"BANKHATTAN"

It's a real shame. New York City is rapidly losing its character. The small family run stores on our Avenues are fast disappearing as rents increase and profits fall. In their place arrive the big conglomerate banks that bear down on Main Street New York and take over every available corner.
What is quite amazing is the speed at which a store closes and a bank opens in its place. Just last month I walked into a men's store to buy a shirt that I saw on display in the shop window. There was an " everything must go." sign in the window, as the store was closing down for the fourth time in five years. I thought nothing of it. Many stores in Manhattan announce they are having a closing down sale and then miraculously survive following the sale. I bought the shirt and took it home to show the wife. When the kids were in bed I took it out of the bag and had a mini fashion show for the wife.
" What do you think?" I asked, expecting a nodding approval accompanied by a few complimentary adjectives, thus justifying my purchase. Instead , she took one look at it and retorted, " this is the last time you ever wear that with me in the same room. What were you thinking?"
So the shirt went back in the bag and a week later I returned to the store to find a Chase Manhattan bank open and servicing customers in its place. How could the sale of clothing have ended, the store stuttered and then converted to a brand new spanking bank all in a week? It takes four months for a contractor to put in a fifty square foot bathroom in Manhattan and one week for a five thousand square foot banking facility to be built from scratch. The next time I do renovations in my apartment I am walking over to a site where a bank is due to open and grabbing the building crew for my project.
Why do we need so many commercial bank branches? In England the trend is completely different. If you need cash from an A.T.M or cashpoint (as it is known across the pond) , you cant find a bank for miles. It is impossible to get cash out and for good cause. Petty crime is rampant in London and so banks don't even want to open in fear of their customers being mugged outside their premises. In New York there is a bank on every block now. I have accounts at Citi and Chase and my options are endless. Within half a mile of my apartment there are five Chases and four Citis. How do they all make money? I understand that after the financial crisis of 2008 many folk got nervous that their hard earned savings were not secure. The banking insurance only covers up to a certain amount and so many bank depositors spread their accounts thin, giving every financial institution a little bit of cash so as to preserve their capital. Hence the abundance of bank branches. A really good friend of mine has twelve separate accounts at different banks. It would take him a whole day to withdraw from all of his bank accounts.

These bank branches are destroying the fabric of Manhattan neighborhoods. They are ugly in appearance, they contrast with the artisan nature of New York stores and represent everything bad about big business. They are solely profit driven , are engaged in mass mundane advertising campaigns that spill over into window displays and add very little to a neighborhood feel. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed with the sheer number of banks here that I refer to where I live as " Bankhattan." I hope this trend reverses at some stage.