Tuesday, April 29, 2014

33 ways Buzzfeed's East Village feature may depress you

Buzzfeed unleashed a post late yesterday afternoon titled "33 Ways Manhattan’s East Village Has Changed In Only 7 Years."

Using Google's new "time travel tool," Buzzfeed rounded up a whole lot of then (2007) and nows... such as!





And!





Head on over to Buzzfeed for 31 more! It's rather a lot to take in one viewing, so be warned...

23 comments:

Anonymous said...

so much loss of green! whole swaths of forests have been clear cut to make way for the skyscrapers.

I-)

Anonymous said...

Idunno. I'm not automatically against more tall buildings, given our housing shortage. I AM against more luxury condos and "market rate" rentals, which of course, pretty much all of the new development is. How do we get the goddamn state assembly to let us reinstate rent control? And how do we run these invasive chain stores out of the nabe?

bowboy said...

Tall buildings = luxury condos, but feel free to point out where that's not the case in this timeline, Idunno.

I'm more against a few penthouse$ being allowed to cast my apartment, many others, and our public streets and parks into shadows, strictly for their own pleasure. But hey, maybe you like not having access to sunlight that rich people feel they are more entitled to.

nygrump said...

Here's an idea that will freak people out: citizens first. So long as one citizen is homeless, no space is made available to a non citizen. naah, the US will never put its own citizens first.

Kurt said...

@nygrump That's quite an idea for a blog that covers a neighborhood known for it's immigrants. You sir are a real 'murican!

Anonymous said...

bowboy -- that way lies San Francisco. They height-capped most of the city and now they have gorgeous sun-soaked streets of Victorians that only tech billionaires can afford to live in. I'll take shadows if it means regular people can afford to live indoors here.

nygrump -- uh, NYC is a city of immigrants since 400 years ago? Jebus I'm sick of the "Pull the ladder up after you" mentality around here.

Anonymous said...

The scariest part is when they run out of empty lots, gas stations, and small building from the 1920's they will be going after our 100+ year old tenement buildings to raze. There is nothing outside of a vast financial meltdown to stop it.

Joey Blau said...

some shots don't look that bad... now I don't live there but many scenes had a few empty slots filled in and some different stores..

That Cooper Union building is very odd.. .what is that a crushed box?

Anonymous said...

Some of those are lateral moves, to me at least. Forbidden Planet turned into "Lumiez", oh noez.

Walter said...

Good point, Kurt 2:02 PM

nygrump said...

I'm not talking about the past. I'm talking about the 1%er, outsider carpetbagger transients that keep pumping their cash and drugs (e.g, booze) into our neighborhood that is making it basically unaffordable and unsustainable. I knew it would freak people to say that, not that I'm asserting it. Its just an idea I'm throwing out. In the U.S. its a crime to want to take care of the citizens.

Anonymous said...

The Astor place building is the worst of the worst of the worst. I have been here since 2006 - so I have seen most of this change with my own eyes, and while a lot of it is terrible, sometimes you can see the developers are at least making an effort - and I have been able to stomach even when the stuff where they clearly made no effort to build something good (the Jupiter and the Whole Foods block)

BUT the Astor building - I just don't see how this one happened - it is so terrible - and I noticed the other day they put a Jeff Koons inside - hahaha - do bad developers get one of these for free now?

Glenn Belverio said...

I think NYgrump is talking about all the mega-rich Russians and Arabs who are buying up apartments but only using them 10% of the year.

Anonymous said...

Check out their other post 60 Photos Showing How 7-Eleven Has Rapidly Taken Over New York City. It's a real wrist slitter.

Anonymous said...

@Glenn Belverio They call it a pied-à-terre. They're all over NYC and more now than ever.

daho said...

There were a few kicks in the stomach, but not as bad as I expected. Blockbuster to a real estate company isn't a big deal. And I hadn't realized the new Bean is in the former Angelica's Herbs space. Some of these corners actually look better than before WHEN they've utilized current buildings and not torn them down for a glass condo.

Anonymous said...

I'm pretty sure the Max Brenner chocolate by the bald man place closed in 2005.

Anonymous said...

I've been here for a long time and it's crazy to think that some of those places that go away just slip from memory and become the new place that you see all the time. But when you see a picture, you're reminded and it all comes back.

Anonymous said...

*sigh*

Anonymous said...

Overall, some improvements, some disasters. Net score, judging from this set of photos (the full set), is a zero - no net improvement, no net decline.

- East Villager

Anonymous said...

BuzzFeed posting about the changes in the EV is like Christopher Columbus writing about the changes in the New World.

PeterG said...

nygrump if you don't like people from other countries I think you might prefer living in a different city.

My wife is a US citizen, born in New York. I'm a British citizen and we live in the East Village. I'm not sure where you think we should live. We'd like to stay here in the EV and bring up a family here, but guess what, its really really expensive so we may end up being 'transient'. I guess stay or go you wouldn't be happy about it.

Anonymous said...

Buzzfeed where posts are purely cooked up from the imagination of some intern or its "writer", who has only been here 6 months, never leaves Midtown, but professes to be the NYC "expert.