Nostrand Ave: Many Hair Salons, No Cafés
Back in 2007, the New York Sun ran an article with the title Retailers So Far Fail To Follow Homebuyers to North Crown Heights. From the article: While homebuyers see the area’s potential, new businesses are proving harder to attract. Along Nostrand, for example, many stores have old facades and rundown signs. Graffiti covers the…
Back in 2007, the New York Sun ran an article with the title Retailers So Far Fail To Follow Homebuyers to North Crown Heights. From the article:
While homebuyers see the area’s potential, new businesses are proving harder to attract. Along Nostrand, for example, many stores have old facades and rundown signs. Graffiti covers the security gates over the storefronts. While heavy on nail and hair salons and barbershops, the commercial strip lacks basic services such as a bank branch. “People are buying nice homes and spending good money and there are no services,” a project coordinator for the North Crown Heights Merchants Association, who is a sales agent with Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate, Barbara Brown-Allen, said. “They don’t know the spending power that’s here.”
A year and a half later, the blog Nostrand Park decided to try to put some numbers to that assertion by doing a store-by-store analysis of the retail options on Nostrand Avenue between Eastern Parkway and Atlantic Avenue. The five most represented categories were Hair/Braiding Salons (13%), Variety Shops (11%), Caribbean Take-Out (10%), Bodegas/Delis (8%) and Nail Salons (5%). On the flip side, the survey found that there was not a single dine-in restaurant, café, book store or art store on the entire strip.
Nostrand Avenue North Retail Survey [Nostrand Park]
Photo by filmlynx
Etson- yes there is and if you go inside (after admiring the architecture of the exterior) you will find a jawdropping temple to lucre that rivals some of the other Temples of Money like the Chase Bank on Montague St.
and to add, my grandmother who raised me, had no money but she too (white) always had to have her hair done every week… so i kinda take back what i said about it being about african-american culture. it’s obviously something else, but it’s still weird to me. there’s nothing wrong with a big mess of hair if you can barely afford to eat, no?
*rob*
I’m sure Montrose will be pontificating shortly, if she hasn’t done so already.
First of all, those percentages add up to 46%- what’s the other 54%?
Secondly- while Nostrand isn’t crawling with trendy bars and chi chi cafes, I think there are several reasons for this. this is a working class neighborhood, for the most part. People cook and eat at home (and if I can judge by the wonderful smells emanating from their apartments, they are really good cooks.) They have other interests than sipping wine at a fancy marble table and reading the menu (in french).
The food shops along Nostrand offer good, inexpensive ethnic foods. Most of the storefronts are small and the kitchens take up most of the space. You work with what you have. But you don’t have to be fancy or expensive to be good. Sure, I’d love a nifty little coffee shop (so would everyone else I know in this neighborhood) but we do not want to see Nostrand Ave. become Smith St. that said, new places are opening up.
The survey didn’t make note of the hardware stores, the florist, the print shops, or the vegetable stands)
Having spent many a happy hour in the many variety stores I can truthfully say its a treasure hunt. You never know what you’ll find, and a dollar package of 15 bic pens writes just as well as a 3.99 package from Staples.
Nostrand Ave. provides what neighborhood residents need- there’s not much disposable income so you won’t find a dress shop with a 200$ denim skirt. That doesn’t mean you won’t find clothes- you can. they may not be Calvin Klein, but who cares? If you love interesting, ethnic or even plain funky, you can find it.
A comment about the hair and nail shops. Women in this neighborhood are very appearance conscious. Most of them take great care of themselves – they take great care of themselves and they have a different vision of beauty. They’d hoot at the idea of paying some hairdresser $500 for a wash and cut- and the skill it takes to do some of the complex and fascinating hairstyles I see, no trendy hairstylist on the UES would ever attempt. There’s a gret deal of skill involved.
Don’t forget- the people in neighborhoods like CHN are not into conspicuous consumption. They aren’t worried about their interior designer finding the next new, hot artifact. The hair and nail salons are indicative of the real pride they take in themselves and, yes, their heritage.
so in actuality the question isn’t why haven’t the retailer followed the “new people” into CHN. Retailers are already here- and they cater to their clientele. You can either jump in and swim with the fishes- and enjoy it too!- or sit in the house and bewail the fact that starbucks is not yet, and may never be, here. And I’m good with that.
quote:
i LOVE You MM and you know that but i have issues with this…
“The prevailing philosophy being that we may not have much, but we at least look good.” and i think that might be one of the biggest problems with african-american culture.
(i really really really hope i didnt say something bad by saying that tho).
*rob*
I don’t live in the neighborhood but have walked and driven round Nostrand a fair bit, and it is always busy. So I assume many people find the services they need there.
Certainly Caribbean takeout and bodegas sound like the kind of services I would use a lot (certainly more than say, skateboard and dry goods shops). Also isn’t there a bank on the corner of Nostrand and Eastern Parkway?
My prediction is that this topic will either illicit vast ennui from Brownstoner land, or will spill buckets of cyber ink in a classic gentrification war.
My take on it, as someone who lives here: One of my friends who actually has lived here her entire life, and she is now retired, remembers Nostrand Ave in the 1950’s and 60’s. Like I’m sure NOP can relate, Nostrand was a first class retail strip, with everything from the butcher, the baker, banking, shoe and dress shops, drug stores,candy store and a furrier. She told me her parents rarely shopped anywhere else, everything was here.
When the city, for all intents and purposes, abandoned central Brooklyn, most of these merchants followed the rest of the white flight, and left the stores to absentee landlords who rented to whoever could pay the rent. Those renters and their businesses catered to the population that moved in, or remained in CH.
Bodegas, hair and nail salons fill a need. They are relatively cheap businesses, and don’t need a lot of fixtures or fanciness. You don’t need a marketing degree to run them, and in the case of bodegas or nail salons, family members can provide cheap labor. Most hair places are either owner operated or rent booths to other stylists. A good stylist makes money for her/himself, and pays the owner rent and a percentage of gross. Hair care has been a successful business for generations of Caribbean and African American women. We may not have much, but we will pay to get our hair done. We’ve done so since Madame CJ Walker made herself the first black Victorian millionaire. Whether that is cool or not is not the point, it just is. The prevailing philosophy being that we may not have much, but we at least look good. The majority of the rest of the businesses served the population that was and still is here – Caribbean food, etc.
During this time, of course, many people had to go outside the community for many goods and services. This is not news. We needed cafes, book stores, better groceries, banking, etc in the 70’s and we still need them. The good thing about this new gentrification is that businesses may finally take a chance on us, instead of being afraid. The problem is that Nostrand Ave is almost totally owned by about 3 landlords, who see little incentive to change the status quo, for whatever their reasons.
I must end this epic by noting that the Nostrand Park survey leaves out a lot of businesses that have been mainstays of the neighborhood. Barbara’s Flowers, for example has been a successful business in that same location at Bergen and Nostrand for 40 years. There are insurance companies, a copy place, pharmacies, at least two successful hardware stores, and other mainstream and necessary businesses that have been there for years. These people go unnoticed by the new wave of residents, which is a shame, as they are a valuable part of both the resiliency of the past, and sage business elders for the future. Of course we need banks, restaurants, etc, and I welcome and look forward to sitting in a Nostrand Ave cafe and watching the world go by, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
and this is the most barf-worthy comment i have EVER heard.
“They don’t know the spending power that’s here.”
what the hell is that even supposed to mean? that people who lived there before didnt have money to spend? oh wow so someone now can come in who bought a 2 million dollar home and has money to spend but uhhhh they dont know where to spend their disposable income? hello, there’s a train stop a few corners away that takes you to manhattan. pooping out a tiny violin right now.
Wow Rob! You’ve been on a roll!
This proves Brownstoner stays in his house and write shit up!!!! Do you know how many restaurants are on Nostrand Ave???? There are a yon of places to eat (Yes you can sit down)!!!!!
Montrose Morris where yer at!!!!!! This is the time The What really needs your help! Give them hell!!
The What
Someday this war is gonna end…
good thing. people are wellgroomed and don’t spend their money getting tanked and pretending that is sophistication.
All those cafes and restaurants bring late night noise, dirty streets from spilled garbage and rats.
Note – there was a typo in the original post. Hair/braidings salons comprise 13% of the strip.