Goodbye to All That

Dear Readers:

I am ending Lost City. Most of the City is lost after all—the good parts, anyway—so you could say the course of history has put me out of a job. Ironically, the kinds of news that fills up a jeremiad like this will, if too constant and voluminous, eventually puts the enterprise out of business. It's like writing a volcano report from Pompeii; you know the communiques are going to end sometime.

I began the blog because I was incensed and alarmed at what the city was becoming. It was losing its grit, its fabric, its very character. It was losing its New York-ness, and gaining nothing but Subway franchises and luxury condos. Since none of my editors would let me write about it, I became my own editor. I was gratified to soon find that there were a lot of people out there who felt the way I did. And it wasn't too long before there were other bloggers who took on a similar mission, like Jeremiah Moss at Vanishing New York and EV Grieve at the blog of the same name. Taken together, we made for quite a few howls in the wilderness. And, tragically, we never ran out of things to report.

But, in the end, they were just howls, as ineffective at Lear's on the heath. I wrote thousands of words, and posted hundreds of pictures for four-and-a-half years—nearly 3,000 posts, all told. None of them made any difference. Not really. The press paid a little attention to our windmill-tilting, but City Hall never did. The City continued on its inexorable march to glossy mediocrity. Bloomberg, the billionaire, city planner Amanda Burden, the millionaire, and their cabal of equally wealthy real estate and Wall Street pals forged ahead and got the metropolis they wanted all along: homogenous, anodyne, whitewashed, suburban, toothless, chain-store-ridden, ordinary, exclusive and terribly, terribly expensive. A town for tourists and the upper 2%. He took a world-class capital of culture, individuality and independent endeavor and turned it into the smoothest, first-class, gated community Houston ever saw. Walk down Broadway on the Upper West Side, Sixth Avenue in Chelsea, Third Avenue in Yorkville—or look at the gaping hole of Atlantic Yards—and you will see the administration's legacy.

It is still inconceivable to me that New York could have (and elect, and "elect") a mayor who witnessed the extinction of such irreplaceable city landmarks—Chumley's, Gino, Gage & Tollner, Cafe Des Artistes, Manny's, Astroland, The Green Church, Cedar Tavern, Gertel's Bakery, CBGB's, Yankee Stadium, Shea Stadium and countless other institutions—and never uttered a peep. No comment, no stump speech, no recognition of what was passing into history on his watch. Not even lip service. He stood by and watched Coney Island, one of the most iconic neighborhoods in New York, utterly destroyed. He never saw the value of what was vanishing.

I'm proud of Lost City. As a writer, it's the purest and most idealistic thing I've ever done. It may not have saved a single building, or prevented a single piece of luxury crapitecture. But I know it occasionally caused discomfort to the powers that be, and that it alerted some readers to a few of the City's treasures. For that alone, it was worth it.

Still the blog has always taken a vast amount of time, hours upon hours each week, and it doesn't pay any bills. I'm tired and discouraged, and I don't relish hanging around just to record the last few living landmarks as they fall in this barren forest, making no sound that the City Fathers can hear. Nor do I much enjoy scouring the street looking for vestiges of the city I loved, vestiges that are harder and harder to find. Our "third-term" mayor has three more years to go; he's not going to ever see the light and things aren't going to get better.

I will use the time I put into Lost City on more lucrative ventures. It makes me sad to say that, but it's an imperative. I moved into Carroll Gardens 16 years ago. It was affordable, middle-class and wonderfully diverse. But it has been cruelly proved to me over and over in recent years that, today, I would not have a hope in hell of entering it without an annual net worth of $200,000 and a sterling credit rating. Like so many areas in New York that were once open to people of all incomes, races and professions, it has been "monetized."

I will also start reading books again, something that's been very hard to do the past five years. There was always an urgent item to post.

I will continue to write the "Who Goes There?" column for Eater, which runs every couple weeks, as I enjoy the series (even as the eateries quickly fold in my wake). I will also leave Lost City here floating in cyberspace for whoever wants to take a painful trip down the potholed memory lane of the City's inexorable losses. I may post an occasional item citing a particularly grievous loss to the burg.

Before I go, I'd like to thank the following fellow bloggers, who have always supported me with linkage, kind words and otherwise: Lockhart, Ben, Amanda, Elizabeth and Joey at Curbed/Eater/Racked; the folks at Gothamist; Jonathan at Brownstoner; Queens Crapper at Queens Crap; Jeremiah at Vanishing New York; EV Grieve at EV Grieve; Katia at Pardon Me for Asking; Kurt at Restless; Ken Mac at Greenwich Village Daily Photo; the folks at City Room; Kevin at Forgotten New York; and the late, great Bob Guskind of Gowanus Lounge. (If I forgot anybody, I'm sorry.) A fond thank you to the children and grandchildren of long gone New York businesses who reached out to me over the years. Some even sent me momentos from the past. I'd also like to thank the many readers who have regularly left their thoughtful, insightful and sometimes angry comments. I didn't mind people being angry. I was angry, too. Still am, though more often just mournful these days.

If anyone out there feels like quietly continuing to fight the good fight, take a look at the "Lost City List" below. Patronize those places. Let them know they're wanted and needed.

I wrote this farewell from top to bottom in one go, or, as a friend once said, "Obviously, this letter was written, not composed." I could polish it up, but I doesn't seem appropriate.

Sincerest Regards,

Brooks