Wednesday, August 19, 2009

*Everyday Chatter

Grieve has been following the controversial 7th Street Tumor--and now there's a For Rent sign in the window. Today it's the bedroom for two homeless girls and their friendly cat. Tomorrow, this 3,000 sf space may be the next obnoxious bar and restaurant to invade the street.


Save Union Square from death by too much flare--just say no to TGI Friday's. [Gothamist]

In chain stores per acre, the East Village makes the top 5 most chainified in all of NYC. [Curbed]

And the chain stores keep coming as "the recession could have played a role in facilitating the chain expansion." [CR]

Remembering an older Orchard Street. [HNY]

And another old Orchard business dies. [BB]

Get ready for Brooklyn's Michael Jackson block party. [Gothamist]

How weird and scary is Hollister? Mike Albo lives to tell: "We needed to get out of there before we were trapped in this psychic brothel forever. I clutched onto him, and we battled our way past all the beautiful faces. Like sirens they beckoned for us to stop and transfer our lust into $600 worth of distressed denims and 'casual luxury' tees. Stop being so pretty around me, I wanted to scream." [NYT]

8 comments:

Mykola Dementiuk said...

Ha Ha! There will always be street people, in the worst of times, in the best of times. More power to the people!

L'Emmerdeur said...

Listen J, first of all, the NYT as expert financial reporting? Yeah, m'kay.

That said, let those chain stores take over, and then watch them all fail hard and fast when these green shoots turn out to be mirages. There's a LOT of bank failures around the corner, the FDIC is toast, there's still many hundreds of billions of dollars of toxic crap being hidden by banks, the US balance sheet is toast, ad New York's economy is still mighty dependent on finance...

Other countries are in even worse shape, which means the US dollar may actually strengthen over the next few years, which will make the US more expensive for impoverished tourists, thus driving them away.

So let the chains come. Let them pay the nosebleed rents while they still can. They're all toast, because the people who frequent them are getting shellacked, and the truly wealthy folks who will be left with any purchasing power in New York once the storm has run its course won't be caught dead in those chains.

Anonymous said...

The Mom & Pop businesses were what made New York unique and interesting. Exploring the different neighborhoods, was like visiting different countries.

Now, every street is pretty much the same. How is New York the "greatest city in the world" now? Chain stores are what makes it great?

Tourist come to Times Square to take photos of more chain store ads. It's sad.

Are people turning into hypnotized chain store zombies?

Melanie said...

Change came to NYC as a double edged sword.

Unknown said...

it's a good use bu those girls for today but what's their tommorow.

Alyssa

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Anonymous said...

Hollister disgusts me. I never heard of them until I saw them in NY. And I recently found out that it's owned by Abercrombie and Fitch. No wonder why that place is weird, because it's owned by that freako guy from A&F.

And it's a made up beach town too.

Jill said...

The twitter feed from Save Union Square is pretty damn funny. They are at http://twitter.com/SaveUnionSqNYC

Anonymous said...

L'Emmerdeur - That was probably the most stupid, uninformed comment I have seen on the Internet all year. You should be embarrassed being so publicly stupid.