"Hey, we're preserving landmarks here! Forget about it-wait, don't forget about it!"
-L.P.C. Chair Sarah Carroll
at a recent unveiling
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Above: monsters. |
It does, unless you're Bess Wyden, the owner of The Strand. Wyden is pleading with the Commission to please, please, not recognize her building as landmark. Because, say it with me now: sometimes helping isn't helping.
Pictured: just another worthless eleven story building in the heard of Manhattan. |
Seriously, nobody wants to hear about how they didn't have turkey in 16th century England. It's goddamn delicious. |
And independently owned bookstores aren't exactly flush with cash right now. Not like online businesses like say Amazon...who after driving most bookstores out of business opened a few physical bookstores of their own. Which seems sort of like the retail equivalent of murdering someone and then wearing their skin, but then I'm not a business person.
Nothing beats the feeling of community you get from browsing an unstaffed bookstore where algorithms make recommendations for you. |
"City government is famous for not getting shit done, how come this is so hard?"
-Bess Wyden
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"The richest man in America, who's a direct competitor, has just been handed $3 billion in subsidies. I'm not asking for money of a tax rebate...Just leave me alone."
-Bess Wyden, shortly before producing
a mic which she then dropped to the floor
So the obvious question is why am I talking about a shop owner's fight with a municipal agency in a city I don't actually live in? A lot of it has to do with the fact that I, like a lot of people with internet access, have strong opinions about things that don't materially affect my life.
People chiming in about shit they've got no real stake in is a major, load-bearing component of the internet. Without us, the whole thing might collapse. |
Without the L.P.C. New York might look like San Jose...what? Have you been to San Jose? It's basically a mall. |
But instead they're blundering through with their well-intentioned but likely disastrous help that isn't help. They're like a commission full of Walter Pecks about to shut down the containment grid, smugly insistent that what they're doing is what's best for the city, but tragically unable to see that all they're doing is playing right into Gozer's hands.
Yeah, I kind of got lost in the metaphor there, but I think my point stands. |
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