Vanishing New York Backup

VANISHING For the past decade, ever since the Ace Hotel took over the Breslin SRO hotel on Broadway and 29th Street, I've been watching the Wholesale District vanish. It is not dying. It is being murdered, shop by shop, building by building, all to create the fake "neighborhood" known as NoMad. Hanging by a thread, it recently took a turn for the worse. A major center of wholesalers on Broadway has just been wiped out in one fell swoop. Along the west side of Broadway in the upper 20s, the sudden mass erasure of so many small businesses is staggering. 1165 Broadway Before (taken in 2016) 1165 Broadway Today, 2019 Between 27th and 28th Streets, 1165 Broadway housed several small wholesale businesses, selling perfume, jewelry, handbags, African-American hair products, clothing, and more. For years, I have walked by it every week, lingering to admire what I cannot fully participate in, but appreciate nonetheless. The small businesses attracted a diversity of...

For its opening weekend, Hudson Yards, aka Dubai on the Hudson, is crammed with people. They walk the glistening floors of the luxury shopping mall and climb The Vessel, aka The Giant Shawarma (h/t Eater ). They stand in line for free ice cream and ransack a refrigerator full of foul-tasting beverages that may or may not be free. They pose for Instagrammable photos with the mega-development's corporate logo and pay $28 to visit Snark Park, an "art theme park" where the creators have seized an opportunity to " literally control and curate everything ," which pretty much sums up everything about Hudson Yards. In my 2017 book Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost Its Soul , I predicted that Hudson Yards would be: "A dreamworld of exclusion...one of those places Mike Davis describes in Evil Paradises : 'where the rich can walk like gods in the nightmare gardens of their deepest and most secret desires.' It will be what Norwegian urbanist Jonny A...

Today I wrote an essay for The Atlantic on the folding of Amazon in New York City and the activists' celebration party last night in Queens. It begins, "A piñata hangs from a tree on Diversity Plaza in Jackson Heights, Queens. It is decorated with the face of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and by the end of Thursday night it will meet the fate of all piñatas." Read the rest here

Since Amazon announced its controversial plan to move into Long Island City, Queens, New Yorkers have organized in force against the corporate tech giant. On Black Friday, a group called Amazons Against Amazon rallied on the steps of the NYPL Main Branch and marched to the Amazon bookstore on 34th Street, singing anti-Amazon carols while the NYPD guarded the store. Songs including "DeBlasio the Neoliberal Mayor," sung to the tune of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and Countdown to Amazon HQ2, a.k.a. The 12 Days of Christmas. "Amazon got a buyout and gave to NYC: Skyrocketing rents, No more local bookstores, Tech bro invasions," among other undesirable gifts. More events and actions are being planned by multiple activist groups. Today, Amazons Against Amazon and the Queens Anti-Gentrification Project are calling for a Cyber Monday blackout of Amazon . Also today: Protect Queens: #NoAmazonNYC Nov. 26, 5:00 - 8:00pm Court Square, Long Island City, Q...

Yesterday, after Amazon, Cuomo, and de Blasio announced their widely despised plan to move HQ2 into Queens with massive tax-payer subsidies--and a private helipad gifted to Jeff Bezos (on our dime)--the Empire State Building jumped onboard, sparkling Amazon orange in celebration of the controversial behemoth's sucking up of $1,705,000,000+ in corporate welfare. New Yorkers on Twitter, unhappy with Amazon HQ2, were not pleased -- and swiftly ratioed the tweet with fiercely negative responses. They said "ugh" and "fuck you," "pathetic," and "this sucks and I hate it." They told the building to "read the room" and "Get wrecked by a giant gorilla." Keith Olbermann weighed in: And a couple of folks compared the shameful spectacle to the evil Eye of Sauron:

It's official. Amazon has announced they are opening a headquarters in Long Island City, Queens. Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York State has handed the mega-corporation a sweetheart of a deal--not yet including, as Cuomo suggested, renaming Newtown Creek the Amazon River. Until now, that deal was a protected secret. Here are the jaw-dropping details--from a PDF from the New York State Urban Development Corporation, d/b/a Empire State Development. (Thanks Robin Grearson for sharing on Twitter via Amazon's announcement ): If I'm reading this right, Amazon gets: - a 99-year lease on a whole shit-ton of square footage (more than I can calculate) - base rent of $850,000 per annum ($70,000 per month -- perspective: when Florent was kicked out of the Meatpacking District, its rent went to $50,000 a month. For a small space. Ten years ago.) - a package of incentives valued at up to $1,705,000,000 Those tax-payer funded incentives include: - A capital grant in the ...

Yesterday was the SBJSA hearing before the City Council at City Hall. Thank you to everyone who showed up for the rally and the hearing itself, and thank you to Speaker Corey Johnson and the City Council for giving this the time and space it deserves. At noon, a large crowd of about 100 SBJSA supporters gathered on the steps of City Hall for a rally and press conference. David Eisenbach, who is running for Public Advocate, led the rally at which several people spoke on behalf of the bill. At the same time, supporters of REBNY, the powerful real estate lobby that opposes the bill, streamed in. At the gates they received blue baseball caps printed with a white slogan making the claim that the SBJSA is commercial rent control. (It is not.) The optics on this had an unsettling effect. Later in the day, SBJSA supporter James Klein said during his testimony, "If New Yorkers have learned anything over the last two years, we have learned that when a mob shows up in colored hats, New...

As we near the October 22 public hearing for the Small Business Jobs Survival Act, I want to think critically about the use of the phrase "Shop Local." First, let me be clear, I am not critiquing the act of shopping locally, which is important and necessary. I am critiquing the use of the injunction "Shop Local" by city leaders, which I believe is sometimes weaponized against the real possibility of systemic change to help save small, local businesses in the city. It is, quite simply, a way to deflect blame from the system and onto the individual, stopping progressive change in its tracks. I was struck this summer by the appearance of this deflection at a town hall meeting with Mayor de Blasio and City Council Member Helen Rosenthal on the Upper West Side. When an audience member asked what can be done to stop New York's mom and pops from vanishing , the mayor said that, while he supports a vacancy tax to stop landlords from leaving storefronts empty, ...

The Cafe Edison could have been saved. CBGBs could have been saved. Lincoln Plaza Cinemas could have been saved. Your favorite restaurant, bar, and bookshop is next--if you don't do something right now. At long last, the Small Business Jobs Survival Act is getting a hearing . This is the moment we've all been waiting for. It's time to stop complaining and do something. photo by EJ Berry What you can do: 1. Write and/or call your local Councilmembers--your messages go into the record--and tell them to pass the SBJSA: - Fill out this easy-to-use form to email the City Council - Or find your individual Councilmembers here and contact them directly - Councilmember Mark Gjonaj is Chair of the Council's Small Business Committee-- write or call him , too. You can also contact the members of that committee: Diana Ayala , Stephen T. Levin , Bill Perkins , and Carlina Rivera . - Find them on Twitter and tweet your request: Pass the #SBJSA 2. Write and/or call t...

Sick of watching the small businesses in your neighborhood vanish? Here's your chance to do something about it. Come to the #SaveNYC Happy Hour: - Wednesday, October 3, from 7:00 - 9:00PM - Dream Baby Cocktail Bar, 162 - 164 Avenue B, NYC: Extended happy hour for #SaveNYC = $4 for beer and well drinks, $2 off everything else. - View Facebook invite here At long last, the Small Business Jobs Survival Act is getting a hearing . Come celebrate, meet and mingle, and strategize next steps for this important event and beyond. Jeremiah Moss and others will be speaking on the importance of this historic bill. David Eisenbach, the anti-REBNY candidate for Public Advocate, will talk about his work and what we can do to get ready for the public hearing later in October. Speaker Corey Johson Pledging Support for Small Businesses (WNYC Brian Lehrer) from Wheelhouse Communications on Vimeo .

About a decade ago, I had a dream that the southeast corner of 14th Street and 8th Avenue was being torn down to make room for WalMart. That didn't happen. At the time, I checked with one of the business owners (there was a popular Korean deli, a bodega, and a liquor store). He told me that the owner of the buildings had turned down offers of up to $45 million for the whole lot. But then, last year, it all went . We learned that a 10-story office tower is coming, designed by architect Gene Kaufman and developed by the Chun Woo Realty Corporation. Chun Woo Realty Corp, DNA reported last year, "has owned the two properties for around three decades...noting that redevelopment was something they’d 'been contemplating for over a decade.'" “We’re not developers who moved in and are pushing small businesses out. We’re actually the longtime permanent owners of the building, and it was actually our business,” the developer said of the deli. He didn't menti...