A pop-up convenience store that opened this weekend at The Standard, High Line is selling all your favorite snack foods in inedible, but collectible form.
Browse the aisles of 8 ‘Till Late in the “garden room” at the Meatpacking District boutique hotel, and you’ll find Doritos, Pop-Tarts and Sour Patch Kids stitched from felt cloth.
The one-of-a-kind bodega is an installation by British artist Lucy Sparrow, 30, who raised more than $53,000 in funding for her crafty project on Kickstarter. Customers are invited to take photographs and purchase the plush items they covet most with real money, but Sparrow asks that they complete an order form and leave the packing and checkout to store employees. The expert sewer herself is minding the store, sporting a smock and Converse sneakers with the 8 ‘Till Late logo.
Sparrow’s shop — its name a play on the 7-Eleven franchise — is the American re-interpretation of an exhibition she mounted in London three years ago, a corner shop stocked with typical British grocery items constructed out of her favorite woolly textile.
It took the artist nine months and a team of 10 helpers, including her mother, to fabricate the entire inventory for her latest work. Sparrow transported her nine-ton opus across the Atlantic in 21 crates on four planes, she said. Items range in price from $15 to tens of thousands of dollars — but the felt bodega cat minding the deli counter, named Krampuss, is not for sale.
“I hope [the show] brings a difference accessibility to art,” said Sparrow, a vegetarian who confessed she loves junk food for not only the late-night sustenance it provides, but its colorful packaging. “You don’t need to pay to get in and you can buy a piece of art of $15.”
The most popular merchandise thus far: the $65 bottles of Moet champagne, the $40 cans of Dr. Brown’s Cel Ray soda, and the $25 vegetables.
Here’s what else you can buy at 8 ‘Till Late, open from 10 a.m. to 8 pm. every day through June 30: