Hole in Carroll Gardens
The continued existence of the teeny-tiny Hole in the Wall Video store on Court street, near the former Key Food, was always living proof to me that booming Carroll Gardens still had room for a mom-and-pop mercantile culture.
Today, it is closing for good, after 20 years service to the community. That tenure would have the business arriving just before the neighborhood started to change from a sleepy Brooklyn backwater to a hot nabe for Manhattan exiles. The place was what it said it was: a hole in the wall. One room, low ceilings. The management folded up the VHS tape boxes so they were flat, in order to use the space on the shelves more efficiently. The selection was decent, the service good; I had an account there for some years.
No mention of the reason they're closing in their goodbye note posted in the window. The place is too small for most businesses. Wonder what's up. The building's owned by none other that the area's famous Scotto clan, and there's an application in with the DOB to renovate the storefront.
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4 comments:
Netflix is probably why it closed.
Sad to say, the only time I go into a video store is to rummage through close-out merchandise. They're an 80's-era thing that will probably be near-extinct in just a few years. More room for banks and Starbuckses (Starbucki?).
No. It was a rent increase and no word on what will try to move in there. No food.
Not only was this a rent increase, it was a rediculous rent increase. They also wanted the owner to sign an incredibly long lease (10 years), and refurbish the store. This was unaffordable by todays market, and the landlords knew it, although they claim to want to keep the relationship too. It reminds me of an old saying my Mom used to say... "Here's your hat but what's your hurry? "
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