The coffee is never as good as one would think it should be at these places.

who is still eating cupcakes? PIE is the next big thing. geesh. get with the program people.

At first, the factories and cafes seemed god-sent. They popped up around the city like thin blades of pale green grass, pushing through the debris of failed businesses and garbage to hold forth with a fragile pride. The Wall Street Journal took notice and dubbed it the "Cupcake Economy." It was a laughable bestowment, and yet we didn't laugh. Instead, we went to work. We made cupcakes. We made them in winter. We ate them in spring. We bought them in summer, and we stood in line as leaves fell to earth, waiting for just one more box. One more box of cupcakes. We produced and consumed; consumed and produced. We did this day in, day out with a mechanical numbness, a dull superficiality that neither aggravated nor soothed. Over and over and over and over. It became second nature, almost physical, an extension of our existence that through sheer repetition became no more noticeable or remarkable than urinating in the morning.

The first one came with a weak February snow storm on an amber colored night. It ripped the front off a faux wood-paneled cafe on Perry Street and bore into the back of it a deep, black hole. The police said it was a homemade device, albeit a good one, and the news wondered if perhaps a disgruntled former employee had planted it. The mayor said it was fortunate the blast happened during off hours and no one was hurt. And after a day or two no one talked about it anymore.

February 29. Leap year. Some people had parties. Early morning, March 1, hangovers were quickly displaced by news of three cupcake storefronts defaced by fluorescent green spray paint. Eat It Cupcake Pig Sugar Fucks, the graffiti read. Or Eat It Pig Cupcake Sugar Fucks. Or in another twist, on Greenwich Street, Eat Cupcake It Fucks Sugar Pig. It depended on your vantage point, really. From the south it could have been Eat It Cupcake Sugar Pig Fucks. Only the Post ran photos. Television showed the storefronts at strange angles, with reporters carefully positioned in front of Fucks and Eat It. The police said it was crude vandalism, albeit well-coordinated, and the news wondered if perhaps more disgruntled former employees had been behind it. The mayor said it was fortunate there were no bombs involved and no one was hurt.

People talked. Bloggers blogged. Commenters commented. DaFonk wrote on a widely-read city blog, "Who is fucking with the cupcakes? Why? We need these jobs. Also, cupcakes?!" MuskTangSally added, "Cupcake Mafia Wars!!!" Someone else wrote a long, angry screed about capitalism and the economics of Manhattan and even Brooklyn and the fact that the only jobs in the fucking city are cupcake factory or cupcake cafe jobs that don't pay for shit and who in the fuck even wants to work there let alone eat anymore of these goddamn fucking cupcakes anyway for Christ's sake because Jesus, the fuck, why is no one else sick of this fucking cupcake craze and I want a t-shirt that says Eat It Fuckcake, or maybe one with that weird graffiti from the vandals, Eat It Cupcake Sugar Pig Fucks, but definitely not any t-shirts from fucking American Apparel, which everyone now hates for being exploitative, or at least should. And after a day or two no one talked about that anymore either.

That summer was hot. People sweated and seethed. More locals, fewer tourists, plenty of hate. Despite the desperate pleas of a blog commenter, no non-American Apparel Eat It Fuckcake t-shirts materialized. The Cupcake Economy endured.

In early September, on a sweltering Sunday morning in the city, the Times ran a blurb that it would be kicking off a new feature in the Wednesday Dining section devoted specifically to cupcakes, cupcake recipes, cupcake chefs, cupcake personalities, whatever that meant, specialty cupcakes and even things that were not cupcakes and could not really be turned into cupcakes but which could at least be presented alongside cupcakes and so could somehow become, it seemed, cupcake-esque. It was to be called Breaking Cupcakes.

Bromethalin is a neurotoxin designed primarily to kill rodents. It acts on the central nervous system by uncoupling phosphorylation from oxidation. This can cause brain swelling, loss of motor control and, eventually, if untreated, death. Few outside of the pest control industry had ever heard of bromethalin before November. After a couple thousand poisonings, however, word got around. By Thanksgiving, those who were able to give thanks for not having been poisoned by bromethalin contaminated cupcakes were as conversant in bromethalin and other rodenticides as pest control experts and any number of the doctors who had been sent up from the CDC in Atlanta. The immediate effects of exposure are skin and eye irritation, which puzzled investigators for quite some time since it was primarily the cashiers, servers and customers who were being poisoned, not the bakers. Later, it was discovered that the contamination had come from a shipment of cardboard cupcake boxes, and because the bakers really had no contact with the boxes since that was the job for people who were not trained in the cupcake qua cupcake arts, the front store clerks and servers bore the brunt of the poisonings, along with the customers, of course.

Bombings, Vandalism, Poisonings; Who's Destroying the Cupcake Economy? The city magazine feature marking the one-year anniversary of the first cupcake cafe bombing ran 18 pages, one of the longest in the publication's history, and featured detailed ruminations on the Cupcake Economy from nearly a dozen people -- everyone from chefs to cupcake enthusiasts, doctors, economists, law enforcement figures, politicians and even a popular author who had once written a polemic about meat consumption and was therefore, the editors determined, somehow qualified to discuss cupcakes from a literary vantage point. The last two paragraphs of the piece summarized things this way:

"Still, something about the perceived loss, the over-arching grief, and, some would say, ostentatious sadness, hovering over New York's former Cupcake Economy seems somehow dated and a bit too quaint. It's as if an entire city fell under a spell, a mass delusion that cupcakes were emblematic of something important about this city's character, when in reality this economy, too, was as ephemeral as the last; just smaller, easier to swallow, well-decorated and served in neatly wrapped individual portions.

Stacy Chenault, whose cupcake cafe, the Pink Pastry, is among the most recent bombing victims, insists there's nothing wrong with New York's Cupcake Economy that a little time won't heal. "The Cupcake Economy's not dead," she says between careful sips of hot tea. After a long pause, she repeats, "The Cupcake Economy's not dead." It's hard to tell if she means that as a statement or a question."