Manhattan it wasn’t, but if you were a “bridges and tunnels” commuter who didn’t drive, Newsday was your go-to read.
In the days before smartphones, before MP3 players, podcasts, and web pages, you’d board the MTA bus or train, claim your seat if you were lucky, and either put on a CD, and FM radio, get out a paperback. The skilled commuter would have mastered reading the newspaper half-fold, or quarter-fold. The real pro’s could quarter-fold the New York Times, for the rest of us it was half fold, or better still, just read Newsday.
In August 1994, Newsday was pumping out summer sports news, various advertisers were “bigging-up” the Woodstock ’94 festival, including “Nobody beats the Wiz“.
The August 23rd edition lead with a “friendly fire” shooting of two cops. Forest Gump was on top the movie box office. Newsday staff writer Gene Seymour had one of two important jazz stories, his was the “Unsung Roy Haynes” – Fame is finally catching up with one of the great drummers of jazz.[1]https://newsday.newspapers.com/clip/83989203/unsung-roy-haynes-jazz-drummer/
Singles advice, singles adverts and events were still a big deal in newspapers then, who remembers singles call-lines, a cross between Tinder and Only fans (so I’m told) and towards the back, in the notices section, was the other jazz story. Largely completely unnoticed, and one of dozens of legal notices, published weekly was the Manhattan Mini Storage version of Storage Wars. The notice read:
LEGAL NOTICE
L-9658
LIEN SALE: Manhattan Mini Storage
Corp. WILL Sell Under New York State
Law. Daniel Bader Auctioneer As Agent
DCA #529683 By The Room For Cash
Only At 520 West 17th St.. N.Y.. N.Y
10011 Al 10:00 A.M. On August 30,
1994 And Such Succeeding Days As
May Be Necessary For The Following
Accounts: #0104003 Alexandria Valenti,
#0104022 Jeneene M. Pearce. #0901-
008 Bruce H. Craven, #0901044 Mi-
chael Borkin. #0901090 Adolpho Arena.
#0908020 Christopher Bock. #0908072
Pavel Sova. #0909069 Stanley Burns,
#0914022 Martin Rohms, #1001052
William Lindner, #1002017 Kathleen
Black. #1005036 Creed Taylor Inc..
#1005058 Thomas Broadbent #1012-
011 Connne Bowe. #1103010 Eduardo
Cruz. #1104002 Greenstreet Records
c/o C.T.I.. #1106018 Jonathan V. Dia-
mond, #1109071 Anthony Lamonte,
• 11 10012 Gary Wills
The other jazz news story? Yep, there it was, a follow-on from the bankruptcy of “Creed Taylor Inc.”[2]https://www.ctproduced.com/cti-enters-chapter-xi-bankruptcy/, the final final sale. The storage lots of two accounts were being legally sold off by the order of New York State. Account #1005036 Creed Taylor Inc.. and account #1104002 Greenstreet Records c/o C.T.I.
At this point, it’s impossible to guess what the sale included. I have reached out to Manhattan Mini Storage to see if they they have a catalogue or inventory for the sale in their archive. Just like the modern day Storage Wars, sometimes it’s trash, sometimes it’s treasure.
Satyam Shah, VP of Operations, at Manhattan Mini Storage confirmed that the sale did not go ahead. As is often the case, between the announcement of the sale on August 23rd, and the sale on August 30th 1994, the debt on the units was paid, and the CTI unit cleared wasn’t closed until 1999, some 5-years later.
An ignominious end to an amazing company, that like so many in American business, succeeded in spite of the big companies but was eventually crushed by them.
References
Updates
Jan 24th, 2021 10pm – added response from Manhattan Mini-Storage.