Mourning Manny's

After 74 years, Manny's Music on 48th Street is closing its doors. Don't ask me how I missed this story when it broke a couple months ago, but I just came across it in the New Yorker last night and became deeply sad.

Every time I have to pop into the (godawful) Midtown Sam Ash for some trusty Thomastik Dominants or W.E. Hill and Sons rosin (which they haven't had for months, ahem), I make a stop at Manny's. They don't have violin stuff, but they do have walls lined with photos, autographed by everyone from Clapton to Dylan to the Beatles to Simon & Garfunkel...the list goes on forever. On display on the first floor was a sample guitar favored by George Harrison on his visits to the shop. All of the greats walked Manny's halls. It was a free museum of rock.

I loved to take my guitar-nerd friends here, and to pick up and play the acoustics upstairs. I've made small purchases here over the years, but it was really more about the visiting experience for me. Even the delighfully antiquated 3-layer, dot-matrix printed, carbon-copy receipts were charming. Popular suspicion seems to indicate that the rest of Music Row will follow suit in shutting down, but I am positive that no place will be missed more terribly than Manny's.

[image via Flickr]