In the vast constellation of New York City bagel shops, Absolute Bagels on the Upper West Side has held a lofty but unusual position of honor.
Famous among bagel aficionados as a keeper of the flame lit by the original bagel makers of the Lower East Side — hand-rolled, kettle-boiled, oven-baked, always fresh — the shop was founded in the early 1990s by Samak Thongkrieng, a Thai immigrant who learned his craft at the venerable Ess-a-Bagel.
Even as the nondescript storefront became an unlikely TikTok destination, Absolute Bagels kept no social media presence of its own, had no website, did not deliver and accepted only cash.
But as anyone could see from the lines up and down the block on the weekends, Absolute was among the most popular bagel places in New York.
Then, on Thursday morning, tragedy. A piece of paper haphazardly stuck to the door with packing tape spelled out the sad news in bright red letters: “WE ARE CLOSED.”
And lo did a cry of anguish rise from a stretch of Broadway between West 107th and 108th. It spread quickly to West Side Rag, the local news site that broke the bombshell news on Thursday morning, and then downtown, on to Brooklyn, to New Jersey, and to bagel lovers everywhere.
“Nooooooooo!!!!!” someone with the username Joe posted in comments about the West Side Rag story. “No no no no no no no no no no no!!”
“This is, like, a cataclysmic event in the bagel world,” said Sam Silverman, a Brooklyn resident who organizes classes and events for bagel cognoscenti and is known in the business as the Bagel Ambassador. “It is insane,” said Mr. Silverman, whose favorite order from Absolute was the everything bagel, untoasted, with scallion cream cheese.
Ray Lugo was sitting a few blocks away at another Upper West Side institution, the Hungarian Pastry Shop on Amsterdam, when a waitress told him the news. He went straight to Absolute to confirm the rumor. He found the metal gate partially lowered and the door ajar.
When he arrived, at about 2 p.m., an employee of the store stood stooped beneath the metal gate, handing out free bagels to a crowd of a dozen people. The employee was crying. Like the other workers inside the store, she declined to give her name or explain why the store had closed. It had been open on Wednesday, and somebody presumably made bagels on Thursday morning. It was a mystery.
Efforts to reach Mr. Thongkrieng by phone on Thursday were not successful, and it remained unclear whether the store was permanently shut. The shop was last inspected by the Health Department in August and had a “B” grade on its department report card, according to the department’s website.
Gale Brewer, a longtime city councilwoman from the Upper West Side and former Manhattan borough president, called 10 people on Thursday, including police leaders and members of the New York State Assembly, asking for information about Absolute Bagels. But her investigation left her unsatisfied.
“This bagel thing is weird!” she said. “Nobody knows why it closed.”
Other than the shop’s workers, few were as devastated by Absolute Bagel’s demise as Emily Code. When Ms. Code, 36, moved to the Upper West Side 14 years ago, her first meal was an Absolute bagel. She has lived in three different apartments since then, all within a block of the store, where she knew the workers by name.
In April 2020, as Covid forced much of New York to close, Ms. Code commissioned a friend to make a painting of Absolute Bagels. She features prominently in the picture, wearing a red top and a big smile, standing in a line of waiting customers that became as famous at Absolute as the bagels themselves.
The painting remains the centerpiece of her living room. “When we were going absolutely crazy, I was like, ‘What would give me joy?’” Ms. Code said. “It’s the one place I really love in the neighborhood.”
Hazel Balaban last visited Absolute Bagels on Wednesday. There was no indication the shop was about to close, she said, although a worker did offer a free bagel to Ms. Balaban’s daughter.
“Looking back, that was probably a red flag,” said Ms. Balaban, 37. “They never did that.”
The bagels were good, of course. But Ms. Balaban also kind of liked Absolute Bagels’ line, especially in the early morning, before the TikTokers arrived. Between the hours of 6 a.m. and 8 a.m., the line was just people from the neighborhood. They stood together, waiting for bagels baked like the city itself: crisp exterior, warm and soft on the inside.
“I’m heartbroken,” she said, before catching herself and acknowledging, “Of all the wrongs in the world, a bagel store closing is pretty low on the list.”
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