I would be more comforted by this if financial services were the only New York-intensive industry that was biting it. But, like most of the world, there seems to be little acknowledgment that media, both new and especially old, and its twin idiot brother, advertising, are also sucking wind. I'd be interested in know what the cumulative percentage of unemployment is when you combine those fields with finance, then throw in fashion.
I'm a former Manhattanite/Brooklynite and while I will always love those places, I'll happily keeping fighting the good fight in little Wilmington, Delaware...our hipsters are few and far between but at least our creative class has the benefit of a blank slate and having to play nice with others. Not all of these others are "smart" or "like-minded"...but since when did a community of such false diversity inspire anything but mediocrity? No thanks.
So... Psychiatrist slumlords in Manhattan are going to save NY by doing something to gastropubs, but I'm not sure what exactly. Sounds like another riveting example of omphaloskepsis in Gotham. Wake me up when the plot becomes less gratuitously self-involved.
So comes the news from the (itself endangered) San Francisco Chronicle: Both the Virgin Megastore in San Francisco and the massive Union Square location in New York City will close in April. (The Times Square store is also slated to shut down in April; that news was announced last month.) Expect liquidation sales to begin next month.
@frankwolftown: Time to get excited about the prospect of Walmart Times Square.
With the glut of empty big box stores in Manhattan-two Virgin Megastores, three Circuit Citys, two CompUSA's-and a dearth of retailers with any interest in such spaces, it is only a matter of time until the property owners saddled with those millions of empty square feet begin to pressure the city council to ease off the anti-Walmart rhetoric that has so far kept them subjugated to the suburbs.
@nycaviation: That's a really good point. Let's hope Target beats them to it. Target is at least better than Wal-Mart and we don't have one in Manhattan yet.
That article about Eagle Rock is completely annoying. It basically encapsulates the worst part of gentrification which is that a neighborhood doesn't matter until white yuppies move in and bring in things like Whole Foods.
@tunamelt: Actually the LAT Neighborhood mapping is a kinda cool project. Truth: all my Los Feliz friends thought I lived in a way cooler place when I was in LA. Glendale.
@Strehle: Or as Richard Ford wrote in a short story: "makes us no more or less than animals who meet on the road -- watchful, unforgiving, without patience or desire."
I actually don't find that line as much of a downer as it looks sitting there on the page.
this is crazy. I was JUST in eagle rock, because I was scouting neighborhoods in LA. yeah - hipster paradise, it's not (note to the residents of eagle rock: what's UP with that bombed out dairy queen on the main drag, with all the homeless people? I felt like I was in diamond bar), but what it does have? a beautiful range of hills just on the edge of town, easy access to silverlake and pasadena (hey, don't laugh - pasedena is really lovely), and good rents just up the 2 from downtown - I'd still consider it.
eagle rock is a neighborhood tho, not a suburb - you want to talk about forclosure blighted suburbs of LA, try riverside to lake elsinore - that's foreclosure alley.
@The Boulevard of Broken Queens: Agreed on all counts (with the perspective of a Pasadena resident). And add vast swathes of San Bernardino County to foreclosure alley, though it already had plenty of blight before that.
@Strehle: are you anywhere near the norton simon? I was kinda blown away just how NICE pasadena is - I expected it to be like, I dunno, northridge or any of those other blighted strip mauled towns near LA, but then I went to the artscenter open house and DAMN what a nice looking town !!! must be kinda hellish when the 210 is backed up, tho?
eagle rock seems nice enough tho - I mean, 400 sq ft w/ a garage for $900 on a nice residential street, 15 min. from downtown w/o traffic? quiet too.
(btw: where else in LA is cheapish and convenient now? eagle rock, mt. washington, maybe parts of culver city? kinda liking culver city, for the arts thing. give me the insidery scoop, peeps)
@The Boulevard of Broken Queens: Ugh, on cheapish but still "really" in the LA area (and not, say, Covina) I don't know at the moment. My partner and I moved into our current home in Summer 2004, and the downward movement in prices has decided for us that we're not going anywhere soon. So our real estate porn viewing has been limited to seeing what's happening in our local neighborhoods.
We live in NE Pasadena, <10 minutes from the museum - nice area. I was just in Old Town this afternoon because it was so sunny today.
@The Boulevard of Broken Queens: It depends on what kind of thing you're looking for. I live in Koreatown and I love my apartment and my nearness to Metro Rail and all sorts of sweet stuff.
"Old Town" Pasadena was lovely before it became a mall. Now it's just like anyplace else with its Crate & Barrel and Williams Sonoma and Gap. Feh. I hate the suburbanization of city centers.
Hehe, someone fooled the NYT reporter into thinking Eagle Rock was a anything but Eagle Rock. It's a lovely town, but cutting edge hipster 'burb? Nonononono...
Mentone, though... Mentone is on fire, and has actually become the epicenter of the neo-expressionist movement. Coffee houses, salons, lofts -- it's got it all.
@SarahHeartburn: I arrived a when Mayor Koch was covering the windows of burned-out buildings with decals, so that the neighborhoods wouldn't look gloomy from the expressways.
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[tech.yahoo.com]
So comes the news from the (itself endangered) San Francisco Chronicle: Both the Virgin Megastore in San Francisco and the massive Union Square location in New York City will close in April. (The Times Square store is also slated to shut down in April; that news was announced last month.) Expect liquidation sales to begin next month.
02/28/09
With the glut of empty big box stores in Manhattan-two Virgin Megastores, three Circuit Citys, two CompUSA's-and a dearth of retailers with any interest in such spaces, it is only a matter of time until the property owners saddled with those millions of empty square feet begin to pressure the city council to ease off the anti-Walmart rhetoric that has so far kept them subjugated to the suburbs.
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And no matter what anyone says, hipsters are basically just yuppies with attitude and a general lack of cleanliness.
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The comments are great, if you enjoy watching people battle it out over real estate labels.
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I just wonder at the insane crazy class/race battle of naming neighborhoods that goes on in the comments. It's like Curbed on crack.
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I actually don't find that line as much of a downer as it looks sitting there on the page.
02/28/09
eagle rock is a neighborhood tho, not a suburb - you want to talk about forclosure blighted suburbs of LA, try riverside to lake elsinore - that's foreclosure alley.
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eagle rock seems nice enough tho - I mean, 400 sq ft w/ a garage for $900 on a nice residential street, 15 min. from downtown w/o traffic? quiet too.
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We live in NE Pasadena, <10 minutes from the museum - nice area. I was just in Old Town this afternoon because it was so sunny today.
02/28/09
Also, I moved.
So maybe I can't talk.
02/28/09
But I'm also 23 and single.
03/01/09
"Old Town" Pasadena was lovely before it became a mall. Now it's just like anyplace else with its Crate & Barrel and Williams Sonoma and Gap. Feh. I hate the suburbanization of city centers.
02/28/09
Mentone, though... Mentone is on fire, and has actually become the epicenter of the neo-expressionist movement. Coffee houses, salons, lofts -- it's got it all.
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