Jeremiah Moss’ Vanishing New York

New York City is considered one of the top retail capitals of the world. With designer stores and famous spots littered around the city, it is no wonder that the city’s retail industry is flourishing. On one end of these retail stores are the chains (ex: drug stores and banks) and designer stores (like Marc Jacobs) that are the big businesses that dominate the market. On the other end are small mom-and-pop businesses—the ones that define the culture of the community and neighborhood they are located in. While many of these small businesses are places that are treasured by New York City residents, the majority of them are being wiped out by the effects of gentrification and the rapidly changing real-estate market. About 1000 small businesses close each month in NYC (Theodos), and the future for the rest of the small businesses in the city is questionable. Jeremiah Moss’ blog, Vanishing New York, is an extensive documentation on valued small businesses and how they are driven out by the forces of gentrification. The posts on his blog cover all the neighborhoods across the 5 boroughs, and dates back to 2007. It provides as a record for all the mom-and-pops, clubs, and little stores whose disappearances usually raise a small outcry from the neighborhood they’re from, and then gradually fade from everyone’s memories.

Moss’ blogs brings to attention the cultural value and the connection that many neighborhood residents have to the small businesses that cannot thrive among the big competition. It highlights the plight of small businesses that get caught up in city policies who ignore the value of small businesses in the midst of chasing after profit and pleasing developers who drive the majority of the city’s real-estate economy. The posts on Moss’ blog ridicule the tendency of one-of-a-kind businesses being replaced by “yet another Starbucks.” Like the manufacturing industry, detailed in Winifred Curran’s work, small businesses are considered a disadvantage for property owners who want to turn the highest profit for their buildings—by saving them for high-end retail stores, which can afford to pay high rent prices, or by trying to rezone the space altogether into a residential space, which provides rent prices that are three times as high as industrial rents (Curran 1435). The posts on Vanishing New York complement the unfortunate situation that industrial and small businesses face in the soaring real estate market, by individually labeling each of these businesses and how they are pushed out.

Jeremiah Moss’ blog is important as it helps NYC to remember the valuable businesses that could not thrive in the crushing tide of gentrification. It brings to attention how big of a problem this is becoming, and can serve as a driving force to encourage the city government to do something about it. Currently, the Small Business Jobs Survival Act (SBJSA), which protects small businesses and leases on their property spaces, is a viable solution to keeping these businesses from being driven out (Stiffler). There are many other solutions proposed to protect small businesses, some of which involve taxing property owners for keeping their spaces vacated (Calder, Rosner, & Brown), or culturally landmarking older businesses and nonprofits (Jacobs). Combining Moss’ documentation of businesses being driven out, which turns this issue into a real and ongoing process, with the solutions that many of the city lawmaker’s are suggesting, perhaps the small businesses of NYC, important landmarks of their neighborhood’s culture and community, can be saved.