Paper Windows

They say New York is the city that never sleeps, but if you get up early enough you’ll see that, yeah, it does. And it sleeps pretty late, too. One Saturday this summer, I was walking home from Central Park after an early morning run. It was probably close to 9 o’clock but it was still sleepy out in front of the Museum of Natural History. The bus loads of tourists had yet to arrive. The crosstown traffic normally scurrying along 81st Street had yet to appear and it seemed like, except for me and the occasional still-pajama-clad dog walker, only the doormen were out—hosing down the sidewalks like they seem to do almost every day. It was quiet. You could hear birds. And the air was fresh enough to have a hint of salt water tang to it from a breeze blowing in off the Hudson.

Despite my better judgment, I was on my way to Starbucks for five bucks and 500 calories’ worth of “reward”—a lemon slice and an iced coffee. Turning right onto Columbus, though, I was met with a papered-over window where the Starbucks should have been. My first thought was, “Wait, I’m on the wrong block.” But no, my brain said, your eyes are seeing what they’re seeing, the Starbucks had closed. I then began calculating where the rest of the neighborhood Starbucks were—there are many, and, like soldiers in a war, it’s futile to get too close with any of them as they’re liable to take a bullet through the helmet at any time. So, I headed north towards the next one; my post-run levity fading fast as my stomach churned back to life.

I had walked only two doors up the street when I found another surprise, and an ever bigger buzz kill: brown butcher paper blocking the view into what should have been Penny Whistle Toys; a marshal’s notice posted to its door. “That’s a shame,” I thought, and pondered the many times I’d gone there for a quick peek and left empty handed.

Penny Whistle was never a store blessed with natural ability. It was too small and too square to ever really be a visually interesting place to shop. Frankly, it looked more like a mini KB Toys than anything else, albeit one with a perfectly respectable best-of selection of what you’d find in a larger specialty toy store, plus a surprisingly fun-looking assortment of binned impulse products by the door. It might not have been an FAO Schwarz-style “retail-tainment” destination, but if you were on your way to the park and realized you’d forgotten a Frisbee, it would be a natural place to pick one up. And, unlike the recently departed Geppetto’s Toy Box in the West Village, Penny Whistle was firmly ensconced in a “nanny neighborhood” crowded with strollers full of potential customers. Apparently, Penny Whistle’s demise was the result of a more troubling situation than simple store traffic and too many window shoppers. In the weeks since, I’ve yet to get through to anyone at its sister location in the Westchester suburbs.

As for that Starbucks, though, it’s back. Turns out it was just undergoing a remodel. Some people think it now looks more like an airport lounge than before, others less. I’m still up in the air about it, but the coffee’s usually fresh and the interaction’s usually anonymous enough that you don’t have to worry yourself with small talk. Sometimes there’s something to be said for the simple “I won’t care about you if you won’t care about me” exchange of cold commerce a chain store can provide.

But as with any local business, I’m sorry to see Penny Whistle Toys join the swelling ranks of retailers closing shop (or many shops) in the last year—a list, I should add, that includes Starbucks itself, long believed to be the “unsinkable ship” of America’s merchant fleet.

What I try to remind myself when these things happen is that, for every store closure, someone else sees an opportunity. People continue to open Learning Express locations, fledgling franchisor TT&B’s Brilliant Sky Toys & Books is slowly spreading, and there are no doubt more new toy stores somewhere setting up shop as we speak. There’s a dream-come-true quality to opening your own business surrounded by something you’re passionate about. It makes me believe we’ll never truly run out of independent toy stores, no matter how hard the business of making them work becomes. The vision of what they could be is just too tempting to keep people from giving it one more try.