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.