The largest, most profitable commercial center in Queens - from the 19th C - was downtown Jamaica: through the 1950's, folks in LI would come in for 'date night'. Plenty of restaurants, a bunch of 1st-run movie theaters - half-dozen major dept stores. By the end of the '60's - the 'Great Migration' had succeeded in turning the downtown into a wasteland: the same was happening to similar strips in Brooklyn and the Bronx. The 'solution' was the construction of what were some of the first Malls in the US: the 'Queens Center Mall' was one, completed in 1973: a fresh, gleaming beacon of modern commerce. Today, it doesn't matter what you build - or where: as the saying goes, 'If you build it, THEY will come' - and destroy. 'There's a reason we can't have nice things anymore'.
All the time the same old, same old--Amish savages can't behave themselves.
ReplyDeleteThe largest, most profitable commercial center in Queens - from the 19th C - was downtown Jamaica: through the 1950's, folks in LI would come in for 'date night'.
ReplyDeletePlenty of restaurants, a bunch of 1st-run movie theaters - half-dozen major dept stores.
By the end of the '60's - the 'Great Migration' had succeeded in turning the downtown into a wasteland: the same was happening to similar strips in Brooklyn and the Bronx.
The 'solution' was the construction of what were some of the first Malls in the US: the 'Queens Center Mall' was one, completed in 1973: a fresh, gleaming beacon of modern commerce.
Today, it doesn't matter what you build - or where: as the saying goes, 'If you build it, THEY will come' - and destroy.
'There's a reason we can't have nice things anymore'.
The negro in his natural habitat.
ReplyDelete