The Death of a Once Great City: The fall of NY and the urban crisis of affluence

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by 10023

Good. That means you can finally buy decent produce in Harlem.

Maybe not the easiest to get to, but Fairway has been there for a very long time.

[cjreisen]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Actually, it sounds like you haven't been above 96th Street in quite some time. There is a Whole Foods on 125th Street. Does anything more need to be said?

I go up there bi-weekly, and have you seen that Whole foods? The building looks like it's clad in recycled aluminum from a dump. 125th street is by NO MEANS gentrified. Opening up a grocer in an underserved area that just lost its largest grocer (Pathmark) isn't gentrification. If oyu want to tell me there's a shift happening, point out Manhattanville and Columbia restarting that whole area. But 125th street is by no stretch of the imagination nice, or washed out. It's still scary and ugly as always.

[10023]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

The LES is the trendiest part of Manhattan today, but it wasn't that way 10-15 years ago. There were far more dive bars and underground music clubs back then than there are now. Today it's mostly office workers bouncing around to places that used to be dive bars. What's left of the old LES culture has mostly migrated into Brooklyn, particularly into Bushwick and Bed-Stuy along the J train corridor.

I know. I dated a girl who lived down there in 2005-06 and you could still hear gunshots at night. That hasn’t been the case for a while now.

But you already had places like the Box, or even Schiller’s, Stanton Social, Pianos, Barrio Chino, etc. I was spending a lot of time in that neighborhood for years, and it hasn’t been down and out or full of dive bars for way longer than 15 years. There are some more fancy places now (which probably started with Beauty & Essex), but I quite like the Ludlow Hotel (Dirty French is awesome).

Chinatown is really the last ungentrified part of Lower Manhattan, a few speakeasy cocktail bars notwithstanding.

[cjreisen]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Yeah, I don't get that, at all.

The big changes in NYC aren't in core Manhattan. They're everywhere but core Manhattan. NYC had a highly gentrified core 30 years ago. The core is much cleaner and more spit-polished, the retail more upscale, but most neighborhoods aren't fundamentally different. The Village and Midtown and UES are basically the same.

If you lived in, say, Murray Hill or Brooklyn Heights in 1988 it wouldn't be that different from 2018, outside of new construction here and there. The neighborhoods with the absolute most radical changes are South Bronx, Central Harlem, Bushwick, Bed Stuy, Williamsburg, LIC, Flushing, Sunset Park.

Yeah but sunset park, south bronx, central harlem, are all seeing low quality infill, typically in abandoned lots, and typically deeply affordable housing. It's not hipsters and starbucks moving there, it's old time residents and their offspring finally getting quality housing. This as a result of the greater government budget that has come from NYC's prosperity.

[10023]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Maybe not the easiest to get to, but Fairway has been there for a very long time.

I used to live in the Upper West Side and I have no idea how Fairway acquired the reputation it had. Perhaps only because New York’s mass market alternatives (Food Emporium, Gristedes, etc) are just so unbelievably terrible.

[cjreisen]

Originally Posted by 10023

I know. I dated a girl who lived down there in 2005-06 and you could still hear gunshots at night. That hasn’t been the case for a while now.

But you already had places like the Box, or even Schiller’s, Stanton Social, Pianos, Barrio Chino, etc. I was spending a lot of time in that neighborhood for years, and it hasn’t been down and out or full of dive bars for way longer than 15 years. There are some more fancy places now (which probably started with Beauty & Essex), but I quite like the Ludlow Hotel (Dirty French is awesome).

Chinatown is really the last ungentrified part of Lower Manhattan, a few speakeasy cocktail bars notwithstanding.

True, I walked in two bridges last week, almost every block of it. And not a hipster place in sight. Still almost 100% chinese, and very unkept, grungy and dirty as it's always been. And that's a good thing.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by cjreisen

I go up there bi-weekly, and have you seen that Whole foods? The building looks like it's clad in recycled aluminum from a dump. 125th street is by NO MEANS gentrified. Opening up a grocer in an underserved area that just lost its largest grocer (Pathmark) isn't gentrification. If oyu want to tell me there's a shift happening, point out Manhattanville and Columbia restarting that whole area. But 125th street is by no stretch of the imagination nice, or washed out. It's still scary and ugly as always.

Absurd. There's a Gucci in Harlem. The Pathmark closed because it's getting replaced by a gigantic condo tower, by Extell (developer of Billionaires Row supertalls).

These things are subjective, of course, but if you consider Central Harlem "scary", then I'm not sure how to respond. Is it because there are still lots of black people and subsidized housing there?

Are you new to NYC? There's subsidized housing, mostly housing poor blacks and Latinos, in every core NYC neighborhood. There's a gigantic housing project two blocks from 15 CPW, which has $100 million apartments. There's a homeless shelter almost next to 220 CPS, which reportedly has a $250 million apartment sale.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by cjreisen

Yeah but sunset park, south bronx, central harlem, are all seeing low quality infill, typically in abandoned lots, and typically deeply affordable housing. It's not hipsters and starbucks moving there, it's old time residents and their offspring finally getting quality housing. This as a result of the greater government budget that has come from NYC's prosperity.

I do not recognize the NYC you speak of. It's like you're talking about an alien city.

There is essentially no "affordable housing" being built in Sunset Park or the gentrifying parts of the South Bronx. Central Harlem has some new affordable housing, but most new housing is luxury condos.

All these areas have "hipsters and Starbucks", though the primary demographic drivers are all distinct. In Sunset Park, it's upwardly mobile Chinese, in Central Harlem it's typical professionals, obviously with an AA tilt, and in South Bronx it tends to be creatives.

In another post you claim Two Bridges has no gentrification, yet there's a giant 900-ft. luxury condo nearing completion in the middle of the area, with four supertalls/near supertalls planned. What exactly is your standard for gentrification? You need like a 300-floor all-marble building filled with Saudi royals?

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by cjreisen

I go up there bi-weekly, and have you seen that Whole foods? The building looks like it's clad in recycled aluminum from a dump. 125th street is by NO MEANS gentrified. Opening up a grocer in an underserved area that just lost its largest grocer (Pathmark) isn't gentrification. If oyu want to tell me there's a shift happening, point out Manhattanville and Columbia restarting that whole area. But 125th street is by no stretch of the imagination nice, or washed out. It's still scary and ugly as always.

Uh, ok... I guess you must be the new New York of which the author speaks...

[cjreisen]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I do not recognize the NYC you speak of. It's like you're talking about an alien city.

There is essentially no "affordable housing" being built in Sunset Park or the gentrifying parts of the South Bronx. Central Harlem has some new affordable housing, but most new housing is luxury condos.

All these areas have "hipsters and Starbucks", though the primary demographic drivers are all distinct. In Sunset Park, it's upwardly mobile Chinese, in Central Harlem it's typical professionals, obviously with an AA tilt, and in South Bronx it tends to be creatives.

In another post you claim Two Bridges has no gentrification, yet there's a giant 900-ft. luxury condo nearing completion in the middle of the area, with four supertalls/near supertalls planned. What exactly is your standard for gentrification? You need like a 300-floor all-marble building filled with Saudi royals?

All supertalls including One Manhattan Square are being built to the east of Manhattan Bridge, the eastern boundary of two bridges, thus, not two bridges, so your point is moot.

And are you a god damn fool? There's almost no market rate housing being built in South Bronx, all of it is affordable.
https://www.6sqft.com/la-central-992...-construction/
Take this for example, just because buildings are nice doesn't mean they're not affordable. No millenials are moving to South Bronx, it's locals who already lvie there and their offspring.

[10023]

Originally Posted by cjreisen

True, I walked in two bridges last week, almost every block of it. And not a hipster place in sight. Still almost 100% chinese, and very unkept, grungy and dirty as it's always been. And that's a good thing.

Is it though? Why would I not want that neighborhood to gentrify a bit? I can’t even think of a decent Chinese restaurant in that particular corner of Chinatown (and most Chinatown restaurants suck anyway).

The fact is that the optimal situation lies somewhere between “skid row shithole” and “so expensive that only banks can afford the retail rents”, but the golden age of a neighborhood is probably closer to the latter than the former.

[LouisVanDerWright]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Actually, it sounds like you haven't been above 96th Street in quite some time. There is a Whole Foods on 125th Street. Does anything more need to be said?

There's a Whole Foods at 63RD and Cottage Grove in Chicago which is the "Heart of Darkness" as far as your average scared, racist, white Northsider is concerned. I had no idea Englewood is now one of the most gentrified neighborhoods in Chicago. After all, there's a Whole Foods there, does anything else need to be said?

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by 10023

I used to live in the Upper West Side and I have no idea how Fairway acquired the reputation it had. Perhaps only because New York’s mass market alternatives (Food Emporium, Gristedes, etc) are just so unbelievably terrible.

Yeah, I don't think full service supermarkets in New York are really that great compared to what most of the rest of the country is accustomed to, but there is only so much you can squeeze into these small footprints.

I do think that many stores have stepped their game up once Whole Foods started to proliferate into different areas of the city. I remember a time when places like C Town and Key Food didn't really care about organic produce and gourmet products. Now you're pretty hard pressed to find one without it within a 10 mile radius of midtown Manhattan.

[cjreisen]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Absurd. There's a Gucci in Harlem. The Pathmark closed because it's getting replaced by a gigantic condo tower, by Extell (developer of Billionaires Row supertalls).

These things are subjective, of course, but if you consider Central Harlem "scary", then I'm not sure how to respond. Is it because there are still lots of black people and subsidized housing there?

Are you new to NYC? There's subsidized housing, mostly housing poor blacks and Latinos, in every core NYC neighborhood. There's a gigantic housing project two blocks from 15 CPW, which has $100 million apartments. There's a homeless shelter almost next to 220 CPS, which reportedly has a $250 million apartment sale.

The Gucci in Harlem is purely a novelty, and not at all actually emblematic of market forces up there. No more relevant to the Harlem market than the Prada store in Marfa Texas is of tumbleweed backcountry texas,

And your Harlem comment is so ignorant and stupid. I want to see you comfortably walk around Camden NJ at night time, and when you're scared shitless, I'll ask if its race based. So dumb to make this a race discussion. It's 125th street that's scary, not the rest of the area. But I've been mugged there, and chased in recent years. It's not gentrified, and not remotely nice.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright

There's a Whole Foods at 63RD and Cottage Grove in Chicago which is the "Heart of Darkness" as far as your average scared, racist, white Northsider is concerned. I had no idea Englewood is now one of the most gentrified neighborhoods in Chicago. After all, there's a Whole Foods there, does anything else need to be said?

Well, the difference is that the Harlem Whole Foods didn't have to be lured there with financial incentives.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

It's hard to say how much of it is a really a product of New York's ongoing gentrification and how much of is just part of a broader cultural shift, but when it comes to everything from music to fashion to design to art, one certainly gets the impression that New York is less nationally or globally relevant now than it has at probably any point in the past century. Which is to say, it's not not relevant - it's too big and too multi-faceted to ever not be - but its role has in part been supplanted by other places (Los Angeles is probably the most culturally "exciting" place in the US these days), and is no longer the incubator of cultural & artistic innovation that it was once known for being.

Of course, we do have to remember that the New York of the 60s-90s was a product of a very specific time & set of circumstances. The confluence of affordable space in the centre of a hyper-urban global megacity, unique mix of cultures (at a time when most other places weren't particularly diverse), and countercultural zeitgeist of the time is something that was never going to last forever and couldn't be replicated today.

Many European artists and intellectuals moved to NYC during WWII and didn't move back afterward. The art world didn't return to Paris after the Nazis were driven out. Most Americans sort-of missed this detail because a few of the most prominent Europeans like Picasso did not move.

European artists and others from around the world continued moving to NYC through the 80s and 90s because there was no art center of significance in Europe. A lot of American tourists STILL think Paris is the center of the art world, 70~ years after it moved!

London is now more of an art capital in Europe because there is much more crazy finance money in London than in Paris. Wall St. has long had a symbiotic relationship with the NYC art world, however, and so there is little risk of art dealing being dislodged from Manhattan. The artists themselves, however, can rarely afford to live and work in NYC.

Not only can stuff like Andy Warhol & the Velvet Underground never happen again, neither can stuff as recent as Michael Aleg & the Club Kids. The internet started auspiciously in the mid-90s as an extension of DIY zines. But the smart phone thing and facebook flattened everything. It flattened regional differences. I was just listening this morning to NPR about how regional drag queen cultures are disappearing because everyone's looking at the same Instagram celebs and taking their cues from a shared source.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by cjreisen

The Gucci in Harlem is purely a novelty, and not at all actually emblematic of market forces up there. No more relevant to the Harlem market than the Prada store in Marfa Texas is of tumbleweed backcountry texas,

There is no Prada in Marfa, TX, obviously.

And your comment re. Gucci is frankly stupid. Unless you intimately know Gucci's financials, how would you be able to ascertain that they opened a store for a reason other than profit?

Originally Posted by cjreisen

And your Harlem comment is so ignorant and stupid. I want to see you comfortably walk around Camden NJ at night time, and when you're scared shitless, I'll ask if its race based. So dumb to make this a race discussion. It's 125th street that's scary, not the rest of the area. But I've been mugged there, and chased in recent years. It's not gentrified, and not remotely nice.

Now I'm reasonably confident you're just doing some wacky trolling persona from some random locale. 125th St. is the busiest street in Harlem, packed with visitors, and it would almost be impossible to be "mugged and chased" in that maelstrom. Are the Swedish pensioner gospel tours getting jacked or something? Take a visit sometime.

In any case, if you think Camden, NJ (probably the poorest, most violent, most abandoned city in the Eastern U.S.) and Upper Manhattan are remotely similar, then there's not much else to say. Your sense of discernment is an epic, total fail.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

The internet started auspiciously in the mid-90s as an extension of DIY zines. But the smart phone thing and facebook flattened everything. It flattened regional differences. I was just listening this morning to NPR about how regional drag queen cultures are disappearing because everyone's looking at the same Instagram celebs and taking their cues from a shared source.

The US population is also much more mobile and transient than it used to be...flattening out once distinct local cultures as people spread out all over the country. I'm from New York and have lived in Texas for 20 years but I still retain my 'New York ways' and there are lots of people like me here who changed the fabric of Houston. New York is getting this in return by a huge steady influx of non-New Yorkers making their impact on the city. While New Yorkers continue to move out.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by cjreisen

And are you a god damn fool? There's almost no market rate housing being built in South Bronx, all of it is affordable.

This is funny stuff. You should offer your real estate advice to Brookfield Properties, one of the biggest residential developers on earth. They're only building 3,000 luxury rentals in the South Bronx, and this is one of many megadevelopments going up, none of it subsidized.

Originally Posted by cjreisen

No millenials are moving to South Bronx, it's locals who already lvie there and their offspring.

More hilarity. There are no "locals" living in industrial warehouses, obviously. There is no one living in these former manufacturing areas. The newcomers are almost entirely non-local millennials.

[Obadno]

“Gentrification is bad”

Yawn I have seen too much improvement all over the country in formerly blighted awful cities to agree with this.