Cranky US blogger campaigns to preserve NY's small businesses

New York

HERE's an old story: Your favourite dive bar/record shop/little Cuban restaurant gets turned into a Citibank/Apple store/luxury condominium. You pass through denial, anger, bargaining, depression, then inevitably settle into acceptance.

For nearly a decade, Jeremiah Moss has been telling that story on his brilliantly dismal blog, Jeremiah's Vanishing New York, a digital obituary column for the various mom-and-pop concerns that have fallen prey to the city's endless search for higher rents. A wistful man with a vulture's eye for carrion, Mr Moss has dedicated years to recording the demise of famous institutions such as the Roseland Ballroom in Manhattan, which will soon become a high-rise building, and unfamiliar treasures such as Family Jewels, a clothing store in Manhattan, which is scheduled to close at the end of the month.