Kibbitz & Nosh is a photographic tribute to Dubrow's and the bygone days of the New York cafeteria
In this new collection of portraits taken in the mid-1970s, Marcia Bricker Halperin documents a lost institution where New Yorkers grabbed a mouthful and gave an earful.
My next-door neighbour Benny Feigenberg sought sanctuary at two hallowed institutions, the synagogue and the cafeteria. He attended services regularly as an active member of both congregations.
Like so many of his contemporaries in the rag trade, Benny found respite at the Seventh Avenue location of Dubrow’s Cafeteria’s. He was one of the many (over 5,000 in its heyday) who came to kibbitz and nosh at what was then the caffeinated nerve centre of New York’s Garment District.
Today, the Yiddish word kibbitz is largely understood as an endearing term for idle chitchat. But in the milieu of the cafeteria, to kibbitz was to meddle in the business of others, to offer unwanted advice or commentary. Benny revelled in the give and take among the salesmen, jobbers, cutters and pressers. This was his tribe.
I was a morning regular at the Manhattan Dubrow’s in the years prior to its closing in 1985, when the owner, Paul Tobin, sold the lease to a real estate developer. I hated my job as a salesman at a 16mm movie distribution company: Only the promise of Dubrow’s golden challah French toast got me out of bed in the morning. A single eggy slice was as thick as a bible, its thorough consumption more effective at lifting the spirits of a young man finding his place in the world.
The order of the day – any day – at Dubrow’s was the people-watching. You get a good helping of this cafeteria pastime via the black-and-white portraits in Kibbitz and Nosh: When We All Met at Dubrow’s Cafeteria. Photographer Marcia Bricker Halperin approached the New York cafeteria with the eye and empathy greats like Henri Cartier-Bresson and Brassaï brought to the Parisian cafe. Her important new book is introduced with insightful and very personal essays by Donald Margulies, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, and Deborah Dash Moore, an historian of American Jewish life.
A half-century ago, Marcia Bricker, then a recent graduate of Brooklyn College, stepped inside the Dubrow’s near her Brooklyn home and started observing the observers. She sat down for coffee with the kibbitzers, a good number of whom, thankfully, were not camera shy. She built an archive that now documents the faces, figures and fashions of a special place in time.
“Marcia’s vanished cafeteria photographs date from the late 70s,” writes Margulies in the book’s introduction, “but they seem even older. They are graphic evidence, documentary proof, of a lost time and a lost culture.”
A small but superb exhibition of photographs from Kibbitz and Nosh is on display through August 15th at the Kaufman Arcade (132 West 36th Street), in the heart of New York’s Garment District. Marcia gave me a guided tour, recalling her consequential days at her Dubrow’s in Brooklyn in the mid-Seventies and, a few years later, at the Manhattan Dubrow’s at the time of its closing.
The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
What was Dubrow’s?
Dubrow’s was a family-owned chain of cafeterias. Self-service restaurants. That was the key thing. No waiters. Take a tray. Get your food from a long array of all different foods, every imaginable item.
New York was filled with cafeterias in the Fifties and Sixties. Dubrow’s was a particular name and a particular brand of cafeteria that was beloved. Many Jews went there. It was the hub of the Garment District. Everybody would go to get the news of the day.
In Brooklyn in particular it was a real community centre. People would meet their friends there. And of course they would meet new friends there. The older people would eat in the morning, the Over-Eighty Club. At night, people would come after a dance and maybe try to do a pickup.
Do you remember the food portions being as enormous?
A hallmark of a cafeteria was the idea of plenty. The mural in Brooklyn portrayed people bringing a bounty of food to the table. The biggest pieces of cake would be up front. A lot of the people had grown up in the Depression when there wasn’t all that much.
The interior design of the Manhattan Dubrow’s was very much over-the-top, too, wasn’t it?
It opened in 1952. It was a crazy mix of styles. No expense seems to have been spared. The mural was fabulous. It had all the elements of Hollywood and some kind of garden of earthly delights. It had Greek goddesses, 1940s fashion models, a stairway that led up to a map of the 13 colonies. The midcentury modern chairs are now collectibles.
How did you become the photographer laureate of a New York institution?
I was an art major. At one point I wanted to be a street photographer. It got too cold. I came into Dubrow’s cafeteria. I was captivated by the textures, the mosaics, the reflections off the mirrors, glass and chrome. And then of course the wonderful faces from people all around hooked me. I returned again and again to photograph them.
Did you seek out spectacular characters who were outrageous in their appearance or their garb?
I was looking at a lot of photography. I was aware of Diane Arbus. But I established a rapport with these people. They would talk to me. They would invite me over and try to give me cheesecake. We’d drink coffee together. I really got to know them. So when I photographed them it was just a little bit different than just finding an unusual face and photographing it.
Those people you would consider a little outlandish, with the great hat, an engaging smile or a flowered shirt, they would engage with me. It became a collaborative thing.
The name of your book is Kibbitz and Nosh, but many of the people you photographed are neither chatting nor eating. Several are alone.
One of the main things of the cafeterias was that you be part of looking at people, of being around people. If you lived alone, this was a place you could go and not feel so alone for a little while. There was a comfort in this place. People would share tables. Not even bother to ask, can I sit at your table? They’d just plop themselves down. You would not be alone for very long. People would engage in conversation. Or if they didn’t, they were able to just eat together, in silence.
Did you know you were documenting a period in New York and a community that wouldn’t be around for much longer?
I had studied with photographers that had talked about photographing things that are no more. It motivated me. New York was filled with cafeterias in the 50s, 60s and up until the 70s. I definitely sensed this was a waning time.
Viewing this wonderful collection of images from your Dubrow’s days, would you classify your work as documentary photography or art photography?
I would like them to be seen as pieces of art that stand on their own. That is my greatest hope. But I do love being the source now of information on this, with the photographs as primary sources. There is an exhilaration to having brought these out into the world. I always sensed I would have to get them out.
“It had Greek goddesses” well if it hadn’t you’d be missing something crucial! You transported us in time and place! Such an amazingly written piece and photos to match. Some of that feeling got lost when the cafeterias became cafes.