Mark Of A Great City
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- October
- 22
The other day, I asked Yonkers Mayor Phil Amicone to name one kind of store he’d like to see come into the city’s downtown.
Without missing a beat he replied, “We don’t have a book store. You cannot walk outside City Hall at lunch time and buy a book. I mean, you can buy a paperback at some of the stationery stores. We don’t have a Borders, a Barnes & Noble… We have a great library, but we don’t have a bookstore.”
It’s something he said he’s been working on with the big book chains, but they will only follow when the downtown experiences a change in demographics, i.e. more educated yuppies.
New Rochelle is the same way. No bookstore.
You listen to mayoral candidates extoll the virtues of their cities, that they’re the “greatest cities in the world” and all that. But no city can truly claim any real progress until it has a bookstore.
This entry was posted
on Monday, October 22nd, 2007 at 3:42 pm by Phil Reisman.
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Phil Reisman is a veteran journalist and native of Westchester County. He began his career in 1977 as the head copy boy of a startup New York City newspaper that quickly went belly up. Reisman was not to blame for the newspaper's failure, or so he claims.
When one issues a correction, it probably
isn’t wise to use an exclamation point when
one is still wrong.
What’s next, correcting the correction?
Or is one splitting hairs by using the
word “attempted?”
A city without a bookstore is a city with a story not worth telling.
I wuz born an raized in Yunkers sew dont tell me my
city aint grate!
Yonkers tore down its Carnegie library to increase city hall parking space.
Enough said ?
Ethan! I’m curious! You seem so brave!
So why don’t you use your real name?!!
Eitdher a candidate selling furniture, or a furniture store selling candidates.
I thought they tore the Library down to build a bridge
across the Hudson. I think their slogan was “Beautiful Yonkers, gateway to New Jersey.”