
Author Imprint

Jeremiah Moss Talks Gentrification in "Vanishing New York"
Jeremiah Moss moved to New York in the 90s, which he calls a "Harold and Maude" story. He started a blog in 2007 to chart the disappearance of beloved small businesses in his neighborhood, forming the basis of his book, "Vanishing the New York: How a Great City Lost Its Soul." He talks about how gentrification changes the character of the city itself and what residents can do to fight back.
TRANSCRIPT
>> Hi, I'm Maddie Orton,
and this is "Author Imprint,"
Today, we're talking to
Jeremiah Moss, the author of
"Vanishing New York:
How a Great City Lost Its Soul."
If the title sounds familiar,
"Vanishing New York" is also
the name of Jeremiah's blog,
where, for the past 10 years,
he's lamented what he calls
a city going extinct.
Jeremiah moved to New York City
in the '90s.
This was around the time
that the grungy, bohemian Mecca
he dreamed of, filled with
kosher delis and indie
bookstores, was quickly giving
way to big-name retailers and
one particularly prolific coffee
chain.
His new book is a comprehensive
and nostalgic look at what's
lost.
♪♪
Jeremiah, thanks so much
for joining us.
>> Thank you.
>> So let's start
with the beginning.
You started the blog
10 years ago.
>> Mm-hmm.
>> What made you want
to do that?
>> Well, I think, you know,
about 10 years ago in 2007,
I had really been noticing,
for a couple of years,
that the city was changing in
what felt like a different way.
So I've been here since '93,
and of course,
the city is always changing,
as people love to remind me,
but this felt like a different
level of change.
And, you know, I wrote a novel
about a guy named Jeremiah Moss,
which is my pen name,
and, you know, I found myself
writing his voice.
He was lamenting a lot of the
changes, and I wanted to kind of
keep going, so I started the
blog more -- It was more for,
like -- for me.
It was a personal sort of labor
of love in the beginning.
>> And what was the idea,
though, behind looking
at the different pieces
of New York that were closing
and really sort of giving them
each their own,
almost, eulogy moment?
>> Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
I think it sort of evolved
into that.
You know, there was one
other blog called "Lost City,"
which has stopped running
a while back,
but that was a great blog
that was doing very similar
to what I'm doing.
And I thought, you know,
I could do that, too.
I had a lot of photographs from
the past and journal entries,
and so I started sort of, like,
just putting them up online,
in some ways, I think, hoping
maybe to find some people
who were, you know,
simpatico and similar-minded
because, you know,
when I would talk about,
"The city is changing.
Something is really happening,"
people would tell me,
especially native New Yorkers
would say, "Eh. You know,
this is par for the course.
This is what happens in the
city."
>> Right, the city is always
changing.
Sure.
>> Exactly, exactly, yeah.
>> And so what was the idea
behind the blog, then?
To say it's changing but pay
attention because this is
changing in a fundamental way?
Or to just give each of those
things its moment?
>> I think, in the beginning,
to give each of those things
its moment.
I don't think, at that time,
I had really put together
why the city was changing
the way it was.
It was really more a memorial
at that point.
>> So why the pen name?
You brought that up,
Jeremiah Moss,
which is not your real name,
but you chose a pen name.
>> Right, mm-hmm.
>> Why write the blog
under the pen name?
>> I think, you know,
in the beginning, I was working.
I had a few jobs.
I was working at a clinic.
I was doing some copyrighting
and copy editing,
and it just seemed like, you
know, bloggers were using pen
names, and I felt like, you
know, let's kind of just keep
this a little separate space
where I can sort of, you know,
do this kind of writing.
And then I just stuck with it,
and what I found was that it
really gave me a lot of
psychological freedom to write,
think, from a different
sort of part of myself,
and so it opened
things up for me.
>> What was the reaction to the
blog?
Because I think that I had read
that you were surprised at sort
of the quick traction it got and
the visceral responses that you
got.
>> Yeah, yeah.
So I started the blog in July.
By October, I was in
The New York Times.
I was profiled in theTimes,
and people really respond to it,
you know, and I think
it really touched a nerve.
And what I discovered
was that I certainly was not
alone in my feelings.
I just hadn't connected to those
people, but the Internet
enabled me to connect to people
who were saying, "Yeah,
I'm noticing the same thing.
I feel the same way.
You know, something is happening
here."
>> Were there any comments
that stuck out with you along
those lines, any particular
things where you were like,
"Wow, this person is really glad
that I talked about this"?
>> Well, I can't -- I mean,
there's been so many, you know.
I can't think of any
specifically.
But people -- I mean,
I'm jumping ahead a little bit,
but since the book has come out,
I get e-mails from people
saying, you know, "You put into
words something I've been
feeling but wasn't able to
articulate."
So I'm hearing that a lot, which
is such a gratifying thing
for a writer to hear.
>> And you're also a
psychoanalyst, right?
>> Right, yep.
>> So, I mean, that's kind of an
interesting combination, to me,
the idea of putting to words
these feelings that people have
and working with people's
feelings professionally.
Do you find a tie there?
>> I do.
You know, I think a lot
about empathy, right?
So empathy is one of the tools
of a psychoanalyst
or psychotherapist.
And there's a way in which
I think that we can empathize
with the people of the city,
but we can also empathize
with the things of the city,
the architecture, the spaces,
the little shops and the little
place because they're human
spaces, you know.
And there's a way in which
I think that there's not a lot
of empathy for these things
in the city today.
There's a sort of --
You know, and one could argue
that New York has always been
like, you know, "Tear it down
and build it new," right?
>> Mm-hmm.
>> But it feels like that's
really accelerated a lot and
that there is a kind of loss
of empathy, not just in New York
but in the United States
and in Western culture at large.
You know, there's sort of a
larger conversation about is
there, like, attacks on empathy?
And what happens when you have
empathy is you might be moved to
preserve things.
You might be moved to take care
of vulnerable people, and in the
culture we have today, that's
really not valued as much.
>> I think that's true.
I mean, I also think that
there is sort of a thing that
happens where you almost --
I don't want to say
anthropomorphize a space,
but the idea that a space takes
on a characters and a persona,
that when you lose a space,
the Carnegie Deli for example,
that there is this moment of
a pang that you're missing
a big character
in New York sort of, right?
>> Absolutely, absolutely.
I mean, I started off
in writing as a poet.
I had this idea of the pathetic
fallacy, which is that sort of
anthropomorphizing things
that are not alive or human.
And pathetic meaning pathos,
right, like feeling into
something and connecting with
it.
And these spaces I think of as
being -- You know, they're not
alive, but they are enlivened
by the people who have passed
through them, the people who
keep them going, you know, the
owners and the customers and,
you know, all of those people
over a period of time.
And a lot of these places,
you know, have been around
for decades, some 100 years.
>> Yeah.
I want to talk a little bit
about how you define New York,
because I think
this is really interesting.
You talk about, in your book,
which I thought was a really
strong point to make, that, you
know, arguably you could go back
to the New York of the settlers,
the New York
of the Native Americans.
You could go back to the 1700s,
1800s.
>> Right.
>> But you settled on
a character for New York,
in a way, that I think is also
the character in my mind for
New York, and probably a lot of
people, so I just -- I want to
read this quick piece here about
what you define New York as.
Okay.
"My city is the city
of dark moons, scrap yards, and
jazz, of poets, painters, and
anarchists, of dirty bookstores,
dirty movies, and dirty streets,
of Gershwin's 'Rhapsody in Blue'
trumpeting over black-and-white
Manhattan, of Travis Bickle's
taxi roving through the steamy
rain, that grimy yellow splash.
It's the city of Edward Hopper's
melancholy rooms
and Frank O'Hara's
'I do this, I do that.'
It's also a working-class city
peopled by men and women
who love with the tough love
and thick accents and no time
for --" I'm going to say B.S.
Okay, so how did you
come across that
sort of character and persona,
and why do we all sort of think
of New York in that way?
>> Yeah, yeah.
Well, I think that's really
the 20th century city, right,
which came out of the immigrants
of the late 1800s
and the early 1900s, coming from
Ireland, Italy,
Eastern European Jewish people
mainly, as well as many others,
and then African Americans
migrating up from the
Jim Crow South, and then
Bohemians coming in in the late
1800s and sort of proto-LGBTQ
people coming in from all across
America, from small towns, to
live a more a liberated life,
right.
And a lot of these people were
working class or they were
intellectuals, and so you had
this confluence of really, like,
you know, desperate people,
restless people, people who
really needed to be here
and didn't, you know, have
a whole lot of other choice,
in a way.
So, you know, I think when
people talk about the New York
character or New York values,
it really comes out of that mix
of cultures.
I was just watching
Colin Quinn's special on
New York.
Have you seen this?
>> Yeah, I have.
>> It's great.
And he really lays it out,
and he goes all the way back to
the Native Americans and the
Dutch.
And he really sort of -- You
know, I think that's the kind
of, you know, the sort of
gruffness and the hurry,
but there's a warmth in it,
and, you know, that energy,
to me, is the New York soul
that's vanishing,
and I don't think we see
that as much, and, you know,
we're losing that today.
>> So let's talk about why that
is.
I mean, so you identify this
as hyper-gentrification -- the
idea that there was --
You know, gentrification has
been a thing that's been
happening for a while, but that
this went into hyper-speed.
>> Right.
>> What do you think the reason
is for that?
Is this -- I know you mentioned
Bloomberg as a possible factor.
>> Right, right.
>> Why is that?
>> So something happened coming
out of the financial crisis
of the 1970s, right?
So New York City,
up until the 1970s,
throughout the 20th century,
beginning in the early part
of the 20th century,
really started moving towards
becoming a social democracy.
So taking care of its most
vulnerable citizens,
putting its citizens first
rather than outside investors.
And, you know, then we had
this financial crisis, which
gets blamed a lot on the welfare
state.
You know, it sort of gets blamed
on compassion, but really, when
you look it, the financial
crisis, you know, it's
complicated but, in large part,
was caused by white flight
and the movement of industry
also out to the suburbs,
which was socially engineered
itself, right?
So there are all these, like,
racist roots and classist roots.
But then, coming out of the
1970s, you have this shift,
which academics call the
neoliberal shift.
Neoliberalism is a tricky word
for people.
It's not new.
It's not liberal.
It just means basically a
belief, you know, in free-market
economics, that you don't
regulate the market, and the
market will take care of
everybody, and money and
resources will trickle down,
right -- trickle-down economics.
So that also has a philosophy
to it, which is about not taking
care of people.
It's sort of like, "Every man
for himself.
Pull yourself up by your
bootstraps."
>> Mm-hmm.
>> And so what the city did was
it kind of moved away from its
citizens and moved towards
courting outside investment,
so big business, giving tax
breaks to developers, and
attracting lots and lots of
tourists.
>> And this is when you get
sort of the Disney-fication
of Times Square.
You have a lot of these bigger
retail spaces coming in, right?
>> Right, so those plans really
started with Mayor Koch, and
then Giuliani and Dinkins, too,
really put them into effect.
And then Bloomberg -- You know,
Bloomberg was sort of like the
ultimate expression of this
New York.
He called the city "a luxury
product," and he thought of
New Yorkers not as citizens at
all but as consumers.
And that's a really different
way of looking at people, right,
because citizens are active.
They're engaged.
They're politically active.
And consumers consume.
That's all consumers do.
>> I think you actually really
encapsulate this well with the
concept of going from
neuroticism to narcissism,
I think is what you wrote...
>> Right, right.
>> ...which I think is
interesting.
You know, when I think of
New York in certain ways now,
I think of Soho and shopping
and Rockefeller and shopping and
all these areas that are very
built up with these luxury
brands, but, you know, in many
ways, that's the pushing out of
these smaller indie businesses
that created the vibe.
>> Absolutely, absolutely,
yeah, yeah.
>> So the product of
hyper-gentrification was what?
>> The product of
hyper-gentrification -- that
New York is this product that
people want to sort of buy,
and so the city itself becomes
commodified.
So it's no longer really thought
of as a city for people to live
in.
It's a city for people to
consume, and that's just, like,
a really -- If, like -- If you
twerk it like that, you start
from that point, all kinds of --
>> You feel a little dirty,
yeah.
>> Yeah, all kinds of changes
can happen, right?
So hyper-gentrification is
largely -- It's basically urban
policy now, right?
So gentrification, we talk about
old-fashioned gentrification
happened because, you know, a
few people came in and bought
properties and rehabbed them,
and neighborhoods would change
gradually over time because of
that.
So that's one thing.
And then the city government
saw, "Well, this is a great way
to commodify neighborhoods and
raise real-estate prices and
work with the real-estate
industry, work with developers
to really, you know, change
neighborhoods on purpose.
>> There were two factors
that you mentioned in your book
that were not factors that would
have come to my mind necessarily
as far as making New York
a very different place
than it might have been
organically otherwise,
which were the AIDS crisis and
9/11.
>> Right.
>> Can you talk a little bit
about how you feel those massive
moments in American history
really changed the shape
of New York?
>> Sure.
Well, my thoughts about the
impact of the AIDS crisis really
come from Sarah Schulman's book
"The Gentrification
of the Mind," which I recommend.
And she writes about how, you
know, a lot of the
rent-controlled or
rent-stabilized apartments were
occupied by gay men who died.
And then, when they died, their
apartment were deregulated and
bumped up to market rate, and
the people who moved in were not
these sort of refugees from
middle America in the same way,
you know.
They were more mainstream
people, and so you had this kind
of mainstreaming of the spaces.
So that's that part,
and then the other part --
Remind me what the other part
was.
>> The other part is you
mentioned 9/11, which I thought
was really interesting,
that it's a shift of how America
looked at New York, I guess.
>> Exactly, yeah.
Well, America has always hated
New York, right?
I mean --
>> Well, I will say though,
by the way, I did write down
this Woody Allen quote,
which I love...
>> I love that quote, yeah.
>> ...that you wrote in your
book, which I'll share with
people.
The Annie Hall quote of
"The rest of country looks upon
New York like we're left-wing,
Communist, Jewish, homosexual
pornographers."
>> Right.
>> Which I think is something
that a lot of us wear as a badge
of New York honor.
>> Absolutely.
>> But it is an interesting
point.
>> Right, right.
So when I say America hated
New York, like, there's also
this great book by Max Page,
and the title is escaping me,
but he writes about America's
fantasies of destroying
New York.
And he looks at films and books
in which New York is often being
destroyed.
>> Okay.
>> And so, you know, because
New York was always exceptional,
it was never really quite
America.
You know, people have written
about it sort of like,
"Well, is it Europe?
Is it America?"
It's sort of, like,
this other zone outside of that.
And, you know, I think that that
reached its pinnacle in the '70s
with that.
And Woody Allen really sums it
up in that quote, right?
So what happened after 9/11
was there was this
Americanization of New York
where, you know, everybody was
saying, "We're all New Yorkers
now."
And, you know, we had our flags
waving.
I had a flag outside on my fire
escape.
You know, there was this
national sort of mourning
and coming together
after 9/11 that really -- that
New York was sort of claimed
by America, and so what happened
was, you know, New York had been
the Big Apple and the rotten
apple, right?
And now it was as American
as apple pie, and there was this
real sort of psychic shift, and
tourists -- There was this sort
of point right after 9/11 where
terror kept tourists out of
New York, but then they started
really flowing back in in a
really big way.
Ground Zero became a huge
tourist attraction
and the museum that's there now,
you know, which is -- you know,
I have mixed feelings about.
>> Yeah. It's interesting.
And you talk about the rotten
apple piece, which is kind of
tongue-in-cheek but also kind of
legitimate.
>> Mm-hmm.
>> The thing that I wonder
about, you know, somewhat waxing
nostalgic about a lost New York,
is, is there a worry of
glorifying maybe some of the not
great parts of New York?
I'm watching "The Deuce" right
now on HBO.
>> Right, mm-hmm.
>> And, you know, I think
a lot of people are.
It's great.
>> Sure.
>> But the idea of a New York
where there's a ton of
corruption and crime and
prostitution is rampant in
Times Square.
>> Right, right.
>> Is there a concern of
glorifying that?
I mean, have things progressed
in a positive way, too?
>> Sure, right?
I mean, I think that to glorify
that would be a mistake.
At the same time, can we look at
it in a nuanced way?
I mean, a lot of these
conversations that I have with
people around this topic get
split into black-and-white
thinking, and as a
psychoanalyst, you know, I'm
like, "No, no. It's gray.
It's all gray.
Everything's gray, right?"
So, you know, what I say in my
book is, like, you know, the
city was dirty, and dirt is
fertile, and it is fertile.
And that doesn't mean that
it's not dirty and scary
and dangerous, and, you know,
I'm not advocating for crime.
A lot of people think I am,
which is a crazy notion.
But there is something about
that time, and I think that's
why we're seeing so much
nostalgia right now for the
1970s, because the city has
become so sterilized.
You know, we're not talking
about balance anymore.
We're talking about the city
has gone out of balance, and
maybe it was out of balance in
the '70s, too.
It was too far to, you know,
decrepitude, but, you know, can
we have a balance between the
two?
>> Well, so do you think there
is a balance?
So, I'm looking at -- There is
a moment in your book where you
talk about Robert Moses and
Jane Jacobs and people who
think, you know -- where you can
sort of appeal to both
sensibilities.
>> Mm-hmm.
>> I don't know that you can.
Do you think that there is
a compromise that can be reached
where New York is a safer,
cleaner place but still holds
onto its soul?
>> I do think so.
You know, what happens, too,
in this black-and-white way
that people kind of get
their heads around it is you end
up in this false dichotomy,
right, where you can either have
a safe city that's completely
unaffordable for most people
or you can have an affordable
city that's open but is
completely filled with crime and
danger and risk.
And I think that that's just not
true.
But what we do need to do is we
need to reregulate the city,
because the city that we see
today was created by policies.
It was not natural.
It was not inevitable.
It's not the way it's always
been, and it can be -- a new
city can be created through
policies that are compassionate
and empathic and centered
on its citizens and centered
on its most vulnerable people
and centered on creating a kind
of balance.
>> And you've done activism
work to this end, as well.
I mean, tell me a little bit
about what you think people
should do who are sad when they
see Carnegie Deli close or their
local mom-and-pop shop close.
What should people do?
>> Well, so I started a little
grassroots group called
Save NYC, which you can find if
you do #SaveNYC, and mostly
we've been raising awareness.
I sometimes don't like to call
myself an activist.
I'm sort of a writer/activist
is more, you know -- because I
think that there activists who
are in the streets and really
doing a lot of work, which I'm
not doing, so I want to kind of
give them credit for that.
So, you know, there are a lot of
things we can do.
One thing we can do is we can
pass the Small-Business Job
Survival Act, right?
This is a bill that's been
kicking around for a while.
The majority of the city council
members support it.
It just needs to be brought to
a vote, and it's a progressive
bill that would help businesses
when it comes time to renew
their leases that they get a
fair lease renewal.
I would love to see commercial
rent control come back.
A lot of people don't know
that New York City had
commercial rent control for
almost 20 years after
World War II, and that protected
businesses from these massive
rent hikes that we're seeing.
Because people like to blame
the Internet, and the Internet
has taken a bite out of small,
you know, brick-and-mortar
shops.
But I think they'd be weathering
the Internet if their rent
wasn't tripled, quadrupled,
quintup-- You know, it's crazy.
>> Right, right.
>> So those are two policies
that could be, you know --
that could do a lot of work.
>> Yeah, absolutely.
So, reading the book, I should
also mention you've lived in the
East Village.
>> Mm-hmm.
>> I lived in the East Village.
>> Mm-hmm.
>> We were speaking a little bit
earlier that I looked through
the book, and there were all
these places that you mentioned
where I thought, "Oh, my gosh.
I forgot that that closed."
And that did really affect me.
Lanza's I didn't even know
closed until I read your book.
Were there moments -- What were
sort of, like, the big
harbingers of change that, when
they closed, you were hit really
hard by that?
>> Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
>> Were there any in particular
that, like, stick out for you?
>> Yeah, I mean, I think --
You know, I always have a hard
time with this question, because
it's sort of -- I forget, too.
I mean, I think forgetting gets
sort of built into the
changeability of the city and
just life as it moves forward.
And also, the places that mean
the most to me are very
personal, right?
>> Sure.
>> So, like, there's a big loss,
like CBGB's music club.
That's a major loss.
I really never went there.
I went there a few times.
It wasn't personally important
to me, but it was more important
for, you know, the culture of
the city.
>> Mm-hmm.
>> St. Marks Bookshop is a big
one that I miss every day.
I mean, I loved that -- I loved
that shop.
That's a big one.
Cafe Edison, which is around the
corner from here on 47th.
>> It's huge.
>> Huge, you know.
That was a beautiful spot.
It had been around since, I
think, 1980, and the owner
didn't renew their lease.
And, you know, the whole
Broadway community came out in
support of it.
And we had a group,
Save Cafe Edison, and we got all
the way to Mayor De Blasio, and
he tried, and he couldn't do
anything.
And that's when I realized we
really need systemic policy
change.
>> You do a thing on your blog
that I think is really unique
and interesting.
There are some of these places
where you've been to on the last
night that it's open, things
like that.
It's almost sort of a -- I don't
know if it's silly to say, but a
personal funeral, in a way, that
you have these moments with
these places.
>> Yeah.
>> What are some of the places
that you've been to on the night
before its closing, and what do
you do when you go there?
>> I eat a meal, you know,
sort of like a Last Supper
kind of thing.
>> Mm-hmm.
>> Cafe Edison was one of them,
you know, and I write about it
in the book, but, you know, this
memory of sitting at a table
next to the back counter and
watching the owner, you know,
and he was -- I was having some
blueberry blintzes, you know, as
a last meal, and he was circling
the restaurant, you know.
It was almost like he was saying
goodbye to it.
And every time he would go by
the counter, he would run his
hand along the Formica of the
counter, and it was just the
sense of, you know, he was
saying goodbye to this thing
that had meant so much to him
and his family for so long.
>> Mm-hmm.
>> So mostly what I do is I have
a meal and I observe and I take
some notes and I just sort of
sit quietly and really -- I try
to take it in as much as
possible, sort of, like, this is
the last time, and I want to
almost take it into my nervous
system, in a way, and, you know,
hold it, which is impossible.
>> And you were there with other
people who are doing the same
thing, I think, right?
>> Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
So it's often a communal
experience, and I'll hear people
saying goodbye, you know, and
you'll see people crying and
you'll see people hugging.
And it's really beautiful and
sad.
And -- Yeah.
>> Yeah.
Well, I think that's great.
You still have the blog going,
right, "Vanishing New York"?
>> I do, yep.
>> Vanishingnewyork.blogspot
.com, right?
>> Yeah, it's an old Blogspot.
>> No, that's great.
Okay, so if people want to
lament along with you or holler
at you and say, "Did you see
this is closing?
Did you see that's closing?"
that's where they can find you,
right?
>> Yep, absolutely.
>> Jeremiah, thanks so much for
being here.
>> Thank you.
>> I appreciate it.
Check out "Vanishing New York:
How a Great City Lost Its Soul"
wherever books are sold.
It might make you fall in love
with a New York you never knew.
Thanks for tuning in.
♪♪
Author Imprint Podcast
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- WordsAuthor Imprint: The Podcast — Meg WolitzerJune 21, 2018
- WordsAuthor Imprint: The Podcast — Steve BerryJune 14, 2018
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