Walk

103rd and Broadway looks like any Broadway block. A cafeteria, a movie, stores. In the middle of Broadway is an island with some grass and benches placed at intervals. 103rd is a subway stop, a crowded block. This is junk territory. Junk haunts the cafeteria, roams up and down the block, sometimes half-crossing Broadway to rest on one of the island benches. A ghost in daylight on a crowded street. You could always find a few junkies sitting in the cafeteria or standing around outside with coat collars turned up, spitting on the sidewalk and looking up and down the street as they waited for the connection. In summer, they sit on the island benches, huddled like so many vultures in their dark suits. The peddler had the face of a withered adolescent. He was fifty-five but he did not look more than thirty. He was a small, dark man with a thin Irish face. When he did show up - and like many oldtime junkies he was completely unpunctual - he would sit at a table in the cafeteria. You gave him money at the table, and met him around the corner three minutes later where he would deliver the junk. He never had it on him, but kept it stashed somewhere close by. -- Junky by William Burroughs.

This is a picture of 104th and Broadway. The Casa Puebla building used to be a Horn and Hardart cafeteria--possibly purpose built. I don’t know if Burroughs misremembered, or was changing the street names to protect the innocent. Maybe there were two cafeterias on one block. Up through the seventies cafeterias: fancy ones like Horn and Hardart with their little mailboxes of food which could be released for a nickel, and steam-table hells were common in New York. As common as Starbucks and big, chain-drugstores are today. None, as far as I know, now exist on Manhattan. They were full of junkies and beatniks anyway.