'Snarlboros' and 'The Pangea Post': Inside the MTA-sanctioned dinosaur bodega

If you’ve passed through the Grand Army Plaza subway station lately, you may have noticed a new bodega tucked into a former subway newsstand. But they don’t take cash, they take MasterClaw, and instead of your trusty Mega Millions ticket and a pack of Marlboros, they have a Meteor Millions ticket and some Snarlboros.  

Welcome to Rex’s NYC, a dino-store staffed by the stuffed Rex, a toilet-paper-mâché dinosaur positioned behind bodega glass, and the imaginary bodega’s prehistoric proprietor. Rex’s NYC is the work of collaborators Akiva Leffert and Sarah Cassidy, two self-described creatives responsible for the art installation that stocks a formerly disused space with everything a Triassic commuter might need: packs of 3 Tusketeers and Buttertalon, sticks and rocks to go, and a bulletin board listing cave sublets. 

The store is one of several installations launched through the MTA’s Vacant Unit Activation Program, a city-wide initiative aimed at creating engaging public art from the currently defunct 30 + retail spaces found in the subway. 

"It’s a bodega for dinosaurs. It sells what any local dinosaur might need."

When the subway opened in 1904, the founders declared that it constituted “a great public work” and that all parts of it “exposed to public sight shall therefore be designed, constructed, and maintained with a view to the beauty of their appearance.” The MTA Arts & Design Program was founded to continue this vision, but while they have an advisory position for this program, the Vacant Unit Activation Program, launched in 2023, is actually run by the MTA Real Estate initiative. 

Calls for submissions are the only time I’ve seen the word “whimsical” used in an official press release, as the MTA specifically states that the program is “intended to encourage visually appealing and engaging uses to make stations more welcoming and whimsical spaces for riders.”

The program is open to the public and actively encourages submissions. As Leffert told The Groove: "Pitch it, pitch it, pitch it! We had originally pitched a womb installation and they were cool with it."

The process is quite literally that: pitch it. If you are a nonprofit, community, or arts organization and would be interested in operating a unit, reach out to mtare@mtahq.org.

This week I spoke with Leffert (and Rex) about dino products, subway grime, the collaborative spirit behind this project and how you too, can open a weird little dream space underground.

So, what’s a dinosaur bodega? Where’d you come up with it?

Well, it’s a bodega for dinosaurs. It sells what any local dinosaur might need. Sarah and I were just riffing on this idea of old newsstands … and we sort of got to old newsstands, really old newsstands, really really old newsstands … a bodega for dinosaurs. It just went from there. I led the product production and Sarah led the dinosaur production, which is Rex, the toilet-paper-mâché dinosaur that owns the bodega.

What is your background, were you trained in extinct retail?

We are amateurs, we just happen to be artsy people. Sarah is a painter. She used to do standup. I do a lot of, I would say random, things. I made a deck of tarot cards, I set up a joke computer science conference, I ran for president. 

I actually have done a piece of art on the subway before, at Jay Street MetroTech: a table with a rat listening tour. We did a survey about how rats could be neighbors, I had a guy in a rat mask ratting it up. The cops shut us down after about an hour. 

How did you come up with the products that would be sold in the dino-store?

When we started out we had a rough idea and then we looked at some bodegas and we thought, what are the categories of stuff in a bodega? And then we had a party where we just sat down and made jokes about all this stuff. 

And that was still pretty high level so we had to expand it. For example, The Maul Street Journal, but there's a lot of detail that goes into that. Or Dinopolitan Magazine, but we had to write all the jokes in the magazine. Our friends pitched in a lot! Someone we know who works at The Wall Street Journal helped with the first draft, and one of my friends made that incredible lucky cat dino. 

 So we had, like, zero idea how to do any of this but these are solvable problems, and we've got some friends in our community. For example, Sarah has a friend who is really good at making things and we got together one night and he said “Hey, here's how you make shapes” because we did have a first idea and that one didn't really come together. So he mocked up the head using construction paper, drew it on a poster board, and then it came together.

We made every single product in there. For example, the packaging: the thing is - you can’t get someone on the internet to send you a packaging box. What they really want to do is send you a hundred boxes. And I don't need a hundred boxes. I need five boxes! 

So, I found some box templates online and fit all the products to match the templates, and then literally laser cut all the shapes out of paper. And then we had an assembly party where everyone dusted out the glue guns. And we just like hot glued the shit out of everything.

Can you tell me more about the Vacant Unit Activation Program? 

 There are these old newsstands, some of them have been closed for years and were in real shit shape. And they were just non-commercially viable. And a higher-up was like, what if we open this up to artists and community programming? 

The idea of  them not being used anymore … extremely tracks.We found some Pringles that expired in 2012 so we think this has been closed since around 2010? 

When we got the key in December, it was disgusting. Not like in a trash disgusting kind of way, but everything had just a layer of soot on it. We have these clear shelves that when we first got them, were gray. And there were weird splashes. Oh, and  when we toured it, there was like a hole in the floor. They of course fixed that. We also had some friends help us clean. 

But then a week later or so, we came back and there was like a new layer of grime, and we were like, oh, this is doomed, and, should I ever breathe in the subway again? And we realized that there was a vent in the door and it was coming up from the grate, so we sealed it. 

We hired a contractor to do the protective glass in the front, which was its own whole saga. The contractor had to get approved by the MTA and that took a month because there's a lot of approvals. We've got our contacts at the MTA, but they have to get approval from different departments, so it's a whole journey. We worked on it for over a year, but there were parts of the process that were mostly just waiting for something to happen. Which gave us time to come up with more products! 

What’s been the reaction?

My favorite part is people doing double takes and then triple takes as they look at it more and more closely. There's a lot of detail that we put in and I enjoy when people just keep catching more and more of it.

People really love some of the very New York stuff, like the Steg Yun poster or Cellino & Barney. I think they should be reading the newspapers more. There's a lot of really good details in there that people mostly just like eyes glaze over, but we wrote real stuff. Like  I think the the BDS at the Jurassic Park Slope Food Co-op article is really good. Everything on that is real. I wrote those. Everyone’s like, "did you use AI?" And I’m like, no, Chat GPT is not funny enough yet. 

(As we discussed this, a teenager passed by and commented: “Huh, the one thing that’s in there that’s just normal is the Mets hat.” He was right, next to Sabie, the saber-toothed bodega cat, the Mets cap stood out as the only non-dino-themed object in the whole dino-store. If you ignore how big it is, all the better to fit Rex's skull).

Akiva confirmed that Rex is a Mets fan and they have big plans for the future. 

“Rex loves the Mets. We all love the Mets. We wanna get Mr. Met, we’re trying to make that happen!”

Any other future plans?

We’re open to anything. We’re down to do a charity auction and maybe sell some of the products, or maybe sell some merch, posters, T-shirts of some of the New York jokes, like the Steg Yun poster. A friend suggested carbon dating, a speed dating event. Also Dino Day is June 1! We’re not sure how we’re celebrating yet but we’d love to do something.

Any advice for people regarding the program?

Rex would love to hear from you about any sort of product suggestions, dating advice,  whatever you would need. Rex wants to hear about it and he wants to help!”

You can contact Rex by emailing him at rex@rexs.nyc, or sliding into his DMs on Instagram, @rexs_nyc. 

Rex’s NYC is on view 24/7 at the Grand Army Plaza subway station until December 2025. Some people make it a prehistoric pit stop, but you could easily spend an hour window shopping.

More information about the MTA’s Vacant Unit Activation Program and list of current exhibitions can be found at the MTA website. To submit a proposal or ask questions email mtare@mtahq.org. In a city where room can feel like it’s going extinct, it’s is a rare opportunity to claim a bit of city space.