Stop the BS!

The other day I went to Arthur Avenue, that wonderful, colorful, unique New York neighborhood.

Arthur Avenue is a treasure.  Walking on its sidewalks you feel transported to another country and continent, to cities like Napoli, Palermo, Roma.

Thousands of Italian immigrants flocked to that Belmont section of the Bronx at the turn of the 20th Century, working at the newly opened Bronx Zoo and Bronx Botanical Garden.

But there was something a bit out of place on Arthur Avenue and it caught my eye.  I fixated on a Star of David mosaic at the entrance to an Italian specialty food shop. 

The store is Teitel Brothers Grocery.  It’s an Arthur Avenue anchor, family owned and operated since 1915.  Owned and operated by the descendants of brothers Jacob and Morris Teitel, Jewish immigrants from Austria.  

Jewish immigrants who came to New York, to an Italian neighborhood, and who built a business that’s lasted more than a century.

A Jewish owned Italian food store on Arthur Avenue? That’s crazy!  But that’s New York!  Immigrants, outsiders, coming to this great city, to it’s great neighborhoods and bringing change, however improbable or seemingly out of place it might seem.

Sadly, New York’s current mayor thinks we should build a moat around some New York nabes, stopping change, keeping outsiders from entering.

Eric Adams said it two years ago while campaigning for mayor and he just said it again. He equates neighborhood change, gentrification if you will, with slavery. He thinks Blacks are being forced from their communities by non-New Yorkers and that, he says, is akin to the slave trade.

In 2020, he told new arrivals to go back to Iowa and Ohio.  He said, “New York City belongs to the people here who made New York City what it is.”

Iowa, Ohio, whatever.  Emma Lazarus must be barfing in her grave.

New York belongs to the people here who made New York City what it is?  What? 

New York has always been a city of immigrants, of outsiders. People like the Teitel brothers who came here to create an amazingly diverse, vibrant and culturally rich city.

Google the map that shows where 640 languages are spoken in the Five Boroughs.  

The New York City Department of Planning says that between 2010 and 2018 almost half a million people arrived from overseas!  Not Iowa, not Ohio.

Mr. Mayor, in Brooklyn, the borough you represented, neighborhoods like Brownsville, Bushwick and Bed Stuy, used to be overwhelmingly Jewish and Italian.  Over time they became predominantly Black.  Yes, it’s true, now they’re changing once again.

Should we start redlining neighborhoods to exclude newcomers?  It was horribly wrong when that was done to exclude Blacks and it would be just as wrong the other way around.

Should we ask the homeowners in Harlem if they want to give back the profits they’ve made from their properties?  No one forced them to cash-in on their hard-earned equity.

I get it that some longtime residents hate it that their mom and pop stores disappear, replaced by five-dollar a cup coffee houses and organic, gluten free grocery stores.  

But change happens.

Harlem was once a rich, white neighborhood with a significant Jewish population.  

Hell’s Kitchen?  It used to be an Irish neighborhood.

Yes, neighborhood affordability is an important issue that needs to be addressed. Letting the 421A tax abatement incentive expire without a replacement, as the tunnel-visioned New York State legislature just did, doesn’t help.  

It was the city’s biggest and most lucrative tax incentive to build market rate housing.  It had flaws but not replacing it with something else that could help generate affordable housing was another blunder by the boobs in Albany.  

Real estate developers will go where the climate for building is friendly and inviting.  If it ain’t New York they’ll just build in Florida and Texas. 

It’s hard to understand just what Eric Adams is thinking.  This is a guy who resided in New Jersey while he was Brooklyn Borough President.  Should he go back to Fort Lee?

Maybe Adams is just pandering to his base because he made his current statement and the one in 2020 at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network headquarters. After all, Adams does occasionally play the race card when he’s not rubbing elbows with the rich folk in the Hamptons.  He apparently likes being all things to all people.

New York City is like a giant kaleidoscope where a myriad of colors are blended into a beautiful panorama of city life.  New York is like that Star of David mosaic in front of Teitel Brothers Grocery on Arthur Avenue.  Made up of hundreds of little pieces that form an implausible, sometimes out of context, but wonderful work of art.  

Mr. Mayor, stop the BS!  Instead, make sure you welcome everyone and celebrate change, not chastise, criticize and politicize.