
Why are New York’s bookstores disappearing? - howard941
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/mar/04/why-are-new-yorks-bookstores-disappearing
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ratling
Rich people don't spend enough on books and NYC is rapidly becoming nothing
but rich people.

Going to be awkward when no one is around who can do their laundry or run the
McDonalds. Will we see the return of servants quarters?

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coldtea
> _Rich people don 't spend enough on books and NYC is rapidly becoming
> nothing but rich people._

1) As if poor places are bookstore heaves and e.g. working class suburbs are
full of reading people?

2) Unless this is an American peculiarity, that wouldn't explain rich people
in Zurich, Paris, London, Vienna, Dublin, etc, which read quite a lot
historically. The kind of rich that don't read are some nouveaux-rich gaudy
types.

~~~
ratling
This isn’t a bookstore problem in NYC/SanFran/etc. It’s an, “everything that
needs not rich workers to function,” problem.

COL has gotten so stupid that workers have to commute multiple hours to do
modestly paid work (everything from cleaning to office work).

Eventually it’s unsustainable. When you have to live so far out that transit
costs exceed what you need to eat and have a roof over your head you look
elsewhere (or a lot earlier than that if you can swing it).

I’m seriously expecting company housing/servants quarters to become a thing
again in some places. And for businesses to move elsewhere which is already
happening. Probably not the big 5 but a whole lot of smaller entities.

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cafard
Well, Travel Books (I think--it was close to Penn Station) closed a few years
ago because the owners had reached the age that they wanted to retire. I don't
know how hard, if at all, they looked for a buyer.

I do hope that the Landmark Commission will get it through its collective head
that the true landmark at The Strand is the all those shelves, and that
literate and helpful staff.

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smacktoward
TL;DR: The rent is too damn high.

 _> But the biggest culprit, at least in New York, is the same seemingly
unstoppable force shuttering small businesses across the city: rising rent.
Rent is a particular concern for bookstores because they operate on low
margins but require large storage space._

 _Bookstores “have weathered many economic challenges over the decades, but
there is nothing they can do when the landlord triples or quadruples the rent,
or simply refuses to renew the lease”, Jeremiah Moss, author of Vanishing New
York: How a Great City Lost Its Soul, tells me._

