Parkside Bicycles
329 Amsterdam Avenue at West 75th Street
Dates of opening and closing unknown.
Owner = unknown
Have any tips on where the owner might be or memories related to this shop? Please drop me a line.
TODAY
VIP Dry Cleaners operates out of the space where Gerry captured two shops that came and went in the 1990s, Parkside Bicycles and Delphine’s & Co., a women’s clothing boutique.
In place of Parkside Bicycles, today stands VIP Cleaner and businesses that, apart from the Memorial Chapel, seem similarly geared toward meeting the daily needs of residents. Places to grab an inexpensive or casual bite to eat (Subway; 16 Handles; Playa Betty’s) or a bottle of something to take to a dinner party (Pour), are all watched over by the oldest structure on the block, the pale-brick, 15-story residential unit to the south of VIP Cleaner at 321 Amsterdam Avenue that was built in 1925. If buildings could talk, what stories might it reveal about the comings and goings on this stretch of the Upper West Side?
FIELD NOTES
So far no leads on Parkside Bicycles and so far too shy to inquire at the Riverside Memorial Chapel next door.
Parkside Bicycles? What became of you? Inquiries with the present occupants and surrounding shops yielded no information on its history. Nor did any of my research. I might have tried speaking to employees of the Riverside Memorial Chapel, located just to the north of the former shop. Unlike the other businesses in the area, the oldest of which Pour opened in 2006, Riverside Memorial has occupied the same location since 1926. But I have not been able to bring myself to enter such a solemn space, inquiring about my search for something so frivolous as a former bicycle shop.