The Big Pick-Up Closing

When I first started coming to New York City on a regular basis, I often stayed with my brother-in-law (now ex-brother-in-law) and his partner in Chelsea. I wiled away hours reading the Times and drinking coffee at the Big Cup, “a boisterous Chelsea coffeehouse with a Day-Glo interior … big couches and stay-all-day atmosphere.” Today’s story in the Times about its imminent closing says the Big Cup was nicknamed Gay Grand Central, but I always heard it referred to as the Big Pick-Up. Needless to say, I was one of the “Women and straight men [who] were welcome too, but as a review once put it, ‘They just seem sort of irrelevant.’” Doors close on Sunday, a victim, of course, of rising real estate prices. Scott Siler, an owner of the business since it opened in 1994, told the Times: “You can only charge so much for a cup of coffee.”

Read the whole article here.