My girlfriend just came back from Brooklyn, after visiting her father, and she said her favorite bakeries are all closing down, the employees are all Hispanics who don’t speak English, there’s no Italians anywhere, just Chinese and Arabs...she said I wouldn’t recognize Bay Ridge.
She brought back some ribbon cookies from what was once the best bakery in Brooklyn, and they were stale, and used different ingredients than they used to. her aunt says it’s because there’s no more Italians to buy the cookies anymore.
Sad...
Ed
My last family trip to Brooklyn was probably a good 40 or more years ago. My grandparents lived there and we would spend at least every other weekend visiting them.
I can’t even imagine what it looks like now, nor do I want to see it.
I treasure those childhood memories, especially more so as time goes on.
When you went to those bakeries, back then, they had long since been bought, decades before. Their owners worked crushing hours, for their kids, and their own pride. They also had bought their houses at modest costs.
But they were always marginal business that were kept going at the cost of their owners. When those owners died, no one was going to pay high prices to buy them, and work those long hours.
New York, New Jersey, all of New England, west to Illinois is all living off the fumes of a near retired/dying small business force.
No one wants to physically work that hard, those long hours, fight the town permit nazis, the state regulations, federal taxes, rules...for that kind of money. If you work that hard, put those hours in, can deal with those hassles, why hand over directly, or indirectly 2/3 of what you slave for to, basically, your economic enemies, i.e., the state?