Someone Just Bought the Restaurant Booth From ‘The Sopranos’ Very Last Scene for $82,000
Nobody’s quite sure what happens at the very end of The Sopranos. But we now know what’s happened to the booth that Tony & Co. sat at before the TV screen faded to black.
The restaurant where the final scene of the hit HBO show was filmed recently offered the booth on eBay, where it sold for $82,600 to an anonymous buyer, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday. With an opening bid of $3,000, the price quickly skyrocketed to $30,000 a mere six hours later. By the time of the final sale, the booth had generated an impressive 238 bids.
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“If I didn’t have to do it, I wouldn’t be doing it,” Christopher Carley, a co-owner of Holsten’s, the New Jersey restaurant, told the Post about selling the booth. “They’re just looking really shabby,” he added, “and that’s not what we want to portray.”
Carley was approached back in the early 2000s by an HBO scout who had wanted to visit Holsten’s as a potential filming location. As a fan of The Sopranos since it began airing in 1999, Carley was excited, but he didn’t hear back until late 2006, when the producers decided that the restaurant was the perfect place for the show’s final scene. Over the course of a few days in March 2007, Holsten’s shut down so they could film, with Carley appearing in the scene at the grill, flipping hamburgers.
In the years following the show’s end, fans have flocked to Holsten’s, with the booth something of a tourist attraction. Carley even added a plaque to the dividing wall that states “This booth reserved for the Soprano family.” On busy days, customers might wait for an hour to sit where Tony once sat, and eat the onion rings that he called the “best in the state.”
Carley had only been hoping to make some $50,000 from the booth, which achieved more than that in just a day. He’s using the money for the renovations at the restaurant, with all the booths being replaced for more updated models. While that may be good for the look of Holsten’s, some think that it’s changed the vibe.
“It’s kind of taking that aura out of the restaurant,” Danny LaVarco, a local who embodied Tony Soprano when sitting at the booth, told The Washington Post. He added that he might even stop eating there altogether.
While the booth may be gone, though, Sopranos lovers still have the chance to dine at the restaurant where Tony—maybe, depending on who you ask—took his last breath.
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