Will Amazon Finally Kill New York?

A New Yorker reads “Seasonal Associate” in the age of HQ2.

On December 12, activists built this sad box tower at an anti-Amazon press conference held on the steps of City Hall. [Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images. Illustration by Katie Kosma.]

In May of 2017, Mayor de Blasio unveiled Jimmy Breslin Way, a street sign dedicating the stretch of 42nd Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenue to the late reporter. It was a strange press conference — half eulogy, half lecture — a chance for the mayor to laud Breslin and scold members of today’s media by whom he often feels unfairly maligned. “Think about what Jimmy Breslin did. Think about how he saw the world,” said de Blasio. He left without taking questions. What was he talking about? Did he imagine he and Jimmy Breslin would get along? In 1969 Breslin wrote a cover story about Mayor Lindsay for New York Magazine, “Is Lindsay Too Tall to Be Mayor?” was the title. Lindsay was an inch shorter than de Blasio.

In 2010, Heike Geissler took a temporary position at an Amazon warehouse in Leipzig. Geissler was a freelance writer and a translator but, more pressingly, she was the mother of two children and money was not coming in.

Rebecca McCarthy, writing for Longreads, looks at what Amazon’s HQ2 could do to — not FOR — New York. It’s well worth your time.