Following the huge success of Sleepless in Seattle, Nora Ephron reteams with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks in an email update of Ernst Lubitsch’s 1940 romance The Corner Store, moved to the cushy Upper East Side from New York.
independent bookstore owner kathleen kelly (ryan), as ‘shopgirl’, exchanges sweet messages with sweet ‘ny152’, blissfully unaware that behind the name lies joe fox (hanks), heir to the chain of megastores that threatens to put her out of business.
Aside from one major trick, the film plays nice with its Westside setting. ‘the corner store’, where kathleen sells children’s books, was a small cafe. but, don’t you think so, she closed it and the place is now mode organic cleaners, 106 west 69th street, on columbus avenue.
It could be assumed that Kathleen lives locally, but her apartment is 20 blocks north, at 328 West 89th Street, between West End Avenue and Riverside Drive.
ignore the address “152 riverside drive”; that’s just to justify joe’s online name: “ny152” he lives just four blocks north of her. Her house is the side entrance, on West 93rd Street, at 210 Riverside Drive.
The really big gimmick is the “Fox & Children’s Book Megastore. Supposedly in the neighborhood and thus a major competitor to Kathleen’s modest establishment, the store is on West 17th Street at 7th Avenue in Chelsea. .
Both Kathleen and Joe frequent the same Starbucks location, 2252 Broadway at West 81st Street. this seems like an odd choice or someone so concerned about the big chains that they drive out local businesses.
joe tells kathleen the story about delivering flour in bulk to the bakery, where a ton of flour is dumped into underground tanks every night. it was h&h bagels, which was located at 2239 broadway at 80th street, until they closed in early 2012.
When Joe’s relationship with Patricia (Parker Posey) begins to unravel, he moves to live on the water at the 79th Street Boat Dock, 79th Street on the Hudson River; by the way, the only place in new york where he can moor his boat all year long.
Among other businesses sponsored by both Kathleen and Joe is the legendary West Side Deli Zabar’s, 2245 Broadway at West 80th Street, where Joe manages to embarrass Kathleen by helping her when she finds herself in the cash-only line. Zabar has been around for a long time, appearing in Woody Allen’s 1979 Manhattan.
When it comes to meeting her mysterious correspondent, Kathleen makes a visually inspired decision. The European-style restaurant adorned with fairy lights is Cafe Lalo, 201 West 83rd Street, on Amsterdam Avenue. Famous for its wide variety of indulgent desserts, the only fly in the ointment is an appearance by Joe Fox.
another longtime west side favorite is ‘the sturgeon king’, barney greengrass, 541 amsterdam avenue, west 86th street, where kathleen remains upbeat, assuring her birdie friend (jean stapleton) that the area could become the new ‘book district’. greengrass has been serving smoked fish and its famous jewish food since 1908, and has been at this address since 1929. more recently, the restaurant became the home base from which young oskar schell undertakes his expeditions into the extremely noisy and incredibly loud close.
and now a sad loss. The terrace cafe where Kathleen inadvertently speculates with Joe about her online friend was the luxury ocean liner-style Ocean Grill, which for 18 years occupied 382 Columbus Avenue at West 78th Street, until it closed in 2015.
As things begin to thaw between them, Kathleen and Joe run into Grey’s Papaya, 2090 Broadway at 72nd Street. Grey’s is famous for its hot dogs: the ‘papaya’ is a fruit drink accompaniment. You can see Gray in the background as Bruce Willis and Samuel L Jackson solve the “how was she going to survive…” riddle in Die Hard with a Vengeance.
It’s not a spoiler to reveal that, yes, kathleen and joe do get together at the end, with a kiss and makeup in the garden on 91st street in riverside park.