SoHo Reels Economically As Shoppers Vanish in the Pandemic

The The New York Times zooms in on NYC’s SoHo (home to Adafruit HQ) and details the economic devastation that the pandemic has unleashed here over the last 19 months. We’re feeling very lucky to still be here.

“The pandemic has affected us in a bad way,” said Connie Gharibian, the finance director at Hudson Furniture, a high-end furniture designer that decided not to renew the lease on its Wooster Street showroom after people started staying home in March 2020. “The traffic there was just not enough to keep us going.”

Just a few years ago, SoHo was one of the world’s hottest retail districts, packed with luxury brands like Chanel, Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Ralph Lauren that paid some of the highest rents in the country. Shoppers spent $3.1 billion in SoHo and neighboring NoHo in 2016, according to a report by HR & A Advisors, second only to Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan in total retail revenue.

Tourists swarmed Broadway’s overflowing sidewalks and bobbed in and out of stores like Dean & Deluca, Nike and Uniqlo. Social media influencers clogged narrow side streets, snapping pictures for posting on Instagram. Shoppers lined up outside stores early on Fridays, eager to buy items on sale.

Almost overnight, the shoppers, notably those from overseas, evaporated, proving how heavily the stores relied on them.

Read more.


Halloween season is here!
Halloween season is here! Check out all the posts, gift guides, and more!

Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards

Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.

Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!

Join us every Wednesday night at 8pm ET for Ask an Engineer!

Join over 38,000+ makers on Adafruit’s Discord channels and be part of the community! http://adafru.it/discord

CircuitPython – The easiest way to program microcontrollers – CircuitPython.org


New Products – Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers! — New Products 10/30/24 Adafruit LPS28 (LPS28DFW) Pressure Sensor – STEMMA QT / Qwiic

Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: New Raspberry Pi Products, 503 CircuitPython Libraries and Much More! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi

EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey

Adafruit IoT Monthly — Halloween, WiLo, and more!

Maker Business – Adafruit Daily — First Solar’s $1.1 billion development of vertically integrated factory in the U.S.

Electronics – Adafruit Daily — Trigger happy oscilloscope?

Get the only spam-free daily newsletter about wearables, running a "maker business", electronic tips and more! Subscribe at AdafruitDaily.com !



No Comments

No comments yet.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.