I'm seeing a surprising amount of weepy teeth-gnashing on social media about the closing of the Astor Place Starbuck's, which -- to my mind -- as a single establishment, almost singularly typified the disemboweling of the original character of the neighborhood (later further eroded by Kmart, CVS, Raising Cane chicken, Wegman’s, etc. etc.). I still lovingly remember the Astor Riviera (which you can see here, courtesy of the amazing Glenn Losack) that held court on that corner well prior to the arrival of the Seattle coffee chain.
Someone commented in response to this same topic on a friend of mine's Facebook page: "Vampire landlords are sucking the blood out of this city." While, true, yes, they are, the notion of a fucking Starbucks being indicative of "the blood" of this city made me wince.
I’ve wrung this rant-rag dry, by now, but New York City used to be comprised of an amazing network of independent mom’n’pop ventures, not plagued with endless fast-food franchises and big-box retail outlets. That shit was for the strip malls and the suburbs.
But, sure enough, largely thanks to the efforts of this fucker, Starbucks moved into town in the mid-`90s, and proceeded to spread faster than a spilled cup of pumpkin spice latte.
My favorite memory of the Astor Riviera involves a friend of mine and I ordering a pair of milkshakes there, once, on a hot summer day. An endearingly surly waiter brought them over and plunked them down on our table, only without straws. When we spoke up about needing straws, he took two out of his apron and blithely tossed them in our direction from about a yard away, which reduced us to hysterics. So, yeah, maybe the service wasn’t exactly top notch, but I’d take the Astor Riviera over a Starbucks every single day of the apocalypse.
ADDENDUM: Someone on what used to be Twitter actually typed this with a presumably straight face:
End of an era. For old NYU grads, Starbucks on Astor place and the Kmart by it felt like forever places. St. Marks is also not what it used to be.
It almost goes without saying that the next occupant of that stately space will be another bank, a fucking cannabis dispensary or yet another addition to the maddening proliferation of fitness outlets that now define "activewear alley" or the "fitness corridor." Fuck all that.
You can see “coming soon – the Astor Riviera” (misspelled as “reviera”) in this clip from “Downtown `81,” starring Jean-Michel Basquiat and, in this scene, man-from-the-past David McDermott.
Meanwhile, my feelings about the departure of Starbucks are best summed up by this clip of the Brothers Ramone.
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