My City Was Gone

I know it's not like I'm living in Baghdad or Beirut and my local supermarket or hospital has just been blown up, but the recent news that two of my most beloved NYC stores are closing really bums me out. Both Coliseum Books (an independent bookstore that I've been going to since the late 70s) and Tower Records (where I bought LPs in the early 80s and CDs at the end of that decade!) are kaput, killed off by mega competition from thousands of internet-based discounters, iTunes and file-sharing, and Manhattan's ridiculously high rents. (I'd much rather hit an indie record or book store than a chain or go on-line...but there are almost none anywhere near where I work or live!)

I stopped by the Lincoln Center Tower yesterday. All CDs were on sale and, as a result, blood is in the air -- people were frantically picking through the stacks like buzzards pecking at the flesh and bones of some mass of roadkill. And I guiltily picked up some CDs (The Saints and Los Abandoned) that I couldn't ever expect to find at the local Best Buy.

Change is good...inevitable, really. But NYC is rapidly losing so much of what had made it so unique and vital for so much of my life. And neighborhoods that used to be so out on the fringe of things (and have all these funky people, shops, restaurants, and bars) have been transformed into the playgrounds of the very, very rich.

Hate to sound like a cranky old man talking 'bout how great things were back in the day...but they really were!

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"My City Was Gone" is from my favorite Pretenders album, "Learning to Crawl." Chrissy Hynde mourns the destruction of her hometown of Akron, Ohio during the Reagan years: "All my favorite places/in my city had been pulled down/reduced to parking spaces."