UWS’ Absolute Bagels Line Changes Direction

By Gus Saltonstall

Change has come to one of the Upper West Side’s most famous lines.

For the past two weekends, Absolute Bagels on Broadway between West 107th and 108th streets, has seen its line form on the southern side of its door, instead of on the usual northern side of the business.

The change is due to the recent closure of the next-door Garden of Eden market at the end of March. With the supermarket’s fruit stands no longer in operation, Absolute Bagel customers have started lining up in the now-empty space underneath the still-standing awning — which is especially helpful on rainy days.

“In fact, the line from Absolute Bagel — which for 20 years has always lined up north outside the shop — today was lined up *south*,” Mark Hurst wrote to West Side Rag on the first weekend after the Garden of Eden closure.

Here’s how the line looked for decades.

One Upper West Sider expressed worries that the new line direction would make the in-store experience at Absolute Bagels less efficient.

“You go in a clockwise direction right now in the store, but with the line now going the other way, the people in line are going to be blocking the people trying to leave the store,” Gabriel Kramer-Garcia, a nearby resident of the bagel shop, told the Rag. “It’s already hard enough to get a bagel on a Sunday morning there, now it just got a little harder.”

A different longtime customer kept his analysis of the line direction change brief.

“It changes nothing, there is still a line,” Upper West Sider and Absolute Bagels regular Joey Viviano said.

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