Gray's Papaya Pt.2

Gray's Papaya?Pt.2

I eventually ran a Mexican restaurant uptown on 93rd, and third. I lived on the top floor of a walkup above Cafe Mocha, a bakery/restaurant across the street from where I had lived as a girl. At the cafe my father had made me (8 and mortified)?take a tip to the Zither player and ask for a favorite song.?As a restaurant manager I heard tales over the bar of IRA gun-running happening from the basement of third avenue’s “Dorian’s Red Hand.” History was handed on with a paper wrapped sausage, a beer at the bar, or bebidas fria from the Papaya King. On such an active street, I was safe as a child, watched by grandma’s whose names I didn’t know. I handed on these stories to my kid who harbors memories of their own 9th avenue childhood pizza stop. But in Yorkville those places are gone.

In 2022 Papaya King on 3rd Ave was slated for demolition to make way for another tower on what is now called “billionaire’s row.”?Open on the corner for 90 years, it was a well loved, memorable stop which served everyone from everywhere at an affordable price.?Now it is another casualty of unchecked development ...

By?Rebecca Holderness, CEO & Founder of?2ftD Design Data