A not Something funny happened on Fulton Street last week.
The vacant downtown storefront on the corner of Cliff Street, once intended as a Southern-style coffee shop, has become home to High Society, an unlicensed pot shop.
Wait, you say: haven’t Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams pledged to rid the city of thousands of illegal and dangerous drug dealers?
Hah! Unlicensed marijuana dealers are not only resisting the “crackdown,” but – as the arrival of high society proves – they are multiplying.
The economic trends brought on by the pandemic, combined with “woke” government policies and attitudes, are preparing the city for a scourge of marijuana on every corner, worse than the sidewalk bridges that stand forever.
And Hochul’s so-called “crackdown” will make no dent.
The 2020 lockdown, incited by business-hating elected officials and “scientists,” destroyed countless stores and restaurants and left behind long-empty spaces.
The erasure of retail has led to normally responsible landlords being willing – making this desperate – to rent vacant storefronts to anyone.
The smoke sellers run the city for several reasons.
Insurmountable licensing hurdles have deterred legitimate marijuana dealers from challenging unscrupulous profiteers.
The licensing rules were also adopted under former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who effectively turned state government over to far-left Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrew Stewart-Cousins.
The Big Apple has long had more storefronts than the market can support, especially in Manhattan. Online shopping has further increased the number of vacant stores.
But it was not until the confinement of 2020 that the situation turned into a disaster.
Many older apartment buildings, where most of the unlicensed marijuana spots are concentrated, are having such a hard time earning rent that they would rent them to the devil.
That’s surely why the owner of the three-story building at 34 Cliff Street on the corner of Fulton Street—an entity identified in city records as “Dr. Fulton”—let the high society in.
They were no doubt frustrated at not finding a new tenant after Peaches Low Country Kitchen vacated the space it had never opened in despite years of “coming soon” signs.
There aren’t enough sportswear stores or food outlets to fill all the dark storefronts.
Buildings attract marijuana for the same reason that modern, luxury buildings now rent out their ground floors to tenants they never considered before – like walk-in medical and dental clinics, “spas” for dogs, laser treatment salons and classrooms.
The former ground floor site of the Lester clothing store, a fixture on the Upper East Side for half a century, is now home to the Goldfish Swim School with a giant pool that draws glances across the street. window.
But the buildings have small, cramped spaces that lend themselves only to candy store-sized uses, like unlicensed drug dens.
No fewer than eight of them were within a two-block radius of my house on First Avenue in the 1970s – most of them replacing the small cafes and take-out shops that didn’t never recovered from confinement.
Store and restaurant owners are also hesitant to open new establishments because they fear the proliferation of shoplifting, born of a perverse mentality according to which “minor” crimes committed by “disadvantaged” young people should not be not be prosecuted.
This of course leaves more room for pottery stores.
Maybe Hochul and Adams will eventually find a way to drive out weed sellers despite political, bureaucratic and judicial resistance to getting rid of them.
Of course, our elected leaders could also find a way to bring back the Brooklyn Dodgers.
A few unlicensed spots, recently padlocked by the New York police, reappeared overnight.
Rampant judges, irresponsible bureaucrats and well-paid lawyers manipulate the system in favor of drug dealers.
Until New Yorkers wake up and are “woke” to the devastation, politicians who say they are determined to close pot shops are blowing smoke in our eyes.
New York Post
