Barnes & Noble revokes its liberal exchange policy. As of 3/3, you need a receipt and all returns must be made within 14 days. No exceptions. So much for one benefit of big chains. This is what you call a bait-and-switch folks!
An Upper East Sider grieves the chipping away of her neighborhood. [Times]
Creative people are being pushed further and further to the outer edges of Brooklyn--and many right off the NYC map. [Observer]
East Village bodegas are dropping like flies. [Racked]
God save the Minetta Tavern from whatever is stalking it! [Eater]
Before you jump off the Brooklyn Bridge (and before they convert the bridge into luxury condos), there may be good news:
"The great Manhattan bank branch boom is over. Financial players that paid top dollar to rent hundreds of retail locations, pushing out neighborhood coffee shops, florists and fashion boutiques, are ending their shopping spree, real estate sources say." [Crain's]
The Mayfair is still alive. Got my hair cut here not long ago. One of our last good barbershops. [AMNY]
The Moondance Diner isn't dead after this winter's roof collapse. [AMNY]
A blogger remembers Brooklyn's lost crayon factories. [PMFA]
A few signs with obsolete telephone exchanges live on--and, once in a while, I find one. They're not easy hunting, but Forgotten NY recently put up a bunch. Here are a couple of mine, the first in Forest Hills and the second in the East Village.
10 comments:
I'm certainly pleased that the bank boom is over, but I don't hold out any great hopes for what will replace them. The "coffee shops, florists, and fashion boutiques" cited by the article are gone forever. All for the sake of a miserable bank branch frenzy.
Ah, I used to live next to that tobacco sign before I got booted from the "Extell portfolio".
Great bank article! I'm always learning new NYC real estate phraseology with terms such as "co-broker" and "true 1 bedroom". Here's a good one: "underbanked neighborhoods".
I lament the vanishing of the B&N return policy. I had a (somewhat cheap, let's face it) boyfriend who used the megachain as a lending library. I always wanted to go in there and return a book because I didn't think the ending worked.
New York is Dead.
It's really the people that killed it.
These yuppie jerks move in and ruin
everything. It's the people that
make it New York City, not the stores. If the people were old school New Yorkers, there wouldn't be these robot zombie chain store hipster people everywhere.
I made a habit of doing what my boyfriend and I called the "R&R" - otherwise known as the "Read and Return." I was just like ajm's cheap boyfriend - but I considered it my personal revenge against Barnes and Noble putting so many small bookstores out of business. It's a true miracle Shakespeare & Co. and the St. Mark's Bookstore outlived the B&N in the Astor Place neighborhood. Though it's only in my fantasy that my small R&R subterfuge contributed to the wreckage!
Jeremiah---in the same city section as the article about Sutton Place, there is another article about a retired policeman, living in subsidized housing in a working class area of the Bronx, he is no longer entitled to. A housing person (I am not sure what her role was) who felt he should have to leave, described the need for available housing for working class people in the city, as "Fighting for crumbs". This is a frightening statement---on Thursday, in the Arts section, the article on the Walentas showed that they had given cheap rents to artists in Dumbo to keep the neighborhood "hoppping", but made it very clear that any of these artists could be thrown out at the Walentas' pleasure. The article inferred, not too subtly, that the realtor is king. This is the situation that I find so sad, that a leading newspaper supposedly liberal, is comfortable with this.
i have question:
can any of the many tipsters on here direct me to a good place to get a shave?
the only two places i know of are: a completely overpriced place for business execs in midtown (something like $40+ for a shave); and, even worse, hipstere hellhole freeman's (their prices are at least decent).
any tips?
andy (bed-stuy)
Lest anyone forget , the builders ,Tishman Construction and others ,of the 110 3rd avenue building are the ones that were directly responsible through apparently willful negligence for the collapse of a tower crane in Oct of 2006 . It should not be a surprise therefore that there is a little shoddy laminate work on display .
What we should all be doing now is asking here "How much more of the work and material in this building is unreliable and/or poorly constructed and of substandard quality .... or indeed just simply unsafe? " This is a question we also should be asking about a very large percentage of what has been recently constructed here in our city .
Shortly after the crane accident a large portion of the glass curtain-wall assembly of 110 3rd ave. plummeted to 3rd avenue also . Tishman construction was fined $5000 for this accident .Tishman has defaulted on payment of this $5000 fine if the DOB building profile for 110 3rd avenue can be believed .This event was never reported in the press .
Knowing some of the detail of the crane collapse event( which can be seen at NMNL) ,actually having been there photographing for 12 hours during the dis-assembly procedure behind police lines up-close and talking to fire department personnel and a number of riggers at the scene , and having read of the event in multiple publications including ENR (engineering news record )to my mind this event was closer to being a case of criminal negligence than to being a simple ECB (environmental control board ) violation .
To date according to the DOB building profile for 110 3rd avenue Tishman has been fined $1500 for its part in the collapse. There are several other hearings concerning the collapse involving several parties including Tishman ,but those hearings continue to be post-poned and moved to later dates .
This is our NYC DOB at work : where the hell is the damned District attorney's office ... asleep .
I just walked through Tompkins Square Fashion Park this morning and saw three lovely dogs dressed in sweaters--it is really chill this am--one English Bull dog was wearing a fashionable print sweater made from his owner's own wardrobe--and the two pit bulls were certainly in fashionable sweaters commercially made--
hope you are having a beautiful sunny albeit cold day-
I hate to say this but...it seems that Mom and Pop ops are out--I remember coming into New York from Brooklyn to enjoy the real beauty of New York which is vanishing and it seems to say--You are not wanted here if--you cannot afford to spend 2500 to live in a small hole--and like it-if you taste and style--who cares--people are nice--go to hell--
seems the long-standing good which was New York is now gone and deminishing further as we speak--soon there will be nothing left except the "new" and Fuck Them Too-
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