{"id":81007,"date":"2014-12-18T17:09:41","date_gmt":"2014-12-18T22:09:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=81007"},"modified":"2014-12-18T17:26:21","modified_gmt":"2014-12-18T22:26:21","slug":"toast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/18\/toast\/","title":{"rendered":"Toast"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Closed_sign_Hawkins\"<\/a>

Photo: Ken Hawkins<\/p><\/div>\n

I was told not long ago that a certain prominent New York publication has put a moratorium on features about the death of local institutions; otherwise, they\u2019d be running such features constantly. And the sad truth is, there is a sameness to the narrative. Neighborhoods change, rents rise, developers swoop, venerable places close. It\u2019s a story so familiar that it tends, nowadays, to inspire sadness rather than outrage.<\/p>\n

These stories also pose certain questions. What makes something “iconic\u201d? Just because a place is old, does that automatically make it an institution? What if standards have slipped, and a restaurant or bar is a pale shadow of its former self? And, of course, the ultimate test: sentiment aside, how often do you actually go<\/em> there? In the end, the arguments are moot. Good or bad, beloved or forgotten, everything is going. The Metro section reads like an obit page.\u00a0<\/p>\n

You could spend your life going only to sepia-toned places for purely charitable reasons. What kind of a life this would be, I can\u2019t say\u2014probably a melancholy one, filled with pricks of secret, guilty relief when some of the spots are put out of their misery and the civic-minded patron is let off the hook.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I just had a last lunch at a coffee shop that\u2019s being ousted by new landlords. My grandfather used to have lunch there. Of course, my grandfather didn\u2019t care about food. So long as he could get a quick sardine on rye toast and get back to work, he was happy. That, of course, is the point; it\u2019s the loss of everyday, affordable things that hurt most. That\u2019s when a world vanishes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Walking back from lunch, my friend and I admitted the truth: the matzo ball soup had been insipid, the kasha varnishkes<\/em> woefully underseasoned, the matzo brie bland, and the alleged Reuben a mere pile of tough corned beef and sauerkraut blanketed with barely melted cheese, and with nary a drop of Russian to improve the situation. The lunch had been bad.<\/p>\n

Did it matter? I asked. Did it render its loss less sad?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d my friend said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t change the nature of the basic, systemic problem. After all, there\u2019s no such thing as a perfect victim.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was told not long ago that a certain prominent New York publication has put a moratorium on features about the death of local institutions; otherwise, they\u2019d be running such features constantly. And the sad truth is, there is a sameness to the narrative. Neighborhoods change, rents rise, developers swoop, venerable places close. It\u2019s a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[16434,16435,6699,125,16433],"class_list":["post-81007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-businesses","tag-closing","tag-gentrification","tag-new-york-city","tag-stores"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow Should We Mourn the Death of Local Institutions?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"With more and more iconic businesses falling prey to gentrification, Sadie Stein asks how we should react to the changing storefronts of New York.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/18\/toast\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Toast by Sadie Stein\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"December 18, 2014 \u2013 I was told not long ago that a certain prominent New York publication has put a moratorium on features about the death of local institutions; 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