Benny’s Burritos closed in 2014, but this week it reappeared in its old spot on the corner of Avenue A and East 6th Street. Only now, it’s a Hollywood set, its windows papered so cameras can’t see the 2024 bodega behind the façade. Down Avenue A, a version of Kim’s Video appeared in place of a Japanese restaurant — the windows covered with vintage posters and the menu concealed behind graffiti. “I wish it was real,” said Ian Ullman, a neighbor who used to rent from Kim’s and stopped to take a photo of the new, old sign.
The false storefronts — along with heaps of old tires, chained-up bikes, beat-up Honda Civics, and trash marked “NOT TRASH” — are set decoration for Caught Stealing, a Darren Aronofsky film about a baseball player who sinks into the “criminal underbelly of 1990s New York City,” according to IMDb, which lists the stars as Liev Schreiber, Zoë Kravitz, and Austin Butler. It’s one of two films shooting downtown this week that are peeling back a few layers of gentrification. The other is Marty Supreme, a project from Josh Safdie that stars Timothée Chalamet as a mustachioed table tennis whiz. That shoot has turned Orchard Street, between Delancey and Rivington, into a 1950s version of itself.
On Thursday, the Marty crew was cleaning up a set that included a fake stone entryway behind a new glassy, 16-story hotel. Across the street, the Wschód gallery had a new grimy awning advertising it as Wechsler Barber Shop. Next door, Orchard Express Tailor Shop was operating as usual, despite an odd sign reading “Waldman & Silverman — Exclusive Haberdashers” and a window display filled with vintage clothes — knit mens shirts, rayon dresses, and a sheath dress that stuck out to Ellen Koenigsberg, who runs a vintage store around the corner and came in to have a pair of jeans taken in. “It’s 1960s,” she said of the dress. Not that the anachronism bothered her. It was all surreal fun.
Back over on Avenue A, the fashion stylist Juje Hsiung noticed almost as soon as he stepped out the door that the neighborhood had become a fake version of itself. There were piles of tires, piles of bicycle wheels, and piles of trash — all in bags of the exact same black plastic. “There were piles and piles, and the piles were just too good.”
