Posted on 09/14/2023 6:37:47 AM PDT by CFW
The rising social disorder and crime of the 1970s and 1980s drove out not only hundreds of thousands of residents from New York City, but also many businesses. Within a few years, entire communities lacked basic amenities like supermarkets and drugstores; empty storefronts littered shopping districts. That started to change only when crime began falling in the 1990s and neighborhoods rebounded—first in New York and then in other big cities—prompting national retailers to begin setting up shop in places that they had once avoided. Thousands of stores and tens of thousands of jobs blossomed in New York alone thanks to this retail revival. But those gains are vanishing before our eyes as rising retail theft is driving a new era of closings.
It took decades for New York’s retailers to recover from the disorder and crime waves of the 1970s and 1980s. Entire districts lacked basic shopping choices, including Harlem, a community of more than 100,000 residents that didn’t have a single large-chain supermarket for more than 20 years. Once-flourishing shopping districts in the South Bronx and in neighborhoods like Bushwick in Brooklyn played host to boarded-up storefronts—vestiges of rioting and arson. National retail chains with the everyday stuff people wanted—Home Depot, Lowes, Target—shunned the city, leading to an exodus of dollars. One study in the early 1980s estimated that Queens residents alone spent half of their purchasing power, more than $1 billion a year back then, shopping in Nassau County. By the early 1990s, a consumer survey found that 56 percent of city residents left New York at least once a month to shop. Nearly 30 percent said they went specifically to buy at stores that didn’t exist in the city—an irony, considering that Gotham had once been considered one of the world’s great retail cities.
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
“That started to change only when crime began falling in the 1990s and neighborhoods rebounded...”
Rudy! Rudy! Rudy!
No more kick-but, tough on crime Mayors since Rudy.
Of course, crime just ebbs and flows - like MAGIC! Right, Socialist Democrats?
Crime goes away once the Revolution is complete. Then all criminals will go up against the wall. Along with anyone else deemed a “Counter-Revolutionary”.
Hide your money in your books.
“I wish you a Merry Welfare and a Happy Food Stamp!”
I remember taking a combination of buses and trains for almost three hours each direction to get from Hyde Park, Chicago to the Montgomery Ward in Oak Lawn to get a Coleco Adam daisy wheel printer ribbon.
While I was there, I had dinner at Chi-Chi’s which was better than the Jewish run El Lugar on 55th.
Everyone knows racism is the actual cause. /s
I don’t care, but do hope they start to realize why this is happening and maybe feel a little nervous about going downtown for other reasons like dining and entertainment
All moot once they ban hammers as potential weapons and DIY as a practice that deprives union tradesmen of their livelihood.
My Give A Damn meter must need new batteries. It’s not moving off of zero.
When the places are not staffed because no one wants to work for $20/hour because welfare pays $25/hour, the stores won’t be open... end of problem.
And this article gets incorporated into the Social Justice curriculum when...?
It’s not my fault. Not my problem.
And I’m not going to even try to fix it either.
When I left Pacific Bell in Nov 1991, the company paid out my 401k on exit. I did a direct transfer to another 401k to avoid having a "distribution" that was taxable. Pacific Bell was dumping huge numbers of employees at the time and the state of CA sent out a notice that any retirement income earned inside CA would be taxable by CA upon distribution no matter where you moved. Such BS. You've never seen so many middle fingers raised by employees and their legal counsel in the direction of CA government.
No mention of shit and needles on the sidewalk?
“driving the thugs from the hood.”
Only works if they are shot while looting.
You have much more expertise in this area than I, but from what I’ve read and occasionally seen your hope for local support of small businesses in the urban deserts is not likely to happen.
The people who are willing to take the risks to open small shops in these areas seem to be recent immigrants, now the trend is Arabs, earlier, people from east Asia. The have no inherent fondness for their customers and they tend not to trust them and take active measures to prevent theft. Both their honest and dishonest clientele resent this. And theirs will be the first businesses attacked the next time there is an opportunity ‘to let the people touch those things’.
Now, if the honest people in urban areas, the majority, would take active measures against the dishonest, there would be hope. But there has been little evidence of that happening anywhere.
Good. I’m glad that they didn’t get their grubby little d$ck beaters on any of your property.
It appears that the idiots in NYC (voters) have created their own cycle of improvement and destruction.
High crime, vote in a Republican ti fix it.
Everything's ok, vote in democrats to destroy it.
Short memories and stupidity.
And these indoctrinated dolts seem to think they are superior to the rubes in the country who provide their food.
"Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has a unique (one would hope) method for dealing with rioters: Let them destroy property.
The mayor made this shocking admission on Sunday, saying at a press conference that during her city’s weekend riots, she wanted to “give those who wished to destroy, space to do that.”
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