A sign on the building hosting the Harry Styles pop-up shop reads, \u201cTogether, Together.\u201d<\/p>\n
The temporary merchandise store opened in the East Village in late August and will stick around through Nov. 1, a weekslong period coinciding with Styles\u2019 30-show residency at Madison Square Garden. Many of the English pop singer\u2019s eager fans are more than willing to wait for hours (yes, actual hours) in a line that snakes down East Second Street to purchase his colorful shirts, tote bags and baseball caps.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re thrilled to be there. But to certain locals, \u201cTogether, Together\u201d is a cruel joke.<\/p>\n
Bonnie Slotnick, 72, who runs her namesake cookbook store a few doors down from the pop-up, was arrested last week following an altercation with a member of the pop-up\u2019s production team. Slotnick was charged with four counts, including harassment, possession of a weapon and \u201cmenacing\u201d in the second and third degrees.<\/p>\n
Slotnick told the neighborhood blog EV Grieve that she’d been upset for weeks by the masses of people congregating in front of her business. In an email to Gothamist on Tuesday morning, she added, \u201cI don\u2019t think the people standing in line, who are mostly from elsewhere, have any idea of the disruption they\u2019re causing.\u201d<\/p>\n
When asked for comment, Styles’ team did not respond.<\/p>\n
Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks has been around for nearly 30 years. It’s now located on a relatively quiet block in the East Village, where it moved to around a decade ago. The neighborhood has changed, with venues like Mars Bar long ago shutting down long ago and being replaced by major chains. But the area directly around this block of East Second Street, which stretches between Bowery and Second Avenue, has been able to sustain a number of independent businesses and a variety of housing situations, from a halfway house and accommodations for homeless people to upper middle-class apartments and an NYU dormitory.<\/p>\n
The long lines accompanying the Styles pop-up is a glaring reminder of the neighborhood’s ongoing gentrification.<\/p>\n
As was first reported<\/a> by EV Grieve, Slotnick got into a verbal argument on Friday with a production team member she said was standing in front of the cookbook store\u2019s basement entrance, where Slotnick normally locks her bike. The woman allegedly refused to move after Slotnick asked a couple times and, per the store owner, \u201cthe name-calling started.\u201d Slotnick turned around from securing her bike with a Kryptonite lock and, holding the key between her fingers, said she \u201cshoved\u201d it toward the woman, who asked her colleagues to call the police. Slotnick said she spent about 12 hours in custody between the 9th Precinct, Manhattan Central Booking and a brief visit to Bellevue Hospital.<\/p>\n \u201cThe line has wreaked havoc on my mental state,\u201d Slotnick wrote in her Tuesday email to Gothamist. \u201cI dread coming to work on the days that the pop-up is open, which is five days a week.\u201d<\/p>\n The pop-up is located at 22 East Second St., a building resembling a two-bay garage that is owned by 77-year-old actor and filmmaker Willard Morgan. Morgan told Gothamist on Tuesday that his uncle built the place in 1955 to house a glazing business, and it has been in the family ever since. Morgan took over operations in 2004 and has rented the space out for all sorts of events, including performances, fundraisers and pop-ups.<\/p>\n \u201cCynthia Nixon\u2019s campaign held a fundraiser there,\u201d he said. \u201cDebbie Harry had a fundraiser for her music education fund. It\u2019s been an active community structure since the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n Morgan has rented the space to corporations, such as the makeup brands Maybelline and MAC Cosmetics, \u201cto cover the huge taxes that we pay on the buildings.\u201d (He and his brother also own a property on East Eighth Street.)<\/p>\n Morgan wasn\u2019t very familiar with Styles before the pop-up. He mistakenly referred to the former boy band as \u201cFirst Direction\u201d while speaking to Gothamist. But he did some research on Styles\u2019 career after agreeing to rent his space to the pop-up and found him \u201cquite genuine, charming and talented,\u201d Morgan said. He didn\u2019t anticipate the pop-up\u2019s massive turnout, but says it made sense in hindsight.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a trend in the city,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople will line up for custard or yogurt or a bagel or the latest trending pancake house. It\u2019s part of our daily peregrinations. We encounter a lot of lines.\u201d<\/p>\n Residents have expressed mixed opinions on online forums over whether the people waiting in the Styles pop-up line have been disruptive to their daily lives. In a comment left Monday on an EV Grieve Instagram post<\/a> about Slotnick, the account for Left Bank Books, a rare and used bookstore located in the West Village, suggested that the debate is beside the point.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fans in this line may be the most docile, innocuous people to ever wait in line for anything,\u201d the comment reads. \u201cThe fact remains that these lines, mostly for corporate and private-equity backed businesses, impede traffic flows, obstruct small businesses and local residents, and don\u2019t arise as an organic expression of a given neighborhood\u2019s culture or street life.\u201d<\/p>\n In her email, Slotnick described the East Village as \u201ca thriving \u2018small town\u2019 where residents shop at local independent stores \u2014 and where the whole concept of standing in endless lines to buy stuff seems absolutely crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n Morgan understood this overall sentiment and said, \u201cI sympathize with her dismay.\u201d But change, he continued, is \u201csomething we have to deal with.\u201d<\/p>\n Ramsey Khalifeh contributed reporting.<\/p>\n