This is why so much of NYC retail space is just “for rent” signs. Landlords got spoiled by those years when national banks, pharmacy chains, and high-end realtors were setting up branches every other block. Now they’d rather just let these spaces sit empty and wait for the unicorn tenant that can afford their ridiculous prices. And this isn’t just a thing on the minor strips/outer boroughs, 5th Avenue in manhattan is a ghost town, relatively speaking.

I really think we need a tax on unutilized assets. Start with commercial real estate then residential real estate and go all the way down to the useful things in your storage unit.

Didn’t take your boat out this season? That’s a paddlin’.

An entire class of completely useless people, obliterating utility and community wherever they find it in pursuit of a fatter wallet

I hope a lot of these fucksticks off themselves when the market finally collapses and they have nothing left

A number of long standing local places by me are closing / closed due to rents going up. So far most of them have been replaced by major brands (fast food, Starbucks, pearle vision???, Jenis, etc). Landlords would rather get the sure money from a big brand than the unsure money from a locally owned place. It feels like it’s spelling the end of locally owned business which is both a real shame, and also an obvious sharpening of a contradiction of capitalism

Pour one out for the based grandma

You thought you were eating, but you ended up with a MAOthfull

Begging Kim to resurrect Mao so he can protect Chinese grandmothers.

I am so, so sorry that happened to your community

I was just about to write up a landlord story of my own, so I’ll hitch onto your existing post, kristina.

Every summer I make it a point to get the hell out of the city and spend some time approximately in the middle of nowhere. I like to find a village where I can rent out a backyard guest house (aka a big shed with a kitchen), and just disconnect for a week.

Twice now I’ve ended up in the same small town, and rented out the same couple’s trailer next to their irrigation reservoir lakefront guest house. Lovely people. They have a one-eyed dog, and a three-legged dog. The husband taught me how to temporarily patch my tire with rubber cement and a knife so I could drive back home for a real fix. But they aren’t the point of the story.

I’d like to talk about the town’s burger shop. It’s one of those local chains that you only find in just one state. Think of it as being like In-N-Out Burger, circa 1995. One of the locations is right near my place back in the city, too. Naturally, there is a huge price difference between the two locations.

Before I go further, I want you to guess which burger costs more: the restaurant in the city that’s a central shipping hub for the region, or the restaurant in a town with less than 1500 people? Obviously it’s the rural one, right?

Nope. The first time I visited there was five or six years ago, and I was shocked to find that their menu was cheaper by more than a third. Same food, same distributors, same recipes—way cheaper. A burger that cost me $6 in the city cost me $3.90 in the middle of nowhere. How’d that happen? Wild.

I was there again this year and, obviously, prices have gone up thanks to massive corporate greed mysterious inflation. But by far less than I expected. The burger on the menu in rural nowhere has now increased to a staggering… $4.25. The one in the city is now $9. I asked the owner about it, and he very flatly told me why he can charge so little:

He owns the building the restaurant is in. His dad built it 40 years ago. He’s the only location that isn’t a renter. He’s making the same profit all the other owners are, but he doesn’t have to pay any rent.

Fuck landlords. They make my treats 'spensive.

I had this happen to my favorite pizza place when I was in college. They ended up putting a chain bagel place in it’s spot later.

The most soul crushing part was seeing that old Italian man working the prepared foods pizza counter at a grocery store chain months later.

ALAB

edit: they did this to a restaurant I liked downtown. It was a historical old mason building and they sold it so the Hilton could build a hotel inside of it. The restaurant was in the basement. They ended up turning it into an area for businesses and still nobody has entered it. They could have just kept them.

I lost my Arab spice merchant the same way. He had a small shop in a middle eastern mall they had placed in an old factory. The mall had impressive greengrocers, halal butchers, restaurants and my spice merchant who had any spice you could ever want in his small shop. When you bought spices he would always tell you about their medicinal properties and give you the recipe for how to use it to cure various ailments.

Then one day the landlord decided that all those small immigrant shops were not paying enough rent and kicked them out. Today the building is full of chain gyms.

Some of the shops moved to another mall placed in a housing project with a large non-white population. The mall was built for western high street shops but has become home to small middle eastern immigrant shops. It’s the best place to go for vegetables, spices and a cheap haircut. Now the city and the housing association are planning to knock down that mall as part of an “urban renewal” project to “revitalise” the area by replacing the current residents with whiter and richer ones.

Capitalism is a conspiracy to make us eat boring unseasoned food.

Bricks

Yeah, we’ve got a ton of empty commercial properties in my city because some dbag bean counter reckons they make more money keeping it empty and seeking ludicrous rents than they would actually renting it out for a reasonable rate.