The City Bakery’s famous hot chocolate, pretzel croissant, and cookie. Photo: Lily Wokin The City Bakery ran on charm. People will tell you otherwise, that it was a certain baked good that made the place what it was, but it was propelled by the fact that it was a nice spot to go, a nice spot to just be.
On a personal level, though I doubt I’m alone, the City Bakery played some part in my own idealized version of New York City. We all have one, especially those of us that move here in our 20s with very little life experience but plenty of hours spent watching television and reading books.
The City Bakery just sounded like the sort of place I needed to see for myself. Was it official? Was it really the City Bakery? I envisioned some stream of New Yorker types — MTV VJs like Matt Pinfield and Bill Bellamy standing next to John Starks who was standing next to Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and a couple of SNL people who would go on to star in bad movies — waiting in line for a morning coffee in this place with an official-sounding name that, I figured, was in the heart of the city.
So I did. I got a coffee, and I sat there and just took in the energy of the gigantic room. I didn’t have a book with me, and this was before iPhones, so nothing was demanding my attention. I could absorb the people moving around me, the smells, and the conversations I heard fluttering about.
Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be