Kibbitz and Nosh: When We All Met at Dubrow's Cafeteria

by Marcia Bricker Halperin

Overview

On a winter's day in the mid-1970s the photographer Marcia Bricker Halperin sought warm refuge and, camera in hand, passed through the revolving doors of Dubrow's Cafeteria on Kings Highway. There, between the magical mirrored walls and steaming coffee urns, she found herself as if on a theater set, looking out at a tableau of memorable Brooklyn faces. Enchanted, Halperin returned to Dubrow's again and again.

In Kibbitz & Nosh, Halperin reminds us of the days when she would order a coffee, converse with the denizens of Dubrow's on Kings Highway and at its Manhattan location in the Garment District, and in that relaxed atmosphere execute candid photographs. In keeping with the work of Vivian Maier and Robert Frank, these black-and-white images taken during the waning days of New York City's legendary cafeteria culture are revealing and empathetic.

Dubrow's was a restaurant-cum-social club for a generation of New Yorkers; it was a place to chat with friends, an escape from the confines of the family apartment, and a space to dream while looking out onto the traffic on Kings Highway and Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn or Manhattan's Seventh Avenue. Beyond Dubrow's on the sidewalks and in the streets, the gritty and fantastic New York of the 1970s appears, ready to come through the revolving doors to order a coffee and a blintz.

The Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Donald Margulies and the lauded historian of the Jewish-American experience Deborah Dash Moore provide essays that illuminate and contextualize Halperin's poignant photographs. Kibbitz & Nosh, with a whiff of nostalgia and full of incisive visual commentary, is a revealing return to this lost third place, the essential cafeteria.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501766510
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	05/15/2023
Pages:	152
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 9.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Marcia Bricker Halperin, a lifelong Brooklynite, began photographing in the 1970s. Her work is included in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Brooklyn Historical Society, the International Center of Photography, the Daniel Cowin Collection, City Lore, and the Walter and Naomi Rosenblum Collection. Follow her on Instagram @marciabrickerphoto.

Table of Contents

Prologue
1. Sundays at Dubrow's, or: Remembrance of Creamed Spinach Past
2. See You at Dubrow's
3. Dubrow's, Kings Highway, Brooklyn: Where It's Happening, Come to the Highway
4. Dubrow's, Garment District, Manhattan: The Epicenter of the Schmatta Business
Acknowledgments
Biographies

What People are Saying About This

Mimi Sheraton

I miss Dubrow's every time I take a cab down 7th Avenue. I happily recall meals at Dubrow's before and after attending the opera at the old Metropolitan Opera House which was located a block away (until 1966).

Robert H. Abzug

Both historical documents and art in their own right, Marcia Halperin's photographs unite a touch of nostalgia and the realist grit of a time gone by.

Lisa Hurwitz

Marcia Bricker Halperin gives new life to historic dining establishments through these incredible candid photos of a bygone era. The accompanying essays that give these photos context are enlightening in how they establish New York cafeterias like Dubrow's as Jewish spaces—they were the extended living rooms of the New York Jewish community.

Erika Sanger

Poignant and resonant, Marcia Halperin's photographs lovingly evoke the city, the people, and a time that is not so long ago, but feels so far away.

Reggie Nadelson

Kibbitz & Nosh reveals a New York of working people, of folk who needed a place to sit down, drink a cup of coffee and rest. This was a hard world and Dubrow's provided a break from it. Marcia Bricker Halperin's photographs show us a place that made New York what it was.

Debi Mazar

I frequented Dubrow's Cafeteria in the garment district in the 80s. I lived in the neighborhood and worked in the evening at nearby Danceteria, the club's name inspired by the cafeteria's fabulous neon sign. At Dubrow's you could get a full meal for seven bucks, and then sit as long as you liked in that architectural gem. The people watching was Beyond! Marcia Bricker Halperin's photos bring me right back there and capture the essence of old New York.

Ben Katchor

Marcia Bricker Halperin's wonderful photographs are evidence of the rich public-eating culture that was lost as the working- and middle-class aspired to 'better' themselves. Offered the sterile fast-food and pretentious upscale dining of today, I long for those steam-tables with their slightly overcooked food and those communal seating arrangements offering conversation 24/7.

Editorial Reviews

There was a time when New York was home to dozens of restaurants like the Horn & Hardart Automats or the Belmore Cafeteria, the cabby mecca made famous in the movie 'Taxi Driver.' You'd grab a tray, shuffle down the counters and grab a seat. Marcia Bricker Halperin's record of New York's long-gone cafeterias, rendered in black and white, have graceful architecture, dazzling or moody lighting and more than a few characters, like Gene Palma, the slick-haired street drummer and Gene Krupa maven.

The New York Times