We want to thank everyone for their passionate support.  One thing we did achieve was a broad amount of media coverage including a piece in The New Yorker and 2 (IMHO) excellent articles by Michael McDowell in the West Side Rag. NY1 did a video interview, Pix11 asked for one, Thrillist covered it and I was told the NY Times covered it as well. One reporter told me Linda Rosenthal even picked up the gauntlet and contacted Howard Schultz directly. We got close to 600 signatures to try to save a Starbucks!

Despite a lot of flak we got for trying to save a national chain, many people here and in the media understood and supported the real message;  the importance of shared spaces to our neighborhoods.  They support and even create the community, they foster friendships, they provide touchstones for people in daily and often dire need of them and they encourage diversity in the only way really possible to do so:  daily human interaction where we don't even notice race/color /age/gender or gender  identity because they become secondary and even irrelevant to the interaction itself.  It is how the world can change. Not Death by a 1000 Cuts but Life by 1000 Interactions.  Starbucks on 76th Street certainly contributed to that and whether it is a "multinational" or not is irrelevant; it was an agent of change and gave birth to many friendships and business and ideas and love and provide a safe haven to a generation of children and adults and seniors alike.

 I’m accused of being “Polly Anna” well so be it; I believe hope and love and honor and just simple kindness are transformative not just for ourselves but our community and are the hope of the world. The hope of the world.   And I would not have taken valuable time and energy to fight for Starbucks 76th if I had not experienced those very things there on a daily basis for the decade I patronized it.  The simple joy and support  I received (and I hope gave in equal measure) interacting with John (and John) and Frank and Cassie and Luz and Lola and Teddy and Ethan and Clara and a dozen other people that came in and out of my life there are irreplaceable and in many ways those interactions are the engine of the world (at least the engine of mine).

I hope the real issue has become clear; not that Starbucks as an entity may or may not have put 'Mom and Pop' shops out of business but the larger evil is being missed in that somewhat knee-jerk response (and even glee) at the closing of this branch. There is an existential issue we face; if Starbucks cannot afford the rent then who can? Certainly not Mom or Pop. Then who can? If you consider Starbucks to be some killer virus as some do you should be in sheer terror of the virus consuming it in turn.  We have 10+ huge storefronts closed between just 74th and 79th Street and Columbus. Many have been shut down for years, the rest (including this Starbucks) likely will be as well.  The entire stretch from 78th to 79th on the West Side of Columbus is shuttered, half the stretch from 77tth to 76th on the East Side is empty, the 'Starbucks' block is now at least 50% empty, Dramatics remains closed on 74th for years now.

The real estate tax laws allow these storefronts to write off the loss, as far as I know indefinitely.  This is not how markets work or markets serve. Tax write offs likely exceed $60M annually for this stretch of streets alone (if my off the cuff arithmetic is correct) and bring nothing to the neighborhood; not goods, not services, not community, not jobs, not a tax-base, not safety, not inspiration. And there is no motivation for them to bow to basic supply and demand and lower rents that would allow the very types of storefronts we all need.  You want Mom and Pop back. Fight for changes to the laws that allow this abomination of a law to exist.  We weren't fighting for Starbucks. We were fighting for a community. And these laws destroy that very concept. When the concept of community is being destroyed we are in grave danger, all of us.  It used to be sort of a glib remark on my part that only capitalists and conservatives could talk me out of my conservative and capitalist beliefs.  That remark is now a tear in my heart and makes me feel betrayed and used to my core by my own ideals by a jaded system happy and perhaps even designed to do so.

Thank you for your support one and all and I hope we can count on your support when we petition for the real fight we were having and the real fight ahead;  saving our communities. I lived in this neighborhood when it was shall we say less than ideal and it turned around in a few short years to what it has become now. Never forget it can turn around just as quickly and one only need to take a stroll from 79th to 74th to see how that is happening right in front of our eyes. Let's not let that happen.