The Strokes Set Up New York City Shop, Have Coffee

Photos courtesy of The Strokes

There are two schools of thought on pop up stores, both of which I just concocted this morning. The first school holds that the stores won’t be around in a decade when we’re all plugged into VR, fleeing whatever fresh apocalypse we’ve created for ourselves. It maintains that life is essentially pointless, that whatever small-handed overlord comes to power will not smile upon such material things.

But the other school of thought, the more reasonable voices on the other side of my head, they say that the pop up store is a way of inviting fans into a band’s mind, a novel way of introducing new material—musical or otherwise—to a thirsty fanbase. It’s the physical form of a cultivated aesthetic.

And if there’s one band that loves a cultivated aesthetic, it’s The Strokes which perhaps explains why they’ve put together a pop up store on New York’s Lower East Side for the rest of the week. Billed as a “Record Store, Installation + Espresso Bar,” it’s down on 350 Bowery and you can buy cool Strokes shit like shirts and records and, well, coffee.

Go enjoy a macchiato while you ponder the band’s back catalog. They did, after all, just come out with an EP and it was pretty great. Future Present Past officially comes out on June 3 and the band will be hosting a midnight release for it at the store. They’re headlining New York’s Governor’s Ball this weekend, too, and warming up for it with an intimate show at Capitol Theatre in Port Chester NY. So yeah, make that macchiato a double, what the hell.