Taxi Parts

Two years ago, a little taxi parts shop called, aptly, Taxi Parts, was forced out of its long-time home and moved to the East Village. Now it's gone.



As E.V. Grieve reported, they moved to East Harlem. We can guess it was the rent that pushed them out.

Before this, the shop had been up on 10th Avenue and 35th St. for 25 years, on the ground floor of an old tenement building near Hudson Yards. They had to move when it was decreed that the building would be demolished for the Hudson Spire, planned to be the tallest building in the United States. But, as Curbed reported last year, "those plans have since been abandoned."

So the original Taxi Parts space sits empty. And now the next Taxi Parts space sits empty -- along with a few other empty spaces along First Avenue in the East Village.

This is what happens in the hyper-gentrified city. Stable, long-lasting small businesses get pushed around by rising rents and developers, and then they're not so stable anymore. And neither are the streets of our city.