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Boston then and now: When you could catch a movie and grab a pastrami on rye in West Roxbury
By adamg on Sun, 09/22/2024 - 4:39pm
In 1989, The Unbearable Lightness of Being was playing at the Village Cinema in the Hancock Village Shopping Center on VFW Parkway in West Roxbury - and next door Stan Salter was serving up pastrami on rye and challah French Toast next door at his eponymous deli.
The view today:
The theater, which opened in 1949, closed in 1989, no doubt a victim, like so many other businesses in West Roxbury and Roslindale, of the larger enterprises further down the parkway in Dedham.
Stan Salter opened his deli, which also served beer and wine, in the late 1970s, originally under the name Pumpernickel. It stayed open a bit longer than the theater - in 1989, Boston Magazine declared it served the city's best pastrami sandwich.
Salter died in May, 2022.
1989 photo from MIT's Boston Suburbs Project. Posted under this Creative Commons license.
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Comments
Is It Over Yet?
I got up twice during the Unbearable Longness of Watching thinking the movie was over.
This strip center also had West Roxbury's other Friendly's.
Weird flex, but you do you.
Weird flex, but you do you.
I loved the movie
But I tried to read the book and ... well ... you shouldn't even bother. If you think the movie was long and tedious, the book is way longer and tedious.
That brings back memories….
My grandmother lived in Hancock Village. She would often take us for a weekend so my parents could have a respite from the wild animals. Going to that cinema and having a pastrami sandwich beforehand became a fixture of those stays. I saw A Shot in The Dark with Peter Sellars there at the tender age of 12 It was considered a little risqué at the time thanks to a scene set in a nudist colony with a lot of peek-a-boo nudity, but my grandmother didn’t care. We laughed ourselves to tears. I became a major Peter Sellars fan and developed a pre-pubescent crush on Elke Sommer.
Boston, and the world in general...
...does not have enough pastrami sandwiches.
The good ones are in Brookline
Michael's on Harvard Street has the best ones outside of the late, great Carnegie Deli.
Barry's Village Deli in Waban
Barry's Village Deli in Waban is really good.
It's too bad there's no more kosher option except for takeout from the Butcherie.