text: Serpentine Shelly, Serpentine!
  THERE you are, you and your family have diligently saved and slaved for many years to start your own restaurant instead of working 12/6 in someone else’s. You choose a location based on the apparent need and lack of existing establishments, sign an expensive lease and begin a costly and torturous build-out, only to find halfway through the process that someone else had the exact same idea three blocks away. Whether it’s Hunan or Szechuan, by the time it gets distilled for American tastes it’s practically the same.
  Hunters Point finally gets a Starbucks, but unlike almost every other Starbucks worldwide this one will be in a remote location: 49th Avenue and 21st Street. Which might as well be East Sheboygan because there’s no way to directly walk there on 49th Avenue, instead requiring a serpentine sprint crossing the Pulaski Speedway and then huffing uphill a few hundred meters. So the big corporate guys can misfire too1.
  Or we have the case of Four Winters Ice Cream, which chose a shoebox in Long Island City to sell a seasonal product for their NYC debut. At least they knew the existing landscape – I think? Finally in the world of retailing consumables in LIC, Greenpoint Fish & Lobster closed their small 48th Avenue outpost after a 3-year run. It’s easy to comment I want this, I want that to come here, but you gotta sell a lot of ice cream, or sustainable sea-bass to stay here and keep the lights on. As well as hope that no one else has the same idea.
  Starbucks to Open a New Location on 49th Avenue – context please
  Greenpoint Fish & Lobster Closes in LIC – Greenpoint store & restaurant still open
  Meet The Mysterious Restaurateur Buying Up Prime Hamptons Locales – we told you 2 wks ago he works out of LIC
  460 W. 34th Street Is Looking Prime For Amazon – everywhere in NYC but LIC
  Many Unhappy Returns: Six Months Later Amazon’s Foes Have No Replacement For The Loss of Promised Jobs – lumps of coal for the constituents
  Plan B For LIC – six months after Amazon debacle, LIC needs a (master) plan
  - I know, I know, Related the owner of the building probably gave them a sweetheart deal to make their building more attractive, plus the tenants there will be captive as there are few nearby choices [↩]