Chances are this is not the ‘hardware’ the gruff, chauvinistic protagonist of the 1977 film Saturday Night fever, Tony Manero, would have come to expect of the Bay Ridge paint store he slaved away in by day, for cash advances to go clubbing at night.

Nevertheless, there’s an interesting, if not ironic set of bookends to 5th avenue’s Pearson’s Hardware store (formerly Manero’s paint store of employ) in a neighborhood long considered a conservative Republican outpost of Brooklyn.

On the left hand side is an ad for what appears to be a gay male telephone dating service, on the other, old glory; sandwiching one of the only remaining vestiges of the Bay Ridge Tony Manero tore rubber through in Bobby C’s car – in a film that some would argue set the stage for an entirely new ‘lost generation’ of Bay Ridgites.

Saturday Night Fever was born out of a short story for New York Magazine by British writer Nik Cohn, who, having been unable to understand the 70′s disco subculture – later admited to fabricating its characters and events almost entirely.