I saw this documentary on Friday night at the Boston Independent Film Festival. I had heard about it vaguely a couple of months ago, probably off of someone else's blog. It was an amazing film, considering that the director didn't even have any clue that he was going to make a documentary in the first place (he was just going to take photos of the restaurant's interior, but rented a video camera on a whim). And he got the film into Sundance!
Anyway, the basic premise of the movie is centered around a restaurant owner in Greenwich Village in NYC. Kenny Shopsin's owned this restaurant for 20-plus years, and he found out that he lost his lease.
It's a quirky place - seats a handful of people, he cooks all the meals himself in a cramped kitchen, and offers more than 900 items on the menu. Plus he has all of these "rules" about who can come into the restaurant. While Kenny's trying to figure out where he's going to move the restaurant to, he spouts his philsophies on life, yells at his wife and kids, makes a boatload of meals, and kicks a bunch of tourists out (just to name a few things).
There was something about this movie that really touched me. Was it the food? I think it was Kenny's outlook on life, really. Lately, I've also been thinking about how the cycle of gentrification affects people. The desirability of the neighborhood was increased in part by Kenny's restaurant being there - and mind you, it's something that developed over time. More people wanted to move to the Village. Thus the rent went up. A new landlord bought the building that Shopsin's was in and raises the rent to the point where Kenny couldn't afford to be there anymore. So he had to move out.
But then doesn't that remove what made that area desirable to live in, in the first place? How can that cycle be stopped or turned into something else? Kenny does eventually move on to another space, with the help of some "wealthy patrons" who feel like his place is worth saving. But what about the dozens of shopowners who are priced out of the area and don't have anyone to save them?
Regardless of my ramblings about gentrification, I throughly enjoyed the movie.
(Hrm, I still haven't finished Jane Jacobs' "The Death and Rise of Great American Cities". Maybe she'll have some answers.)
Posted by tracie at May 4, 2004 02:36 PM