If you want to see the future of storefront retailing, walk nine blocks along Broadway from 57th to 48th Street and count the stores. The total number comes to precisely one — a tiny shop to buy drones. Why? Shopping from home or on a smartphone is a lot easier than shopping in a store. The ease of buying sweaters and light bulbs online trumps the thrill of people-watching in stores where slow-moving sales clerks take 15 minutes to ring up a $25 tie on balky computers. Amazon makes it easier to return goods that don’t live up to expectations than it often is to buy things in stores. Clerks have no idea what’s in stock. Fashion goods displayed on shelves are chosen by too-young buyers with their minds more on the current Instagram trend than on customers’ needs. I now buy many of my clothes from Charles Tyrwhitt online. Many more products offered there fit me than in their stores, where shirts seem cut for skeletons. And yet, it’s scary to think that one of the city’s great pleasures, window-shopping — which also ensures vibrant, crime-deterring sidewalk life — will become a thing of the past except at certain locations. https://nypost.com/2018/04/07/the-worlds-hottest-shopping-city-is-becoming-a-ghost-town/
And the blame is on rental prices? Maybe not... The first time I walked by NYC restaurants and saw that "A B C" mandatory classification, I was stunned... This was one of the stupidest things I've ever seen... If it is becoming a ghost town (I doubt it, at least for now), the blame is on shit like that... The level of absurdity in the shit that NYC local government comes up is absolutely astonishing... Crap like this makes even "other governments" look like "geniuses"....