22. Because on Great Jones Street, Shopping Is Art

Clockwise from top right: No. 40: Partners & Spade (646-861-2827); No. 57: Japan Premium Beef (212-260-2333); No. 55: The Future Perfect (212-473-2500).Photo: Clockwise from top right: Courtesy of Partners & Spade; Hannah Whitaker/New York Magazine (inset beef); Zach Desart for New York Magazine (Japan Premium Beef); Courtesy of the Future Perfect

Every once in a while, New York assembles an extraordinary single block, where a few very specific-minded individuals open shops devoted to a unique curatorial position: découpage, for example, or taxidermy. And there usually appears, if not enough people to keep it alive forever, at least enough to keep it going for a while, to poke their heads in and have a considered look. Right now, that block is Great Jones Street between Bowery and Lafayette. On the north side there’s Partners & Spade, which is Andy Spade’s gallery-shop full of unusual artwork and random, assorted stuff (photographs of guns, for example, taken from a fifties police file, bowling pins by Renate Müller, handmade arrows, antique globes). It’s a nice place to browse, and you can even buy things that don’t cost too much, if that’s what you’re after. On the south side, there’s Japan Premium Beef, probably the most beautiful butcher shop in a city already infatuated with meat (although we’ve never seen anyone in there to buy the $49.99-per-pound Wagyu). Last month, David Alhadeff opened a Manhattan outpost of his advanced-home-design Brooklyn store, the Future Perfect, and to complete the browsing experience, there are reliably comfortable places to eat: the Great Jones Cafe or Five Points, or the juice bar at the just–New Age-y–enough Great Jones Spa. It won’t last forever, this tiny strip. Something will inevitably come along (an “It” restaurant, a trendy dress shop) to tip the balance in the wrong direction. But right now, this week, it is exactly where you want to wander on a Saturday afternoon.

22. Because on Great Jones Street, Shopping Is Art