[This morning at The Bean]
Well, a lot to absorb here... so.
Jim Dwyer at The New York Times reports that Starbucks will be taking over The Bean's flagship cafe at First Avenue and Third Street.
Once more for effect:
Starbucks will be taking over The Bean's flagship cafe at First Avenue and Third Street.
Dwyer puts it into
really fucking depressing perspective for us:
The city sheds its skin every day; Mom & Pop are always getting the boot. Manhattan now has 186 Starbucks, which is eight per square mile. There are more Starbuckses than subway stations. You might think that 186 stores on one small island is the functional equivalent of everywhere, but it turns out not to be, in Starbuckian terms, enough: outlet No. 187 is opening Friday in Times Square, and sometime early next year, No. 188 — or so — will be hanging its shingle on Third Street, right down the block from the world headquarters of the Hell’s Angels
Well, The Bean is showing them. Ike Escava, a Bean partner, now plans to open a location on First Avenue at the southeast corner of Second Street, where that pizza/hookah place was. (Or was supposed to be.)
Meanwhile, as you know, The Bean will open new locations on
Third Street and Second Avenue and
Ninth Street and First Avenue... Despite the expansion, the Bean people originally said that they would keep their flagship store. However, they have been on a month-to-month lease, and the landlord gave them a 30-day notice to leave late in August, the
Times noted.
Back to Dwyer's article:
Starbucks has a public relations firm in New York City that issues statements on behalf of the company, but does so anonymously, a peculiarly disembodied form of human communication.
Asked about the plans for Third Street, the company issued this statement: "In many of the markets that we have entered, we found that the local coffee culture is greatly enriched and invigorated by our arrival."
For the time being, though, there won't be any coffee on this corner after this month...
