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The War for New York City Is Lost, Declares General
This weekend brought the final post on the blog Lost City. It has, for the last five years, documented what is disappearing in New York. If you have not been a regular reader, the blog will remain, and you may go back through it and remember things and places in New York that you may have forgotten. The final post is worth reading. Its proprietor writes: "I began the blog because I was incensed and alarmed at what the city was becoming. It was losing its grit, its fabric, its very character. It was losing its New York-ness, and gaining nothing but Subway franchises and luxury condos…."
And goes on:
The City continued on its inexorable march to glossy mediocrity. Bloomberg, the billionaire, city planner Amanda Burden, the millionaire, and their cabal of equally wealthy real estate and Wall Street pals forged ahead and got the metropolis they wanted all along: homogenous, anodyne, whitewashed, suburban, toothless, chain-store-ridden, ordinary, exclusive and terribly, terribly expensive. A town for tourists and the upper 2%. He took a world-class capital of culture, individuality and independent endeavor and turned it into the smoothest, first-class, gated community Houston ever saw. Walk down Broadway on the Upper West Side, Sixth Avenue in Chelsea, Third Avenue in Yorkville-or look at the gaping hole of Atlantic Yards-and you will see the administration's legacy.
(via)
I can't begin to describe how tedious I find this. Sixty percent of people who live in Queens were BORN IN ANOTHER COUNTRY (among a zillion other notable stats). Yes, there's plenty of shit out there that I'm not happy about, but this view of New York is ridiculous.
Did I mention that it's Monday?
seriously. He needs to get out in the boroughs every now and again. No shit the city center is ritzier than ever, buts its not like hip-hop was invented in Soho, either.
@mushroom: Actually, the blog is pretty evenly split between posts about manhattan and the outer boroughs. He lives in downtown Brooklyn.
And yet: What's exciting about ANY POST LIKE THIS is I get to jump up and down and say, "Jersey City! Jersey City! Jersey City!"
That's where I live (son)!
"The name's Plissken."
I thought you'd be taller.
Bloomberg knew exactly what he was doing.
Dave Bowman stares through the visor on his space suit, the reflected lights of the New York skyline rippling and distorting across its surface.
"My God," he breathes. "It's full of Subways."
we are all made of $5 footlongs.
McTuckyFriedSubBucksWayKings.
I miss the other kinds of $5 footlongs you used to be able to pick up in the old Times Square.
Everyone knows New York=Manhattan. Obviously.
I, on my part, find this line of argument completely tedious because it seems to assume that New York was one, fixed thing for forever, and now suddenly has gone to crap. Sorry, kids, New York is constantly changing.
Apparently not even that. New York = a small chunk of Manhattan, roughly midtown west down to Battery Park.
People who snivel about how much the city has changed for the worse need to leave the neighborhoods that are all about running after tourist and "I'm going to live here for three years then get married and move to Westchester" dollars.
Yes, New York doesn't equal Manhattan. New York equals wherever you live, right?
The comments here are puzzling. "This guy needs to GET OUT of the oldest and arguably most historically significant borough in New York, where most people go to work and eat and drink and shop and look at art, and see how the outer reaches of QUEENS and THE BRONX have yet to gentrify.
"We, the commenters of the Awl, would now like to stick up for Queens."
In the meantime, every other business opening up in Manhattan is a Bank of America, Subway, or Dunkin' Donuts. But this shouldn't bother residents of Manhattan because, like, GET OUT OF MANHATTAN. BROOKLYN'S STILL REAL. (In twenty years: "Guys, stop whining about Brooklyn–Brooklyn's not New York. Come to my gallery opening in Staten Island.")
The writer has a problem with homogenization and rampant commercialization. I grew up in Dallas, and have lived in New York (Manhattan even–Harlem!) for eight years. My current home looks more and more like my former home. I don't consider this a good thing–and my resentment ain't bullshit.
I, too, dislike the loss of small shops and mom and pop-style establishments, but they are fading away worldwide, not just in New York. What we are experiencing is the Paris effect–where the central city is turned into a luxury backdrop for international commerce and tourism while the "real life" is regulated to the outer boroughs. Problematic as this may be, however, I fail to see how this would make an invite to a Staten Island gallery any less "authentic."
Oh, I don't find Staten Island inauthentic. I find it too damn far from everything. My point was, after Brooklyn is inevitably hit by its own Paris effect (which may, by then, be called the Manhattan effect), Staten Island's where the action will be…? Jesus, I hope not.
I visited Paris for the first time a couple years ago, and it felt preserved in amber–if I'd been there without having lived or set foot in New York, it would've enchanted me completely. But instead, around every corner, I saw New York's petrified future. Beautiful, of course, but chilly and so, so overexposed. A "luxury backdrop," as you say. A great set for movies.
Well, there's nothing that says that the Paris effect is permanent.
If it is, it could also be expected that Staten Island will develop into a community that would not seem far from everything because people who like it would actually be living there.
I'll go with door number 1, myself.
@balso-wood: I'm not saying you have to go to Queens to have some kind of "authentic" experience. I'm saying New York is one of the most diverse and amazing places on earth. If this person wants to spend his/her days documenting its so-called demise, well, as they say here on the internets, whatevs. This reflects an extemely common world view–"REMEBER WHEN EVEYTHING WAS BETTER–that bores the crap out of me.
"If it is, it could also be expected that Staten Island will develop into a community that would not seem far from everything because people who like it would actually be living there."
It's possible, but I still think it'd require a giant bridge, or a pneumatic human-transport system, like the one in the Running Man.
Wait a minnit — If the problem with Staten Island is that it's "too damn far from everything," you have to say from what. Too damn far from … the gentrified Manhattan that you hate? (Okay I hate it too.)
At least there's something for me at all the Subways. What about all the banks? EVERYTHING THAT ISN'T A SUBWAY IS A BANK! How insulting is that to people with no money?
Yes, a city with 8 digits worth of people really should stay exactly how it was when any given 1 of them arrived there. That's practical.
Now you're on the trolley.
Just create your own culture. There are always ways to do it.
Instead of spending your time lamenting something that may-or-may never have been, go out and make something you want to see or make the scene you want there to be.
With an OPEN BAR, I hope.
When they lost Duane Reade; they lost New York.
Sure, I see a lot of Subway shops.
I also see subways where I and others can venture, singly or in pairs, without the automatic fear that we will be harassed, assaulted, mugged, beaten, raped or murdered.
Bike lanes freeing up space for green transit.
Spaces such as Central Park, Bryant Park, the High Line, the Waterfront and various others extant and in development and far safer, cleaner and greener than before.
A new interest in interactive and public space and a greater realization about the value of architecture overall.
And lots of other things, some good, some bad.
I am tired of people whose experience of a place depends exclusively on whether or not a pastrami joint they liked happens to be or not be replaced by a TGIF.
Send this dip anywhere outside of his cultural comfort-food zone (Third Avenue in Yorkville? I'll take that with a side order of fuck off, please.)and he will see character by the bagload.
Sometimes the body-bag load.
::slow clap::
Yeah, I know it makes me not edgy, and all, but somehow subway stations that don't smell like piss seem like a boon to me.
I doubt he's thinking of subways.
"Oh, I say! The hatter here used to be a splendid chap! And this shoe emporium! Wonderful place, would shine them up a treat! And cabbies were all hale-fellows back in the day! None of these dusky types with their odd terrorist music and turbans! Saw one just now, gave me quite a turn! But worst are these "subway" "sandwiches!" They seem to be popping up all over! I even noticed one that appears to be located underground!"
"…a greater realization about the value of architecture overall."
Prove it.
And interactive space? Like, what, Apple Stores?
Take a look at the registered landmarks list in New York back in the 1970s and then look at it now.
Take a look at Sheep Meadow, circa 1969 and then look at it now.
Take a look at Grand Central Terminal, as recently as a little over ten years ago, then look at it now.
Try to have a cup of coffee behind the New York Public Library back in, oh, 1983, then do it now.
Try to ride a bike ANYWHERE in the 1970s and then do it now.
You lived here for 8 years? I was born here in the 1970s. That was not some creative wonderland. It was fucking hell on fucking blood-drenched earth. It was women raped in the stairwell and the guy next door stabbed to death in his kitchen. In a "good neighborhood."
I'll have a foot-long with extra mustard.
THANK YOU. Sure, chain stores and banks are just oh so horrible, especially the way they fly their employees and customers in from Iowa every day rather than providing jobs and services to New Yorkers. And as much as I enjoyed being shoved into a phone booth and threatened with stabbing in Times Square in 1986, I kind of prefer walking around it unmolested today, even at the cost of Forever 21 and the Disney Store.
I'll see your registered landmarks, and raise you countless glass luxury condos, which will look like hubristic shells in a decade. I'll raise you Columbus Circle. So much of the new architecture adds nothing socially valuable–ignorant of New York's architectural legacy and plug-ugly to boot. Then we can talk about preserved areas like SOHO and the Meatpacking District–the buildings are there, but what about what's inside?
Regarding crime, I never said I missed crime. I spend a lot of time in New Orleans, and certainly appreciate how nice it is to not constantly be looking behind my back after 8pm. (Though, now I feel like I'm overstating the grittiness of NO.) On the other hand, New Orleanians are, in my opinion, much more effectively protective of their own history. This is a city that has (more or less) kept Starbucks away.
In the most general terms, I just miss variety. And you're right, this is happening everywhere. Maybe my problem is just with the world, in general. Sigh.
And I still don't understand "interactive space." I'm not being a jerk, I just don't get the term–does it mean a space where you can get coffee and a sandwich?
Well, let's not go nuts. I mean, Forever 21. I think I'd take the phone booth over that one.
Well, sorry, but that's a false trade-off: unruly crime OR chain stores. Not quite so simple as that. Unless you feel that on some fundamental level massive corporations add stability to our lives. Which is why I've been lobbying for a BP station near me here in Harlem.
I assume "interactive space" was intended to refer to projects like the car-free Times Square, the High Line, and the newly expanded (and, FYI, fucking gorgeous) Brooklyn Bridge Park. Although I may be incorrect in that assumption!
I hate the condos, too–I live in the shadow of Blue Condo NYC, and used to have to walk past that wavy glass monstrosity on Astor Place every day–but a) they were misguided at the time, and have largely been killed off by the burst of the housing bubble, and b) reducing New York City to just them is kind of ridiculous. As other commenters have pointed out, the "lost" New York of the late 20th century wasn't without its problems. New York: constantly changing.
It's more that safety attracts chain stores, who may better able to afford the newly safe, higher valued real estate.
I probably should have used the term "multipurpose space." Central Park being the most famous. Later parks or semi-public spaces (particularly during the 1980s) stressed single use environments that amount to little more than coffee and a sandwich in grand lobbies. More recent parks and public spaces serve more diverse functions and interests.
And while many of the condos/buildings of today are indeed crap, there are some that are very good and some that are as good as any architecture ever built in New York. This is somewhat a question of personal taste, but I would put the Standard Hotel and the new 7 World Trade Center up as excellent new additions to the city among others.
Sorry if I get a little testy on this subject. My (vastly abbreviated) childhood in this burg was no Gossip Girl idyll.
Maybe this will explain my outlook better: I hate hate hate car-free Times Square. I walk around there and find myself yelling, "Come on, New York! Have a little self-respect!"
grumble.
And yes, to confuse matters further, I love the new Standard. I'll probably never need to set foot inside, but I love the slightly retrograde brutalism.
Because cars are just so New York?
I fail to see what's so lacking in "self-respect" about a pedestrian only plaza–those are the hallmarks of many a great European city, after all.
No no no, cars aren't just so New York–though I don't have the huge issues with cars that so many do. I'm not opposed to bike lanes, etc., though I'm not holding out on some fantastic carless future for the city, in the same way I don't hold out for a USA criss-crossed with bullet trains. Because it ain't gonna happen, and sometimes it's just awesome to drive.
Thing is, Times Square still isn't carless. There's one fewer avenue for traffic, but it's still loaded with taxis and trucks and drivers loaded with regret. Only now, the control of the place, as it were, has been ceded to throngs of confused tourists, with no sense of space, bumping around chairs and tables like a bunch of blind crazies on Shutter Island. Taking away cars–which hasn't really decreased congestion, thankyouverymuch–just turned the place into a mess. It's not a plaza, it's not a park–it's just an island of people in the middle of blazing neon and honking cars, where the ostensible aim is: "Please, have a seat and drink in our advertising." Before, Times Square at least had a certain flow, which was very New York: "Okay, have fun, but move move move!" Now, there's just no there there; I mean, there wasn't really before, but now it's just reveling in its lack of there there.
Lux, I like pedestrian plazas, but unlike the ones around DUMBO, Tribeca and even Madison Square Park, the ones on 34th Street and 42nd Street are really not that great. They are clearly designed to divert traffic because otherwise, they don't make for nice pedestrian areas.
Also, blocking Broadway is kind of sacrilegious. That's a historic street that dates back to the city's founding and stretches the length of Manhattan. To cut it in two is just wrong.
Washington Heights (at least the southern part, where I live) has barely changed in the last dozen years. (Which is good and bad, from my very subjective vantage point.) Granted, Bloomberg doesn't know where it is, but as many others have said, there are parts of the city that are far from being devoured by luxury condos and big-box stores. (In fact, I sometimes crave them!) File under: people who complain about gentrification but live in gentrified neighborhoods.
Having spent the past two years living on the border between northern (gentrified) and southern (not gentrified) Washington Heights, more and more often I find myself praying the north will win, if only because I'm tired of having to walk 5 blocks to find a grocery store where the canned goods aren't covered in a thick layer of dust, or a laundromat where the dryer doors aren't held on with twine.
Heights & Inwood, represent.
Some day a real rain will come and wash all the Subways off the streets.
When Neither More Nor Less stopped for the same reason, I checked out his blog and clicked through dozens and dozens of pages. I get that the East Village isn't what it used to be, but his whole angle seemed to be standing outside Ray's Candy and waiting for the local addicts to pay a visit and then take pictures. He so rarely left that corner!
If you love the gritty old NY, give it time. These shiny new condos will crumble, the mob will regrow it's head and you'll be afraid to turn a dark corner soon enough. If that's what you want.
True enough. Soon we may yet go back to the grand old days of turning up the TV so we don't hear Kitty yelling her head off.
/expectant sigh.
Forgotten NY, at least three different EV bloggers, sure, a lot of this is forced or strident. Maybe iconoclasm is also over; that used to be a hallmark of New York — otherwise you'd see people who moved to Williamsburg or Smith Street in 2004 complaining 'all those Manhattanites.'
It is the Internet and technology that has changed funky-ass New York, and all cities, not crooked city planners or rich people: eBay took away the good thrift shop haul and downloads ended the rekkid stores, the handmade flyers for bands, activist stuff, art that used to be tacked up all over town was replaced by websites.
That's a really good point, actually. Another cord of wood in my The Internet Ruins Everything fire.
@Bookish:
I wonder…
True, technology has created a venue for very fast and relatively inexpensive self-expression, but would the kiddies who are blogging be making guerrilla theater in storefronts or tacking art up on lamp posts if they didn't have the internet? Or has the internet become a creative outlet for those who don't want to/can't get out and play with others? Because the other stuff still happens too — it's just harder and more expensive to do in a city dominated by rich folk, and to my aged eyes, appears less about creative expression and more about drawing media attention with an oddball concept in a weird venue.
I used to write about "bodies in public space" quite a lot (don't laugh at me, I was young and really serious about it!), so this is a topic near and dear.
I think the latter; I agree with you, CD, as usual. It makes street life a total snooze, and a lot of these babies today are all about the big payoff anyway, not living an artist's life.
Nice to see you here.
Sorry that Lost City is folding. Another site that's worth checking if Old New York is your thing is Scouting New York. This young guy, a film scout, takes just wonderful, detailed photos in all 5 boroughs, often of older buildings with amazing details and histories. Because of his job, he access to interesting views and vantage points, and documents things like incredible gargoyles and sculptures, hidden 40 stories up on a Deco skyscraper. Lots of hidden surprises from the past in the city. Visiting his archives= highly recommended.
http://www.scoutingny.com/
Thanks for that link.
It's sad to see "Lost City" go, but at some point blogging becomes a job that doesn't pay. So you need to make a choice. And I think Brooks made the right one.
That said, I have grown a tad tired of a few of Brooks posts that simply focus on the aesthetics of signage. I'm sorry, as much as I like old store signs myself, that factor-in and of itself-is not why people are growing weary of NYC. The reality is that this city is becoming more and more geared towards temporary residents. Either tourists, kids out of grad school going for their "NYC 4-5 Year Degree" or chains that could care less about NYC.
The tourists you know about. The chains you know about. But you know what an "NYC 4-5 Year Degree" is? It's basically moving to NYC to "give it a shot" for 4-5 years before moving elsewhere. Get some shared apartment, go to crazy bars and places, get your own place, go to that one food place somewhere that is special because you found it, do one really wild thing, decide NYC is too expensive, move away.
You know what the problem is with that? When the city is not geared towards the long term-and encourages the short term-rents and prices go up accordingly. And it's always accordingly high.
That is what is dead.
It used to be that store rents and apartment rents encouraged long-term investment. No more. Have a some decent store idea? You had better come up with the next $5 cupcake, because otherwise, who cares? Want to open a small/modest coffee shop and live upstairs or down the street? Sorry, that's gone. You need a gimmick now to draw in enough folks to cover the $7,000 to $10,000 rent per month you will pay on that small strip of a shop.
You see, I like going to flea markets and artists markets. And when I go to them nowadays, I mainly see folks who-in my mind-would open their own stores in NYC if we lived in a parallel/more-affordable universe. But they can't. So their business is now all mail order, Etsy, eBay and the occasional folding table gig. That's it. I mean, why encourage small businesses when the rents are geared towards chains that can pay crazy prices just to have a small presence in NYC. I grew up in this city and always saw change, but this current wave of change is completely different from the changes of the past.
Heck, you know what a "pop-up shop" is? It's a real-estate and marketing invention that only came to light when the rents went through the roof.
It's all temporary and short term and a a slap to folks who make this city home. That is the problem with the "new" New York. They cleaned it up and made it nice and then told the folks who live here "Ehhh, you don't matter…"
But happily most folks still see Brooklyn & Queens as a scary… And the Bronx and Staten Island as other planets. Good!
I think I agree, though in 86 I left NY after 5 years. But in every other city, transience equals slum. Except NY. A block in LA, which is all rentals is usually trashy. A block in NYC is solid gold, especially if it is in a "desirable "
area. Why is that? Pride of ownership keeps neighborhoods across the
country from becoming crack-wastelands (well, it USED TO), but take 16th
street where I once lived, 4 of us in a $1,200 per month 2BR unit..
the whole street was rentals, and all the streets around it..etc.
so this is confusing to me. Live on a rental-block in Memphis, even all old
decayed grand homes, and it's still crack-ville. Same with many blocks on the dreaded 'east side' of West Hollywood.
Anyway, it's all about greed. How much can I get this year for that building, for those units?
NY failed miserably when they didn't institute COMMERCIAL RENT CONTROL.
what a delightful place it would be, to have those weird old stores back
again, paying $85 a month in rent.
This debate here over gentrification misses the point of what "Lost City" was primarily about: aesthetics. The author – who refreshingly has remained anonymous – was deeply interested in the history of New York City and savored what remains of it. He had an idiosyncratic and endearing affection for things like wooden phone booths, 19th-century bars, Italian bakeries, and hat stores. He was deeply unhappy when ‘21' dropped its requirement that men wear a tie.
His main laments were over the loss of these aspects of the city's heritage and the charmless banality of what replaced them. Cases in point: when Gage & Tollner in downtown Brooklyn was replaced by an Arby's. And Gino being replaced by a Sprinkles cupcake shop.
Much of his worst vitriol was reserved for greedy landlords who squeezed out businesses, often family-owned, that had been operating for decades. He also complained frequently about the "crapitecture" (cheap new construction) springing up all over the outer boroughs. Less on point, he had other grievances, such as the obnoxious bartender at Boat who wouldn't accept payment in dimes, which reflected a certain quirkiness but reflected the frequent lack of civility in the city.
It is true that change has been a constant in New York City and that relentless process of renewal does give the city part of its vitality. "Lost City" sought to at least slow the pace of change to preserve the best of the city's cultural and aesthetic heritage, a laudable project.
But who would not vote for a "Grand Central Market" or artists or permanent
artist market zone, instead of the usual weekend tent affairs?
Subsidized used bookstores and 'steampunk' accessories (oh god, I said it!
gotta go shower now..)
But, no, it's the Gap and Starbucks etc, and well, does ANY CITY have a 'zoned area' where people who make things and /or re-sell things can
rent for a subsidized rent cost… and they would actually take business away from the fancier areas with the chain stores..
Someone I know who once worked in a cafe in LA, in Silver Lake, open since 1942 (?) said that even if they were full every day, they still barely turned a profit. The rent, mostly. And the tiny space (expanding would of course cost more rent)
it's all greed. Landlord greed. If the roof leaks, make a deal. But don't raise the rent 50 percent a year like Helmsley-Spear did in the 1980's-1990's on corner shops. Fucking greed.
That was all incoherent but the page re-loads so we try to beat it, without proofing….
It's the children.
They will keep moving there, unaware of how things were, or that you wouldn't even THINK of a Bowery apartment, and that rents are now basically a million dollars a month.
The upside: they fixed up Brooklyn. But it's become terribly hip,
overnight.
Anuntie Mame would not approve, except to say that they are children, and that "they should wise up, go buy land i the midwest, sell ethanol, and return to NY with the proper amount of money."
("Proper amount" being enough to put your former landlord out of business, or at least indicted on slumlord charges)
"Civilization, like the car of Juggernaut, is scarcely stayed perceptibly in its progress by a heart less easy to break than the others that lie in its course; this also is broken and Civilization continues on her course triumphant."
I come late to this post because I read it only last night, on the road from New York City after the Webbys, back home to the hinterlands. I would like to propose that (somewhat in line with the Internet Ruins Everythingers above, but obviously in a more optimistic frame of mind) a large part of the "domesticization" of NYC may have to do with the enterprise of blogging itself. By opening up your lives to us outlanders, by showing day to day The Way You Live Your Lives, you have de-othered yourselves! I am constitutionally a country mouse, and haven't watched TV in more than a decade (so there is no televisual component to my view of NYC). When I was a teenager, I got my picture of NYC from, uum, the VV, and Paper, and Interview: my temperament did not lead me to think I MUST LIVE IN THIS WONDERLAND OF DRUG FUELED CLUBBING. But for the past decade my "street view" of NYC has been filtered through the observations of all those dozens/hundreds of NYC blogs I encounter, and it seems much more approachable/navigable, because you've made it manifest that you New Yorkers are not magical unicorns: you eat, sleep, fret, fuck, smoke, work, procrastinate just like the bumpkins-although you undoubtedly have snazzier hairdos.
But don't worry, I have no plans to move, unless someone's willing to install me in the Standard on a year-to-year basis, because THAT I could get used to.