Tracking the Hyper-Gentrification of New York, One Lost Knish Place at a Time

The joy of looking backward through rose-colored glasses. I grew up on the LES in the late '70s and early '80s. I don't miss the crime or filth at all. I don't miss having high school friends "jumped" on the subway on their way to and from school. I don't miss the "rapid dismissal" from school on Halloween or whenever there was thought to be a dangerous situation, which was not infrequently. Of course there are things I miss, but I'd rather be able to walk the streets of my old neighborhood safely and without fear.

The New York heyday Jeremiah Moss imagines he was part of lasted from about 1947 to 1952. He and other artist/long shore man/poet types could easily move to Camden, N. J. - where you can buy a house for the equivalent of one month of New York rent - but Camden's not cool enough, or it's too dangerous, or it's not New York, so they don't want to.

I was a Legal Aid Society lawyer in Brooklyn in 1983. You should have seen Brooklyn in 1983. Now my daughter works in the Meatpacking District, near the High Line. A NYC of little neighborhoods and weird places and a cup of coffee regular at Chock Full O' Nuts and open fans in subway cars has long since disappeared. Something has been lost. My head hurts at the changes when I visit from Upstate. It isn't fun or charming or witty or quirky anymore. If that's progress, I'll stay Upstate.

Do you really think that Knish places were always in NYC? Knish places came with an ethnic group. Now, knish places are being replaced by est Indian and Asian places. New York City is constantly evolving. I am sure that Peter Stuyvesant wouldn't have recognized the place even 100 or 200 years ago. If enough people still wanted knishes, they'd still be available. Get used to it.

All I can say, is it is sad...am not sorry I left, only sorry to hear that New York is done, and only needs for someone to stick a fork in it and turn it over.

Since 9/11 the City has been on a mission to deny its vulnerability, that is, the once characteristic neuroticism of New Yorkers referred to by the author now gone haywire into full on blatant and unforgiving narcissism. That so many of the ma and pa businesss that enriched neighborhoods are gone is just another reminder of how all of the US has gone the way of Walmart. We can never have the great post-WW II NYC back, but it could regain some soul and humanity. Why not open its arms once again to ALL ? In other words, live in the spirit of that Statue of Liberty in New York's great harbor. Make New York Great Again.

I cannot wait to finishing reading "Vanishing New York-How A Great City Lost It's Soul"! The author writes with the passion and heartfelt observance of a Jane Jacobs. Contrary to several other comments posted here, Jeremiah IS a New Yorker! No one invests ten years of his or her time for zero money, writing a blog hoping that maybe someday it will magically turn into a book. Ironically, the fact that Jeremiah Moss could even write this book points to so much of what is being lost. Nobody starts out with the goal of being a “starving artist”, but in a New York and other places of an earlier time, you could still survive and at least pursue that dream, “Yeah, I’m going to be a writer” and I’m going to do it here. – Dianna M

Hansbury makes a common era among those who came to NYC from elsewhere: that is, he feels the city was at its best when he arrived, and wants it perpetually frozen at that moment. He knows and cares little about the City of the 80s, 70s, 60s, 30s, the Belle Époque, etc. People have always complained that New York was changing for the worse: I wouldn't be surprised to discover that the Lenape did the same thing before the arrival of the Dutch.

Books like this make me want to re-read, E. B. White's, Here is NY, written in 1941.

The problem with this worldview (cityview, more accurately) is that it's so Manhattancentric. I had lived in Manhattan since arriving in the city in 1976. Last year, I moved to the South Bronx and discovered that the "old" New York is alive and kicking in the neighborhoods of the dreaded Outer Boroughs.

The central problem is the way municipal government pays for itself. In most US cities government is financed through real estate taxes. The relentless appetite of municipal government for new funds in a time of federal retrenchment drives local government to encourage the continuing increase in value of the tax base. That is at the root of it. That said, much of the city still has edge. The East Village and the alphabets as well as large areas of Brooklyn are full of adventure and surprises. And Harlem and the Barrio haven't entirely lost their character yet. Perhaps a more questing investigation would turn up some interesting things.

Like many here, I view this cat as a relative newbie New Yorker, having planted his first impoverished Con-mark on an imagined still-wild Alphabet City sidewalk in the mid 90s. Here's the thing that strikes me as most true: books like these could be written and relished by every single generation of New Yorkers, homeboys or implants like Moss. The past was always better. That's how the self-deluded emollient power of nostalgia works. But there's also the undeniable flaw of the angry nostalgist at work here - they're the biggest narcissist in the room. It's *their* New York (or London, or San Francisco) that's gone missing. Gobbled up by the voracious pack of heartless monster other narcissists with more money. Need proof I'm right? Just wait 20 years. Somewhere there's a kid getting on a bus aimed at Port Authority who, after falling in sufficient love with unrepeatable $15 cocktails at throwback LES joints and $8 franks @ Coney, will write his agonized eulogy for *his" lost New York. That's how the yearning bone inside all of us works.

You people seem to want to hate this city, decry its lack of soul, find it boring, yada yada. Every single day, I have to choose among hundreds of events, many cheap or free, dozens of museums, more than in the 80's, flourishing galleries, libraries (private and public). More independent movie theaters than back in the day. So much still to see, more than ever to do. You all sound like old farts. And I notice that the people who complain the most don't even live here. Your loss.

Same thing has been happening a lot of places. Developers are tearing down everything vaguely affordable in Boston suburbs that were once merely middle class to cram MacMansions onto modest lots selling for $1.5 million and up. We're losing economic diversity.

Manhattan is clean, polished and expensive. But...very hard to find a place to have a grilled cheese on rye with tomato sandwich.

Lived here my whole life. Love the past. Except I couldn't walk on side streets at night. Don't mourn the underbelly that took lives and created alcoholics and drug addicts. Look at the Hudson River Park! It's gorgeous! Look at Brooklyn, look at Queens. Look at the food! Pulled noodles everywhere you look! Lighten up. Things change. Sometimes for the worse. Sometimes for the better.

In keeping with NYC's longstanding tradition of giving ethnic knicknames to appropriate enclaves, how about calling Hudson Yards "Little Dubai" to match its futuristic, sterile, corporate ethos..?

balderdash! neither would ginia bellafante live in binghamton. almost to a person, the kids with money, to whom nyc now belongs, are boring "takers" who do not even know what the words "mutuality" and reciprocity" mean. i am not against youth pre se, just against boring selfish yuppies who are not entitled to their multi-million squats.

I am a native New Yorker who is also very dispirited with the mallification and Mid-Westernization of my hometown. Yes, it was far more authentic and fun to live in NYC when I got out of college in the late '80's...but Moss isn't a native and his 20-+ years doesn't give him belly-aching rights. He's from Massachusetts and he's a transplant just like those he looks down upon...he's made a meal-no, a buffet out of his lamenting of "lost/vanishing" New York. HE knows a very recent part of it, and will always be that guy from New England who natters on and on about how he "really" knows Manhattan and environs. Truth is, he doesn't.

For all the understandable nostalgia that a changing nyc engenders in those of us who have been here more than "a few years", I take today's nyc ten times over the nyc of the 70s, 80s and even early to mid 90s. I envy today's 20-somethings who have more interesting places to visit than I ever had in the 90s when I was in my 20s. Today every place looks inviting and welcomes you in. Back then, "shady" was the qualifying feature of what today is remembered as "a cultural institution". Today I can get lost in the city with my 8 year old without worrying that we'll encounter some porn shop or a prostitute offering her services. We can spend time in parks that back in the "good old days" were drug infested and filled with drug addicts consuming in plain sight. All these changes, bemoaned by many and derided by even more, are the constant that should be relished even when it impacts us in ways we are not ready to accept.

Good review except that the reviewer felt compelled to find a critical angle (the last 2 paragraphs). Who cares?! When someone writes a fine obituary of a great jazz musician they don't end it by suggesting that the death opens the door for a new generation of jazz musicians; that would be foolish and disrespectful of the loss. It's enough to mourn the vanishing NYC, and condemn the ugliness of what's replaced it.

"The only thing that doesn't change in New York is New Yorkers talking about how much New York has changed." - Julie Kessler DIFFICULT PEOPLE

I don't care what anyone says, NY was a lot more interesting, exciting, vibrant, welcoming, financially manageable, culturally alive and fun in the 70's and 80's. Gentrification is just a fancy word for minority removal, bohemian suppression, the blandification and suburbanization of the urban landscape so yuppies and hipsters don't feel threatened by a little blight and those exotic immigrants and people of color with their strange languages and exotic ways. No sense of community or solidarity, its just sit at a Starbucks and stare into a computer. Koch began it but Giuliani and especially Bloomberg - a billionaire ruling the city on behalf of billionaires - ruined it. The grit that made NYC great is going, going, gone, so I guess all you folks can move back to the ah ha cities you came here from - asap.

Same thing going on in San Francisco these days

Not to grossly overgeneralize... but... I think big magnet cities are changing in two very key ways: who lives there and who plays there. In the 50's and certainly the 60's, 70's and 80's New York filled during the day with workers who commuted in from the burbs. They left town at night and on weekends with their suburban tastes and values, leaving much of the city to the interesting people who didn't come to New York for a commuter job, but came to New York to de-construct then re-construct themselves into what they wanted to be. Now all the kids whose parents were those commuters don't want to live in the suburbs where they grew up. They want to live in the city but they bring their suburban tastes in with them. So we get Home Depot's and Chipotles and all the rest. Add to that the fact that the glamor of big cities is being monetized down to the last square inch -- its New Year's Eve at Times Sq. someplace in New York 24/7/365. These trends leave the city feeling crowded and busy but hollowed out of anything eccentric or non-conformist. Its bland and transactional everywhere you look.

New York's community boards have spent the last 30 years turning the city into a gated community where no newcomers are welcome. They protest every time someone proposes building new housing so that the people moving here don't have to displace the people already here. As the author mentions at the end, New York City has become unaffordable and lost its soul because of land use restrictions. Make more room!

I stayed to long in New York. The day to day stress of paying rent equal to 11 days of work out of 20 took a toll. The real estate industry claimed Manhattan and the boroughs. I moved to Texas. Affordability I thought. But it is a state with outsized pride, among those a glittering health care industry. And now the stress eats me up each day again. Health insurance premiums eat up 6 days of work out of an expanded 24 working days.

I moved to NYC in 1980 for college, and left it this year. The hyper-gentrification came to Prospect Heights, and this was much to my benefit. But the character of the gentrifiers (greed, dismissiveness of the working class, entitlement for lapdogs over people) made me happy to end that chapter of my life. Now we enjoy the expanse of nature upstate, and a more accepting culture.

"New York" is vanishing and the Great City has los it's soul...and then again...isn't it true that "the older you get, the better it was." I can remember as a kid (1960s - early 70s) when my parent's generation, who were born in the 19-teens and 20s and had grown up in New York City ...were constantly complaining about how dangerous, ratty and scuzzy NYC had become and how far it had fallen from those bucolic days of yore when the Bronx and Brooklyn actually WERE THE SUBURBS.

The first paragraph says it all for me. Everyday I walk through what used to be truly interesting parts of the greatest city on earth and think, "Why am I even here anymore?"

I live and work here and have for 50 years. New York is now a safe place to live in contrast to years ago. Central Park is clean and delightful. Madison Square , Tompkins etc are restored and lovely. I see children on the street with family or nannies but they are here. We continue to have equality issues which need addressing. I agree the glass , neo hideous architecture is an aesthetic and community disaster, Buit look at Battery Park City, the parks there and the walks along the river. In so many ways it is a Golden Age and yes we go to Brooklyn!!

Whenever an article appears here that mentions Bloomberg, there's always a sizeable claque lamenting that he's not our President - so that he could do for the country what he did for New York. I couldn't agree more. Imagine how wonderful a land this would be if nobody could afford to live here!

What has happened to Manhattan and Brooklyn is simply an example of how we have developed as a society, and it is happening all across the country (albeit in NYC it is happening on a geometrically-scaled index of wealth!). The price of comfort and safety, on a broad scale, means a rush to the middle. Things on the cultural "High" end and things on the cultural "Low" end graft together (in old NYC, the marvelous tension was that they lived together, without merging). So we don't have as many sublime experiences, but we do have a plethora of very well designed, squeaky clean, safe, comfortable, hip experiences. It's the devil we chose as a socierty... even those of us who didn't want it.

Are crime figures down? Are tax figures up? What’s the impact on insurance? Police? Fire? Sometimes you have to accept that a colorful rainbow of bohemian characters just isn’t as impactful on society at the right points as we might hope. See Cincinnati’s OTR area.

Income tax of 99% on ALL income over $250K, and guaranteed annual income of, say, $12K for each of the rest of us.

This is nothing short of a brilliant book. It is not only great, it is courageous. City Hall would rather sit in denial of what is actually taking place making empty gestures. Due to a combination of the usefulness of the money big real estate provides to campaigns and lobbyists, to an incredible lack of will to create intelligent city planning and government programs, we are left with a city in decline. A city without a creative class-without the working class who shovel the coal into the burning furnaces and make it go-without small individual store owners with eyes on the street, New York is as likely to fail as the Titanic, a ship fueled by greed once thought to be unsinkable. Those of us who live here understand only too well that the ship is sinking. Our days are numbered no matter how hard we may try to hang onto the precious soul of New York and our place here. Bravo to all those who do fight on like the urban hero Jeremiah Moss.

The obvious solution to this problem is to encourage the building of a lot of new housing and improve transit to accommodate new people. Why is this is so difficult? There are are large areas of the outer boroughs and NJ that are relatively low density, and either new public housing or relaxing of zoning regulations could easily accomplish this goal.

I wonder to what degree the reviewer of this book is willing to admit the complicity of her newspaper in the very processes that the author of the book is documenting? The NYT has not been a neutral observer in these transformations. It has been a willing participant and often even an enthusiastic cheerleader.

I am nostalgic too, and had the privilege of running the streets of the "city" in the '70's as a street rat, but it is too easy to forget about the extensive blight in the satellite cities at that time, expecially in the Bronx and Brooklyn. Yes, there really is only one city, Manhattan, but this too will pass.

Having lived in Manhattan from the 70s onward for some 30+ years, the changes are palpable and distressing. Not only have well-known cultural institutions disappeared, a whole way of life is largely gone, one based on sophisticated, long-time New Yorkers informally passing on their collective knowledge to incoming, inquisitive "entry level" young people, who seek adventure in all disciplines and career paths. The true essence of a city is this critical work as a cosmopolitan "teaching and thinking machine" amid the chaos of different groups mingling and colliding, and that job is, for now, coming to a close. As for leaving for other places, I would cite Mr. Johnson: "London does not truly satisfy a man, but it leaves him completely dissatisfied with every place else."

I fell off my chair here in Binghamton, NY when I read the last paragraph of this review, which cited a "recent study" for the proposition that land-use restrictions in NY have directly contributed to job growth in this town. When I picked myself up I read the cited study, which purported to find that Binghamton would have had 170% less jobs between 1964 and 2009 if NY had no land use restrictions. Since 170% less jobs makes no sense, I assume the authors meant 170% less job growth. Those of us who have lived in Binghamton during most of that 45 year-period believe that the idea that there were more employed Binghamtonians in 2009 than there were in 1964 is absurd; employment was booming here in the 60s and 70s but has been increasingly anemic ever since. So again, we are back to nonsense, as 170% of nothing is nothing. If and when you can factually report actual job growth of any kind in Binghamton, please do so.

growing up in the East Village, we used to call Alphabet City. A was alert B was bad, C was critical D was death. In truth it was a wonderful place, full of fun, energy, discovery and a little threat. Mone has now conquered all in New York City and the city is more than happy to become the suburbs to pacify the Suburbans who move here for short-term. There is nothing here to discover anymore.

I moved to New York in 1994. After 22 years, I left for many of the reasons Moss describes, watching so many things that drew me there disappear, falling victim to real estate rape. Financially, it was unsustainable, as it has become a city that requires super-human spending power (or the unicorn of a rent-controlled apartment) to survive. When I moved there, I was making $14/hour and able to afford my own apartment - albeit tiny - in a doorman building in Hell’s Kitchen. Even if you adjust for inflation (and pretend wages have gone up), a young person right out school with the same job could never afford my tiny old studio today. I defined myself as a New Yorker. The city was part of my identity. You have to love NY to live there, and I did. I moved there on my 24th birthday and left on my 46th. I “grew up” in Manhattan. Defining experiences that made me who I am happened there. I waited tables and tended bar in places where I met legends. I got to be on TV and in the movies. I fell in love (then out of love). I got to work for Joan Rivers. I got sober. I met my best friends. Many of those things probably couldn’t have happened in any other city (or certainly not as readily). The decision to leave was agonizing and heartbreaking to say the least. But it was time. NYC is like an indifferent lover who doesn’t care if you spend the night or go home. So I left and moved to Cleveland a year ago, with my identity and self-esteem fully intact. I don’t regret it for a second

Most Manhattan neighborhoods were eye-poppingly overpriced for all but the heartiest and most determined newcomers even back in the late 70's. Sure...the late 70's had CBGB's, pop up galleries and the very cool (and near-free) live-loft jazz scene but I had recent grad artist friends living 3 to a room in overpriced studio apartments...or...if they were finding affordable lofts...they were in drug and crime infested neighborhoods where they would literally run home after getting off the bus from their uptown day jobs. It was a great scene but make no mistake, housing WAS expensive. One friend of mine was reduced to moving into a SRO hotel where he ended up getting sexually assaulted. He moved to a far more affordable and inspiring Italy months later. Unless you got famous fast, were bequeathed a rent controlled apartment by friend who arrived in the 60s or early70s or your parents helped out it was a very dicey scene. In a sense it was not too difference swimming across the Rio Grande in the hopes of finding fame and fortune in el norte. Many, many just couldn't cut it...even in the good old grimy and ratty 70s.

And this writer doesn't get it either. It's not that "neither of the two registering that the man, owner of a building bought in 1979, now highly coveted, has been put in the position of potentially making many millions of dollars" matters to us. Forcing people out of the city they grew up in is not OK whether it is NY or the Rust Belt. Destroying a city's essence for the sake of money and greed whether here or anywhere is not OK.

As a native New Yorker who was born in the Greenwich Village of bohemians, teachers, pensioners, dowagers and every other brand of New Yorker, I miss my hometown immensely. When I return, my observation is that Manhattan has become a gated community for the very wealthy. And like gated communities elsewhere, it is largely barren and devoid of soulfulness, very reflective of the times in which we live. May it rise again to its previous glory.

In the summer of 1979, I spent a few weeks visiting a friend who was attending Parsons School of Design. I remember great food at Zabars, going to CBGB, exploring Central Park and visiting the colossal Public Library. What I remember most was the amazing diversity and sense of adventure in just walking and wandering. It had a buzz. Perhaps it still does but not one I would be interested in. Mostly, I would not be able to afford it. And frankly, it seems boring. Too much money does kill the soul and that to me was the buzz.

Irony of ironies, Manhattanites looking for culture that is not exclusively limited to stuffing their faces must travel to Brooklyn, in an inversion of the long-time pattern but even that avenue of escape will be short-lived as the same forces that destroyed Manhattan destroy Brooklyn. As the latest example, take Greenpoint. The area around Greenpoint Avenue and Franklin Street had been moribund for decades and over the last several years became, for better or worse, a thriving Hipster Central in North Brooklyn. Bars, restaurants and boutiques now line the street, with one new, ominous addition. On the corner of Greenpoint Avenue and Franklin St., on what would now be considered prime real estate, a new storefront has opened. From the subdued, well-executed architectural treatment on the outside, one might conclude a fancy, possibly Japanese restaurant was inside but peering through the darkly tinted glass reveals otherwise. Among the unbroken wall of luxury condos now going up along the entire North Brooklyn waterfront, there is a 39 story monstrosity that has the chutzpah to call itself "The Greenpoint", as if any structure could possibly be less representative of the area. This storefront is their sales gallery and I suspect few of the other quirky establishments surrounding it realize that it serves as their death knell.

The New York my husband grew up in was the NYC of free museums, libraries open on Sundays, cheap baseball tickets, and excellent public schools. It was a NY where teachers--his parents--could afford to buy a house in Queens and retire in relative comfort. NYC in the 1980s and 1990s was a place where young people could come to spread their wings, try things out. Bloomberg said he wanted to make NYC a luxury product. He remade 40% of the cityscape. Today, it's a place for rich people to park their money, live the good life, and have a good time. Serviced by largely nonwhite people struggling to make a living. 90% of the kids in public schools are poor. People I know who came here in the 70s, when the city was on its knees, are leaving. Block after block is empty store fronts. It's a depressing place.