Updated 2 years ago
https://www.curbed.com/article/nyc-businesses-closed-2020-pandemic.html
As big real estate squeezes out all but major chains, leaving many buildings vacant, one by one, landmarks fall, replaced by Starbucks and Chase outlets, erasing the very character of the city – the uniqueness that made NYC a magnet for creative and ambitious people all across the world.
That is mostly gone. Even Karma, where we threw many events. It was owned by my friend, the late Sangam Pande.
NYC has very tough times ahead as the tax base is largely evaporating. Hopefully, NYC won’t have to be put practically to cinder before real estate recovers. Maybe an old growth forest, after a burn, will renew. But I doubt it will ever reach the heights of the late 90s – the perfect sweet spot between a crime-ridden jungle of the 70s and 60s and the squeaky clean Disneyfied Times Square of the first two decades of the 21st Century.
So much lost… but this has been going on for decades. Here is a notable loss from 1963:
