Jeremiah Moss's Vanishing New York is for anyone who has visited a city they used to love and found it changed beyond recognition, or even visited a city for the first time and found a succession of familiar storefronts where once a range of independent shops proliferated. The trend isn't new, but it's been on my mind since an article about a beloved grocery store closing in Le Marais, only for the space to reopen as a high-end lingerie store. Jeremiah Moss feels the pain of the Parisians bemoaning this turn of events.
Vanishing New York is a work to evoke sadness and anger in those who don't want to inhabit a cookie cutter world. Moss takes a deep dive into gentrification, public policy (especially the "tax breaks" that politicians like to hand out like candy), and corporate greed, while also laying a share of blame at those who want to play tourist - or up sticks and move somewhere new altogether - all while being able to eat and shop in the same places they know at home. In short, it's a depressing read laying bare a knot of problems, none of which has easy solutions. (It's all good and fine to exhort everyone to eat/shop local, but as Moss points out, in many cases corporations are going to great lengths to appear local, especially to those who aren't in the know.)
Moss devotes the most ink to the changes in Manhattan, from the Lower East Side to Greenwich Village to Harlem, and then dives into Brookyln before quickly looking at Queens and the Bronx. Staten Island doesn't merit a mention. Whether this is because the same forces aren't impacting it, or aren't impacting it yet, or Moss simply doesn't like it, I couldn't say, but my only quibble what that unexplained omission.
A well-written and depressing read. Five stars.
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