But where Andy Warhol, Susan Sontag and Greta Garbo once wandered through the flea markets along a four-block stretch of Avenue of the Americas stuffed with more than 700 hustler's booths, there is now only the Antiques Garage, home to 100 booths on a busy weekend.
The actors portray would-be contestants at the start of what the show likes to call their journey: singing in the subway or the shower, behind the wheel of a pickup truck or in a garage band, in a booth in a parking lot or on the beach.
Designed in what is apparently called a "skeumorphic iOS" style (think Garage Band and Photo Booth), the inkjet-printed canvases feature a series of notable quotes from presentations by a usual-suspects roster of tech luminaries like Sheryl Sandberg, rendered in a font not dissimilar from Journeys' logo.
At Pesquera Drive, there was a tiny open garage with some voting booths.
Tyroler is set up like most small yards, with a truck scale outside for the big loads and an oversize light-blue garage that contains a payout booth and a smaller scale for the kind of stuff brought in by cart-toting small-timers.
An 8-foot (2.43m) wide paint booth is suitable for a two-car garage or a large patio.
Booth often features cartoons about incompetent car mechanics and dog-infested car garages.
Those two sites, the West 25th Street Market and the Hell's Kitchen Flea Market, will offer space to the Garage vendors when they are displaced, though many may need to downsize to smaller booths.
Or that they convinced an entire roster of UK garage heroes – including Craig David – to join them for the 1Xtra's station's Fire In The Booth segment, where MCs get to show off their skills.
Around 8 a.m., Mr. Deering, the auto mechanic, stepped out of the garage at the Royal Oldsmobile dealership to see two officers squinting through a pair of binoculars at a phone booth across the street.
