Beloved Bookstore Gives Way to Waxing Center in Flatiron

Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.

Anyone looking for a metaphor for New York's recent changes doesn't have to go much further than 18th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenue, where the scruffy, quirky Skyline used bookstore has recently been replaced by a franchise of the Uni K Wax salon chain. Over at nostalgia blog Vanishing New York (which is always looking for those kind of metaphors), Jeremiah writes:

Uni K Wax, a body waxing chain from Florida, is now bringing bare balls and vulvas where once were books of art and poetry. It's perfect, isn't it? How it so tidily exemplifies the shifting of the city's equilibrium, what is valued now, and what gets thrown away. It's almost poetic in itself. Books—out! Celebrity eyebrows—in!

Skyline closed in the winter of 2010 after twenty years at 13 W. 18th Street, reopening minus its lovable bookstore cat as Rob Warren Books in the front corner of a flower shop on 28th Street. As for those celebrity eyebrows—because we know you're wondering—they belong to Tyra Banks, Salma Hayek, and Christie Turlington, among other boldface names.
· Books to Wax [VNY]
· Uni K Wax [Official Site]
· Skyline's Bookstore Cat Needs a New Shelf to Call Home [Racked NY]

Uni K Wax

13 West 18th Street, New York, NY