Vanishing New York Backup

For the past dozen years, more than ever, New York City has been dying . It's getting murdered by rising rents, suburbanization, rampant development, and an unrestrained flood of chain businesses. Bloomberg actively encouraged this. Bill de Blasio promised to heal the tale of two cities, but nothing has yet been done to protect our small businesses from the filthy, bottomless greed of landlords. New York's small businesses have been dropping like flies. We are losing the city block by block. The stunning loss of Cafe Edison, after a major fight from community members and politicians, including the mayor, shows us that we are powerless without legislation to back us up . If we can lose Cafe Edison, we can lose everything. And we are losing everything. Shopping local only goes so far when landlords routinely double, triple, and quadruple commercial rents, or simply deny a lease to their long-term business tenants. We can buy all the books, booze, and bowls of matzo ball sou...

Hooters has arrived where Peep World once was. In 2012, good old Peep World shuttered right across from Penn Station. We soon learned it would be replaced by a Hooters . Now the big neon signs are up on 7th Avenue and 33rd, the green-shingled Peep World facade ( formerly a Burger King, and before that an Automat ) has been replaced with glass, and the Help Wanted signs are in the window, announcing "Everyone Looks Good in Orange." There is a large Hootie the Owl inside, its wide eyes a pair of not-so subliminal boobs gawking out at the street. And the place is enormous. It didn't just take up the entire 33rd Street Peep World space, it looks like it runs straight through the neighboring building, across a whole floor, with windows on the avenue. It is making its presence known. In 2012, I wrote about the shift from Peep World to Hooters . Previously: Peep World Closing Peep World to Hooters Peep World Remnants Paper Magazine

In today's Daily News, I've written an open letter to Taylor Swift , New York City's Global Welcome Ambassador: Dear Taylor, Since you were named New York City’s “Global Welcome Ambassador,” you’ve been widely mocked, including by this paper. Sure, haters gonna hate. They say you’re not qualified for the job because you’ve only been in New York for a few months, you live in the luxury bubble of a $20 million penthouse and you don’t eat dirty-water hot dogs. I disagree. For those reasons and more, you are absolutely qualified to welcome bright-eyed visitors to the new New York, a city that has been made over into a sterilized playground for suburbanites, tourists and oligarchs... Please read the whole thing here *Note: In the print edition, the News added a subhead saying I'm a native. I am not. Update: The New York Post's editorial board responded quickly to the Swift backlash. They quote me as a snarky "snob": "No sooner had Ta...

After much anticipation, after two years of temporary schlockfests in the old Colony Music space, including Halloween stores and Christmas shops, it looks like landlord Stonehenge Properties finally found someone to commit to the reported $5 million rent . Reader Ken Jacowitz did some snooping around and sent in the following shots. Is that a teddy bear peeking from behind Colony's door? photos by Ken Jacowitz Why, yes, it is. But not just any bear. Signs say it's the Build-a-Bear Workshop bear, native to Overland, Missouri, and conqueror of suburban shopping malls across the nation, with over 400 stores worldwide, including three already in New York City. Colony Music had been here for over 60 years , since 1948. They were forced out after Stonehenge bought the Brill Building and quintupled the legendary record and music store's rent . Add this one to the ever-growing list. Where once was a New York original, a one of a kind, there's now another piece of ...

From my most recent Op-Ed in the Daily News this weekend: Soon there will be no New York left in New York. The city is becoming, for the first time in its long and illustrious history of exceptionalism, just another Anywhere, U.S.A. What has de Blasio done to protect New York’s small businesses and control the virulent spread of national chains? Nothing much. Before he was elected, I asked him in an online Q&A what he planned to do. In his answer, he called small businesses “incredibly important to the character and strength of our neighborhoods” and said he wanted to follow the example of the Upper West Side’s “mom-and-pop” rezoning, designed to protect small shops from being forced out for chains. That’s actually a fairly weak rezoning, but it’s a start — one that de Blasio has yet to follow through on. It’s time for the mayor to step up and take action against the destruction of the city’s character. Read the rest here .

Journalist and author Tim Teeman just did an interview with me over at The Daily Beast. In "The End of New York," we talk about chain stores, cellphones, suburbanization, hyper-gentrification, and polar bears.   Read it here. P.S. You can buy Tim's book, In Bed with Gore Vidal , at Three Lives bookshop in Greenwich Village.

Recently we saw the former Bleecker St. Records turn into a Starbucks . This week, the former Norman's Sound and Vision record shop has become a Dunkin' Donuts. Monday was their grand opening . Located on Third Avenue between 7th and St. Mark's, Norman's closed in 2012 . The rent was too damn high. " The landlords pushed us out here ," said the owner in a video interview, referring to Williamsburg, where Norman's has since moved. According to the Center for an Urban Future's 2013 " State of the Chains " report, Dunkin Donuts is New York's most plentiful: "For the sixth consecutive year, Dunkin Donuts tops our list as the largest national retailer in New York City, with a total of 515 stores. Over the past year, Dunkin Donuts had a net increase of 39 stores in the city (an 8 percent gain)." Add one more to the growing pile.

The Starbucks that took the place of Bleecker Street Records has got its signage up, sans Mermaid, according to Richard Morgan who shared this shot: Luckily, the record shop successfully relocated to 188 West 4th Street , along with their big kitties, Skuzzball and Creeper. But still. They lost their last spot after 20 years when the landlord jacked up the rent to $27,000 a month. Village Voice At the time, on 1010 WINS , Chris Simunek (of High Times ) predicted, “what’s going to go in there is a Starbucks or something, or just something that we already have plenty of.” I thought it would be a frozen yogurt or candy shop, but Mr. Simunek wins the prize. This is the city's 9,000,000,000th Starbucks location. 

Someone has started a Twitter feed and a Tumblr page called "Now It's a Fucking FroYo Place." "Tracking New York's downfall," one froyo place at a time, the site puts together Google Streetview images of city locations before and after they were taken over by frozen yogurt shops. "It was a photo shop," reads one entry, "and now it’s a fucking fro-yo place!" "It was a local bar," reads another, "and now it’s a fucking fro-yo place!" "It was a bodega...and now it’s a fucking fro-yo place!" You get the gist. To quote from Manhattan , "It's pithy yet degenerate." The lost places aren't all winners, but that's not the point. The point is that the streets of the city are being taken over by monoculture--chain stores, banks, condos--and the froyo place has come to exemplify a certain strain of this banality, one that is multiplying like a virus. So here's to "Fucking FroYo...

VANISHING!(?) After setting off a panic when it opened in 2012, and " Effectively Stabbing Village in Heart ," it appears that the IHOP on Carmine Street has one foot in the grave. Still open for business, a FOR LEASE sign recently appeared on its front. Originally, IHOP signed a 49-year lease for this corner of Carmine and Varick, paying $300,000 per year. The real estate agent who brokered the deal told the Wall Street Journal that Carmine, "was a dumpy street. Now it's top-notch." IHOP is "a big brand, and it'll help me convince other big brands to follow. People don't even know where Carmine Street is--yet. We'll fix that." Not so fast. As a bonus, this news comes just after a self-professed "New Yorker from Elsewhere" waxed nostalgic in Downtown for this very IHOP, recalling a recent snowy night on Carmine when "tourists and locals alike gathered at clean, florescent-lit, flavored-syrup laden tables...

At the end of each year, I usually do a round-up of that year's vanished places. But this year is special. This year means the end to the evil Bloomberg era, so I offer this "Master List" of Vanished New York from 2001 to 2013 . It's been 12 merciless years of destruction and loss, from "significant" losses to countless "smaller" ones--neighborhood laundromats, shoe repair shops, drugstores--far more than I have compiled here. If you look only at this list and add up all the years in business represented, we lost approximately 6,926 years of New York City history in only a dozen years. And we know the real number is much higher than that. Clearly, we need strong protections for the city's small businesses. Many of the closures were due to the impact of gentrification, either through rising rents, demolition for luxury development, or a decrease in business due to their neighborhood's up-shifting of demographics and values. A few closed...

The 7-Eleven on St. Mark's Place has closed. EV Grieve was the first to report the thrilling news, noting that "Workers on the scene confirmed...that the store has closed." I had to go look for myself.  A peek inside the store reveals that the place is almost entirely emptied out. According to the Post 's report on the closure , even the young people shunned it! Immediately after opening, this 7-Eleven started threatening the future of Gem Spa across the street, a store that has been with us since at least the 1950s, and much beloved . Meanwhile, the front window of this 7-Eleven was smashed--twice. Then the activist group "No 7-Eleven" formed, primarily fighting the 7-Eleven that opened further east on Avenue A. They held rallies, ran bodega tours, started petitions, and more--all to fight the invasion of this chain and others like it. Years ago, Manhattanites defeated 7-Eleven. The chain tried to make it here, but no one shopped, so they fa...

As the 7-11 convenience store chain continues its massive push, pressing forward with its clearly stated goal to consume New York City's bodegas with its " Business Conversion Plan ," some East Villagers are taking action. 7-11 smashed on St. Mark's Our friend Liberation reports the scene last night: "There was a great turnout at the Father’s Heart Ministries to discuss the 7-11 coming to Avenue A and 11th Street. A really diverse crowd of 50 or so people showed up, all of them sick of the chain stores consuming the neighborhood and wanting to do their part to protect the local businesses with roots in the community . The meeting served as a jumping off point to brainstorm ideas and get more people involved. Because the group was diverse so are the skills they bring to table. In the next few weeks people can expect a new website for the project and action steps people in the community can take to push back against 7-11 and, in the long term, possibly o...

Last week, the faculty of NYU authorized a no-confidence vote , a move that could lead to President Sexton's termination. They write, "The NYU 2031 Sexton Plan, the administration’s ill advised multi-billion dollar plan to expand the university within Greenwich Village, was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back." And now, some key quotes from the must-read book While We Were Sleeping: NYU and the Destruction of New York . "It's not just NYU. There are days when I feel like I'm stranded in some upscale mall in Pasadena . Don't even get me started on the insidious transformation of Bleecker Street!" --Jessica Hagedorn " Those little garden plots on the corner of Bleecker and LaGuardia may not be on our way to anywhere. And yet we need them, we seek them out, to smell the wet earth, to remember the feel of soil drying on our hands, the smell of a fresh tomato, the wonder of a dogwood blooming. I'm sure NYU has computed t...

7-11 has landed on Delancey Street near Norfolk. Delancey 7-11, photo by Karen Gehres This comes after another 7-11 opened earlier this month on East 14th Street . Dayenu! Before that, another opened on St. Mark's Place . Dayenu! And before that, another opened on Bowery . Dayenu! And that's just the East Village/Lower East Side. 7-11 has made it clear that they've come to New York City to take over our local bodegas and corner grocery stores. They call it the Business Conversion Program. As New York magazine reported, the program's "stated goal is to entice mom-and-pop shops into becoming 7-Elevens." 8th and 25th, photo by Thomas Rinaldi On 8th Avenue at 25th Street this week, yet another 7-11 has plunked itself down--this one right next to a mom-and-pop corner grocery store, Kyung's Gourmet Foods. The spot used to be something needed--a laundromat. The sign in the window says: "Franchise This Store." It's a 7-11 without ...

This week, Capital New York published an article on " The golden era of the noble, ineffectual 'respect our neighbors' sign ." I'm glad the author, Sarah Laskow, is bringing attention to the situation, but I need to add my two cents, because urban etiquette signage happens to be a passion (or perhaps obsession) of mine--I've been collecting samples for awhile. coffee shop Laskow focuses on the signs outside of drinking establishments, mostly in the East Village, where they do proliferate. But the signs are not limited to bars. You'll find them outside of cafes, dessert shops, and restaurants that are not booze-centric. So we can't just blame drunkenness for people's bad behavior . She says the signs have "multiplied since New York banned smoking in bars," and traces the origin of the fight against noise and crowding to 2003 when the smoking ban began. The ban definitely increased the problem, but the story is more complex. nood...

Yesterday, the Times took a look at the new Fedora and the expanding "Little Wisco" of Greenwich Village, a "self-perpetuating machine" in the words of the new Fedora's owner. We've discussed this Wisconsinization of the Village before and how it has come to exemplify the current trend of newcomers longing to recreate their hometowns in New York City. Ever curious about this trend, I look to the Little Wisco phenomenon for answers. As we learned from The Feast , the new Fedora features a cocktail called the Black Squirrel Old Fashioned, an homage to the bartender's hometown of Reedsburg, Wisconsin, where the Black Squirrel Lounge is the "hip bar...where everybody goes and hangs out" at the America's Best Value Inn-Voyageur Inn and Conference Center. I searched out the America's Best Value-Voyageur Inn and Conference Center to see if I could understand more about this whole phenomenon. View from the parking lot "Fun and ...

Eater just interviewed the new owner of the beloved and shuttered Fedora, about his reaction to nostalgics' Fedora criticism and his vision for that slice of Greenwich Village. He said: "... We want to rebrand this like little pocket, the three blocks from West 4th street down where Fedora is all the way down to like Christopher and Sixth Avenue . I’d like to rename this little area 'Little Wisco,' because we’ve got the oldest and most prominent, Kettle of Fish (a true Wisco bar), we’re here, Jeffrey’s is here, Fedora will have Wisconsin people and a friend of mine that I went to college with is opening up a clothing shop on Christopher and Gay so it’s a lot of Wisconsin . You know they’ve got a Little Italy, I think we should make a Little Wisco in the West Village ." Joking or not, in this last statement, equating a Little Wisconsin with Little Italy, he inadvertently illuminates a powerful phenomenon at work in the city . For generations, the fabric of...

This Observer article deserves its own post, belonging as it does in the Suburbanization of New York annals. In it, you will read about the world of New York's suburbanized gated communities . It's an odd world, custom-made for The Joneses , personalities recently attracted to the city, harboring fantasies of total cleanliness, safety, convenience, and spaciousness. It's a world peopled by 20-something interns who can somehow afford to split rents of $3000+ a month, who come to New York from the Midwest, eschewing things like walkups because living in a gated, fully loaded environment "is just so much better in so many ways. It's like living in a hotel. Everything's always convenient, always safe, always clean. You don't have to worry about gross things. Like mice! And creepy things like that." If "Consume!" is New York's post-9/11 war cry , then "always convenient, always safe, always clean" could be the city's post...