I find myself floored at the amount of places that were familiar favorites that have gone belly up. The latest casualty is the Stage Deli. Ben Bensons and Ghalaghers will be gone soon. In Staten Island Golden's Deli closed and is missed. A Kosher Chinese place opened on what was a historically a family owned Chinese spot on Jewett and has been doing well. The food is better then the place that preceded it but I miss the old timers.
I went to the Catskills and saw all the great hotels abandoned. Kutshers is still there but barely like a ghost of the past. Oddly, the killer of those hotels were property taxes and deals should have been made to keep them going. Instead desolation and decay has set in. There are those who criticize tax breaks but those hotels supported local families. The families now are on government aid. The hotels brought visitors to local stores, but they are memories now.
Even as Dirty Dancing becomes a memory and the Borsht Belt fades into memory like vaudeville we are at a loss for a better time in a more sterile less certain America.
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I think that the same is true all over the United States. Over the past 15 years or so, almost all of our favorite eating places here in Northern Virginia are no more.
Progress -- supposedly, anyway.
Well, in my neck of Missouri we've seen more places going belly up. Oddly, that pattern really got rolling last year while we were being told that "recovery" was underway. Now closings, layoffs or "reorganization" are spreading to other shops and businesses. Demand on the local food banks has more than doubled this year. Gee, you don't suppose any of the presidents' policies have anything to do with this do you? Naw, can't be. Otherwise people like Jamie Foxx wouldn't be calling him "our lord and savior" and marching bands wouldn't be spelling out his name on the field and the news media would have called him on this.
Cheer up, Beak. Guy Fieri's new place is still there serving crap.
This closing is probably due to a string of poor Broadway seasons and declining tourism.
Still, the story of the disappearance of the Jewish deli (and other institutions) hasn't been written.
We are becoming a homogenized culture eating crap at franchised fast food joints.
Gotta think of the profits.
It is not just the Jewish deli. I need a road map to find a classic Italian Pork store.
Local restaurants with proud histories are going extinct and apparently it is not NYC only. How many Marc Jacobs and Hipster joints are enough.
There is something special about siting in a seat at Nathans with my kid and explaining it was here when
my grandmother got off the boat. A McDonalds never ever gets the charm of a Greek Diner. These businesses are a piece of our homes and lives.
There are "ruins" everywhere. Check out what that particular photographer catalogs in Virginia alone!
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