After 56 years in business, beloved diner Soup Burg closed its last location on the Upper East Side late last month. In an elegiac article in the Times, writer Anne Barnard explains: "The landlord had not even named a price." He told second-generation owner Jimmy Gouvakis to get out and make way for a TD Bank.
The shutter "represents a broader challenge to the fabric of New York: the loss of affordable mom-and-pop shops in Manhattan neighborhoods that once, not so long ago, were not solely for the extraordinarily wealthy." These shops were what "Premillennial, pre-Starbucks New Yorkers would call it a coffee shop," writes Barnard. In 2005, at Soup Berg's peak, there were three locations in the neighborhood.
· Hold the Home Fries. Forever. [NYT]