the underwear drawer

babs, in memoriam




This may be difficult to believe, but it wasn't until about a month ago that a Starbucks opened up near [University Hospital]. Guess they didn't think health care workers drank coffee. Anyway, it's there now, across the street from the subway station, and doing a booming business and one might expect.

Mom-'n'-Pop-coffee-outlet crushing aside, I have no problem with Starbucks, but can't help but to fondly remember what used to occupy this store space at the corner prior to the inevitable landing of the monolith. Well, immediately prior, it was a Washington Mutual bank, which didn't really hold my (or the neighborhood's, apparently) interest. But before that, when I was a medical student, it used to be the site of BABS, which according to the overhanging sign was a nursing uniform store. I say "according to the sign" because you would not necessarily infer that from the window display at BABS, which mostly consisted of various spicy pieces of lace and imitation satin lingerie. Nor were men left out--I still remember the men's G-string that was displayed in the window around Christmas when I was a second-year med student, a saucy little number shaped like an elephant's head. With a trunk. Um...yes.