Grab a Matchbook From Your Favorite Spot and Thank Me Later

When the legendary Jazz Standard club closed, in late 2020, I mourned the loss of yet another New York cultural institution. My favorite spots were shutting down one after another, sinking me and the city further into a collective depression. I texted the news to my parents; it was there, when my parents were in town, that they introduced me to the Mingus Big Band and to the music of Joni Mitchell, whose songs I fell in love with after we saw a cover singer perform. I never considered that something might kill a venue that had been so central to my youth.

There is one place, though, where the Standard lives on: my matchbook collection . On the front there’s a burnt orange, Rothko-style square lurking behind the words “JAZZ STANDARD.” On the back you’ll find a graphic of a trumpet, right above the club’s address and phone number. I couldn’t recall ever picking up this matchbook, but I imagine a handful might have been displayed by the entrance or on the low tables downstairs. Either way, here was proof that the club once existed. I couldn’t resurrect the Jazz Standard, which originally opened in 1997, but at least I had this modest memorial to its life. Since my early 20s, I’ve been amassing a collection of matchbooks from places I’ve gone, many of them now shuttered as casualties of the pandemic — a restaurant in my hometown of Portland, Ore., where I went for wood-fired pizza; the bar where I debriefed with friends and family after seeing movies; my old co-working space.

I became a matchbook collector, or phillumenist, when I first moved to New York City from Portland 11 years ago. I briefly lived at home after college and felt stuck; New York was an opportunity to begin a new life separate from my parents. I never intended to stay for more than a couple of years: The city was fun but also chaotic, tiring and unsustainable. It was with this mind-set that a former boyfriend and I spent our first year eating and drinking our way through Manhattan as a way to explore everything the city had to offer. I pocketed matchbooks from every establishment that had them, gathering analog keepsakes of my early adult life.

Eventually, I fell in love with New York and decided to stay — but discovered that the city is protean, sometimes painfully so. Frequently, I would return after a week away to find new scaffolding erected, a dress shop vacated or a diner emptied. It was difficult to stay grounded, as if I were being tossed around by the comings and goings of city life. This whiplash felt especially pronounced after I came home one evening to find a crowd drinking on my block. It turned out that the neighborhood dive bar I relied on, Milady’s, was abruptly shutting down and that regulars had come to say goodbye. As my relationship to the city changed, so did the way I thought about the matchbooks: They became a way to document what may one day disappear.

This has given birth to a reflexive habit. The first thing I do when I enter an establishment is scan the room for matchbooks. I’m always disappointed when I don’t see any. Without them, the particulars of place are no longer something I can hold onto, abandoned to our culture of screens and digital memory. With their slogans, doodles, aphorisms and inside jokes, matchbooks are objects of beauty that evoke an establishment’s singular character. Looking at one can trigger the din of a specific night out or a snippet of conversation, even the hours spent alone.

When I began freelancing as a journalist, in 2016, I missed the camaraderie of my old co-workers and the frenzy of the newsrooms where we worked. To combat my solitude, I often walked around the corner to a Mexican sandwich shop on East Fourth Street called Miscelánea for lunch. It had a to-go counter and a little outdoor seating. I always ordered a vegetarian torta and sat on a stool by the window, reading a magazine; sometimes I browsed the jarred goods. I rarely spoke with anyone, but the familiarity of the tiny restaurant made me feel less isolated. Its closure in 2019 punched a hole into my routine. Now I only have the consolation of Miscelánea’s matchbook: a simple white design with diagonal stripes and the word “FUEGO” on the front.

People once took care to create these tiny representations of what a place means in the patchwork of city life. Yet even matchbooks carry their own mortality. Once a place vanishes, so too does the production of its matchbooks. Because of this, I’ve been too scared to actually use mine. Instead, they’re on display on a bar cart in my apartment.

So far this year I’ve slipped a matchbook into my purse from the Francis Kite Club, a Manhattan bar that was formerly a queer-friendly club; while attending a Purim party at the Upper East Side speakeasy Keys & Heels; and before a dinner at Ernesto’s, where I took friends from out of town to eat and gossip. Later that night I added the restaurant’s oversize and somewhat bulky matchbook to my growing assortment. The name Ernesto’s appears on the rough red cardboard in bold type above a row of stick-figure fish. Years from now, I hope it will still bring to mind the restaurant’s light-filled interior or its location near a busy patch of the Lower East Side. But it will also bring to mind conversations with friends, and beautiful spaces that helped ease my loneliness. The city will keep changing — I can’t stop that — but I’ve built a personal archive of New York that will last.

Britta Lokting is a New York-based journalist whose work has appeared in The Guardian, The Washington Post Magazine and other publications.