Can the Internet...
...redeem the soul of Eastern Long Island?
After filing the report of the unfortunate closing of Westhampton Steakhouse, it occurred to me that what Westhampton Beach... if not the entire South Fork... really needs is more restaurants and fewer real estate offices.
I mean, ye Gawds and Cutler Godfrey, what really tore it for me was when that beautiful clothing shop, Rags, at the foot of Glovers Lane moved off Main Street and into a smaller store, and a realty brokerage took over the space!
I'd been muttering about it for the past 30 years, or ever since I walked around the corner from my office on Main Street and noticed that the West side of Sunset Avenue was almost a solid array of sales and rental offices:
"Real estate has reckoned the soul of the Hamptons!"
But relief may be just a click away with the introduction of... tah-DAH!... BidOnTheCity.com, "Coming to The Hamptons" on February 15th:
Just think imagine... doin' it all on-line!
And before long shops... actual shops, retail stores and boutiques might actually once again proliferate and grace the downtown area.
Wouldn't that be grand!
Comments
1. Ray Overton said...
Unfortunately, the main advantage that real estate offices have on restaurants and retail shops is lower overhead. Between the rents in the business district, our proximity to big box shopping in Riverhead, the limited amount of sewer capacity for wet stores, and labor costs, Main Street has necessarily become an office district with real estate (where people only make money when they sell property). The other night a few of us were lamenting the loss of businesses like National, Gloria's, Schwarz's, Brown's/Sexton's, the Orient Shop and the bowling alley as the "anchor" stores in the business triangle. There simply is not enough year 'round revenue to support these types of operations for the number of store fronts available.
It occurs to me that I may have been, in 1973, the last non-real estate business to supplant a real estate office in the downtown area when I took over the premises at 74 Main Street. And the only reason I got that lease is because Ned Doughtery on the other side of the UA Theater, heard that the realty was going out after 20 years in that location, and bound it with UA to prevent another realty business from going in there! Can't recall the name of that business now, but Ruth McCabe sat in there day-after-day.
3. HighHatSize said...
Ahem. Lamentably, the phrase, "less real estate offices", is a solecism. Here's one cite/site: Grammar Mishaps.
Grammar faux pas corrected!
Now one for you: all punctuation is contained within quotation marks. To be correct, '"less real estate offices,"' is the proper presentation. (For the purposes of clearer illustration, the sequencing of the single['] and double quotes["] have been reversed.)
4. HighHatSize said...
Seems strange to me. Putting a comma within the quotation marks would indicate that that punctuation mark appeared in the original text when it actually did not.
5. HighHatSize said...
Thanks for the correction. It still seems irrational, but no more irrational than the distinction between the use of "less" and "fewer."
I think that I will observe this grammatical rule as Winston Churchill did that of not ending a sentence with a preposition and up with it not be putting.
2. Martin said...
The lack of restaurants in town is due in part to that there is not a sewer system to handle the waste water. No water out no people in. – M
2/3/2010