Frank da Cruz
2-3 May 2020, updated May 20 and September 16.
Photos by me except where noted.
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Poster from 1994
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Bainbridge Avenue, Bronx NY, between 210th and 204th Streets, May 2 and 3,
2020, at the height of the Coronavirus epidemic. This is the shopping area
of a working-class and largely immigrant area of the north central Bronx (
MAP).
There are no investors or hedge-fund managers here; people earn money
by working and then they spend it in the neighborhood, like in the lost
world of Frank Capra movies except in a multitude of languages and skin
tones.
Now most of the shops are closed and many of them will not come back because
they will have lost months of income, but still have to pay rent, insurance,
and so on, and I doubt if any of them received a penny of federal
small-business stimulus (in fact, it turns out that Bronx businesses
received
only
1% of the small-business loans distributed in the city). Already before
the virus, there was an epidemic of shop closings due to uncontrolled and
constant increases in commercial rents. One business owner told me her
lease allowed the landlord to raise the rent each month.