Dear Mayor Bloomberg

Dear Mayor Bloomberg,

I don’t think you’re a bad guy. Yeah, you’re big business and a Republican, a combination that would normally inspire a knee jerk reaction of the highest power from a pinko such as myself. You were the first, and probably last, Republican I ever voted for, and generally you’ve been okay. Maybe I’ve been fooled. Maybe you just seemed alright in comparison to the fascist rule of Rudy. Maybe I’ve misjudged you from the very beginning. But maybe I haven’t, maybe you’re not all bad. So Mayor Bloomberg, I’m begging you – if you really love New York and you want it to live forever as a place of importance and magic and inspiration, preserve and enforce the zoning laws that are keeping the city from becoming nothing more than a generic Midwestern mall.

When I was a kid, my mother would ask me if I knew why New York special. Her answer to this all important question was “Because no matter what you’re looking for, you can find it here.” It didn’t matter that other cities were growing in size or investing in fancy new waterfronts or shopping districts, they would never be New York, because none of them would ever have the diversity. My mother’s examples proving her theory were manifold. You want a rare orchid? The Flower District. Homemade ravioli? Little Italy. Rare books, Jewish deli, discount ballet tickets, imported Japanese mushrooms, the perfect cocktail dress or the best cheesecake you’ll ever eat? My mother knew where to get all these things. A graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology, my mother was particularly fond of the Garment District. Did you break the button on your favorite coat? You could find an exact match to replace it in the Garment District, and while you were there you could marvel at the stores selling nothing but lace, nothing but buttons, nothing but zippers, nothing but bolts of satin in every color imaginable. New York, my mother intoned with gravity, was ten years ahead of everyone else in fashion. New York had things you couldn’t even imagine.

As I grew up, I developed a different set of priorities from my mother, but the truth of her theory still remained true. You want anarchist ‘zines, leather cuffs, late night karaoke, cheap margaritas, hot pink Doc Martens, first pressings of Patti Smith records, vintage Joan Jett t-shirts, bookbinding supplies, dyke bars, or just a place to go at night when you’re a freaky teenager and you have no money? New York did, in fact, have everything.

Then, of course, the money showed up. Now, I’m sure there will be a whole host of people who will argue that New York was dead and gone in the Seventies. Or the Eighties. Or the Nineties. Or after 9/11. In fact, I can’t even pinpoint the moment things changed for the worst. The moment the balance tipped and there were more chain restaurants and ATMs and shiny glass condos than there were independent shops and marginally affordable housing. I don’t know when that happened exactly. All I know is that it happened and it, for lack of a better word, sucks.

Now, Mayor Bloomberg, I am not arguing for a return to the terrible riots of the Seventies or the poverty and the drug epidemics of the Eighties. I don’t think it was so bad to clean the peep shows out of Times Square and sell it off to Disney. I don’t think it’s so terrible that Tompkins Square Park got a new dog park and fewer smack dealers. I do have a sense of perspective about this seemingly endless gentrification, I swear, I do. But I also don’t think that letting Manhattan become a vastly overpriced playground for billionaires was a great idea, either.

I can rattle off a very long list of all the stores that have gotten forced out of the city by high rents. I’m sure every New Yorker can tell you their particular losses, a deep pain they will discuss with the passion of a poet. I think it is disgusting that virtually none of the people that work in Manhattan can afford to live there. I think it is sad that New York City no longer has room for the working class, the struggling artists or the poor students. I am a born and bred New Yorker and a highly educated and highly skilled worker and I can’t even afford to live in my home borough of Brooklyn. On return trips to the city, my home, I am increasingly dismayed to find more and more unique and independent businesses, even some landmarks of New York, driven out of business by unscrupulous landlords, re-zoning, and skyrocketing leases. Does New York really need another ATM or another fast food joint?

I thought perhaps the bursting of the real estate bubble would lower rents and allow some businesses to hang on, but was dismayed to learn the exact opposite. Landlords are increasingly insisting on signing leases only with national chains, chains that are snapping up real estate while it’s cheap. Out go more businesses based in New York, in come more international conglomerates that you can find all over the world. By the time the economy picks up, the only thing left standing will be thousands of Dunkin Donuts kiosks. This shouldn’t be allowed, Mr. Bloomberg. You should be sponsoring initiatives to support New York business owners. You should be helping to keep New York from looking like just any overpriced mall. New York is famous for being different, not exactly the same.

My heart has been broken again and again over the years by the closing of favorite stores, the rising prices, and the death of all things radical and unique, but occasionally I would walk around New York and get a glimpse of something older, something different, something more indicative of the city I have always loved. One of these places was the Garment District. No matter what happened, the Garment District never seemed to change. There you could see the old storefronts, minus the sparkling plate glass windows and the scrubbed sidewalks and the generic merchandise. There you could see the stores selling, well, everything that could be imagined, wholesale even! Long after the last of the fabric stores got forced out of SoHo, long after the Lower East Side and the Meatpacking District got taken over by velvet-roped clubs, the Garment District remained. But for how much longer?

I was infuriated to learn, Mayor, of your plan to force the Garment District into one measly building, crushing factory owners, seamstresses, designers and store owners. All for what? Another glass condo and another overpriced restaurant? What would New York have been without the fashion industry? Why would anyone even want to live in a city devoid of all personality or history, full of no one but the exceptionally rich and the exceptionally boring?

If you can’t be bothered to think about the thousands of New Yorkers who would lose their jobs, or the damage to the very fabric of the city, or the destruction of a century old legacy, perhaps you could think about the $1.5 billion that the fashion industry brings to New York each year. After all, you’re one of those exceptionally rich people, so maybe money is all you understand or care about. Well, Mr. Mayor, think of all the money the city will lose if it loses its status as the Fashion Capital. Will another Olive Garden really provide the city with the same prestige, the same reputation, the same attraction, or the same amount of cold, hard cash?

Stop this nonsense, Mayor Bloomberg, and save New York.

Sincerely,
Michelle Schwartz