When it was a store front, the small theater had no air conditioning. Come summer the stage either went quiet or waited for deep night when the heat occasionally lifted a bit. The front door was always open.
The landlord raised the rent by a quatrillion gazillion percent and, after leaving a couple of tons of sand on the walls and in the basement, the theater traveled up four flights into another building. With no stoop to cool the stage, come the heat, the lights went dark.
3 comments:
I guess we'll never know if it was greed or necessity that caused the rent to escalate. Had the theatre been there long?
I realize, of course, that landlords have to do more than break even. If only they were able to project into the future a bit they might be able to see the value in taking a bit of a loss for a little while in order to reap reward later; both for themselves and the community.
it was greed... and that little store front is now an expensive boutique - one of several expensive shops that has lived at that address..... hmmm....
Penny Arcade described gentrification best in the early 1990s to the NY Times - "killing the golden goose who laid the golden egg..."
Ah, E. 11th St. What a start!
Post a Comment