While searching out the latest boutiques around Greenwich village this week, I came across The Gene Frankel Theatre, 24, Bond st. here in NYC. What actually struck me and the reason I recorded this site was because of the amazing Gold figures climbing the building. This, at least to me, is quite an odd site. On the one hand, one can find the likes of John Varvatos and a variety of other very expensive boutiques around this area and on the other hand the rest of the area looks rather unloved. This is an interesting strategy used by retailers, particularly the Uber cool ones and we can see how places such as Jeffrey's in the Meatpacking district led the way in the gentrification of the area into one which is fairly exclusive. Areas that used to be quite cheap to live in and often populated by artists and musicians and so on, which makes the area so interesting is high jacked by developers, retailers and other non-artisans who wish to obtain some level of credibility and buy up the spaces. This in turn prices out the very people who made the area 'cool' in the first instance. This, of course, is not a new phenomenon and examples of this happening can be seen in areas of London such as Hoxton. Anyway, do check out Gene Frankel on Wiki - what a fascinating story behind his life, and this area is still very sparsely populated by tourists too.
