Earlier this week, I sat with John Dempsey and Maren Powell at a corner table inside A Side — a room with many past lives. Before it was A Side Pizza and Pasta Bar, it was Hell’s Kitchen. Before that, it was one of the homes of VYNL. If you’ve spent time eating or having a drink anywhere between W47th and W54th Streets around 9th Avenue over the past three decades, chances are John and Maren had something to do with it.
It all started with VYNL in 1994 at the corner of 9th Avenue and W54th Street. Photo supplied.
As the pair settled in, they looked around with the kind of affectionate awareness that only comes from 32 years of renovating, repainting, reinventing and restarting. They smiled often, laughed easily and slipped between stories of struggle and success, gossip and gratitude, celebrity glamour and kitchen chaos. It felt like watching two people leaf through a scrapbook whose pages they had written, designed and lived in real time.
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Publisher & Editor Phil O’Brien is an entrepreneur and journalist. As an international photojournalist, he photographed Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Princess Diana and many others. He built a successful international sports photography agency, EMPICS, that was Getty Images’ major competitor in Europe when it sold. He founded a children’s charity in the UK that has helped young people through sport for over 15 years. Phil has lived in New York since 2012. He founded W42ST in 2014.