By Frances Roberts and Richard Levine
You learn something every day. We actually don’t watch a lot of popular culture, specifically television. Maybe an occasional movie on Turner Classic Movies, and of course the news (which has pretty much become popular culture). But the myriad of television programs you get has pretty much escaped us.
Sinatra Shrine. Levine Roberts Photography/Newscom. Find it on Newscom.com: showcasepix041579
A few months ago we had some friends from overseas visiting and they brought their children and the one thing their kids wanted to do was to make a pilgrimage to Hoboken, New Jersey. We couldn’t figure out why they wanted to go to there. Our first thought was that the kids were Frank Sinatra fans and wanted to see his birthplace.
Carlo’s Bake Shop in Hoboken, NJ is seen on Saturday, July 21, 2012. Th family run bakery featuring baker Buddy Valastro, his family and crew, is a popular international syndicated television program called “Cake Boss”. Fans of the program make a pilgrimage to the bakery often waiting hours on line to enter the crowded store to bask amongst these sweet treats. RICHARD B. LEVINE/Newscom. Find it on Newscom.com: lrphotos070633
We couldn’t have been more wrong. Apparently there is a wildly popular television program called “Cake Boss” (yeah, we know we’re the last to hear about it) and the kids wanted to go visit Carlo’s Bake Shop in Hoboken. Buddy Valastro and his family run the business and their weekly shenanigans of making novelty and specialty cakes are immortalized. Not that we begrudge anyone making the trip out there because of the television program but when we were there the line stretched down the block and halfway down the next block. It was almost 90 degrees and there was over an hour wait just to get into the store. You still had to wait to buy something once you got in. Not that’s what I call Fans (with a capital letter!!!)
Customers lining up outside the Magnolia Bakery take advantage of the unseasonably warm weather on January 6, 2007. The popular bakery is known for it’s cupcakes and was featured in the “Sex and the City” television program. The highly anticipated film, based on the wildly popular television show, is set to open on Memorial Day weekend. RICHARD B. LEVINE/Newscom. Find it on Newscom.com: lrphotos036882
But wait!! Lining up to buy cakes and treats, and waiting and waiting. What does that you remind you of. Of course, the Magnolia Bakery on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village. The popular bakery was featured in the “Sex and the City” television program and to this day lines of people stretch around the block to buy a cupcake that was eaten by Sara Jessica Parker (not the same one we hope).
Assorted donuts are seen in a supermarket bakery department in New York on Thursday, April 7, 2011. RICHARD B. LEVINE/Newscom. Find it on Newscom.com: lrphotos060549
Finally, we’ve never been a big lover of cupcakes. So maybe someone will create a television program, Donut Boss, or Donuts and the City. We’d be big fans of that.
Richard Levine and Frances Roberts, of Levine Roberts Photography, are a husband and wife team of photographers covering politics, environmental issues, the economy, business, and social and cultural issues in the Big Apple. See more photos from their collection on Newscom.
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