This article by Lynn Harris is a must-read: "our feelings about Park Slope are linked to our feelings about our entire city: our overpriced, chain-store city run by bankers, socialites and, it seems, mommies. The artists are fleeing and your friends, it seems, have become Park Slope pod people. (And they’re coming for you, too.) It’s starting to feel as if there’s nowhere left to hide." [Times] More background: [OTBKB]
A fascinating timeline of the de-evolution of the Meatpacking District. The tipping point seems to be 1999, a year prior to Carrie's eating of the fateful cupcake and coinciding with the opening of McNally's Pastis. [Shecky's]
By now, everyone knows Florent is dead in the water. But here's the joint's official "au revoir" signage, spelling out a clever FOR RENT (let Ralph Lauren pay the $70,000 a month):
photo: micawave
“Flipping burgers, or folding shirts at a clothing store simply are not appealing to today’s technology addicted, career-oriented teen" -- nope, instead, go-getter teens are going after your job this summer. Hey, they need it for their resume. Resume? I didn't even think about a resume until I was in my 20s. [CNBC]
Back to that waiting in lines thing, I just found this article in the Sun with a choice quote from psychologist, Robert Leahy: "Today people are very insecure about getting the right thing, and the easiest way to make a decision is to seek out what everyone else is buying. If they didn't feel like they had to fit in, and they just looked at what they value, they might make different decisions."
Ancient "Die Yuppie Scum" cry of protest returns to LES. [Curbed]
“Sex and the City, the former HBO hit about four single women devoted to designer shoes and other forms of self-gratification, is about to be released as a feature film. But isn’t the film out of sync with the spirit of New York at a time when people are scaling back?" [Times]
Regarding the Crain's piece: While I know that schadenfreude is wrong, so wrong, I can't help but grin a little bit at Ann Taylor Loft's feeling the lease-renewal pinch in Soho. It was Ann Taylor, after all, who scooped up the lease of Bonte Patisserie in 1998, under circumstances that might have been legal but certainly didn't smell ethical. As a result, the Upper East Side lost a neighborhood institution, a bakery where the goods tasted as beautiful as they looked, where one didn't have to dip into capital to buy a little dessert, and where the owners were friendly and goodnatured about discussing technique and ingredients with the pastry students at Peter Kump's. Meanwhile, an Ann Taylor store became an Even Bigger Ann Taylor store. Neat.
ReplyDeleteI will refrain (for now, anyway) from commentary about the spectre of college students eschewing gruntwork for supposed resume-building jobs, simply because if I start in on it now, I might start bleeding from the top of my head.
Thank you again, Jeremiah, for the work you do here.
J, you outdid yourself. NYCers are dancing on a sinking ship. Hello iceberg, linen toilet paper for my gold dodo, pleze! Most places in the McKinley article are gone. Didn't Oriont burn down? What's the story of DYS (Die Yuppie Scum);initially saw it in EV in 80's. Resume Kids, learn to flip burgers; that's the future! Nothing wrong with schadenfreude; it was a yuppie tenet: one must not only succeed, one's friends must fail!
ReplyDeleteI work and live in the city. But the way things are going--this Vongerichtification of NY-- I may have to get a second job flipping burgers. So you Hannah Montanas can keep building your resume -- and more (2nd) job options for me, may not be glamorous, but it's honest and builds (and keep building) character.
ReplyDelete1. Kudos, sounds like your term "yunnie" seems to be spreading like a precisely-calibrated, pharma-managed disease throughout the intarwebs. I myself use it every chance I get to avoid the alternative - punching people.
ReplyDelete2. Pastis: Patient Zero. I told you it wasn't Carrie's cupcake (well, not the cupcake she ate, anyways), it's Carrie's second career: Brunch.