FASHIONISTA JEWELRY SPOT ALEXIS BITTAR OPENS: EXTRAVAGANT DISPLAYS AND RECORD RENTS
A bright blue and green yak with earrings over its horns greets customers who enter the new Alexis Bittar jewelry store, which just opened this week on Columbus Avenue between 79th and 80th Street. Alexis Bittar is a jeweler who is well-known in the fashion world. Our fashion columnist Cherly Wischhover freaked out when she heard the store was opening.
Alexis Bittar is a Brooklyn-born jeweler who made a splash in the fashion world with his kind of weird but very cool lucite jewelry, which is his signature. He works with a lot of different materials now, but chunky bejeweled lucite is his thing. He also spearheads wacky ad campaigns, like a recent one with the ladies from “Absolutely Fabulous.”
The store, formerly a Supercuts, rented for what is apparently a new record for that part of Columbus: $330 per square foot. There goes the neighborhood!
Thanks to Terry for the photo and tip.
Looks like a musk ox to me.
Is that $330 per year??
Actually, last fall that space (at a relatively lower rate, to be sure) enjoyed a short stint as an Obama for President campaign storefront run by Community Free Democrats and Ansonia Democrats. Occasionally, someone would wander in looking for a haircut, including one memorable 10-year-old boy who ran into the store and started screaming to his parents on the sidewalk, “Where will I get my hair cut?? Where will I get my hair cut??” Anyway, it’s a great location and would be even better if we had commercial rent control. I hope that Mr. Bittar has been able to figure out how to keep the heating system going. (Thanks to my co-leader Nick Prigo for bringing this to my attention.)
They will be out of business faster than you can say Jackie Robinson. $330 a square is disgusting. For shame on the land overlords and for shame on the business owners that agree to such absurdity.
But how much is a yak?
At first thought I found myself saying– well, Super Cuts is a chain. So who cares if this jewelry store replaces a chain store.
But, the price per sq. foot, when taken in consideration of the other places that are being pushed off Columbus — the Emerald Inn, etc., makes it more and more apparent that the Upper West Side is no longer a place for the average middle class person to live or shop.