Authenticity in the East Village

I was also asked at the Columbia Urban Planning class to comment on the East Village as a semiotic neighborhood -- a neighborhood representing its image to attract clients, both residential and commercial. The circumstances in the EV couldn't be more different from those in Chinatown.

The East Village was once an ethnic enclave -- actually several ethnic enclaves interwoven together: Polish, Ukrainian, Italian, Jewish, Puerto Rican and American-born Black ethnicities each had staked out their blocks, streets and buildings. Today it is a typically gentrified and much more homogeneous neighborhood. Its commerce caters to a different quantity of disposable money and, equally important, a different quality of money. 

Old ethnic shops are one-by-one being evicted as their long-term leases come due. The greater quantity of money available in the neighborhood drives up rents, but it's really the quality of the money that makes the difference. If the local hipster were willing to pay a high price for, say, authentic pierogies, the pierogy shop could jack up its price to pay a higher rent. But the hipster search for authenticity is compromised by the search for the new and discriminating that traditional pierogies can't supply. Vegan gluten-free wasabi peirogies are not within the range of the traditional. The quality of the money -- the kinds of purchases its possessor is interested in paying for -- determines the profile of the street commerce.

Hipsters prefer new commerce run by fellow hipsters -- or at least fellow middle-class young and attractive whites. Rich Ocejo pointed out to me the interest among hipsters in the authentic barbershop experience. But the old barber on Ave. C run by a 74-year-old Puerto Rican is way too authentic. Instead the barber has to be himself a hipster, preferably not hipper than the client, and comfortably downscale to provide just enough of a sniff of slumming "authenticity." 

Hipsterism has changed over time, becoming increasingly conformist, fashion-conscious, semiotic and commercialized. If you've read so far in these last few posts, you've got the point that the semiotic -- the use of objects to convey a cultural meaning -- because it is a form of communication, opens the door to deception. Utilitarian dress cannot deceive in itself. A hardhat worn by a construction worker at the worksite has a direct relation to its function. There's no room for deception. It's worn to protect from falling objects. To the extent that clothing is non utilitarian, it is available for communication as fashion. So rolled up jeans have no function but to identify a strain of hipsterism -- at the current moment. Similarly, the lumbersexual beard borrows the image of masculinity transferring it to fashion, contrary to the meaning of its raw, unshaven masculinity in which fashion purports to play no role. 

The constant search for authentic signs and the removal of the authenticity by recreating those signs as fashion is a characteristic of current hipsterism. It is not benign. Look at the ad at the top. Both men are conversing across the generations sitting on a shoeshine bench. The significance to the older generation man in the three-piece suit lives in a structure of meanings that belong to an old racist culture that assumed white superiority when black men served at the white man's foot. The significance for the hipster is merely a kind of play with fashion. 

And so fifty years of civil rights' struggle is effaced, erased, lost, dismissed and mocked, all in the interest of commerce, fashion and the search for distinctive identity (really just the new hipster conformism).

The ethnic, political, and artistic history of the East Village has similarly been effaced, erased, lost, dismissed and mocked. But where Chinatown is endangered by inauthentic representations of its ethnic economic base, the East Village is recreating its own new authentic economy -- the authentic search for the retro, the fashionable, the distinctive, the slumming of elitism coupled with its upscale revision of it, the clean, expensive hipster slum with great, exotic dining and deserts and diverse nightlife drinking options. It is sustainable because the hipster has sufficient disposable money to sustain it. The sole threat is the landlord who demands commercial rents above what commerce can afford. 

It's difficult to describe the restructuring of meaning in hipsterism as deceptive. There's no authenticity to deceive beyond the desire to identify through consumption and display.

See also in this series:
Semiotic neighborhoods vs the authentic and anti-fragile: prestige and its deceptions and betrayals
Prestige and distortion in Chinatown
Suits and betrayal in Chinatown
The Mobility Dilemma and the Clearinghouse Effect

Semiotic neighborhoods vs the authentic and antifragile: prestige and its deceptions and betrayals

(These remarks elaborate an informal presentation I gave as guest speaker at a Columbia University Urban Planning Master's Program class last year. I was asked to discuss Chinatown and the East Village as semiotic neighborhoods. The basic idea is that in ethnic enclaves, the commerce that serves local residents is more resilient than touristy commerce. 

Representations designed to broadcast identity for outsiders betray the people and culture that it purports to represent, so there's a correlation between broadcasting outside and economic fragility, as well as deception and betrayal. Authentic commerce, by contrast, doesn't represent and is antifragile -- it grows stronger in a crisis because the locals have more needs in a crisis, and the local commerce serve them. 

Nevertheless, prestige and respectability are measured in mainstream cultural standards, far from ethnicity and authenticity, and are by nature hypocritical -- invested in presenting and maintaining themselves as prestigious, respectable and mainstream, regardless of the real ethical and moral defects of the apparently respectable -- so authority, including many city planners, administrators, financiers, developers and local community opportunists, scorns and ignores the authentic stability of the enclave's economy, endangering the future of the enclave. Although an ethnic enclave can thrive and grow despite outside catastrophes like terrorist attacks, hurricanes and recessions, it is vulnerable and threatened by internal and external authorities seeking to gentrify it. Already gentrified neighborhoods seek representations of authenticity that betray the authentic roots of the neighborhood. They are stabilized by luxury commerce dependent on upscale trends.)

What is a semiotic neighborhood? Simply put, a neighborhood full of signs. Any commercial street will be lined with signs that draw to its consumers. Delancey Street signs draw to the low-income residents nearby. Times Square draws to an international tourism consumer, advertising the entire city -- that's why the signs are so large, so bright, on-the-pulse and sexy. The signs can be read as an indicator of the character of the consumer.

But semiotics of a neighborhood is not just commercial signage. There are no commercial signs on Park Avenue north of 59th Street, but the stone and stately architecture, the spareness and cleanliness of the streetscape, the absence of commerce, all send a message that this is both a residential neighborhood and a wealthy, exclusive one.

Semiotic neighborhoods can be divided among those that broadcast their signs outside the neighborhood, and those that look inward. Broadcasting neighborhoods use their signs to create an identity for outsiders, an identity they can easily read. It can be a bit of a contradiction: an ethnic neighborhood can broadcast an identity that belongs to the outsiders -- self-stereotyping -- instead of being authentically ethnic. The purpose of the identity after all is not to be authentic, but to draw customers. So notice that it's money that leads to the fakery and the fakery is a betrayal of its own.

Inward-looking neighborhoods have no such need to create such an identity. They are not pretending with a show of what they are. The commerce there simply serves the local community that already understands it for what it is -- theirs. Inward-looking neighborhoods are characterized by authenticity.

In the literature of semiotic neighborhoods, inwardly looking neighborhoods are not even considered as semiotic -- they don't try to speak to the general public or communicate using the broader language of the culture, the recognized stereotypes; the motivation of their signs are restricted to the needs of locals, with no thought of trying to impress anyone with an enhanced identity. Ironically, they have authentic identity -- because they're not trying.

Local-serving commerce has low costs, since the customers don't have to be enticed and brought to the door. The locals are a bit of a captive market. As long as the prices don't drive the locals to seek a better deal, the local commerce can rely on having its customer. When there's a crisis, even a catastrophe like 9-11 or Hurricane Sandy, the local commerce actually thrives. The local residents have more needs in a crisis, not fewer, and the residents are even more captive without transport. They must find their needs served locally.

While the authentic neighborhood tends to keep prices reasonably affordable (the customer is not entirely captive) broadcasting a neighborhood tends to raise prices. The intent of broadcasting is to surpass the profits available locally, otherwise it would stay local and not bother broadcasting at all, since broadcasting incurs advertising and presentation costs. And advertisement and image-creation must be ongoing to keep up with outside trends.

In a crisis, a semiotic neighborhood can be devastated.This happened in parts of Chinatown after 9-11. Mott Street, which had been outward-looking with antique stores and Chinese souvenir shops, lost many stores, and has only recently recovered.

East Broadway, the center of the recent immigration and lined with local-serving stores, has not been devastated in the wake of 9-11 or even the Great Recession. It's been crowded and bustling, the commerce vital and thriving.

To be continued...
See also in this series:
Prestige and distortion in Chinatown
Suits and betrayal in Chinatown
The Mobility Dilemma and the Clearinghouse Effect
Authenticity in the East Village

How doth the little crocodile...

NO711 attended Thursday's Seward Park co-op meeting with the 7-Eleven corporation described in the Lo-down. It was a friendly meeting. 

The co-op has had bad luck with previous commercial tenants. After a long internal dispute, the co-op agreed that a 7-Eleven was the fix they needed to support the co-op financially, though not without qualms about the character of the store. 

Residents expressed concerns about 7-Eleven offerings. The regional manager committed, as a "local-friendly neighbor," to selling just about whatever the locals might want -- lox, kimchee, you name it, 7-Eleven will stock it for you. But when a couple of residents asked if the 7-Eleven would refrain from selling pizza so as not to threaten the local pizza places (there's a really excellent one right there on Grand), the friendly mask was drawn aside. Even after the co-op offered to promote 7-Eleven in the media as a local hero if it took pizza out of its offerings, the manager refused without hesitation. These smart and savvy co-op residents had cornered the corporate spokesperson in a checkmate. The meeting was really an opportunity for 7-Eleven to expand its offerings and compete better in the local market. I don't see this as friendly at all, but actually dangerous. 

I'd suggest that the co-op residents not ask 7-Eleven to expand its offerings, but limit itself to its basic services. Otherwise the 7-Eleven is going to take the profit margin out of really unique and wonderful stores like the Pickle Guys, and meat off the table of their employees. If 7-Eleven starts selling pickles successfully, you may never again see the full variety of dills, or pickled garlic, peppers and tomatoes. 

Someone else in the audience asked whether 7-Eleven will kill local bodegas. The regional manager's response: 7-Eleven will help convert any bodega into a 7-Eleven if the owner feels the competition is too stiff. 

I hope the residents didn't accept this explanation. Many bodegas -- probably most -- are too small to convert to a 7-Eleven. Even more obvious, if a 7-Eleven opens directly across the street from a bodega, the corporation is not about to allow a conversion. Two 7-Elevens on opposite sides of one street? As the spokespersons said last night several times, they choose their locations based on data analysis. Despite the friendly PR presentation last night, they're there to compete, not be friends. It's a business. 

After the presentation, the real estate rep confirmed to me that the corporation guarantees the rent of the store. That's great for the co-op but it's exaclty the kind of monopolistic ploy that encourages landlords to raise commercial rents beyond the capacity of the old, ethnic stores and local services. The corporation can blame it on the landlords, but the incentive to evict comes straight from the corporation. 

When asked whether the corporation cares about a community that doesn't want a 7-Eleven, the real estate rep explained that they choose their locations based on foot traffic. NO711 had to point out that foot traffic is not always local. If there's a nightlife strip nearby, the foot traffic will be largely non local, and no local voting-by-their-feet will make a lick of difference in the profit margin. In other words, 7-Eleven's business model cares about access to consumers, not community sentiments. 

None of this is surprising. It's a business. But it's not just a business. It's powerful, monopolistic, unstoppable and non local. It's the neoliberal future around your corner. It's an omnivorous shark that cannot rest, its drive and motive, inaccessible and remote.

I was surprised at a couple of residents complaining about bodega pricing. Shopping at a bodega is an art, folks. They're all distinct as each bodega identifies its local market. One sells ice-cream sandwiches to the local kids $.50 @, a better buy you cannot find anywhere in the city. Another will fix you an egg-and-bacon sandwich folded into a roll for $2.50 -- you can't beat that either. But the chips will all be list-price. It takes a bit of a flaneur to appreciate the side-ways of a great city. 

[As an addendum: I asked them whether they will employ part-timers (of course you'd expect that they hire part-timers, and in fact they advertise lots of part-time jobs on their website and elsewhere, but I felt compelled to confirm) and at what ratio to full-timers. He said there would, of course, be part-timers but he didn't have any ratio stats. I asked if that's because it's up to the franchisee. He said yes.]

The 11th Street Block Association will probably have to invite 7-Eleven to such a meeting eventually, but the situation will be quite different. 7-Eleven on A is not dependent on local consuming as it is on Grand. Here the store will be playing to the barflies, not the locals. 

Restrict access?

Saw this comment on EV Grieve about a street cart become a new store that everyone likes:

This is how it starts. The cart moves inside, the store becomes two, then three, and eventually an evil franchise that must be stamped out -- a symbol of "corporatocracy". Meanwhile, somewhere else, the process begins again, and is cheered.

EXACTLY!!! Just think, if we had a zoning law restricting chain stores (usually defined as 12 stores or more), then NYer's could enjoy places like this without watching them turn into huge global corporate human smuggling operations. 

We *can* improve the world if we speak out and take action. Resist corporatocracy, restrict global corprorate capital's access to our our streets. Join NO711! Join Occupy! (Yes, it's still active -- headed to a meeting tonight about coordinating all the local neighborhood Occupations in the city and all the Occupy policy groups.)

Right to the City

The group that started it all in Turkey was Istanbul Right to the City. The U.S. has a Right to the City too. The slogan has been around for a while. David Harvey wrote about it in a broad economic context here in the New Left Review. It raises a question: right to the city for whom? Of course, it's for residents, not for capital which preys on them. But which residents? Labor? The dispossessed? The disempowered? Artists? Professionals? Students? Gentrifiers?

The protest in Istanbul began with a confluence of middle-class interests including park conservancy and community groups: Taksim Gezi Park Protection and Beautification Association along withTaksim Solidarity and RttC, according to Jadaliyya. So do the middle-class have a right to the city? Is resistance in itself a progressive act against the powers that be, be they corporate or government or the collusion between them?

No. Community self-determination can be racist or reactionary. And it can be both regardless of class and income. I know upscale NoHo residents who support a new measure that will harass street vendors with hefty fines. (When I asked why, the answer was, there are too many. Sort of begs the question.) I attended a CB2 meeting at which Greenwich Village gentry angrily protested a small school's proposal to use a street for a playground during the day. Too much noise. I attended a meeting of low-income, subsidized residents who did not want a low-income assisted living facility next to their property. Beyond NIMBY, they asked that the facility be built in someone else's backyard a couple of blocks north -- it goes without saying that they didn't consult those residents. It made no difference to them that this assisted living facility was needed in the wider community, that two large senior facilities had just been closed not far away, and that this facility was dedicated to the disempowered and the dispossessed. Residents can be harsh and selfish. "Right to the City" is a romantic slogan. In reality, it can mean anything to anyone.

The credit goes to Istanbul RttC for seeing the park issue as more than a NIMBY issue, connecting it to a broader empowerment issue. That's what I see in NO711 -- the city-wide zoning amendment allowing community resistance to giant corporate control from afar, restricting access to capital, the Right to the City as Harvey means it, not just another reactionary NIMBY fight.

The future of NYCHA

If NYCHA follows through with its infill plan, building market-rate housing among the subsidized projects, I bet that within a decade the city will come up with a plan to give the low-income residents ownership of their apartments for minimum maintenance in the expectation that they'll sell immediately on the open market. The city will require only that it get a cut from the flip to fund the program. NYCHA projects is quality housing stock, a lot nicer than tenement housing, and it's got those river views. Where will the current residents go with their windfall? The city doesn't care, and the city won't have planned for it either. DCP plans only for upscaling and revenue-enhancing real estate raising, not for people.

Failed generalizations

Physics doesn't lack for predictive theories of physical nature, but if it were evaluated on its ability to predict the weather, we'd call it a dismal science. Economics doesn't lack for predictive theories either, it's just that we evaluate it on its ability to predict reality. Reality is only partly predictable.

Looking at the history of the LES in the 19th century, you see a consistent pattern of quality of living space declining in inverse relation to density and rent. Demand at the bottom of the social scale was sticky -- choices were limited by the lack of convenient transit and work was concentrated between the downtown docks and downtown industry. Ghetto construction was structurally uniform for each decade. Outside the immigrant quarter, amenities chased big money as you'd expect in an elastic market: a broad gradient from middle-class town houses to immense mansions. 

Both trends are economically predictable, perfect fodder for economic theory. But there's a change in the LES that doesn't fit the pattern. After around 1910, virtually nothing is built, even though the American economy continues to grow. Not surprising, the reasons for the end of development are not economic. One was a technological innovation only marginally unrelated to economic production -- the subway system, which increased mobility and commerce but not so much production. It allowed labor to live far afield. Quotas on immigration in the 1920's turned the ghetto from a high-demand exploitative rent district to a low-demand, low rent district as residents left for better living spaces and no new immigrants replaced them. Less obvious was the third tenement house New Law act, which required so much courtyard space that landlords couldn't develop on single lots anymore, curtailing single-lot development. You can see it for yourself on 1st Avenue -- rows of four- and five-story Antebellum tenements on single lots. 

Disinvestment in the ghetto was not the consequence of a shift from capital. That would be a backward analysis. Disinvestment was the consequence of political policy (labor protectionism, anti-immigrant eugenicism paralleling growing isolationism), a technological advance in mobility, and an entirely unintended consequence of a progressive movement to improve labor housing (again, politics) with the New Law that made it harder to develop downtown. 

The historical lesson I get from it: politics, technology and public policies like zoning and housing laws have had more profound local consequences than constants like capital growth. Culture plays a role as well. Gentrification can no longer be described as a single economic phenomenon if the youth culture of Williamsburg drives upscale families to seek child-friendlier neighborhoods. That has consequences for construction, schools and commercial character. Until an economist comes up with a theory that explains why a fix-wheel bike with no brakes designed for race tracks with no inclines and no stop lights would be the trend among upscale youth in urban centers filled with lights and steeply inclined bridges, economics will be stuck with "60% chance of rain today."

Will the future be like the past? You can count on the constants, so maybe that's where policy should target, always bearing in mind the law of unintended consequences rules. The most depressing documents are the urban planning proposals of the past. In retrospect they look completely wrongheaded, as if their authors didn't have a clue.

That's why local community self-determination has promise. It's not urban planning from above; it's urban needs from below where life actually happens. 

Pickets, boycotts and strikes

Labor faces a challenge in both chains and small entrepreneurs. On the one hand, there's an economy of scale for public protest against a chain. A boycott against the Gap can target many stores at once. Using social media it might even be possible for cashiers, say, across Walgreens city-wide to co-ordinate a job action. But the larger the corporation, the more resources it has, including greater mobility, which counterbalances the scale of public and the labor organizing. Stella D'Oro picked up and left NYC rather than negotiate. The garment industry left the country rather that pay a minimum wage and rent here. Retail chains can't leave, but they can hold out, and those employees that aren't unionized don't have much of a chance.

On the other hand, pickets and boycotts can succeed easily against a small business with a narrower profit margin. But it's rare to hold an action against a truly exploitative small owner because the profit margin is so narrow that the owner might have to close rather than capitulate, and closing the store puts the employees out of a job; everyone loses. So even the loudest activists somtimes have looked the other way. What made the fight against Jing Fong was the size of the restaurant.

A chain like 7-Eleven hires almost no one, so there are no benefits to the local economy to having them here. They're just easy, the way a Citibank on every corner is easy. And now you can even Citibike directly from it to 7-Eleven. Corporate heaven.

Call to action!

Constructing in an occupied building has become one of the most aggressive means of harassing tenants. Shaoul used it often, and Kushner, who recently bought nearly 30 parcels in our neighborhood, informed the community board last month that he intends to construct building expansions wherever he can. 

The case of 515 East 5th Street may become the precedent for all future expansion harassment. Please come to the Board of Standards and Appeals and spread the word. From GOLES:

GOOD OLD LOWER EAST SIDE, INC



TENANT ALERT!

FIGHT ILLEGAL CONSTRUCTION OF ADDITIONAL FLOOR AND PENTHOUSE ON 515 EAST 5TH STREET!

DATE: TUESDAY, MAY 21ST, 2013

TIME: 10:00 AM SHARP!

PLACE: BOARD OF STANDARDS AND APPEALS (BSA)

22 READE STREET, SPECTOR HALL

NEW YORK, NY 10007

(ONE BLOCK FROM CITY HALL)

COME TO THIS IMPORTANT HEARING AND SHOW YOUR OPPOSITION TO LANDLORD’S APPLICATION TO LEGALIZE THE ADDITIONAL FLOOR AND PENTHOUSE WHICH HE BUILT. THIS CONSTRUCTION WAS FOUND ILLEGAL IN BSA DECISIONS IN 2007 AND 2008. NOW THE LANDLORD IS SEEKING TO REVERSE THEM. IF LANDLORD IS ALLOWED TO KEEP THIS ILLEGAL CONSTRUCTION IT WILL SET A PRECEDENT FOR OTHER LANDLORDS TO DO THE SAME LEADING TO DANGEROUS CONSTRUCTION THAT CAN CAUSE DAMAGE TO STRUCTURE OF SUCH OLD TENEMENT BUILDINGS.

FOR MORE INFORMATION CALL GOLES 212-533-2541

Reviewing the 2008 rezoning

Irrational opposition to NO711 takes me back to the EV/LES rezoning. The supporters of the rezoning were as outraged at me back then as I am towards the one person who maintains polemical objections to NO711 -- not because of his polemic, which is at least interesting, sound or not, but because he lied, then supressed the truth and followed with a string of manipulations and distortions. So I wonder if, in pushing my opposition to the rezoning, I was similarly manipulative. What I said about the rezoning back then was: 

1. The rezoning is an overall upzoning. The EIS bore me out -- 53% more development under the rezoning than under the previous zoning. (Harvey Epstein fortunately managed to mitigate the upzoning plan with an IZ application over the avenues.) 

2. The upzoning of sidestreets will turn townhouses overnight into candidates for demolition and luxury redevelopment. That was an accurate prediction.

3. Developers would often choose not to take the Inclusionary Housing bonus. Also an accurate prediction, although the jury remains out with the largest developments upcoming on Mary Help of Christians and the former theater/deli on A between 6th & 7th. 

4. The height caps were too high, which allows for air rights sales, undermining the inclusionary bonus incentive. We're seeing this at play on Norfolk Street, and there will be more. 

5. The LES downzoning would drive hotel development onto the Bowery and into Chinatown. Hotel development has gone crazy on the Bowery and in Chinatown since the rezoning, although it had already begun before 2008. Hotel development would probably have continued regardless of the rezoning, so it's hard to tell how much the rezoning increased it. 

6. If the EV rezoning is implemented, there would be little political will within CB3 to protect Chinatown and the Bowery. I think I was wrong about this. CB3 eventually came around to support the Bower Alliance of Neighbors zoning plan (although CB3 still features on its website its old Bowery study that BAN rejected), and CB3 has shown support for the Chinatown Working Group's zoning efforts despite its amibitious scope. It's taken time, but it's happening. 

7. CB3 did not push hard enough to protect the Bowery. Here I was completely wrong. The city was and is intransigent on the Bowery. When CB3 members told me this, I simply didn't believe them. I wrongly assumed that they were sacrificing the Bowery for the sake of the rest of the EV. Whether they could have tried harder is irrelevant: they saw (and I did not understand at the time) that the city wouldn't budge, so pushing would get nothing but push back and trouble. So, considering the possibilities, I now think that CB3 cannot be faulted at all for the Bowery and its lack of protection, and I was wrong to fault them then. 

(In my defense, the Task Force leadership undermined its credibility by insisting that everyone had to accept the plan immediately and without change otherwise DCP would walk away from the plan. I responded, btw, that DCP had no intention of walking out. I was right about that as well: CB3 never fully approved the plan, insisting on Harvey's and Paul's 11-points of contention to the end, and yet DCP never walked. It was DCP's plan as much as the Task Force's and DCP wanted it at least as much as the Task Force leadership wanted it.) 

8. Under the previous zoning, most development in the EV was contextual; out-of-scale development was mostly south of Houston. That was true. After NY Law School and TNC, there was a lot of redevelopment in the EV, but only two rose above seven stories, one on 12th & C and one on 13th & B, both about 9 stories, one story taller than would be allowed under the rezoning. Just about everything else capped at 6 stories. 

So was I full of manipulations, distortions and absurd arguments? I'd genuinely like the rezoning supporters to explain. I'm sure I see all this still from my own perspective, so I have to rely on them for a more complete assessment.

No escape from luxury

Btw, this is the article that Yglesias was responding to:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stephensmith/2011/09/29/does-urban-growth-have-to-mean-gentrification/

Smith doesn't assume an upper limit on luxury demand, he thinks the upper limit is reached when overdevelopment begins to lose its attraction. It's a scary thought: the rich lose interest in bland elevator buildings, so they raid the neighborhoods without them. Their presence attract their elevator-addicted friends, so developers construct for them and transform the neighborhood, driving the upscale to seek a hipper slum to raid. It's already happened here -- the Schwimmer Manse. 

Sunday in the Park with NO 7-ELEVEN

We're going to chalk up the park at the Tompkins Square Park nonbandshell at 2pm and then take our chalk and our Community Wheel of Fortune to the corner of Avenue A and 11th Street, the site of the threatened 7-Eleven, and chalk up the street and talk to the passers-by who don't yet know what's coming to their neighborhood. Join us for some good old anti-corporate-anti-suburbanization-and-anti-Pringle-ization-of-our-souls-and-our-streets fun! 

Here's a video journalism piece CUNY TV did on us (NO 7-Eleven starts @ 12:45) --

http://219tvmagazine.journalism.cuny.edu/2013/04/10/march2013/

(Wissecracks about my apartment will be punished.)

7-Eleven Legal Defense and Education Fund (SELDEF)

Here's the corporate defense of 7-Eleven with my comments:

1. It provides cheap food for low-income people.

"Let them eat Pringles!"..........

7-Eleven has 48,000 stores worldwide
more than any other retail store

What's this, the 21st century version of "Let them eat cake"? Literally: 7-Eleven promotes every form of sugar possible. 

2. There are empty storefronts in our neighborhood. We must fill them, and 7-Eleven will!

Filling the storefronts serves only landlords. Retail storefronts are not a driver of local labor and the neighborhood isn't lacking in food options. What we'v'e lost here is service variety because nightlife, chains and franchises have upped the commercial rents so that small stores like bookstores (for new or used -- anyone remember Paul's? I loved that bookstore), thriftshops, hardware, stationers&cardshops and curiosities can't stay or get in (does anyone remember places like Celtic Twilight in the 1970's? Where else in NY could you find a copy of Y Gododdin?).

Allowing chains, frachises and bars just encourages landlords to hold out for higher rents. The only way to bring rents down is taking the Big Gulp out of the landlord's hand: no more lifeline to candy, fat and liquor; do some service for the community. Since the neighborhood is dense, so plenty of services can thrive, and service providers will come if the rents ease off. 

3. 7-Eleven prevents gentrification.

There are 7-Elevens on the Upper East Side and the Upper West Side, in the Scarano condo building the one professed "gated" community in the neighborhood.  7-Eleven didn't even arrive in the EV until after the neighborhood was thoroughly upscaled. 

4. Remove the corporate clone stores and they'll be replaced with fancy boutiques.

EV boutiques on 9th & 10th arrived decades ago when rents were cheap. New stores here are not SoHo-style boutiques. New storefronts here are usually either upscale food -- North Korean-style ice cream, artisanal water, Japanese-Canary Island fusion, 387 varieties of peanut butter served on rice cakes and no jelly -- or cheap fast food, felafel, pizza, Asian dumplings, bagels, or a cafe w/wifi, cafe w/wifi w/sandwiches, cafe w/wifi w/sandwiches w/cute singles. Which do you prefer? If you choose 7-Eleven, go back to item 1 above and see Marie. For me, I'll take a felafel w/humus, please. 

5. 7-Eleven doesn't exploit undocumented immigrant labor. 

7-Eleven doesn't employ them at all. The undocumented can die in the street for all the corporation cares. Or ex-felons desperately looking for a second chance. Giant corporate control from afar. It's taking over our streets, our lives, our work, our food, our future.  

The only defense left? You're addicted to the Big Gulp. Sarah's got your back --

Troubling developments

59 East 2nd Street
The Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Virgin Protection and Chapel of St. Innocent of Irkutsk, an impressive stone structure just across the street from the Marble Cemetery and down the street from Anthology Film Archives, is planning to add 8 residential stories to its current 60 foot height, 141 feet altogether. How will they add eight stories on top of an 1867 church without compromising the structure? It's a historic church on a historic block. DoB has approved their plan.

75 1st Avenue
Developer plans to build a 171-foot tall tower on a tiny 24-foot wide lot. It's illegal to build higher than 100 feet on such a narrow lot, but they are digging their foundation anyway.

226-228 Bowery
8-story hotel in the midst of the Bowery section of the Special Little Italy District, not far from the New Museum. Is this the future of the city's oldest road?

CONTEXTUAL HEIGHT
OF THE LOWER EAST SIDE
NORTH OF HOUSTON STREET
An address-by-address, lot-by-lot survey
November 2006
Conducted by Lower East Side Residents for Responsible Development
Survey I: Representative Streets

Background
This survey was conducted during the first week of November, 2006, by Lower East Side Residents for Responsible Development (LESRRD), an East Village community network, as a community informational project in preparation for a public presentation of a rezoning plan by the Department of City Planning (DCP), November 6, 2006. The goal has been to provide the public, the local Community Board and the City with reliable, up-to-date data on the height of existing structures for the determination of contextual height, the general height of buildings in the Lower East Side north of Houston street. The survey was commissioned and paid for entirely by LESRRD. No funds were sought or accepted from any other source.

Method
Constraints of time and budget prohibiting a survey of the entire proposed zoning area, LESRRD decided to choose, as a first installment of a larger survey, one entire characteristic street and one entire characteristic avenue running through the “East Village” section of the zoning area, Houston east of Bowery/3rd Avenue north to 14th Street. Houston Street itself was included to provide data on the number of easily developed “soft” sites, information crucial to judging the impact of DCP's proposed upzoning of that street.
The survey consisted of a walk through, address-by-address, of each of the chosen streets. Each building was recorded individually with the following information (see the sample record sheet attached): number of lots, number of stories, type of use, period of construction, and number of commercial uses. Type of use included residential, religious, commercial, educational. For lots with no construction, types included park, playground, vacant lot, garden, yard. Serial (contiguous) lots with no construction were counted as one address, with the number of lots recorded under lot number. Period of construction was identified by a variety of historical clues including architectural detail, type, size and color of brick, ceiling height, building height, number of units and number of lots, which clues, taken all together, almost always provide a reliable profile of estimated age. Periods included Pre-Law (prior to 1867), Old Law (to 1901), New Law (to ca. 1920), Pre-World War II (to the 1940's), Post-World War II (through the 1980's), Gentrification (to present).

Data
1st Avenue
#stories_____0___1___2___3___4____5____6____>6*___total
#addresses___2___4___2___5__40___87___15_____1____156
#lots_______2___6___2___12__43___98___19_____1____183

11th Street
#stories_____0___1___2___3____4____5____6___>6*___total
#addresses__11___3___1___6____30___49___28___4____132
#lots______25___3___1___9____35___65___42___6____186

Houston Street**
#stories_____0___1___2___3____4____5____6___>6*___total
#addresses __10__19___4___9___14___27____24___4___111
#lots_______34__35__4___16___19___30____28__18___184

Totals:
#stories_____0___1___2____3____4_____5____6___>6*__total
#addresses __23__26___7___20___84____163___67___9___399
#lots_______61__44___7___37___87____193___89__25___553

Analysis
Of the three streets, First Avenue has the most consistent overall context, mostly 5 story buildings with a large number of 4 story buildings as well, and little else besides. Only 10% of its buildings rise above 5 stories. Over half the buildings – 56% -- are 5 stories tall, 26% stand 4 stories tall. Roughly the same holds true by lot: 54% of lots (not counting 0-story lots) are occupied by 5 story structures. Only 11% of lots have buildings taller than 5 stories. Both median and mode are 5 stories and the mean is between 4 and 5 stories.

11th Street shows only a slightly broader range: 40% of buildings stand 5 stories tall, but 23% rise to 6 stories and an additional 3% rise above 6 stories. 40% of lots (not counting the 0-story lots) are occupied by 5 story buildings, 30% rise above 5 stories. Again, the median and mode are 5 stories, the mean only slightly below.

Houston Street presents a broad spectrum of structures including many soft sites – taxpayers, empty lots and two-story buildings. The data on Houston also reflect the consequences of recent out-of-scale development. Already 12% of its lots are built out-of-scale, not counting any of the new Avalon structures.

Overall the neighborhood appears to have a fairly consistent context. In the area surveyed, 40% of lots are built to 5 stories, 20% are built to 4 stories, 18% are built to 6 stories. Only 4% are taller than 6 stories. 38% are under 5 stories (not counting 0-story lots), only 22% are taller than 5 stories.

Conclusion
A realistic and reasonable zoning would include a 60-foot height cap, a base FAR of perhaps 2 bonusable to 4
with affordable housing. This would be similar to an Inclusionary Zoning R6-B but with a lowered base FAR, something akin to mandatory affordable housing. That would preserve our neighborhood context, protect low-income tenants from development-hungry landlords, and create new affordable housing wherever development is ripe (vacant lots and single story non-residential retailers).

Contrary to the expectation that avenues are built taller than side-streets, the buildings on 1st Avenue are typically much lower than those on 11th Street: 89% of buildings on 1st Avenue are 5 stories or lower; only 70% on 11th Street. This is obvious to anyone who has enjoyed the view of wide-open sky on 1st Avenue. More important, a great many of the four-story pre-Law tenements house only three tenants each, which makes them targets for landlord harassment and eviction in an upzoned neighborhood. The DCP plan could create great pressure on a landlord who owns a 4-story tenement with three tenants to evict, demolish and build 8 stories for 16 tenants even at the proposed FAR of 4. The suggestion that avenues should be zoned taller than side-streets should not be assumed -- it requires substantial justification and careful scrutiny, especially considering the historical character of the neighborhood. In large part First Avenue retains the appearance it had in the second half of the 19th century. The tenements are mostly pre-Law (pre 1867); there are fewer Old and New Law tenements – the tenements that rise to 6 stories -- than elsewhere in the district. Development is more appropriate in less historically significant neighborhoods (almost any neighborhood in the city is less historically significant than the LES) and the avenues in the LES are at least as historically rich and well-preserved as the sidestreets.

Proposals
Based on these data, LESRRD offers three proposals for the Lower East Side:
1.R6-B (60-foot height cap) with a base 2.0 FAR bonusable to 4.0 FAR with affordable housing.
2.Moratorium on construction until final approval of a zoning plan (after City Council Int. 679/2005).***
3.Historical District designation for the Lower East Side.


*Buildings over 6 stories are so few and so variable in height that I grouped them together in one category. They represent only 2% of the buildings of the neighborhood, statistically insignificant.
**Because Houston does not fit the 1811 grid, lot size is often difficult to gage. But rendering both the addresses and the lots increases the precision of the picture.
***”By Council Members Avella, Comrie, Fidler, Gentile, Gonzalez, James, Koppell, Martinez, McMahon, Nelson, Palma, Recchia Jr., Sanders Jr., Vacca, Vann, White Jr., Mendez, Monserrate, Addabbo Jr., Mark-Viverito, Weprin and Oddo ..Title A Local Law to amend the administrative code of the city of New York, in relation to the issuance of building permits for areas where a rezoning application is pending. ..Body Be it enacted by the Council as follows: Section 1. Section 27-191 of the administrative code of the city of New York is amended by lettering the existing section as subdivision a and adding a new subdivision b to read as follows:b. Upon the filing with the council of an application for rezoning by the city planning commission pursuant to section one hundred ninety-seven-d of the charter, the department shall not, except under exigent circumstances involving safety and health, issue any permits for either: (1) new building, (2) alteration, (3) foundation and earthwork, or (4) demolition and removal, within the area that is the subject of the rezoning application until the completion of the uniform land use review procedure process with regards to this application. For the purposes of this subdivision, the term “completion” shall include the requisite passage of time in accordance with all provisions of section 197-d of the charter. Following such completion, the department may issue such permits, in accordance with all applicable provisions of zoning, laws and rules, within the area that was the subject of the rezoning.”