For 44 years, Capitol Fishing Tackle lived next to the notorious Chelsea Hotel....

'Field and Stream' called Capitol "the weirdest tackle shop in America", with some justification. Only some of its clients, you see, were fishers. So the staff might sell a length of rope to a 6ft leather-clad woman more interested in tying her customers than a half-blood knot, or a tattooed weirdo who thought barbed gold hooks would look really neat stuck through his nose.