A Monday Morning Moan

Where to begin? Do I start with the retail wasteland that once comprised the compelling elements of NYC -- unique stuff that brought the rest of the world here like moths to a flame?

I could be wrong but unless everyone is whizzing across the tri-state bridges because of a sudden urge to stock up at Duane Read (one on almost every block) or pay a hefty surcharge to withdraw funds they no longer have from Bank of America (one on every corner, there's even one in my apartment) there ain't much doing in the Big Apple beyond getting a mani/pedi, window shopping at Whole Paycheck, which you could do anywhere, or simply pretending that this metropolis offers anything challenging, different, or independent, beyond our huddled masses, waiting on cold platforms for trains that never come, when they aren't moaning about real estate and schools, that is.

It's hard not to feel the pinch when you have to check first to see if your favorite take-out joint is still in business each time you pick up the phone to order. Just yesterday, another local sushi restaurant bit the dust, although nothing except a drive-by would convince my friend David of this fact, who insisted he had eaten there just a few hours earlier.

My local Indian gem is boarded up now, and traveling from the far and similarly sterile east of York Avenue over go the west side this weekend, I couldn't help notice how the city has become one big homogeneous ode to conformity -- mega-chain stores that punctuate long stretches of sad, empty storefronts. In their effort to get the highest rents in history, NYC's landlords have turned the capital from a character destination into a smiling mouth of capped teeth. They have emptied it all out, pretty much, including the wonderful old Vesuvio Bakery on Prince Street. "It has that authenticity to it that's just magical," said a neighboring retailer, which made me weep instantly into my $4.99 packaged white bread from Gristedes, not because of the statement's truth as much as its inanity. Well, duh! The old Penn Station was magical too but we still knocked that sucker down and put up Madison Square Garden. Will we ever learn?

With just one and a half movie theaters left to service the entire Upper West Side and not an independent toy store within sight; with family-owned bookstores struggling for their life (Morningside Bookshop on Broadway at 114th) and independent retailers going out of business faster than you can say stimulus package, where are we headed? And don't tell me it's because we're in a recession. The retail flight has been going on a while now.

But all is not entirely lost. One tiny, little piece of good news amid the wailing and coat-renting:
Tropicana Juice is reverting back to it's original packaging and ditching the generic crap that they have paid their ad agency millions to design, based solely on 'research.' Apparently, Tropicana's trusted consumers -- not the few polled for the focus groups -- hate the new look, me included. In a nifty and highly ironic PR move that underlines how much we have become a society that compensates failure, the agency behind the mess, Arnell, declared that the negative consumer response to the new OJ packaging was a good thing and that they were glad that Tropicana was getting "this kind of attention." Yes sir, they are feeling just dandy, applauding a job well done, all the way to the bank.

Gotta' go. I think it's my landlord calling.