SOME 20 YEARS ago, when I was in college, I interviewed the actress Catherine Hicks, who was appearing with Jack Lemmon in the play Tribute at the Colonial Theatre. Our meeting took place at the Avery Hotel, where Hicks was staying for the length of the show’s Boston run. It wasn’t the most posh hotel in the city; in fact, the Avery had the saggy, tattered quality of a locale in a Raymond Chandler novel. But on a working actor’s salary, it made sense for Hicks to stay there. Hicks told me that Jack Lemmon, the star of the show, was staying at the Ritz.

The Avery Hotel, on Avery Street, is just a memory today. The entire block where the little hotel once stood is now dominated by the opulent Ritz-Carlton Hotel and Towers — 190 hotel rooms and 309 luxury condominiums — and the 19-screen Loews Boston Common megamultiplex, all of which opened this year to great fanfare. Avery Street, in fact, looks nothing like it did just a few years ago, never mind 20 years ago, and I’m not sure where a young, working actor appearing in a nearby show could now afford to stay. The tiny side street that runs between Tremont and Washington is now walled in by towering glass and steel, an effect broken only by a few parking lots.

Of course, none of this is surprising. It’s downtown development, after all. Still, over on the next block, Boylston Street between Tremont and Washington is reminiscent of the Avery Street of old. A liquor store, a Chinese restaurant, and a dry cleaners share the space with several parking lots, the Actors Workshop, Jack’s Joke Shop, and the ornate Boston Edison building. The block is dilapidated and somewhat seedy, with more than a few unsavory characters hanging out in its doorways. But when you stand in front of Jack’s Joke Shop and look toward the Registry of Motor Vehicles and the entrance to the Orange Line’s Chinatown T stop, you know you are unmistakably in the eclectic, gritty heart of Boston. Stand in the middle of newly paved Avery Street in front of the Ritz and you’d be hard-pressed to distinguish the landscape from any other metropolis in the world.

THE UNVEILING of the new Ritz-Loews complex this year has been good for the city, adding much-needed hotel space and bringing in tourists and corporate investors. (The Loews chain and the Ritz-Carlton Hotel teamed with Millennium Partners of New York to create the multi-use high rise, which includes the multiplex, a 150-seat restaurant and lounge called the Back Lot, and an upscale health club on the top floor.) The boom in luxury-condo construction in the downtown area will inject big bucks and upscale quality to the local economy and the downtown theater district. But at what price?

For starters, at the price of Jack’s Joke Shop and the Actors Workshop, which are being squeezed out of their respective digs at 38 and 40 Boylston Street. The landlord, Harold Brown, who has massive holdings all over the city, plans to tear down this two-story, run-down building and erect a seven-story condominium complex with retail space on the ground floor. Brown has notified both Jack’s and the Actors Workshop that they must find new homes by June 30, 2002.

Jack’s, a local institution since 1922, is the oldest continuously run joke shop in the country. Next door, the Actors Workshop has been in its current spot at 40 Boylston Street since 1956. Both enterprises are owned by crusty Bostonians who’ve seen their share of changes in the city, and who saw the handwriting on the wall when the Ritz-Loews complex went up.

Harold " Hecky " Bengin, the 71-year-old owner of Jack’s Joke Shop, wasn’t about to wait for his eviction notice. When he found out that the building was slated for demolition and redevelopment, he considered retirement. But Jack’s Joke Shop bounced around a lot in its day, and it always managed to survive. Bengin’s father-in-law, Jack Goldberg, ran the store when it was in Scollay Square, the notorious honky-tonk section of Boston that was obliterated to make space for the brick sprawl known as Government Center. Jack’s then moved to Park Square from 1961 to 1985, and after a shorter-lived run downtown, the business relocated to its current spot in 1995. Just when Bengin was about to call it quits, a long-time customer called to offer him rental space at 226 Tremont Street, next to the Tam Bar and across from the Emerson Majestic Theatre. He expects to move his shop in early January 2002.

" It’s the times, " Bengin says with a shrug. " I have a lease with a demolition clause. But Jack’s Joke Shop lives another day. This is my last move, though. "

The old-timers and purists aren’t the only ones who cringe at the thought of making room downtown for the Ritz and the Gap while squeezing out Jack’s Joke Shop and its ilk. Where would pranksters buy squirting flowers and garter belts for their office parties? Where would last-minute shoppers buy their Halloween costumes? Where else could you chat with a guy like Hecky Bengin, raised in Dorchester and Randolph, who remembers Scollay Square in its heyday?

On this rainy weekday afternoon, a steady stream of customers are coming into the store, which features wigs lined up along the wall on one side, and on the other, a glass counter displaying every type of obnoxious gag known to man: fake vomit and fake excrement, lewd key rings, card tricks, a rubber mask of President Bush that’s a dead ringer, whoopee cushions, and plastic spiders that pop out of canisters.

" May I help you, sir? " Hecky Bengin says to a middle-aged man who’s wandering around aimlessly, gazing at the stock piled to the ceiling.

" I don’t know, " the man replies.

" Well, then, I can’t help you! " Bengin cracks up, and the man cracks a wary smile. " See? " says Bengin. " How many places can people come in and be insulted and laugh? You don’t get that at Bloomingdale’s. "

Loren King can be reached at Lking86958@aol.com

PHOTOS BY MIKE MERGEN