Vanishing 1990s New York

Neil's Coffee Shop, as featured in the film Can You Ever Forgive Me is still an operating restaurant

"a quality hold-out from the old city.
"On Lexington and 70th, Neil's has been here for half a century--and it's got the signage to prove it, from the brilliant pink neon sign to the all-caps COFFEE SHOP on the front, to the cursive Neil's suspended on a white cloud around the side.

But it is one of the few from the 1990s still around. Variety reported

... director Marielle Heller and her production team had to re-create New York City in the 1990s on a shoestring budget. A few destinations, such as the Greenwhich Village gay bar Julius or the cavernous Upper West Side food emporium Zabar’s, are vestiges of that period. But in more cases than not, the crew had to avoid CitiBike racks and unearth the few remaining phone booths. It was a race against time.

“We were trying to shoot in bookstores, but they kept shutting down,” says Heller on a recent September afternoon, after debuting her film at the Toronto Film Festival. “We found this great store during pre-production, but it closed before we could shoot in it.”

But some of the sites used, such as the gay bar, Julius',  have been granted Heritage status. Heller told The New Yorker

 “I always feel like I missed this perfect moment in New York, this interesting, grittier, more artist-driven time,” 

“This movie is sort of as that was ending and New York was shifting and artists were getting pushed out. In so many ways I related to what that must have been like for somebody like Lee, to feel their city changing. And to feel like there was no place for her anymore