My New York City neighborhood is under attack, and not by Al Qaeda. The invaders are corporate chain stores, spreading like a disease through our once healthy community.
Dozens of small independent businesses along Broadway, the main shopping street in upper Manhattan, are shutting down, their rents having been multiplied by landlords eager to cash in on a robust rental market. In the last two years, we've lost our amazing video store, where the staff cared passionately about cinema and delivered obscure DVDs to one's door. Rents drove out a homey family-run rice and beans joint that served scrumptious Cuban sandwiches and mango shakes. The space it used to occupy is now for lease -- the price is beyond the reach of anyone but national chains. Last year, the local Chinese restaurant that served up pretty good dim sum on Sundays was replaced by a Bank of America branch.
Just after Christmas, our local independent bookstore went belly-up, and we just learned that the woman's clothing store next door to it, founded by peace activists back in the '60s, would soon be going under as well. The greengrocer that delivered applesauce and chicken soup when my children were home sick closed a few months ago, as did the locksmith and a frame store. Our neighborhood no longer has a lumberyard -- it was torn down to make room for a condo tower.
Rising from the ruins of these beloved local institutions are the kinds of stores you can find in every strip mall in America. Walking my daughter six blocks to school in the morning, I now pass a Rite Aid, a McDonalds, a Subway, an AT & T cell phone store, two Dunkin Donuts, two Starbucks, and several shiny new branches of national banks.
My point isn't to whine, but to think about why this affliction is happening to us and ask why we tolerate it. Enthusiasts of capitalism might say, "well, that's the marketplace working its magic -- businesses are just providing people what they want." But that's stupid and untrue. Nobody wants a Rite Aid. Nobody really wants to go to Blockbuster (the only remaining video store near here), to be served by surly clerks who don't care about movies. And I've never met anyone who wants a new bank branch to open up on their block, especially not in a place where scallion pancakes and Szechuan eggplant once were served. These chain stores aren't being put in our community because people want them. They're being imposed on us against our will by functionaries in corporate boardrooms.
The problem is that big corporations -- unthinking, unfeeling institutions that serve nobody's interest and exist only to generate profit -- don't care about the health of a community. The people who work for or invest in corporations aren't necessarily bad people -- it's just that there's no part in corporate profit-think that considers moral questions like whether what they're doing is right or wrong. And the chain store attack on our neighborhood is made possible by the corporations' enablers in the real estate business, another industry suffering from a historic absence of a moral compass.
The owners of our lost bookstore and Cuban sandwich shop did care about what was good for their community, and so did the guys at the video place and the lumberyard. They wanted to provide us with good food and conversation, well-selected books and movies, and sturdy two by fours. When a quirky, unique restaurant or local business is driven out by real estate greed, our loss is greater than just the absence of the mango shake we can no longer drink or the obscure DVD we can no longer rent. What's irretrievably destroyed is a sense of community, of belonging, of history, of soul.
So if nobody wants Subway, Rite Aid, Commerce Bank, GNC, or AT & T Wireless stores in their neighborhoods, why are they allowed to spawn? The best answer I can come up with is that corporate chain stores are like cancer. Nobody wants cancer either, but mindless, mutant cells don't care about such details.
This real estate cancer isn't just growing here in New York City. The other day, visiting family in Boston, we stopped by the place where we've always bought our lobsters so we could prepare a late summer feast. A sad note was taped to the door by the owner of what was once the wonderful local seafood store, telling us that the landlord had forced them to shut down after 30 years. Every other independent fish store within miles was closed, too. The only place to buy fresh seafood now is at a chain supermarket.
All over the country, Staples and Wal-Marts and Targets spread like a terminal disease, choking the life and spirit from vibrant communities, and I imagine the problem is a lot worse in many places than it is in Manhattan. I remember visiting Orange County, California, on a work trip a little while ago. After a long day, my colleagues and I went looking for a place to eat dinner that wasn't a national chain. We failed. Dinner at the Outback filled our stomachs but diminished our souls.
Several years back, my New York City neighborhood protested plans to put a CVS pharmacy where a funky but necessary food market had been. The corporate drones behind the new store ignored the local opposition, as they always do. But with half a dozen chain pharmacies already casting their bleak shadows on our streets, the public chose to boycott this new one. Without customers, the new CVS soon went out of business and a paint store moved in. The occasional victory is cheering, but it can't replace what was lost.
Peter Miller's new documentary SACCO AND VANZETTI is now out on DVD - check it out at www.willowpondfilms.com