The Dying Manhattan Coffee Shop (and the Case of Philadelphia)
By Guest Contributor Aymar Jean Christian, originally published at Televisual
Taking a break from film/TV/web series today to talk about an issue dear to my heart: the urban coffee shop. Specifically, the dying Manhattan coffee shop (and how Philadelphia is better).
I originally wrote this for Splice Today, but decided to re-post here after hearing from a friend, Madison Moore, that Esperanto, a 24-hour shop in the West Village/NYU-area had closed. Esperanto was, terrible service aside, a wonderful anomaly in Manhattan coffee shops: you stay for hours, anytime, get a meal, free wi-fi and dessert all in a very central location. These stores are a dying breed.
ORIGINAL: In my view, a city is defined by its coffee shops. As Madison Moore explored last week, coffee shops are meeting places to ogle and be seen, work and eavesdrop. They make the city less lonely.
New York has always, in my mind, been associated with coffee shops. Growing up in Jersey, I would go to the city with friends and go out on the town, but also coffee shop around. On break from college in Michigan, I’d do the same. It’s not just me. A generation of people has grown up with television shows and films romanticizing this experience—for me Woody Allen films, Felicity, Sex and the City and even Friends all played a part in creating this New York imagery.
No more. New York coffee culture is dying, especially in Manhattan. I used to be able to venture down to the Village, East or West, and find a café to sit and do work. I had numerous options. But on a recent trip to the city, I found myself hobbled by obstacle after obstacle. Coffee shops serving food and free wi-fi stopped offering one or the other, wi-fi networks in general were either not working or closed down, and because of the relatively small number of cafés, any decent place was too crowded to find a seat.
So what, right? New York is hard; deal with it, one might say.
Sure, but my troubles reflect some fundamental problems with the way the city has been run over the past couple of decades, showing us how something has been lost to the city’s rise to riches—a public sphere, perhaps, to abbreviate and simplify philosopher Jürgen Habermas.
Let me first describe the perfect coffee shop: 1) good coffee, 2) free wireless, 3) outlets for computers and other electrical devices, 4) plenty of seating, and 5) diverse food options (warm and savory to cold and sweet). Everything else is gravy: good music, abundant light and soothing decor are all optional.
New York coffee culture has definitely cramped down on what I consider most valuable, next to the coffee itself: free wi-fi. Stories abound about business owners cutting back on the apparent luxury, much to the ire of its customers, especially students. I don’t blame them, really. The truth is wi-fi makes customers take up space without buying anything. Who wants that?
It isn’t business owners’ fault. New York’s refusal to regulate the rise in real estate prices has made it economically unsustainable to own and operate a successful coffee shop. The sacrifice of Manhattan real estate to developers and corporations at the expense of the middle class (in particular, those tied to the education systems like teachers, professors, and, indeed, students) reached a crescendo with the sale of Stuyvesant Town, an enormous lot of downtown real estate, for $5 billion in 2006, a deal which has now gone horribly awry, marking, in many ways, the climax of gentrification in Manhattan.
But despite the housing downtown, the consequences have already been felt. Coffee shops are one such casualty. Rents are simply too high to allow people to sit and relax. Instead, New York is now restaurant-focused. People sit down, eat, pay and go. The perfect consumer experience. It’s like running a bank. People give you money and get the hell out. None of that sitting around, talking, thinking and learning mess.
Despite the financial difficulties, there are models for success, showing shop owners that it isn’t impossible to make money in Manhattan. Think Coffee, originally from the NYU area, seems to have a new branch every year. The fair trade/organic café has a recipe for success: be everything to all people. They offer free wireless, dessert and entrees, lots of seating (at the flagship), wine and cheese, live entertainment and plenty of outlets for computers. By offering high-margin items like food and wine, they can accommodate those people who only want a coffee and a place to sit and write.
Think Coffee is in the minority, leaving New York with little to brag about. Meanwhile, other cities are one-upping the great cultural metropolis. In Philadelphia, the economics of opening a business has led to a flowering of cafés. Within Center City, Philadelphia’s downtown, I’ve counted at least two dozen coffee shops with free wireless; some have food (one sells crepes), great dessert (another focuses on cheesecakes), or offer everything under one roof (Chapterhouse takes the prize). All of this within an area roughly the size of the East and West Village, where I can count no more than ten similar offerings.
How did Philly one-up New York? The main reason is gentrification happened slowly and with less force in Philly. Large buildings downtown (brownstones mostly) were still selling for way under $1 million as recently as eight-10 years ago. Downtown has only recently become chic. This means young people and couples, looking for an affordable urban experience, have flooded the area, snapping up adorable, classic homes for as little as $300,000—where comparable properties, in size, quality and location, would fetch well over $1 million in New York.
How can New York change course? I’m not sure. Certainly maintaining rent control, which Mayor Michael Bloomberg has sort of done, helps. But New York will not be able to say no to pricey development—and such developments (luxury buildings, etc.) are at a standstill anyway. Guaranteeing “affordable housing” in these buildings has done little, especially since “affordable” in New York is obviously a joke. In truth, broader generational changes—boomers selling their apartments and moving out—and economic shifts—the scaling down of the banking sector—will need to happen in order to make Manhattan comfortable for small businesses again. Something is always lost and something gained in these situations. In truth, New York will likely have to get “worse” in some ways in order to get “better” in others. It all depends on what you value most.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
dersk wrote:
Funnily enough, today’s Times has an article about burgeoning coffee culture there:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/dining/10coffee.html?8dpc
Posted 10 Mar 2010 at 9:08 am ¶
Gregory A. Butler wrote:
Actually, the climax of gentrification in New York City happened about 100 blocks north of Stuyvesant Town – that is to say, in Harlem – and it happened 10 years before the Stuy Town sale.
Also, just a historical footnote, Stuy Town was literally Jim Crow segregated when it was built in 1945 (as in, it’s owners, Metropolitan Life Insurance Co, openly and blatantly refused to rent any apartments to Blacks or Asians as a matter of corporate policy).
That ended with the fair housing and civil rights laws of 1965 but Stuy Town’s overwhelmingly White status is a historical relic of that horrible era.
Also, while professional people and small business owners have been hurt by the gentrification of Manhattan, the primary victims have been Black, Latino and Chinese-American working class people and the Black, Latino and Chinese American poor
While the White middle class may have been priced out of Downtown, the Upper West Side and the Upper East Side, they were displaced into working class communities of color like West Harlem, Central Harlem, East Harlem and Chinatown, and White working class communities like Hells Kitchen and Inwood, displacing the residents of those communities.
So it’s really false to say that the primary victims of gentrification were the White middle class!
Also, Billionaire Mayor Mike Bloomberg did NOT“save rent control”!
The Rent Control Law of 1949 was repealed in 1971.
Since then, we’ve had Rent Stabilization which is not the same thing at all.
Rent Stabilization means that landlords get guaranteed rent increases every 2 years.
Technically, an unelected junta of mayoral appointees [5 community representatives, 2 landlord representatives and 2 so called "tenant representatives"] vote on those rent increases every 2 years – but, in practice, every 2 years since 1972 the landlords have gotten their rent increases.
As for the neighborhood coffee shops – honestly, I prefer Starbucks – they pay their workers a fair wage and offer a benefits package. Can the independent coffee houses make the same claim?
Posted 10 Mar 2010 at 9:31 am ¶
steps wrote:
Just based upon my own observations as a life-long New Yorker of color, I feel compelled to point out that coffee shops are mostly for people of privilege and in most cases, those privileged people tend to be white. As such, yes, rising property prices make it harder for these shops to stay open, but they’re catering largely to the gentrified crowd ANYWAY–I tend to think that they’re engaged in a mutually parasitic relationship that may have started out mutually symbiotic. While we’re trending away from that (especially in Brooklyn, although I’m sure that I can be anecdotally refuted somehow, given the landscape changes there), even the harried young students are carrying the latest, expensive Macs and can afford $5 lattes. I’ve experienced a great deal of (what I believe to be) racial prejudice at Think Coffee, the supposed bastion of the dying Manhattan Coffee Shop, where my service is put on hold despite getting to the counter first, in favor of the long-legged white hipster boy in skinny jeans and flannel shirt or the tall white beauty draped in dramatic black clothing.
I don’t know. I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about the Manhattan coffee shop myself, and I can’t help but always feel marginalized by it because its atmosphere is anything but welcoming and open to all; rather, it desires the business of the very [privileged, gentrified] crowd that is supposedly destroying it.
Posted 10 Mar 2010 at 10:51 am ¶
queerhapa wrote:
I find this essay to be pretty bizarre. Coffee shops have always, IMO, been one of the paradigmatic signs of gentrification. The slow death of free wi-fi (as Dersk’s above link shows, the coffee house is absolutely thriving. It’s wi-fi that is going away) in Manhattan is, I think, not about gentrification, but more about the downward economy that has unleashed so many unemployed folks and freelancers to treat coffee shops like their personal office space.
Posted 10 Mar 2010 at 10:52 am ¶
Eva wrote:
This is nothing new. When I was a kid there was a Woolworth on 34th street where they had a luncheonette where you could get food, read your newspaper and chill out. My mother and I went there often and it was a nice break from shopping. Today Woolworth is no more and has been replaced by restaurants where you have to eat and then get out. Everybody’s in a hurry today.
I got sober in 1987 and at that time on the upper east side, there were MANY coffee shops. Two on either side of Lexington Avenue on 86th street, I remember coming out of my Friday night meeting at 12:00am, going to Louie’s or the Comfort Diner, ordering pancakes and talking until 2am. Now both coffee shops are gone and another one, on 79th street and 1st, also a popular place for folks in early recovery, has closed as well.
Posted 10 Mar 2010 at 11:34 am ¶
dersk wrote:
Eh, if you ask me Manhattan’s been going downhill ever since Stuyvesant handed over the keys.
At least you guys in the States *had* free wi-fi for a while. Honestly, the only two places I know of in Amsterdam with free wifi are coffee shops! The Dutch equivalent of an American coffee shop is called a coffee house, by the way…
Posted 10 Mar 2010 at 11:42 am ¶
Deaf Indian Muslim Anarchist wrote:
There are no locally owned coffee shops in my neighborhood, which is fucking sad. But there are 2 Starbucks and man, FUCK them, I’ll never go in.
I used to go to a locally owned coffee shop all the time in my local college town before I graduated.
Posted 10 Mar 2010 at 12:32 pm ¶
Lo wrote:
Having lived in both cities (raised outside Philadelphia and now moved back/ attending college and working post graduate in NYC)…I don’t think it’s possible to compare the two.
NYC gentrification wasn’t rushed or forced at all. For instance Soho gentrification happened with the rise of loft living in the area, the mass flight to the suburbs, and what is basically the suburban Fordian dream . Once the factories moved out, it was a process of cleaning up the area and renovating the buildings to become what they are now. Plus, the loft living, coffee shop, artist lifestyle had to then be MARKETED towards the people who had fled the city for areas of the suburbs. Once the middle class really started to buy into the lifestyle…that’s when gentrification just got out of control.
Now with Philadelphia…it’s still pretty new to the process…and there is still a large amount of negativity directed at the process. (Center City aside…it’s like a separate beast) The most likely area to compare it to is Harlem (areas like Fishtown and Northern Liberties especially). Space is still cheap-ish and readily available (the rise of the art movement is also comparable). Trust me…no one wants another beatnik coffee shop in those areas. Though the ones they have are great…and it’s defiantly a good city to pull a shop together right now.
Think Coffee…is…debatable. As Steph said above…Think really isn’t the greatest reference. Their coffee is pretty horrible and rushed. Their clientele consists of about 80% NYU students who would rather their Macbook take up the counter then share it with you. Even the Israeli chain Aroma down the street has a better product. If anything…I would reference Grey Dog’s from that area.
Posted 10 Mar 2010 at 12:38 pm ¶
dersk wrote:
@DIMA – Is that just because they’re a corporation? I’m pretty sure they’re a franchise, so a lot of the revenue would stay semi-local – and they are at least a lot better than other corporations in how they treat employees.
That said, since I like coffee and not oversweet coffee confections, I avoid Starbucks whenever possible. They’re finally starting to get market penetration in Holland – at the airport and now the Amsterdam train station – and it bugs the crap out of me.
Posted 10 Mar 2010 at 2:18 pm ¶
Gregory A. Butler wrote:
Derek # 9
Unlike other fast food operations (which is basically what they are) Starbucks does very limited franchising – most Starbucks are owned and operated by the Starbucks Corporation of Seattle, Washington.
There are a few exceptions – Magic Johnson and Starbucks have a joint venture where he operates about 30 Starbucks stores scattered around various Black neighborhoods across the country, Marriott operates some of the Starbucks located in their hotel lobbies, Barnes and Noble operates the Starbucks in their stores – but by and large, if you go to a Starbucks, it’s run by Starbucks.
And even the Magic Johnson, Marriott and Barnes and Noble locations have their store computers directly tied in to Starbucks world headquarters in Pioneer Square in Seattle – and Starbucks Corporate supervises everything those stores do via that network connection, the same way they oversee the stores they own and operate.
Posted 10 Mar 2010 at 2:42 pm ¶
AJ wrote:
The connection between gentrification and coffee shops is obviously well-proven. It’s beyond dispute, in my opinion.
The point I was trying to make is in Manhattan you have a kind of hyper-gentrification, such that even “middle class” neighborhoods (NYC middle class is different from America middle class), shops and independent businesses can’t survive.
I take it as given that certain parts of New York are going to cater to the bourgeois set: college-educated, etc. (mostly, but certainly not all white).
That said, if a place like CBGB’s is replaced by a John Varvatos, I would argue Manhattan has lost something: a connection to even middlebrow tastes in service of the super rich. That’s what is really going on and has been for years (My parents have worked in the city for decades, I would never say this argument is new). The reserving of Manhattan — the most central and convenient place in the five boroughs, a place where the displaced non-rich can meet — for the millionaires at the expense of everyone else.
For me, these coffee shops are the only places I can really meet friends. Rising real estate prices have made neighborhood choice fairly difficult in New York. My friends and associates live all in 4 of the 5 boroughs. Manhattan is central, but increasingly less open.
Posted 11 Mar 2010 at 3:20 pm ¶
Gregory A. Butler wrote:
A J # 11,
Don’t take this the wrong way, and I’m trying hard to not be harsh here – but for the vast majority of working class New Yorkers, gentrification is way deeper than finding a place to hang with your friends!
It’s about being driven out of our communities and/or being made to feel othered by our affluent White new neighbors in our own communities.
As for hanging out with friends – honestly, Starbucks – if you buy a cup of coffee you can hang there for HOURS and they won’t say anything!
I actually prefer them to the “neighborhood coffee shops” you speak of in your article – but, then again, I’m African American and working class and so are most of my friends – a demographic which might not be so welcome in the “neighborhood coffee shops” (except for Cafe One – which is owned by a Black guy) but who are always welcome at Starbucks just like anybody else.
Posted 11 Mar 2010 at 8:16 pm ¶
Emmeaki wrote:
#3, steps and #12, Gregory A. Butler spoke of the marginalization of POC in neighborhood coffee shops. I have experienced this firsthand, as I have worked in many coffee shops in NYC where I am usually the only POC working there and the clientele is all 0r mostly white.
I have seen experienced black baristas denied jobs. (At one job, a white coworker even commented on how the manager refused to hire black people. I guess I was hired because my looks and demeanor were non-threatening and not too “black” for her.)
I was disappointed that at my new job (as a barista), no POC were hired for this new chain. In multicultural NYC, WTF??? I saw other black people being interviewed when I had my interview!
As a patron, I often feel unwelcome when I step into a new coffee shop. I feel as if they’d have “No N*ggers Allowed” signs posted if it was legal.
Starbucks, unfortunately is one of the few coffee shops where POC feel welcomed, as patrons and as employees. When I worked at Starbucks, my coworkers were African-American, Russian, Korean, Filipino, Chinese, Panamanian, Puerto Rican–and this was just at my one store!
I have increasingly seen ads for barista jobs where a photo was required along with the cover letter and resume, like they’ve found an easier way to weed out the colored folks!
Posted 12 Mar 2010 at 1:50 am ¶