Within the din of our country's accelerated slide into fascism is that the fact that the NYC supermarket institution Fairway will soon cease to exist.
Founded on the Upper West Side in 1933, Fairway was for decades the original upscale grocery superstore. Go into your typical Fairway and you could find every kind of olive and olive oil and ground coffee bean and fresh bread and pastries and delicious soups as well as seafood and meat and deliciously prepared meals.
To walk into a Fairway, for me, was heaven.
By 2007 it had expanded -- to four stores in NYC and one in New Jersey. Then it was bought by a private equity firm and did the classic private equity hussle: it loaded the company up with debt, rapidly and irresponsibly overexpanded, became financially unsustainable, paid their executives ridiculous salaries -- and now is bankrupt. Soon all Fairways will close, a nearly century-long legacy eradicated by greed and mismanagement.
It's aggravating because this is a tragedy not caused by gentrification or the Internet or any of the other usual suspects but just by bumbling by rich people.
Sad!
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