The holiday shopping season reached a fever pitch this past weekend. How are local business districts faring? Daniel Biederman, president of the 34th Street Partnership and executive director of the Bryant Park Corporation, reports on holiday retail sales in and around Macy's; Joe Chan President of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, talks about the Shop Downtown initiative; and Josette Squitieri, property manager at the Mall at Cross County (Yonkers), updates this past weekend's sales levels.
Comments [10]
Haven't you learned that achieving the "American Dream" means that your children and grandchildren don't to do the low pay meanial (but necessarily unskilled) work that a working class immigrants do. My immigrant grandparents would much prefer that that I be an unemployed architect than an employed: construction laborer, slaughterhouse chicken gutter, nursing home aid, restaurant dishwasher, vegetable chopper, leaf blower, fast food jockey. By the way, my "low potential" immigrant great-grandfather came to NYC from Germany after the Panic of 1873 and was a ditch digger during the construction of Central Park before dying of TB at age 38. I'm sure he took some native-born American's job also.
I have great memories of being a teen growing up in suburban New Jersey in the ealy 70's and taking public trnsportatio to Manhattan for Xmas shopping, and for that matter, all of my youth oriented shopping. Bookstores, record shops, camping equipment stores, sporting equipment, head shops......whatever...and no national chains. Screw the mall! I didn't own a car so there was no way to get to the mall. My parents wouldn't be caught dead driving to the Paramus and I wouldn't be caught dead shopping with my parents. "The City" had it all. Manhatten was "transit oriented retailing" on a collossal scale.
Celebrity is not sufficient experience to be a US Senator. Carolyn Kennedy has no politcal or business experience. I could easily support Cuomo or Maloney
Can Brian please stop lionizing immigrants on every show? How about some balanced coverage? Do we need to hear how wonderful the "South American flavor" is in a story about NYC's economy?
Fact: we should have NO immigration during this economic downturn. NONE.
This was the policy during the Great Depression.
We imported tens of millions of low potential immigrants who took American jobs and now will be competing (again) with native-born Americans for the few remaining jobs.
Enough already.
Brian,
Just to let you know, Woodside has many small businesses worth shopping at, just like Jamaica. We also have a transfer point to the 7 train which will take you along Roosevelt Ave east to the mecca's of immigrant shopping -Jackson Heights and Flushing or West to Sunnyside and LIC - . Also Woodside has great restaurants such as Zagat rated Sripraphai - a great thai restaurant.
You should visit!
Sounds like a consistent effort on the part of the guest to accentuate the positive, even at the expense of being informative. Perhaps at the expense of being accurate.
In the end, it sounded more like a public service/business service piece to get people to the stores, unfortunately.
I do not blame Brian, the host. He pressed with the appropriate questions, tried to get from them what he could, and even asked the direct question about whether the believed that negative stories in the media hurt sales.
However, this does not mean that the show is not responsible for the vacuous and commercial nature of the segment. Was there any reason to believe that these guests would share negative information, even if they had it, yet? These were boosters for their respective shopping districts, and that's all they delivered.
hi
I have a store in Manhattan, we are an independently owned, small business. Why focus only on the outer boroughs and also the large Malls, how about the small independent shops in the center of the city. We have it harder than the rest, high rents and we are fighting against chain businesses with deep discounts on every block. Tourists who are coming to New York City are coming for unique stores in Manhattan, you should focus on us to, not people who are working with big chains in Malls and on the large avenues.
Love the show, but it is pretty frustrating how you are not supporting the small, independent operations, thanks
The list Ms. Chan just gave in regards to the health of retail in Brooklyn seemed suspiciously focused on national retailers, not local or mom and pops. Guess the rents have reached a level where all NYC will have is national retailers paying inflate rents, selling suburbia to the city.
Enough with the focus on corporate stores; lets start caring about local businesses, the entities which build neighborhoods from the bottom up, not the top down.
shop people shop! ignore reality!
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