I'd noticed recently that Greenwich Village's Lafayette French Pastry looked closed, but I thought perhaps the owners were on summer vacation. I learned today from Eater that the longstanding baker had shuttered for good. Taking over the space will be the irrepressible New York culinary world loudmouth Michael Bao.
This was actually Lafayette's second location in the Village. It used to be on Bleecker Street near Seventh Avenue. It moved about 15 years ago, replaced by a Burritoville which has since vanished. In that guise, it epitomized, for me, the Greenwich Village small business, full of effortless local character. Lafayette was around 85 years old, run by three generations of the same family, a real relic of the old Village. According to their Facebook page, the owners got a letter of eviction in June.
Sigh. Another victim of Bloomberg & Co's desire to turn NYC into "a luxury city" in which only the rich can afford to live and in which "branding" dominates any other value. What Bloomberg and his ilk either don't realize or don't care about is that what they are doing doesn't improve the lives of all New Yorkers, it replaces one segment of New Yorkers with another segment. That family that ran Lafayette Pastries isn't benefitting from the surge in upscale development. They are out of business, and out of a job. I think of it as the Balkanization of NYC....when Yugoslavia broke up we all learned about "ethnic cleansing". In NYC what we're having is "cultural cleansing" aided, abetted, and largely conducted by the very government that was elected to represent and guard the interests of those who now find themselves "cleansed". GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
ReplyDeleteThe comment seems overwrought, but what has been happening in New York is really colonization -more powerful outsiders coming in and forcing the locals to leave and/ or change their culture. Its a shame because it was actually a pretty good culture as these things go. I wish there had been more resistance.
ReplyDeleteEd: There has been resistance. But it's hard to fight City Hall, and City Hall's the one that wants the city colonized by large outside forces.
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