Accounts
Gjelina Group owns popular restaurants Gjelina and Gjusta in Los Angeles, and last year, the restaurant it opened in New York operated for only 30 days before closing due to a fire. During a dinner with Ben and Gjelina Group CEO Shelley Armistead, she mentioned they lacked the necessary funds to reopen. Ben suggested a partnership: Gjelina could sell House Accounts on Blackbird to raise funds for reopening, and Gjelina would treat its supporters as regulars, providing popular House Accounts.
I thought this was a great idea and joined on the first day. For a prepayment of $5,000, I would receive a $5,000 House Account to use at the restaurant after reopening, along with a hotline for reservations for hard-to-get tables, a gift (they sent a Gjelina hat and delicious granola), and 50,000 $FLY. This was a smart move: I would have a go-to place and enough $FLY to possibly be seen as a regular at other restaurants online. A win-win.
In March, Blackbird introduced the Breakfast Club, offering a different but equally appealing deal: pay $85 membership fee to enjoy a year of free coffee or tea at 14 coffee shops in the city, along with merchandise, event access, and 5,000 $FLY. Additionally, as you are more likely to choose one of the coffee shops in your neighborhood, the restaurants gain repeat customers, and you will keep encountering those willing to join the Breakfast Club. A win-win.
a16z crypto partner Carra Wu posted on Twitter that she met new friends at the local Fairfax store:
carra.eth: Yesterday morning, I went to @blackbird_xyz Breakfast Club closest to my home and made 5 new friends—real friends, all living near me.
As an introvert struggling in happy hours and noisy parties, I can’t tell you how big of an unlock this was for me. The Blackbird Breakfast Club is the closest thing in the smartphone age to Central Perk Coffee in “Friends.” @benleventhal might be launching a dating app soon too?
In June, Blackbird launched its latest club: Bar Blackbird. Similar deal: $50, enjoy a free drink every night at over 15 New York bars (when purchasing the second drink) and receive 2,500 $FLY.
Members can enjoy free drinks and a “repeat purchase” experience every time they step into their favorite bar. The restaurants gain new customers, turning them into regulars. A win-win.
There will be more win-win experiments. Earlier this month, Blackbird partnered with Miami’s Cowy Burgers to host a three-day pop-up event at Standard Biergarten, open only to Blackbird users who received (free) Blackbird x Cowy Burger access passes. A burger club might be coming soon.
But Blackbird’s biggest new release is clearly not an experiment. It is the core of their business and their mission to help restaurants increase profitability.
Today, Blackbird officially launched Blackbird Pay, following the introduction of several features in recent months.
“Blackbird initially focused on loyalty, which is nice to have,” Fred explained in our conversation last week, “when combined with payments, it becomes a necessity.”
Here’s how it works.
When you check into a Blackbird restaurant, a bill is opened. You can choose to split the bill with friends, pay with the in-app signature debit card or credit card, or even use $FLY for payment. From the customer’s perspective, this turns your social capital into real capital that can be used for dining.
There’s one more thing…
At some restaurants, you simply tap, order whatever you want, and walk out. The bill gets automatically settled.
I had a similar experience five or six years ago, which was so magical that I remember the details. It was a summer night, and Puja and I were dining outside Bar Primi on Bowery. We ordered pasta and drinks and waited to pay. The server came to our table with the receipt: the bill was already paid. We could leave freely. A magical experience.
I even remember that I used the reservation app Resy for this. My credit card was on file, and the bill was automatically paid. It was a magical experience for me and a faster turnover for the restaurant. A win-win.
Since then, I haven’t had a similar experience. It seems like Resy didn’t continue this feature after being acquired by AmEx. But Ben is bringing it back through Blackbird Pay, and I can’t wait to try it.
I also remember using Uber for the first time, around 2011. My friends and I were gathering at my place for a party before heading to a concert. I tried to call an SUV to take us to the show. The SUV appeared, we all got in, and every one of my friends downloaded Uber on the way. I bet the no-checkout Blackbird Pay experience will have a similar word-of-mouth effect.
However, to promote Blackbird Pay, restaurants need to accept and train their staff on the new system and processes. What’s in it for them?
Blackbird Pay charges a fixed 2% fee, while the industry average fee is 3-4%. Payment is Blackbird’s main source of revenue. Ben explained that they may lose money on some transactions (when users choose to pay with a credit card, Blackbird covers those fees), and profit on others (when they use $FLY for payment, Blackbird incurs almost no cost), but “overall, we like this 2% model.” A win-win.
You can see how everything comes together. Earning social capital and converting it into real capital. Restaurants gain data, loyal customers, and lower fees. You can become a regular anywhere.
Expect these to be the first steps in helping outstanding independent restaurants become profitable.
Helping Restaurants Achieve Profitability
This brings us to the first of four ways of thinking about Blackbird: as a tool to help restaurants be more profitable.
In the restaurant industry’s paradox of foot traffic, there’s another significant contradiction: short-term and long-term. Actions that improve profitability in the short term may harm in the long term. This tension exists in any business, but it’s particularly evident in restaurants, where balancing it is especially challenging.
Take USHG’s emphasis on employee training, for example. Other restaurants could train employees better, leading to a better experience in the short term, but as these employees leave, the decision could destroy the restaurant’s fragile financial situation.
Or consider the quality of ingredients. Restaurants could choose to lower the quality of ingredients to save costs, improving profitability in the short term, but customers would notice and choose to dine elsewhere, eventually leading the restaurant to fail in the long term.
There’s also the matter of providing a consistently high-quality experience for all customers. Restaurants could offer free drinks to everyone, hire an excessive number of staff to ensure timely service for all customers, understand each customer’s needs, and strive to meet them. If the restaurant had unlimited funds, this might be a profitable choice in the long term. Unfortunately, the restaurant might close before determining if the investment had a positive return, or it might not be able to evaluate the return on investment.
This is an extreme example, but it highlights a key point Ben believes is crucial to understanding the restaurant dilemma: compared to the typical companies we report on in “Not Boring,” independent restaurants lack complexity in customer acquisition, retention, and customer lifetime value.
Many of a restaurant’s costs are fixed costs. The cost of food and drink is determined based on a certain quality level. Rent costs are based on the specific location you want to be in. Labor costs are based on the service level you want to provide.
But restaurants can control some things, as long as they have the data and tools to do so. These are the areas that Blackbird hopes to improve.
Blackbird Pay is an obvious solution to enter these areas. Lowering the processing fee from 3-4% to 2% can improve profitability in the short and long term. Faster turnover can also boost profitability in the short and long term. Restaurants would adopt Blackbird Pay for a 1-2% profit increase, which could double profits in some cases.
Once Blackbird is established, it can help restaurants make smarter decisions about customer acquisition, retention, customer lifetime value, and broader marketing.
First, restaurants can design their own membership programs and incentive schemes. They could encourage customers to return after five visits by offering free drinks on the fifth check-in, provide extra $FLY during lunch to encourage dining when dinner is typically busier, or offer free merchandise to the most loyal customers.
Since Blackbird customers check in each time and a bill is opened, restaurants can directly track the relationship between these actions and spending. Unlike traditional reservation systems that only track those who make reservations, Blackbird can collect data on each customer at the table because they also need to check in to get $FLY.
Equally important, although customer data is typically stored separately by individual restaurants and third parties, Blackbird’s data is shared among all restaurants in the network, enabling them to build more complete customer profiles.
According to the updated Flypaper, Blackbird’s customer profiles are divided into four sections:
Personally Identifiable Information (PII): Information such as name, address, phone number, order history, etc., stored in the Blackbird Labs database with limited access due to privacy regulations and requirements.
Check-in records: Each Blackbird customer has an anonymous wallet on the blockchain where they autonomously manage check-ins and membership activities, verified by the restaurant.
Customer value scores: Blackbird utilizes its data to provide an assessment of the expected lifetime value for each customer. This is crucial because even with all the data, restaurants cannot be expected to be experts in calculating customer lifetime value.
Consumer wallet balance: If a customer has $FLY balance, the restaurant can view it.
With each check-in, Blackbird shares the customer profile with the restaurant to help them better understand the customers they are serving. Each restaurant can customize the experience based on the customer.
Restaurants can even use this information to decide who gets priority for reservations. Now, Blackbird members can request tables or other special requests from restaurants via private message (all of which are recorded in your customer profile). Once there is enough liquidity in the system, it is normal for restaurants to reserve tables for high-value Blackbird members—those who spend more, tip more, dine more quickly, are more frequent repeat customers, or invite others and make them regulars—to create more value from each table, thus achieving higher profitability.
There is still much work to be done between where we are now and this. One major risk Jay described to me is:Blackbird can provide a strong platform and usage advice for restaurants, but the restaurant itself must fully utilize all the value Blackbird provides and design unique loyalty programs using these values.
Ben also expressed a similar view, believing that tools around customer acquisition and retention are the most difficult for restaurants to understand. However, he said that Blackbird’s work is to help them improve in this area.
“We plan to work with them to enhance this skill, collaborating with restaurants on various aspects from promotion to product design,” he said. Blackbird has a responsibility to build an interface that allows restaurants to simplify the use of $FLY, rewards, and information as much as possible to attract customers and encourage them to return to increase profits.
Initially, they will gain 1-2% profit space from Blackbird Pay. Over time, the plan is to help restaurants measure what decisions they can make today to solve short-term and long-term conflicts, thereby achieving profitability now and in the future.
A major lesson from USGH is that the business model and customer experience are closely linked, and Blackbird hopes to make it easier for each restaurant to understand and leverage this relationship.
Magical regular customer experience
The good news is that Blackbird provides tools and incentives for restaurants to enhance our dining experience (unless you are rude to the waiter or only come for photos, you may run into trouble).
If you are in New York, I highly recommend trying it out. The Blackbird team generously offers an additional 500 $FLY for all “Not Boring” readers, just register with Blackbird next time you check-in and provide your name, email, and phone number.
I discussed many benefits from the customer’s perspective in “How Blackbird Works,” so I won’t go into detail here, but I did ask Ben how he thinks the experience will evolve in the years of network expansion. Here is his description:
You open the Blackbird app. Based on its understanding of you, your location, and the specific queries you make, it will recommend two to three nearby places. This will be your last interaction with the technology. You simply walk into the restaurant, which will identify you and understand your preferences. All the staff know your name. They might give you a round of free drinks, cook your steak the way you like it, or prepare a special dessert for your birthday. Then you can leave directly. The bill will be deducted from your $FLY balance, and you will receive additional $FLY for visiting.
The idea is to use technology to distance yourself from technology and enter a magical hands-on experience that makes you feel like a regular customer anywhere you go.
Blackbird as the online version of AmEx
More profitable independent restaurants, more amazing dining experiences. Sounds good. However, to achieve this future of dining, Blackbird itself needs to be a successful business model. It needs to constantly grow while maintaining the charm of a startup.
Just like restaurants themselves, the better Blackbird is built, the better it can meet customer needs.
From this perspective, the best way to understand Blackbird is to see it as the online version of AmEx. It profits through payments and increases transaction volume by enhancing customer loyalty.
Blackbird looks like AmEx for a reason – both are payment and loyalty businesses. Fred Wilson stated that Ben’s experience at AmEx directly influenced Blackbird’s concept after acquiring Resy.
He worked at AmEx for a year and understood the internal mechanisms AmEx had built for payments and loyalty. He understood the strength of this business model and the reliance of the restaurant and hotel industry on it but had limited influence on it. He believed in rebuilding this business model online and allowing restaurant owners to be owners at the right time.
There are similarities between these two businesses, but there are also significant differences.
AmEx has built a $170 billion giant supported by a closed loyalty and payment system, in which it is both the issuer and the merchant acquirer. Its operating model is as follows:
AmEx charges higher fees (2.5%-3%) than Visa and Mastercard (about 2%).
High fees enable AmEx to provide generous rewards, attracting affluent customers.
Affluent customers drive higher transaction volumes, making merchants feel the fees are reasonable.
Higher transaction volumes generate more points, enhancing customer loyalty and spending levels.
Enhanced loyalty and spending attract more merchants, increasing acceptance.
Wider acceptance drives more transactions, creating a virtuous cycle.
If Blackbird succeeds, it will reflect AmEx in a funhouse mirror:
Blackbird charges lower fees (2%) than traditional restaurant payment systems (3%-4%).
Lower fees attract more restaurants to join the platform.
Restaurants use $FLY rewards to attract more diners to the platform.
These diners drive transaction volumes, attracting more restaurants to join the platform.
Higher transaction volumes generate more $FLY points, enhancing customer loyalty and spending levels.
Enhanced loyalty and spending attract more restaurants, increasing acceptance.
Wider acceptance drives more transactions, creating a virtuous cycle.
There is one detail I haven’t mentioned yet. While the purpose of $FLY is to maintain stable value or fixed exchange rates, using $FLY allows diners and restaurants to acquire a stake in the network through Blackbird’s second token, $F2. The more $FLY you hold and spend (as a diner) or hold and receive (as a restaurant), the more stake you acquire.
I like Blackbird’s approach because it prioritizes experience over ownership. It doesn’t kickstart the flywheel, but it does make the existing flywheel spin faster by providing additional incentives for diners and restaurants.
Blackbird empowers restaurants and customers, contrasting with the key approach between AmEx and Blackbird: AmEx’s value comes from its closed-loop payment system across all merchants, while Blackbird’s value comes from its focus on an open system for specific merchants.
Over time, other industries may develop products specific to vertical industries using $FLY and $F2, enhancing the practicality of rewards and expanding the ecosystem.
But Blackbird Labs focuses on restaurants, given its business model, the alignment between the two is evident.
Blackbird needs to simplify the process for restaurants to use its tools to provide a quality experience. These quality experiences will bring more transaction volume to restaurants, which will increasingly use Blackbird Pay. Blackbird takes 2% of all transaction volume and, with widespread use of $FLY, can generate more net revenue.
Quality experience → more transaction volume → more profit.
This is true for both restaurants and Blackbird, partly due to the support of encryption technology.
Cryptocurrency solves this problem
So far, we have rarely mentioned cryptocurrency. Blackbird’s membership cards are non-fungible tokens (NFTs), its loyalty token is $FLY, and network participants can acquire a stake in the network through $F2. But we are more concerned with the impact of these different products on restaurants and their customers, rather than the specifics of the tokens themselves.
And that’s a good thing.
Blackbird is one of the first “crypto” applications adopted by mainstream users and businesses, who may not even realize they are using a “crypto” application. When I asked Ben why he thought this was the case, he gave two reasons:
People love restaurants. “Restaurants are deeply rooted in our habits. They bring joy. If we put ourselves at the center of restaurants, it naturally makes consumers satisfied.”
Building a magical product, whether involving blockchain: “The key to adoption lies in developing products that consumers love. This has nothing to do with blockchain technology itself.”
However, despite his experience in building traditional software products, Ben chose to introduce encryption technology in Blackbird, despite the regulatory complexity and technical challenges it brings. After all, he doesn’t need to work after selling two companies, and he is committed to supporting the food industry. If blockchain technology cannot achieve this goal, he will not develop on the blockchain.
So why introduce encryption technology?
Last November, in the article “Blockchain as a Platform,” I discussed how blockchain is just a platform that offers some unique benefits and comes with certain drawbacks, and as infrastructure improves and these drawbacks are eliminated, more developers will develop on the chain.
When transaction costs are $50 and take minutes to settle, or customers have to deal with the complexity of setting up wallets and signing transactions, many consumers and developers may find this trade-off unattractive. “However,” I wrote, “as transaction costs decrease, speeds increase, and user experiences improve, these products become viable.”
In fact, Blackbird is an example I cited in that article.
Five years ago, you couldn’t build Blackbird on the chain. That’s obvious. This means that five years ago, you couldn’t develop a product similar to Blackbird. This is not so obvious but more critical.
Blackbird is effective because it can operate like a regular consumer app while executing functions that regular consumer apps cannot achieve.
Let’s delve into the underlying structure of Blackbird provided by the new Flypaper to understand why and how it works.
Earlier, I mentioned that Blackbird’s restaurant membership cards are non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Currently, they are the only part on the chain in the application, and their on-chain existence is not crucial. They are now non-transferable (we believe identity should not be transferable) and can only be used in the Blackbird app. For now, they can be seen as a record in the Blackbird database, except if Blackbird disappears tomorrow, I can walk into Gjelina and show them that I indeed own my House Account NFT.
The $FLY tokens currently exist in the Blackbird database. When you check-in at a restaurant with $FLY, Blackbird simply transfers the $FLY from the restaurant’s quota to your account in the database. When you settle the bill using $FLY through Blackbird Pay, it simply transfers it from your account to the restaurant’s account.
In the future, $FLY will be used as a reward and payment token on the platform, and restaurants will be able to exchange $FLY with Blackbird at a relatively fixed exchange rate. It will not be traded, transferred, or exchanged for cash outside the application. You cannot profit from speculating on $FLY.
Blackbird users speculated that aside from being reward and payment tokens, $FLY would also serve as fuel tokens and symbols of network ownership, but that’s not the case.
Instead, Flypaper introduced a new token, $F2, which will serve as the network’s fuel and governance token. The network itself will be a third-layer Flynet built on Coinbase’s Base L2, which is built on Ethereum. You cannotTo understand these, you only need to know a few things:
First, transactions will be very fast and low-cost. You won’t notice any difference in experience compared to using regular consumer apps, and Blackbird Labs will cover most of the fees.
Secondly, other apps can be developed based on Flynet. For example, if someone wants to develop a Blackbird for airlines, they can build it on Flynet and utilize $FLY for rewards and payments, using $F2 as fuel.
There will be a relationship between $FLY and F2. When the blockchain launches, all $FLY balances in the Blackbird database will be transferred to users’ Blackbird spending wallets at a 1:1 ratio.
F2 will be allocated to diners and restaurants based on the users’ $FLY throughput – the amount of $FLY they hold plus the amount they consume or redeem as rewards, divided by the total $FLY throughput of the network. If you hold or use 10% of the $FLY in the network at a certain time, you will receive 10% of the $F2 allocation for that time period.
This is a simple and elegant mechanism for distributing ownership within the network, and one of the reasons why Blackbird cannot achieve this off-chain.
Firstly, network participants (mainly diners and restaurants) will receive 2.51 billion out of 5 billion $F2 tokens, representing over half the ownership and control of the network.
Secondly, since the distribution of $F2 in this 2.51 billion tokens is based on $FLY throughput, the most active restaurants and diners in the network will receive more network shares.
Thirdly, considering that most people usually dine at one restaurant per night, while most restaurants can accommodate hundreds of guests per night, restaurants should naturally earn more than diners.
Fourthly, it incentivizes diners and restaurants to join the network and be active early on. Since the allocation is based on individual throughput compared to the total network throughput, obtaining more $F2 early on will become easier. This is an elegant solution to the market cold-start problem.
Finally, since restaurants can use $FLY acquired from Blackbird Labs to reward diners in ways they find helpful, and since restaurants are physical entities, robots will not be able to enter and conduct Sybil attacks to steal all tokens.
Anyone who wants to try booking a non-peak time slot at Principe’s restaurant, personally check-in, consume $500 with friends, and settle the bill with $FLY to maximize their $FLY rewards can attempt it.
(Note: I hope to see restaurants that are difficult to reserve with $FLY.)
Cryptocurrency technology enables ownership of the network by diners and restaurants. It also enables real-time, almost free payments on Flynet using $FLY. These are the core elements that make Blackbird unique.
Restaurants and diners do not need to spend a second considering cryptocurrency technology and how it works.
For restaurants, it is worth seriously considering how to design a loyalty program that maximizes profits, encourages the use of Blackbird Pay, and increases throughput. They may need to understand some data acquisition and user retention strategies but do not need to understand L2 or L3 related knowledge.
For diners, all they need to do is show up, check-in, enjoy their meal, and leave. Just as some people work hard to maximize credit card points or airline miles, or snatch up restaurant reservations, some people will plan to maximize their $FLY rewards. As long as the restaurant develops a plan that benefits both the restaurant and the network, it can be a win-win. But diners do not need to have any knowledge of cryptocurrency to enjoy a “regular” experience at more and more restaurants.
Cryptocurrency infrastructure has finally matured to the point where all of this can happen quietly in the background. Jay specifically highlighted two factors that help enhance the user experience of Blackbird:
Privy makes it simple to embed user-controlled wallets in the app without needing to pay attention to them.
Base, Coinbase’s EVM-compatible second-layer network, is a low-cost, high-performance L2 with Coinbase’s trusted reputation and brand. (Since its launch in August 2023, Base has been upgraded to make the network more economical and fast, which should make on-chain transactions so smooth that users won’t notice when more components of Blackbird move to the chain).
The result is that Blackbird can build a top-tier consumer app with superpowers. Programmable incentive mechanisms. Faster, lower-cost payments. Ownership and control over restaurants.
This means that besides Blackbird, others can also develop similar products to improve their industries.
Fred Wilson pointed out that the existence on the chain provides an opportunity to create loyalty programs similar to AmEx, where all loyalty points are on the chain.
“$FLY is like a stable currency. It’s not like Bitcoin, where you buy it and hope it goes up to $100,000,” he said. “But the idea of putting loyalty points on the chain is an important thing.”
Specifically, this will allow any application to accept $FLY. “Now,” Fred said, “only AmEx and their partners can participate in the AmEx points program. But $FLY is similar to USDC: over time, any developer should be able to launch apps that support $FLY.”
FLY may become a reward and payment token for various merchants (including but not limited to restaurants). For example, if an airline wants to treat FLY in a similar way to credit card points, they may be able to do so. If a luxury brand wants to limit the release of its new products to those who hold or consume a certain amount of $FLY, they may also be able to do so.
Interestingly, developers and entrepreneurs will come up with more creative uses of $FLY based on their own understanding of the problems that need to be solved, just like Ben did for restaurants.
For this reason, Jay put forward a very interesting point about why the a16z team is so excited about Blackbird. “Whenever there is a huge market with fragmented business models, it is a great opportunity for someone to try to fix it with cryptographic technology.”
Perhaps in the case of Blackbird, cryptographic technology can indeed solve this challenge, even if it is done behind the scenes.
Our way of eating now
The successful future of Blackbird sounds more appealing. It is the world we hope to live in, a world that uses technology to create better face-to-face experiences, rather than completely replacing them.
Achieving that future requires a lot of effort. According to the Dune dashboard provided by @jhackworth, there are currently 38,811 wallets holding Blackbird NFTs, and diners have already checked in at 142 restaurants in New York City. Upside Pizza is the most popular restaurant by far.
Top 10 Blackbird restaurants, @jhackworth’s Dune dashboard
Bringing more restaurants onto the platform takes time. It is well known that restaurants are slow to adopt new technologies, and even if restaurant owners give the green light, getting staff to embrace new systems requires additional effort.
Implementing Blackbird is not easy for anyone, but it is even more challenging if you are not Ben Leventhal.
When I asked Ben if it was necessary to operate Eater and Resy before launching Blackbird, he replied, “Understanding restaurants and understanding how they work, being able to communicate in their language, is a huge advantage for us.”
We understand, love, and deeply engage in this industry. We work with them and have built long-term partnerships with them. In day-to-day operations, we understand how they work, how to build technology for them, how to implement, the implementation process, and the content we can reasonably ask for. We know how to work with them, how to interact, and ask, “What do you need?” Listen to their answers without taking them literally. Many of the things we do well are because we have been in this industry for a long time.
If Blackbird succeeds, it is because it has built a product that helps restaurants solve the problems they care about. Technology is just a means, not the ultimate goal.
Every restaurant is unique, just like every person and every business. Some restaurants will be immediately excited about new things, while others may need some convincing. But most restaurants want to provide a good experience for their guests, make them want to come back again, and all want to make more profit.
If Blackbird can solve this paradox, early partners will attract more restaurants to join.
How they use this profit, like the loyalty program they design, will be up to the restaurants to decide.
“Today, for restaurants, there is uncertainty about what the future holds,” Ben told me. “We hope to give them greater control over their destiny.”
Blackbird hopes that based on the decisions they make today, restaurants will have a deeper understanding of the future and additional profits that can be used to take action based on this understanding.
Some restaurants will reward consumers with prices and discounts. Some will use it to provide better benefits, salaries, and training for employees. Other restaurants will use it to try new things: menu development, concept development, capital investment in new locations.
The challenge and opportunity lie in the fact that restaurants are diverse and decentralized. This makes it more difficult to attract customers and develop products that meet their unique needs. But if you can do this, providing tools and profits that restaurants need for prosperity, it will bring a richer, more interesting, and unique experience for everyone. This will bring more opportunities for your favorite restaurants, making you feel like a regular. And it means that local businesses can thrive without merging or homogenizing, as they are not merged or homogenized.
One of my favorite articles is Colson Whitehead’s “Our New Way of Life” in The New York Times two months after the events of September 11th. Whitehead describes New York City as a vibrant, ever-evolving city, defined by the closing of old locations and the opening of new ones, but always remembered for the way we first saw it.
No matter how long you’ve been here, when you say for the first time, “That used to be Munsey’s” or “That used to be the Tic Toc Lounge,” you’re a New Yorker.
When the past is more real and solid than the present, that’s when you’re a real New Yorker.
This is a defining feature of this city, a common feature of any city, our local places, the places where everyone knows your name, will be overwhelmed by competition and change. Extinction and rebirth make the city vibrant. But if these places can grow with the city and its residents, that would be great. I hope Blackbird can help with this.
As for you? Make your contribution. Go out to eat, be a regular.
