The Lost Treasures of New York

A friend of mine was lamenting about the lost treasures of New York. "NYC has been thrown into a blender and homogenized into a bland and boring urban pastiche. This city once had character and disparate neighborhoods. Now it's just numbingly the same wherever you go. I was driving around the city yesterday and occurred to me that downtown-uptown, west-east, it all looked the same now. Same store fronts, same hideous developer apartment buildings, same gourmet coffee, same gentrifications, same same....shame." I know how he feels, for I was in Times Square the day Guiliani closed the XXX shops on 42nd Street. Their patrons stood outside in tears chanting, "Fuck Mickey Mouse." Really. But I think that my friend was speaking about egg creams and luncheonettes. Vanished without a trace. All of it for Starbucks.