BLOOMFIELD, NJ — The ice cream parlor where Tony Soprano may or may not have been beaten has sold for more than $82,000.
As Tony would say: Madone!
An anonymous buyer bid $82,600 at an online auction Monday night for the memorabilia piece that plays a huge part in the lore of the award-winning HBO series — especially since it was where the New Jersey mob boss was sitting when the series ended with the cut to black, which outraged many viewers and claimed a place in TV history.
Ron Stark, co-owner of Holsten’s, the ice cream shop, candy store and restaurant in northern New Jersey where the scene was filmed, won’t say a word about who bought it or whether it was a man or a woman. (That whole silence thing.)
Anyway, the story starts with a few broken legs, at least on the tables of the restaurant that opened in 1939. Suffice to say, things were on a downward trend.
“Our dining room was in bad shape,” Stark said. “It got to the point where we didn’t think it was safe anymore because the legs were breaking, and we didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”
Stark and his co-owner Chris Carley decided to auction the stand and use the proceeds to pay for a renovation of the dining room.
Interest in the stand has remained high among fans of the show since the final scene aired in 2007. Tony Soprano, played by the late actor James Gandolfini, orders a plate of onion rings and puts a coin in the jukebox to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” as his wife Carmella and son AJ join him in the booth, while daughter Meadow struggles with parallel parking outside.
A man walks past the table and enters the men’s room (which in the restaurant is actually the women’s room, but they switched the signs so it would be visible in the shot.) A bell rings to indicate someone is entering. the restaurant – and the screen goes black, in the infamous ending that left countless viewers fiddling with their TV sets thinking something had gone wrong.
It was “Sopranos” creator David Chase’s masterstroke, Stark said — although Stark had no idea during filming that the scene would end the series.
“You’re just stunned and you say, ‘Okay, they ended it, but how did it really end?’” Stark said. “David Chase is a genius at setting up that ending. Let’s say hypothetically that Tony was beaten; it was all over. It wouldn’t have had the recognition that it had. People still talk about it. No one is 100% sure what really happened.”
During filming, Gandolfini looked hungrily at the onion rings on the table in front of him, but he was not allowed to eat them until several takes had been made.
“They’d say, ‘Cut!’ and he wandered behind the grill, and he said, ‘Do you have anything to eat? I’m hungry!’” Stark recalled. He cooked Gandolfini, a hot dog with cheese and fried onions.
The actual booth where the scene was filmed was dislodged on Monday and replaced with a recreation room the same day. On Tuesday, so many media outlets wanted to photograph Stark in the booth that customers had to sit elsewhere during the lunch rush. He does not want to say when the buyer will pick up the car.
As news of the sale spread, patrons were once again joined by “Sopranos” fans, including a man wearing the same shirt as Tony in the final scene, smoking a cigar as he walked in and out of the tent.
People are still coming in and lining up for the men’s room, looking for the gun that may or may not have killed Tony.
“People actually go into the bathroom and take pictures of themselves in the bathroom,” Stark said. “They are coming for answers, they want to know what happened.”
Shari Magill of nearby Nutley, a regular, stopped by for some food on Tuesday.
“Everyone comes here for the score,” she said. “I hope more people come.”
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