actually sold machines to? Here's an example.

My Dad worked 50 years for Stimpson Company, a metal stamping company that's been around since the 1850's. At one time, they owned close to a square city block of buildings in the Bed-Sty section of Brooklyn. Today they're in Florida. As plant superintendent, one of my Dad's responsibilities was to spec and purchase all equipment. For some unknown reason, the management would not buy Bridgeports for the toolrooms. They had DOZENS of Van Normans, 6's, 12's, and 22L's. One of those #12's was the first mill I ever ran when I started working there while still in high school. They had a standing agreement with one of the Canal Street dealers to get 1st crack at any Van Norman they took in. Too bad Pops passed away last July or I'd have the name of the dealer for you. Dad had fond memories of his dealings on Canal street. The #6 that Ferrous has now was probably one of them.

I know it's not much in the big picture, but it is an example of how business was done around here in the past.

Bob
 

tools

Hot Rolled
Joined
Jan 27, 2004
Location
chickamauga, GA
As an airline pilot, I have a number of NYC layovers. Until I started laying over there, I really had no idea what the inner workings of a large inner city were like, having grown up in the country.

As we would drive into and out of Manhattan (for example) I always wondered if there was ANYTHING of substance being made, or even sold, down there. I see nothing but remnants of once really neat companies, being occupied by places selling, well, junk, of ALL kinds. And then, mosty junk food and consumables.

Over the last 2 or 3 years, I have come to know Canal St. as being where the flight attendants go to buy cheap knockoffs of famous designer fashion products. I had NO IDEA it was famous machinery place, that's sad.

I guess I don't get too fatalistic about all this change, since as mentioned previously, we've been through this a number of times before. It's still sad though.

It's actually good for me, since without this situation, I could not afford to set up an ENTIRE machine shop on a hobby budget. I'm learning that I'm getting as good a machinist education as is available commercially. I don't mean for this expression to come across as selfish, but rather to point out that more and more this knowledge is passing into the hands of rather educated (both formal and self educated; all who have in common they're learning it because they WANT to, not because dad was a machinist) folks, who are then making huge strides in documenting this stuff, and making it available to others.

Lets face it, many EXTREMELY skilled folks out there don't have Joe Michaels' or Forrest Addy's (and others) ability to share what they know, and so as they pass along, their skill doesn't. It's a mess for sure, but it's not ALL bad.


"Have you heard Lewis Black do the joke about: crossing the street in order to get to Starbucks, then come out only to notice a Starbucks accross the street? Yup....It aint a joke no mo."

That's REALLY funny since one Sunday morning on a downtown LA layover, I got up and went to the corner for some Starbuck's coffee. The place, unbelievably, was CLOSED. Yikes, methought. Ah, but fear not, there WAS a Starbucks right across the street, that was NOT closed. Geesh.

Tools

Now I'm gonna go look and see if any of my machinery came from Grand. If so, that little tag is gonna get all polished up right away!
 

Joe Michaels

Diamond
Joined
Apr 3, 2004
Location
Shandaken, NY, USA
Tools:

Thanks for the compliment. As a pilot, I think you would have appreciated Canal street as it existed when I was a kid. Back then, Canal Street was wall-to-wall stores selling industrial and US Government surplus stuff. Some of the store specialized in various things. WWII and the Korean War had not been over that long previous to the 1950's and 60's and even into the 1970's. As a result, there were tons of surplus stuff. You'd find stores selling aviation instruments, aviation wiring stuff (like Cannon or Ampehnol plugs), loads of aviation hydraulics and aviation cockpit instruments. Tons of stuff that no one knew the original use of were for sale- odd gearboxes, built for avuiation use with the lock-wiring and government spec tag, 24 volt or high-cycle AC motors, Norden Bombsights, landing gear parts... pumps, and on it went. Navy stuff like more pumps, valves, and hardware was for sale. Army stuff like field gensets (that needed to men and a boy to move), tow cables for tanks....

It's hard to describe what was for sale on Canal Street. We used to go down there and browse. Buckets and cans of gears, springs, cams, shafts, bearings, and on it went. If you wanted machine tools, then you walked over to Center Street and walked a few blocks on Center, broadway or Lafayette Streets. One machine tool dealer, used mainly, was on Canal Street: "Tunnel machinery Exchange".

Guys building hot rods or custm cars went to Canal Street and got aviation rod end assemblies (from control linkages), and aircraft briad hose assemblies and fittings. Service station owners in the 1950's cobbed together snowplows for their old Jeeps or Wilys trucks using Aircraft hydrualics. One guy in my old neighborhood had this beat up Willys MB Jeep (it was a WWII veteran as well). He had a pywood cab on it. His snowplow was homebuilt. His low lift pump was an emergency landing gear hydraulic hand pump from Canal Street. It took two men to plow his lot: One guy drove the Jeep and the other guy pumped the plow up or let it down using that old landing gear hand pump unit.

Canal Street had one of its finer moments in 1981. We got into the startup of a two-unit hydro plant in 1981. The plant was up outside Kingston, NY. It was an abortion of things- a Finnish turbine design built by a re-incarnated US firm. Components made in Finland and by job shops int he USA. Our corporate offices were down at Columbus Circle, in NY City. One of the mechanical engineers from the office ( a guy thought to be as nutty as I am considered to be) made numerous runs to Canal Street to scare up stuff to get the governors working. Those new units were commissioned with surplus stuff from Canal Street running in them.

My late Uncle served as a Tech Sergeant in the US Army Signal Corps in WWII. He built our first TV set with stuff from Canal Street. In the 1950's Television was an expensive proposition. A set cost about 500 1950-era dollars. My uncle built us our first TV using a government surplus tuning unit, amplifier, and some other surplus stuff. He reworked a few things and used a "civilian" chassis, yoke and picture tube. Dad built the cabinet out of plywood on his Craftsman table saw. It worked fine as our TV for years.

I suppose in recounting the story of our first TV set, I came to one reason for the demise of Canal Street. My late uncle was a WWII vet. He died last winter at age 92. He lived quietly in a small apartment with my aunt. He kept his WWII signal corps-issued stuff and built alot of electronics from kits. His breed tramped around Canal Street and Cortland Street (radio row) and dragged hiome surplus stuff to build good stuff out of. Nowadays, no one uses hard-wired components and solderes wires and components together.

I do not know exactly when Canal Street metamorphosed into the "Schlock District". Schlock is NYC slang (from the Yiddish) for anything cheap or shoddy. I am guessing about the time manufacturing industry left NYC and concurrently, about the time the surplus dealers ran out of surplus stuff to sell, Canal Street slid down into the schlock business. At that same time, the numbers of guys who were home tinkerers or played with tools at home or had small shops also declined. All of a sudden, Canal Street was lined with merchants selling brassware made in the Far East (suspected to be our Vietnam Era cartridge brass, coming back to haunt us), and "Schmattas" (Polish or Yiddish for rags,meaning cheap clothing). I have not been down to Canal Street in many years and do not plan on ever going there again. It isn;t what it was and I have no interest in what amounts to a schlock bazaar. I guess I am from the old breed as well.

FWIW: Jackie Mason, the comedian, did quite a piece on Starbucks Coffee. He correctly described Starbucks as the biggest ripoff, serving what amounts to burned coffee, sky-high prices, and the people thinking they are getting something special. I guess this same breed is taking over Canal Street and center Street.

Joe Michaels
 

adammil1

Titanium
Joined
Mar 12, 2001
Location
New Haven, CT
I guess I must have been lucky to go there while I still could. In listening to Joe's stories about the romance of Canal St, and Centre Street, last year I decided to head into NYC one Monday and go exploring. Last year first semester of college I was lucky and didn't have any Monday classes, as a result when the workload was still quite easy Monday's were my days of fun and exploration. Well into the city I went. I took the subway too far and wound up in Brooklyn. From there I had the great pleasure of walking the beautiful and majestic Brooklyn bridge.

When I got into the area many of the old signs were still there. I saw a sign for a woodworking supply, it was all intact and I got my hopes up thinking I'd just walk in. Nope the company no longer exists. Walked further down the street and found Grand machinery. Inside the machines were real neat but they no longer sold any of the tooling that one day was sold in the city. He had a number of older machines a few 10EE's some LeBlonds and a few nicer Takisawas, and Mori Seiki's over all it was a nice display of good American, European and Japaneese iron. As well as there were a few modern CNC machining centers.

One of my most vivid memories though comes when I was in the back of the store with a window looking out at the streets. There they had a late vintage maybe one of the last year of production fully tooled vertical/horizontal and big Kearney Trecker Mill. The more interesting sight was to see passerbuys look into the window. A bunch of yuppies you could tell they'd never seen a machine tool before and their looks seeing this mill were priceless.

The smell too was as Joe describes it, the only difference I noticed was instead of hearing Yiddish or something Eastern European their workers were all yapping away in Spanish and moving a 1/2 painted 10EE on skids with hard wood or steel rollers, with a long prybar. There wasn't however that model machine shop in the window anymore.

From there I went to the Victor Machinery exchange I wasn't too impressed, no bargains or anything it was all behind the counter. There was maybe another one or two other used machinery dealers in the area one I think specialized in rivetting machines but no others selling machine tools.

Since visiting there and hearing Joe's stories I've heard a lot more about that area. At our local machine tool dealer Brother's Machinery in Massachusetts, the owner was telling me about his days growing up as a kid in that area and how liking machinery he thought it was so neat he wanted to be a used machinery dealer.

Also had another experience earlier this year in that area. I was with my girlfriend who at the time hadn't yet been to my house on a Sunday so Grand was closed. Anyhow it was her first time seeing machine tools and it was kind of cool to point through the window and say I own that and that and that! She was impressed hearing stories of my garage. Since then however I've given her a proper educaton. She really is an amazing girl. I took her to the Strasburg railroad and got her a shop tour of the Steam restoration shops, she actually had a good time, enjoyed it and was asking me questions of things she saw. I've also brought her home from school and given her the grand shop tour. Next time she comes over were going to make candle stick holders on the lathe.

Anyhow too bad Canal/Centre street have gone the way they have. They've gone from being man land to a girl's paradise. My girlfriend loves buying the knockoff Coach purses that they sell in the mall for $400 there for $30. I personally think that is great. An article in the Wall Street Journal said the biggest problem with those knockoffs is they are made in the same factory that makes the real thing! So they are as genuine as can be. The factory makes for coach 12hrs a day and 12hrs for the factory. Coach pays them $15 a bag and then whines when they sell the thing as a knockoff for $30 when it sells in the store for $400. Maybe Canal street will make some of these companies think twice before offshoring their products.

Adam
 

jim rozen

Diamond
Joined
Feb 26, 2004
Location
peekskill, NY
Canal st? I thought that was radio row. At
least, that's where I went to take my general
class exam at the FCC office there.

Jim
 

Joe Michaels

Diamond
Joined
Apr 3, 2004
Location
Shandaken, NY, USA
Adam:

Great description, & thanks for validating what I had written. I am glad you got to see and experience the last vestiges of the old NYC Machinery District. It is good your girlfriend got to see it as well as the Strasburg RR shops. It helps to have a "better half" who understands guys like us.

Change must, inevitably, happen. I can;t say I like what is happening in the USA, but I have no much chance of reversing things & realize it. Fortunately, I found a niche. Perhaps I am a stubborn dinosaur, but there seems to be a need for me and the work I do.

Having grown up in Brooklyn, in the 1950's and 60's, I remember the old ethinic neighborhoods and the specialized business "districts" in NYC.
As a little guy, it was obvious early on that I liked machinery. Dad used to take me to Canal Street and Center Street on Saturday mornings. We almost always came home with something for me to play around with. It might have been a small instrument gearbox or similar. It was better than an amusement park or mall. We'd walk over to the area where the World Trade Center later stood- that area had a block of shops on Vesey Street that sold liquidated goods, customs-house auction stuff, closeouts and similar. My dad bought me a set of castings for a Stuart Turner Number 4 engine at one of those places. Probably a lot that came out of a customs house auction. It's an engine I am just finishing these 40-odd years later. The survivors of that block emerged as chain stores called "Odd Lot" and "Job Lot". The "Butter and Egg" district was nearby, but we never had reason to go poking around there.

Jim Rozen: The original "Radio Row" was on Cortlandt Street, not far from where the WTC stood. There were rows of store which sold industrial and military surplus electronic gear. Anything from vacuum tubes (it was the 1950's), resistors and capacitors to radio transmitters, receivers, signal generators and oscilloscopes as well as "record cutting" equipment moved through there. I believe "Radio Row" met its end when the the WTC was built.

New York City in the 1950's was a place where you could walk the streets & ride the subways of most areas without fear of getting accosted or mugged. At the same time, it was a place where people had a certain "edge" to them. Perhaps it came from the hard-scrabble immigrant mentality. People "got off the boat" and many landed right there on Lower Manhattan and settled into tenement life. From there, it was a hard life with no way to go but up. The result was people in New York City tended to be quick talking, quick with a comeback and perhaps seemingly confrontational on initial contact. However, it generally was a front and something you "gave back as good as you got". Having some "comeback" which might mean trading a few good-natured insults, and hard bargaining were all part of that immigrant culture. Simiarly, the immigrant kids and the kids of my parent's generation knew the only thing to do was scrabble hard. Some did it by their wits, hustling in businesses. The old machine tools dealers were examples of this. Many more immigrant kids made it by dint of hard study, often on a kitchen table after supper and into the night. These were kids who studied hard, went to public elementary and high schools that were old even then, came from homes and neighborhoods where English was not spoken, yet they preveailed and went on to become professionals such as teachers, doctors, engineers, lawyers, dentists, architects... My parents were part of that generation.

I have seen this same sort of progression today with the new waves of Asian, Caribbean and Hispanic immigrants. They are the new generations of street peddlers, small storekeepers, and it is their kids who are studying hard and getting scholarships.

As for the New York City of today, former mayor Guiliani did a fine job of "cleaning it up". Guiliani's cleanup took the edge and gittiness off the city. When my wife and I went into New York City after a lapse of some years, were were surprised at how calm and polite everyone was.


What Billy Boy may have ran into at Grand Machinery was some of the "old time" New York types. This was the type who were used to hustling and bargaining. You never bought a machine tool, or anything much else, for the "sticker price". You looked hard at any machine tool they had on the floor, asked to inspect it, and took your time. If you were interested, you asked the price and the machinery dealer threw out a number. You never took that number, you kidded him about maybe having to put his kids thru school and the machine tool being used on the Ark. You threw out a ridiculously low counter offer and it was "let the games begin". If you closed in on a price, you might ask to open a headstock and definitely saw the machine run under power. If it was needed, you bargained for tooling like a vise or chucks. It was all part of the game.

The new waves of immigrants are about the same way with bargaining being a part of the culture. We see it when we go into NY City nowadays.

What is indicative of how NY City has changed is to pay a visit to Katz's Delicatessen. It was a good walk from the old machinery district, being at the corner of Houston & Ludlow Streets on the Lower East Side. Like all the old time Jewish delicatessens, Katz's had outrageously good corned beef (salt beef in the UK), Pastrami, and salami along with great pickles. A sandwich in any of the old time Jewish Delicatessens was something you made a meal out of. When you went into Katz's, right into the 1980's, the countermen were generally older Jewish guys with union buttons on their white uniforms. They sized up the customers and the bantering and up-and-back occurred. You generally came away with a sandwich you needed a forklift to move if you kidded around and "Kvetched" (complained in jest). I remember one time, being at Katz's with my late father. We had each gotten a corned beef sandwich, a potato knish ( a kind of potato pie you pick up and eat), and each had a quart of Schaefer's beer. We were at our table, when the fun began. This character in Con Ed (the local electric company) work clothes started complaining to the bus boy that the meat in his corned beef sandwich was too fatty. The Con Ed guy had eaten about half his sandwich, and chose to complain, expecting a free meal or somesuch thing. The bus boy got a couple of countermen. They took the sandwich away. A few minutes later, they were back with the biggest sandwich imaginable. It needed a front end loader to move. They showed the COn Ed guy the corned beef was all lean, and told him to tie into it. More countermen gathered, some with the big knives they sliced the corned beef with. The COn Ed guy had a cheering section of old Jewish countermen and young Hispanic bus boys yelling at him to eat. Dad and I were kibbitzing with the countermen in Yiddish and I was kidding with the bus boys in Spanish (having worke din South America). The countermen were telling the Edison guy he probably picked up manhole covers int he street, so a little sandwich shouldn;t be a problem for him to eat. The guy was turning red, sweating, and not looking good when he got the sandwich eaten. He was not going to let a gang of old countermen get the best of him. He staggered out and the raucous goings on continued, with kidding and offers of bets as to whether he made it to the curb, collapsed or wound up in the ER. That was the old New York.

I took my wife and kids to Katz's. The corned beef was as good as ever, and the sandwiches were as big as ever. The countermen are now Hispanic or Asian- still slicing the corned beef by hand and stil wearing union buttons. However, the old "give and take" bantering is gone. The countermen are so polite and accomodating as to be unbelievable. It takes something from the experience. My wife and son agreed- the experience was too homogenized, too bland. OTOH, seeing the Asian and Hispanic men working at Katz's makes me realize what a melting pot New York City really is and how times change.

I guess, like the countermen at Katz's, everything changes with the times. Instead of hard bargaining with some oldtime machinery dealer, it's come to shopping for used machine tools on the internet. On used big machine tool purchases, I know the end result is approximately the same. Instead of hopping ont he subway to Center Street, I have hopped on planes to look at used machine tools. Instead of walking from one dealer's store to the next, it has meant hopping planes to different cities to inspect machine tools for purchase. The end result was still a careful inspection, bargaining, and a handshake followed by the purchase.

Maybe locating and buying machine tools via the internet is easier and opens up infinitely more possibilities. I'll still miss the old Machinery District and the types and way of life that went with it.
 

surplusjohn

Diamond
Joined
Apr 11, 2002
Location
Syracuse, NY USA
SOHO was the Southern Manhatten Industrial District, Most of the buildinds are prefab cast iron frames and facades.
I don't have time to tell the stories but I have a few about trucking machinery to Lafayette St. one poor driver got stuck on a side street, the trucking company had to send another driver down to rescue him, took 4 days to deliver, the trucker told me to never call them again....
 








 
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