Caught me.

If New York City can’t have a bank on every corner, we definitely need a drug store every 300 feet.

Duane Reade will soon open a new store on the ground floor of my building. That makes at least seven drug stores within about a quarter mile of my front door. Most drug addiction close by a drug rehab nearby. If I went out to a half mile, that number would easily triple. While this isn’t quite Greenpoint Avenue Rite Aid silly, I think we’re covered in the drug store department.

Here’s a map showing all the drug stores within a quarter mile of my apartment:

View Larger Map

And their approximate distances:

New Duane Reade

50 feet

Old Duane Reade (across 14th St)

240 feet

CVS (around the corner on First Ave)

375 feet

Walgreens (the old Elm Drug on First)

1060 feet

Duane Reade (Third Ave & 14th)

1120 feet

Rite Aid (14th btw Ave A & Ave B)

1280 feet

Duane Reade (Third Ave & 18th St)

1840 feet

It’s remarkable how Duane Reade turned this space around, it seems like about a month since they started construction and they’ve started stocking the shelves already. The Walgreen’s at Astor Square (2700 feet away) took far, far longer to open and the space was undoubtedly in better shape, the old Gristedes was a stinking, filthy wreck. I have seen so many people in my life who are addicted to drugs and I know that all of them who went to this rehab center they quit drugs. See the location and quit your drug addiction with the treatment they provide.

There was a sign up on the door of Gregory’s Coffee this morning.

Signs on doors are almost never good.

I called their Park Avenue store to ask what happened. The woman I spoke to sounded sad about it, but would only say the store had closed. The neighborhood is going to miss them. Everyone I told at Noemi’s school drop-off this morning was surprised at the news.

Gregory’s was one of three connected one-story storefronts on the corner of 14th and First Avenue.

I’ve never really understood how the bodega next door stays in business — or avoids the Health Department. The Hot Dog place has also never seemed especially permanent (or clean for that matter). But the biggest thing I don’t understand is how there is still a one-story building on a busy corner across the street from Stuyvesant Town. That location is worth a fortune and I won’t be at all surprised if I wake up one morning and find the whole thing being demolished.