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ON_THE_BEAN
August 13, 2021
A brief scene in the Korean Drama
"Fashion King" (2012) takes place
in a cafe in New York, and it had
me wondering if it was a place Korean's (and Korean
that really existed or if they'd Drama's) take their
faked it somehow. coffee seriously:
It seemed a touch idealized to me-- COFFEE_PRINCE
it seemed like the kind of place
that was everywhere at the close of
the last century but that in this And as I eventually
one had been priced out and pushed EAST_OF_THE_EAST figured out: This
out by even duller chains. place is called
"The Bean", and
There wasn't anything all that remarkable it's history has it
about the look of the place-- it wasn't getting starbucked
tremendously distinctive, or at least it out of it's
*shouldn't* have been so-- but this original location.
relaxed place (cushions scattered around,
coffee in to-go cups with some plates of
light brunch food) *located in lower
Manhatten*-- struck me as a phenomena of The buildings across the
yesteryear. street in the background
that reminded me a bit of
But, as it happens it *is* a real place-- the lower west side,
the branding visible on the to-go cups Chelsea perhaps if not
shows the name: "The Bean". Greenwich village...
The Bean's original location was on 1st
Ave and 3rd Street but it moved and then
expanded to several locations-- mostly on The East Side has cleaned up
the lower east side. The scene in enough in recent years that
question was shot in the one on the it reminds me of the way the
corner of 2nd Ave and 3rd St. West used to be.
I managed to confirm the shooting location
by comparing the buildings in the background
during the dialog... but there was an oddity
there I ended up puzzling over: the dialog I've been solving
was shot from two angles, and in the closer-in little mysteries
shots, it was clear to me that the background like this of late
was different-- it was out-of-focus, but you by doing armchair
could see the color was wrong (much more reddish) tours of places
the street was wider (more like an Avenue) like Seoul via
and the traffic was faster and in the other google's street
direction, going right-to-left. view-- it's funny
using it to investi-
But: this particular Coffee Bean is located on a gate a neighborhood
corner, and looking at the scene again I realized I used to know...
that we were just seeing the background from
different angles, looking from the right we see
3rd St, but the closer-in shots are also looking
from the left, and we see an out-of-focus 2nd Ave.
The corner diagonally across has a bus stop,
some mailboxes, and a big red brick building,
and the traffic directions check out, 2nd Ave
is uptown, 3rd Street is west bound.
So if the question is "is this
a real place or was it faked?", At least they didn't resort to the
the answer is essentially "real". extreme trickery I half way expected: a
green screen outside of the window of a
random cafe-- or set-- with a New York
scene swapped in, and java jackets for a
made-up place prominently displayed.
And if the question is, is
"The Bean" a real place, I
quote from their web site:
What we don't have
BURNT_COFFEE
Hell yeah. Next time I'm in New York...
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