....block after block of Duane Reades and banks.

there's always Bed-Stuy.. oh wait, not that kind of diversity

At my Duane Reade there is a Chase ATM

Perhaps this is a wrinkle in the time space continuum.
Perhaps a portal or gateway to another dimension, a parallel universe of unending alternative realities.
A future bright potential poised to make a great leap forward culturally.
Maybe just an ATM in a shitty health and beauty aid store.
How f'in long do I got to wait on this line to pay for a pack of gum?

"Who cares, the people make the energy and vibe of the city, not some lame ass restaurant selling mediocre food."

I think, dealboy, that's kind of the point.

The loss of Elaine's is just another symptom of a larger sea change that's been going on in Manhattan for quite some time: the corporatization of the neighborhoods. All of them.

That "lame-ass" restaurant selling (in your opinion) "mediocre food" was someone's dream -- an independent business that for decades offered a warm space and fellowship for those very people who created the energy of Manhattan.

It was one of many of those "lame-ass" restaurants, coffee shops, coffee houses, cafes, used book stores, consignment stores, gift shops, art stores, and many, many, many other small businesses that together were woven into the tapestry of New York. Over the past decade, however, that rich tapestry of independent commerce has been ripped to shreds and replaced with -- what? Soulless, sanitized high-end corporate chains. Oh yes, and banks. Giant ones that really don't give a shit about you unless you have at least seven figures on deposit, and relentlessly pick your pocket with one hand while they distract you with the other hand, presenting you with shiny new "membership" cards and "reward points".

If this trend continues, New York will have all the "energy" and "vibe" of the Mall of America in Minnesota.

Stop whining.

stores dont close if people shop there.

For years residents have restricted development in neighborhoods, thus constraining supply of retail space and driving up prices. Who are the ones who can afford the new high prices? DR, banks, wireless stores, 7-11 and IHOP. I shed no tear for all of the elderly residents of the city who succeeded in freezing the world of their youth/middle age only to have to now pass four blocks of luxury stores to reach the closest deli.

dumb boy
IQ45

This is story from a few months ago.
Get a calendar.
Had breakfast with Qadaffy like on thursday, foal for him, bacon and eggs for me, fucker sneaks the bacon off my plate, woofs it down and acts like......
what bacon?

Got what he deserved.

Stores close sometimes even if people shop there. Landlord's want to profit on a more livable Manhattan so they sell their retail space to the highest bidder or simply cash-out mortgage it at a higher balance. They raise the rent which which dramatically lowers the profitability of the operating business and drives the tenant out. Corporate chains may not agree with the rising cost of rents, but they are "professionally" managed and have access to borrowings at relatively low interest rates (which are generally not available to the small business owner), so the corporate chains are willing to gamble on further gentrification. It may seem like a suckers bet, but inflation may just bail them out of the profligate ways.

nyc matt, you are absolutely correct!

Duane Reed will surely follow Barnes & Noble , Gap, and Starbucks as being an over-expanded debt laden, rotting company some day. These cycles are fairly predictable. On the West Side there are three Duane Reads that are separated by only a few blocks each.

I think that some types of small stores can thrive in NYC if they have a product that people will want. For example, many neighborhoods have small shops that sell very good coffee and not much else because people want an alternative to Starbucks. The independent drug stores do not acept insurance plans for prescriptions so people flock to CVS or Duane Reade which does. Although if the chain drug stores no longer have an arrangement with ExpressScripts in Jnauary, that can change. Banks are great RE clients because they are open short hours which the people who live above the banks often like and they can pay the rent as well as part of a chain. Small shops, unlike restaurants, can thrive here if they serve the customers needs well and offer a product that people want.

But I agree that if you want good customer service, it is not found in the chain shops. I recently went to many window treatments stores in NYC, but ended up using a small family owned shop in Long Island for window treatments because I could not get the customer service assistance that I needed from the NYC shops.

yorkville maintains it's small town feel. all the same places still hangin around.

Seems big stores come in kill the profit of the small stores and then succumb themselves. Barnes & Noble, Starbucks, Staples. They come in make a big splash, drive the small companies out and then close themselves. Of course some of these big retailers are now the big dinosaurs getting eaten by Online retailing.

NYC isn't unique. This is the trend across America. Indeed, across Europe if not beyond. But if you don't want a corporate experience, then choose not to have one! NYC remains a sizzling blast for those who want it. To cry about Elaine's is just silly. Go somewhere else. You were also probably whining when Maxwell's Plum closed to become a blockbuster and then whatever it is now. Or when the Saint closed to become some useless retail space (drugstore? I don't even look anymore--ah, the memories). But life's a banquet--why are you focusing on the dirty plates!! For example (if I must take you by the hand on this...):
Have you checked out the best hotdogs in the city at Crif Dog (and the surprise in the phone booth) on St. Marks? Or the mad Moroccan food at Nomad with its back garden room on 2nd Ave and W4th? The best $5 dinner in NYC for 30 years at Mamoun's (don't miss the maboumeh for dessert) with taro bubble tea two stores to the south? How about being transported to that bistro you loved deep in the 4th or 5th Arroindisments by ducking into Jules Cafe on East 9th for live jazz and escargots one cold night this fall?
Feel like shopping instead? Stop by John Derian on East 2 for great decoupage gifts. Stroll through the museum/showroom of 20th century design at Lost City Arts at the base of 4th Ave. Or indulge in some of the greatest Tibetan rugs from eco & people friendly Domas Rugs on Lafayette. For completely eclectic scents you've never encountered before, check out MiN apothecary on Crosby (you can get a cup of espresso there while you sniff around). Feeling truly indulgent? Make an appointment at Michael Andrews Bespoke in Great Jones Alley's where in the setting of a men's club room a snazzy, smart young sales staff will help you create the clothes of your dreams (for less $$ than you think!) while Michael Andrews himself keeps a sharp eye on everyone while he personally handles all fittings. Need a sweet on the walk home--then stop at Mille Feuille for french macarons that give Fauchon a race for their title.

These are the incredible finds I thought of in a few minutes that are all in just one tiny area of NYC. It remains one of the most bursting-with-energy, fascinating, diverse, mind-blowing playgrounds in the world. I am sad for people who can see nothing more than banks and drug stores as they walk down the streets. How different my NYC is than theirs.

I like chain stores.

And many national chains - Macy's, Bloomingdales, Sachs, Barnes & Noble, Chase, Citi, etc. - STARTED as small NYC family businesses.

jason, you make a good point. many chains are testament to NYC's enduring power to set trends and to establish brands. you can add to your list Barneys and Tiffany. Might as well add Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren. I have to run but adding to this list isn't too tough.

dont forget about Max on b between 3rd and 4th

well, if you dont shop there, they wont stay

kylewest,
true true but,
Manhattan retail rents are in the stratosphere. The days of the mom and pops', the guy whose gonna build a better mouse trap, the clever outragious strore have come to an end. Sure they exsist. They're just a train ride away in dare I say.....Williamsburg or in many of the non-manhattan parts of this city. Most of manhattan has start up costs that are just too intense. I agree with your examples. They are the exceptions that prove the rule. Every once in a while, the little guy hits a homerun. It's just so infrequent on this island that I don't even bother to bring a glove to the game.

I love chain stores. Thank god these grossly overrated 1970s mom and pops are OVER. Good riddance to bad rubbish. They were always shit, you just didn't know any better. I vastly prefer MBA's writing proper quality control process manuals for the employees. Almost everything is better when mass produced, and it's cheaper. WIN WIN!

dealboy,
I got two words for you...

Central Jersey

or as you will begin to know it as 'dealboy nirvana'
big box stores as far as the eye can see.
expert service, as seen at Home Depot.
the culinary stylings of Applebys, TGI Fridays and for your birthday...the Long Horn.
Costco, BJ's, the joy never ends.
What in the world is holding you back.
We only want happiness for you.

so go

I travel for work and family all the time. Walgreen's owning Duane Reade means I can get my prescriptions anywhere. Chase buying WaMu means I can get money out of ATMs for free back home in California. Trader Joes,Baja Fresh, I-Hop and Wholefoods coming FROM California here means I can finally eat shit I like. Apperently a WHOLE lot of New Yorkers like the same foods, because the new Trader Joes,Baja Fresh, I-Hop and Wholefoods in Manhattan are the busiest in the country -and they are NOT even in touristy areas!

Ditto for Starbucks. New Yorkers must love them because they are everywhere. Ditto for Best Buy, West Elm, Apple Stores, etc.

New Yorkers inthe trendiest of neighborhoods love chain stores.

And I can't wait for Panda Express, PF Chang's, and Cheescake factory (now in the suburbs) to arrive in Manhattan!

And Fudruckers!

Is that like Olive Garden?

And lets not ifnore Internet retailers destorying local stores everywhere. But that won't stop me from shopping at eBay, Zappos, Amazon, and Netflix.

Kylewest - great post. Here are a few more:
* Supper on 2nd street just off Ave A - superb Italian for reasonable prices
* 1st Ave Pharmacy near 12th - Ali and his sons go above and behind and know each customer by name. They take all major insurance.
* Seize Sur Vingt in Soho - best made to measure shirts I've ever found (not cheap however)
* And stroll down east 9th street between 1st and A: you have the new Pork Pie Hatters and then the little store selling only microbrews (you can sit and taste a flight) and some phenomenal new Japanese restaurants and the Uppper Rust, a cool little antique store.
To quote the Dead and Tom Petty respectively:
"You tell me this town aint got no heart? Well you just got to poke around (maybe the dark is from your eyes). "
"You can look back but it's best not to stare"

"I think that some types of small stores can thrive in NYC if they have a product that people will want. For example, many neighborhoods have small shops that sell very good coffee and not much else because people want an alternative to Starbucks. The independent drug stores do not acept insurance plans for prescriptions so people flock to CVS or Duane Reade which does. Although if the chain drug stores no longer have an arrangement with ExpressScripts in Jnauary, that can change. Banks are great RE clients because they are open short hours which the people who live above the banks often like and they can pay the rent as well as part of a chain. Small shops, unlike restaurants, can thrive here if they serve the customers needs well and offer a product that people want."

***

Lobster, in an ideal world, yes this is true.

But not in a world where retail rents are outpacing the profitability of most potential tenants.

I don't care how good the coffee is, if the rent for that coffee house on Bleecker Street jumps from $15,000/month to $49,000/month (these are actual numbers of one retailer who was pushed out of the "prime" Village spot he'd occupied for decades, since before any part of the Village was "prime" anything), there are only so many cups of coffee you can sell in a given day. And regardless of the coffee's quality, customers will pay for it only to a certain point. $6.00 a cup maybe. $8.50 a cup perhaps. $25 a cup, fuhgettaboutit.

And it's not just that the corporate chains have deeper pockets and are willing to "wait" for gentrification. They are, in fact, willing to take a loss *indefinitely*. I spoke with the manager of one high-end retailer in SoHo who admitted to me that the store has been in the red since day one. But the parent company not only has the ability to offset those losses company-wide -- it's more than happy to take those losses just so it can maintain that "SoHo presence."

Unfortunately, all the independent retailers who made SoHo into the destination it is today could never swing that -- they had to actually turn a profit to survive.

I spoke with one West Broadway merchant who was having a "going out of business" sale a couple summers ago, and he said he'd opened his gallery in 1979, but was now moving to Brooklyn because the landlord arbitrarily jacked the rent from $19,000/month to -- get this -- $65,000! The poor guy told me he scraped together everything he had and counter-offered with $45,000. The landlord wouldn't even take his phone call.

The location is now an AT&T store, or some such non-descript commercial venue.

Sad. Very sad.

The bottom line is, this isn't simple supply-and-demand, economic Darwinism. The fact of the matter is, apparently virtually NO ONE can afford these retail rents, when even giants like the Dolce & Gabbana-type retailer I mentioned earlier are consistently taking a loss.

"Chase buying WaMu means I can get money out of ATMs for free back home in California."

You could do the same if you un-banked yourself and went with a credit union.

Jason great points about the love of chain stores.

The best joke going is the St Mark's book shop and the "neighborhood"'s desire to protest its rent yet not actually buy books from it.

Ironically one thing that draws the crowds into Soho that support the ATT, Starbucks,Chase are the trendy shops that are being pushed out.

It's cyclical. B&N killed the small bookstore. Online is killing B&N. Rents will eventually go down, some of the buildings are sinking under debt that they can't carry. Plus ça change.

of course, in killing the small bookstore, B&N made more books available at better prices than ever before. and, in turn, Amazon has done more to make book sales accessible and affordable than B&N and all the independents put together.

Do they have an Amazon up in Columbia County?

These big box stores are there for one reason: THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN!
NY'ers are basically all cookie cutter clones of each other, living a SATC lifestyle.
Hence, they all want the same shit.

Death to these ad-hoc 1-off "boutique" stores.
Fcuk that overpriced shit!
MASS PRODUCED IS THE BEST bang for the buck.
And the results speak for themselves!

THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN, AND VOTED WITH THEIR WALLETS!

CC: It's very interesting, since it's not my livelihood.

that's the rub. as lousy a time it is to find a job, is how great a time it is to start a business. the leverage that can be gained through cheap (if not free) technology is unprecedented. two or three people starting a company with some freelance labor (if necessary) can do the job of hundreds from not many years ago.

"kylewest, true true... I agree with your examples. They are the exceptions that prove the rule."
I came up with an arbitrary 9 examples of outstanding, special places all within a small area no more than 5 minutes across and I wasn't even trying. I guess if these are supposedly exceptions that prove some rule, then Greenwich Village and Soho remain exceptional.

Matt, you are right that good customer service and a good product can often not be enough to sustain a small businesss because of the high rents. I still miss the Gotham Book Mart and the large Coliseum bookshop (not the small one on West 42nd) and going to Barnes and Noble is not the same experience. I don't know what the small shops can offer other than a good or unique product and helpful customer assistance. If they are not situated in a prime location which is often not the case, you need a reason to travel there. Not everyone is willing to travel to buy that unique item.

Ebay! Ebay!
Who needs lame ass convenience store with some old crank behinds some register?
Fcuk that inconvenient shit!
Ebay! Ebay!

LONG LIVE NYC!
ALL HAIL MAIL ORDER!!

Oh great, someone else has joined columbiacounty in the nut house.

I think some of this is also generational. I can remember when you needed to attend a concert in order to buy the group's Tshirt and now anyone can buy anything over the Internet and convenience is what people want. I love browsing bookselves in the bookstores looking for new authors to try and I doubt that many people buy books that way now. The way that people shop has changed- look at the amount of gift cards that people instead of actual gifts.

The anecdotes about retailers maintaining stores at a loss, just to have the NYC soho presence are yet another sign of the global appeal of Manhattan/NYC. Like it or not, this place has an outsized impact. That drives up real estate prices in all forms. Is it good or awful...well, it doesn't matter. It just is. The small truly unique places have to be further out, like it or not.

"I still miss the Gotham Book Mart and the large Coliseum bookshop (not the small one on West 42nd) and going to Barnes and Noble is not the same experience. I don't know what the small shops can offer other than a good or unique product and helpful customer assistance."

Regarding bookstores, I'm not sure what the solution is. I actually rather like Barnes & Noble. But I do remember a time not too long ago (before Amazon, before the Internet), when independent bookstores provided a very necessary service: they carried books -- often unpopular books -- that the larger booksellers wouldn't touch. I'm thinking mostly in terms of gay and lesbian literature (not to mention erotica) and other highly marginalized subject matter like witchcraft and the occult. Now you can find that stuff not only online but in Barnes & Noble!

dealboy you are a retard.

All of you fail to realize that 95%+ percent of whatever you buy at non-chain stores or small local chains are made by the same fucking giant corporations that make everthing else.

You go to fairway, you get stuff from Kellogs, Archer-Daniel, Koch Industries, Kimberly Clark, Proctor & Gamble etc.

As for the loss-leading Manhattan flagship stores - that is a legitimate marketing expense for CERTAIN chain stores.

But the vast majority of chain stores in Manhattan make money - and chains like Starbucks have recently closed money -losing ones.

Some more examples: 99.9% of what you get at PC Richards is made by the same mega-corporations who make 99.9% of what you get at Best Buy, or what you'd buy at Amazon's electronics store. But I bet you $100 Best Buy employees get better benefits than PC Richards employees.

I am certain that the same giant global commodity houses sell coffee to Starbucks and to the wholesalers who sell to small mom and pop coffee shops. But almost without fail Starbucks gives better benefits and is more likely to buy "fair trade" and green products than the small mom and pops.

The benefits probably suck for a lot of chain stores versus working at say IBM, Goldman Sachs, or Pfizer, but are generally better than for the mom and pops.

But the local bedding store I pass on 86th street has the EXACT same crap as Bed Bath and Beyone - made most likely in China by the exact same manufacturers.

This is generally aimed at dealboy...

Jason, I'm not sure of your point. I would never buy an appliance NOT made by a giant multi-national. Would you? If so, you're an idiot? Would you guy a automobile that was a 1-off hand built? No, that would be borderline retarded. Death to mom and pops! All hail Sam Walton! Best prices, best products!

No you poopy headed moron. You said 'Almost everything is better when mass produced, and it's cheaper" and "MASS PRODUCED IS THE BEST bang for the buck." in obviously facetious statments. I am pointing out, correctly, that 99% of what you get at 95% of mom and pop stores are mass produced. Mass production has little if anything to do with the chains versus local store debate.

Obviously I like most first-world dwellers mostly consume mass-produced items, regardless of where I purchased them.

>No you poopy headed moron.

This is the same guy who wants to invite me to his office in midtown east to show me how professional he is.

"Bleecker Street jumps from $15,000/month to $49,000/month (these are actual numbers of one retailer who was pushed out"

Matt,
just curious, where on Bleecker? What cross street?

Thanks!

Probably some Marc Jacobs, or maybe the new retail store to house Kanye West's new fashion collection.

how come you've killed off boner, lucy and bb?

how come you killed off aboutready, w67thstreet, alanhart, and significantly reduced Wbottom and inododo?

How happy does that make you?

Hold on, let me ask lucille, Jim Hones or buyerbuyer, and then I'll get back to you.