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LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
A New York institution has closed after nearly 25 years. It s the Astor Place Kmart. The big-box store served as a patently uncool anchor in the East Village, one of New York City s most fashionable districts.
ADA CALHOUN: Kmart just seems so, like, middle-class suburban that I think it seemed sort of like an alien spaceship landing in the middle of this very bohemian neighborhood.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: That s Ada Calhoun, a lifelong New Yorker who grew up down the block. She wrote a history of the neighborhood called St. Marks is Dead: The Many Lives Of America s Hippest Street. She remembers when the Kmart first opened in 1996.
Wong Maye-E/AP Photo
During the pandemic, New York City has lost thousands of the small businesses that gave it its flavor.
A coming third wave of the coronavirus has put the City That Never Sleeps on the cusp of being shuttered once again. There s nothing to do but mourn the lost and the soon-to-be lost.
But New York s legacy is one of constant destruction and rebirth. Like a classic slice of New York pizza, Gotham is eternal.
This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.
In 2016 the writer Anna Calhoun published a book called St. Marks Is Dead: The Many Lives of America s Hippest Street. It s a fascinating history of the four-block East Village thoroughfare, which remained a hub for artists, activists, and bohemians for more than a century.