This is a term used in planning, both urban and otherwise, and refers to zoning that allows for residential, retail, and say, office buildings and uses all in the same general area. Parkchester is a good mixed-use neighborhood, since its ground floors along the main strips are predominantly retail, over which are residential apartments. On Metropolitan Avenue, there's a nice mix chains and mom & pop stores and restaurants: Macy's and Vega Furniture (where I bought my nifty computer table and floor lamp); Ellie's Diner and Starbucks; two banks, and a third on the corner of White Plains and Cross Bronx; Dress Barn and Boltons and New York Woman and several small boutiques. The restaurants, up until now, have mostly been of the diner type. I have a real weakness for Ellie's because it's so New York, in that Nighthawks way, and because it has a great breakfast for five bucks including tip. It's a great mix of new chains and of somehow very 1940s retail that makes me think of my grandfather's restaurant and grocery store.
And up the street, in the space that's being renovated, where I'd hoped against hope that a bookstore might be going in (fat chance, I know) is going to be an UNO Chicago Grill. Can I just say: Ew. I mean, chain restaurants are chain restaurants. There's already a Dunkin' Donuts and a Burger King on Metropolitan. What would have been better? I dunno. Well, yeah, I do: a bookstore, but I'm a voice crying in the wilderness, I suppose. I kept hoping that because there's a Starbucks that Barnes & Noble or Borders might follow. Wow, I never thought I'd say that, but it would take a chain bookstore to survive up here, I think. It's not like Park Slope. Not that I don't think people read here, but it's a very different demographic. There are plenty of little newstands in the hood that do just fine. I just want a good bookstore. I'll have to be satisfied with the very nearby and soon to re-open, newly renovated branch library.
Some people are never satisfied. I used to bitch about not having any amenities in my 'hood; now I'm bitching about getting a new chain restaurant. I have a Zaro's that makes killer cheesecake, fer Pete's sake. What more could I want?
And over the weekend, I managed to get the last of my non-book boxes unpacked, the very last of them tonight. I got rid of my two old rugs (why did I bring those with me? Well, one because it was designed by Virginia Woolf's great niece, whose name I cannot now remember.) I got a shelf put up and about half of what I want up on my walls. What's left needs frames, or is waiting for me to hang the stuff that needs frames to see what should go around it, i.e., my green men. I haven't got quite enough of them to line up across one of the "beams" so I've decided not to do that.
The mixed use here is that I've put my dry sink in the bedroom to use storing my book making materials, which it does just fine. Amazing, when I think how little room there seemed to be in the old army surplus barrister bookcase for them. But that was just crammed full of crap, much of it gone now.
So I'm about two-thirds of the way to getting the place the way I want it. I'm thinking now I'll have the housewarming sometime in February, which will be a year after I moved in. Sounds about right.
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