New York, NY —
The crisis that started on Wall Street is now hitting main streets everywhere. WNYC has started a new project called Main Street NYC to track the changes on five streets, in the five boroughs, over the next year. We’ll talk to business owners, landlords, retailers, new restaurants, and old neighborhood fixtures. WNYC’s Lisa Chow walked down Smith Street in Brooklyn and checked in with some of the folks who work and live there, to find out how they’re faring at the start of 2009.
REPORTER: Well, economists say Main Street is suffering, but how bad is it really?
I ask Tanvir Shamim, who works behind the counter at a perfumery called Mystic Essence.
SHAMIM: Business right now is terrible. Terrible. We’ve been here for more than 20 years but we’ve never faced this kind of situation.
REPORTER: I walk a few blocks down Smith Street, to a store that moved here in 2006.
LUGGEN: My name is Kara Luggen I’m the store manager for flight 1 on Smith Street.
REPORTER: Flight 001 is a specialty travel store that caters to the jet set.
Its design is 'retro-modern' and it typifies the kind of change Smith Street has experienced as the bodegas moved out.
LUGGEN: People aren’t shopping right now with the economy being the way that it is, and with it being January, the weather’s not working in our favor.
REPORTER: Luggen says the store is cutting its hours, trying to get rid of its inventory, with constant promotions, and buying less from vendors.
But, she says, here’s the really irksome thing about managing a store without customers.
LUGGEN: It’s just boring more than anything.
REPORTER: Several retailers tell me they've noticed less foot traffic on what's become one of the trendiest drags in Brooklyn.
Which raises a question, a place that in the past 15 years became a destination for people looking for hip boutiques, restaurants and clothing chains, is Smith Street more vulnerable in this economic downturn?
ZIMMERMAN: I have complete complete complete faith in this neighborhood.
REPORTER: Lexie Zimmerman is manager at the gift store, Exit 9.
ZIMMERMAN: It’s 75% off. Of 58. I think it comes to like 16 dollars.
REPORTER: She makes a sales pitch to a customer on a winter hat. And it works ... this time.
But Zimmerman's boss and the store’s owner knows that it won't work every time.
I catch Charles Branstool on his cell phone at the annual New York International Gift Fair which is in town this week at the Javits Center.
He does most of his purchasing there for the year, but he says this time, he's cut his orders in half.
BRANSTOOL: We’re going into the show very conservatively. I’m really only sticking with the stuff that I know is going to work well for us, that’s done well in the past. It's too risky right now to try on anything too new.
REPORTER: I ask him whether he ever worries about the recession forcing him out of business.
BRANSTOOL: It’s hard not to think that worse case scenario but I think we are small and nimble enough of a company that I can make changes to weather the storm. That’s how I feel in my gut but my brain says something else because I see it happening all around me.
REPORTER: Further down Smith Street, I meet Lisa Bolton.
She and her husband Saul own the Michelin-star-rated Saul Restaurant.
They also used to own the cafe next door, the Boerum Hill Food Company, but decided to shut it down last month after seven years so they could focus exclusively on their restaurant.
Bolton tells me Saul still draws a lot of weekend traffic, but customers are ordering fewer appetizers and desserts ... and more wines by the glass.
She says the restaurant survived 9/11, but this downturn feels different.
BOLTON: Now it’s a little scarier because I think people feel like they’re kind of alone. As opposed to 9/11 when, it was more like everybody had this overwhelming grief as a community. This is more like personal because people are losing their jobs. You don’t feel like there’s anybody to help you.
REPORTER: And yet even in this financial crisis, places are still opening on Smith Street.
The restaurant chain Atomic Wings is about to take over Bolton's old cafe space.
And the Boltons gave their café furniture to Wild Ginger, a vegan restaurant that opened here last month.
And if you were lucky to buy real estate on Smith Street at the right time, you can ride out this downturn.
LAO: I lived all my life in this neighborhood, since the 60s.
REPORTER: Louisa Lao is a retired city employee and owns a building on Smith Street.
LAO: When I bought this house, the guy that I bought it from he was mugged three times. That's why he sold the building, it was horrible you know. people used to get killed for a dollar.
REPORTER: She rents her storefront to Smith Pet Foods, which has been in the space since the mid-70s.
The manager says business is down, but Lao isn't raising the rent.
She doesn't have to.
She bought the building for $50-thousand and last time she checked, it was worth $1.5 million so she isn’t panicking.
LAO: with the economy, you never know, it goes up it goes down. It’s like a yoyo. SO this year it will be bad, but next year, we’re pulling up.
REPORTER: And we'll be watching.
For WNYC, I'm Lisa Chow.
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