Money, Money, Money

Always Sunny, in the Rich Man's World

Recently Grub Street, New York magazine’s food section, ran a piece on Foxface Natural, a new restaurant in the East Village. The writer Chris Crowley calls it “the most original restaurant in New York City.”¹ It is run by Sivan Lahat and Ori Kushnir, a couple who previously ran a sandwich shop called Foxface in the William Barnacle Tavern at Theatre 80 on St. Mark’s Place, where they also reside. They recently purchased the Theatre 80 building at a bankruptcy auction for $8.8 million dollars. 

The Theatre 80 property was up for auction because the owner, Lorcan Otway, whose father bought the building in 1964, fell behind on a 2019 $6 million loan. The original lender sold the loan to Maverick Real Estate Partners, who raised the interest rate from 10% to 24%, increasing the debt to $8 million. Otway filed for chapter 11 protection in bankruptcy court to avoid foreclosure, in hopes to finance it, ask the loan for a state, or find benefactors with deep pockets.

David Aviram & Ted Martell, co-founders & principals of Maverick Real Estate Partners. Private equity firm, natural born predators. What if guys like this were the only people able to afford to live in this city?

What a saga! A historical off-Broadway theater, predatory mortgage brokers, financial hail marys, bankruptcy auctions… Lahat and Kushnir made their money in the 1990s, working “at a start-up that developed automated stock-trading software in New York.” They lived in Japan for a spell then moved back to New York in 2005, into an apartment in the Theatre 80 building where they still reside. They go on to talk about how they don’t have the same issues that many restaurants have, actually that is one issue—capital. They can do whatever they want and serve the food they are interested in, collaborating with their chef. They can pursue their vision of their restaurant without compromise.

The popularity of food, which is a stupid phrase I am using², has increased the amount of money in food. Money begets money, and money loves status. More and more people with deep pockets have opened restaurants or funded them over the past two decades. The cachet of the food scene and business has escalated to great heights.

The interview goes on to discuss how the Foxface Natural owners understand how their position benefits them:

Thanks to their past lives in the finance world — they recently purchased the St. Marks building that housed their original sandwich shop for nearly $9 million — they had access to something most budding restaurateurs do not: capital. Between construction, permits, and the entire drawn-out process of opening a restaurant, the cost of running one can sink an owner early. “The whole framework is making people streamline, not innovate,” Lahat says. “By the time you open, you’re so much in debt that what can you do, you know? This is a tough reality about New York right now.” But without having to worry about outside investors — who often arrive with their own ideas and expectations — Lahat and Kushnir can essentially do whatever they want. “There’s no pressure to be open seven days a week, lunch and dinner, brunch, maximize revenues today,” Kushnir says. “We don’t have to do any of that before we’re ready.³

I can’t shake this interview. The casual tone in this piece makes it seem like this kind of wealth is no big deal, but that’s not true, and this approach is precarious. The disparity of resources in this city is killing us. We don’t have affordable housing, we don’t have food, we don’t have services, we just have cops and real estate developers. There’s always been rich people in this city, but something is different now, there’s a new math, and I don’t know it. How could I? It has more to do with who you know and what tax bracket you’re in and banks more than common sense. Common sense says rents will lower if there are a lot of empty storefronts. Common sense says there are fewer people in this city since the pandemic so housing shouldn’t be so expensive and competitive. That’s just not the case.  

The folks who own Foxface Natural aren’t egregious villains, they seem transparent about their finances and they care about food, although as time passes this attribute carries less weight with me. At least they don’t cosplay as paupers. I wish this interview dug deeper, it feels like a missed opportunity for insight. Like if they need to turn a profit at all, how will they decide to be open for other services, does their impressive capital also extends towards their staff, or is the “industry standard” enough for wages. Their greatest offense is lining Maverick’s pocket with money with the building purchase. Maverick’s gross business practices are part of the somehow legal practices fucking this city up and making it unaffordable.

I take issue with the nonchalant attitude in this interview to their finances because money is not casual to most people or businesses. Money literally influences most people’s decisions, including what they serve, how many hours they work and if they close their business.

I’ve always suspected and known that I’ve been surrounded by people for whom money is no object, that if they lost it, there would be more, along with a savvy accountant to make it work for them. I’ve been surrounded by cooks working for minimum wage with the ability to go on international trips or eat out at fancy places without fear of financial ruin, while I’ve had panic attacks about splitting a check. People with money are so very good at gaslighting how it’s their own hard work and talent that is the difference for success.

Could we please start talking about money in real ways that will make us uncomfortable? Can we please discuss the fact that people and businesses and all entities with more capital and more resources have more security, more success, better health and the capacity for growth. Someone with a lot always has “a lot to lose.” If they lose some of it, they still have something. For those of us who don’t have a lot, our losses cast longer shadows. And if what we have to offer is our bodies and our minds, these items are rarely considered something that we lose.

And yet, for all of my bitching, I am also someone else's rich person.

The phrase “someone else’s rich person” has been in my brain since I read it on an Instagram post from writer, activist, consultant and stylist Aja Barber, author of the 2021 book “Consumed: The Need for Collective Change: Colonialism, Climate Change, and Consumerism.” Following Barber on social media and Patreon means I have a consistent voice about consumerism and fast fashion, worker’s rights and climate issues. Hers is an essential and thoughtful voice, from critiquing the wild consumerism around the Barbie movie, showing examples for styling and buying a sustainable wardrobe under #YouDontNeedNewClothes to discussing the misogynoir she experiences online in regard to her black body. After the news of the implosion of the R.M.S. Titanic vessel was reported, she wrote in a June 23rd Instagram post:

“The Venn diagram on social media of people who will derail a conversation about how maybe we don’t need to participate in trends if it traps people in modern slavery and reduce it to “you’re classist” with the folks screaming “eat the rich” and joking about rich people dying horrible deaths…it’s a CIRCLE. It’s a fucking circle. Guess what buttercup? You’re somebody’s rich person in this system. You absolutely are.”

I can’t get over this statement, made over 6 weeks ago, since the Titanic expedition news cycle that consumed us then evaporated into thin air. We keep scrolling and scrolling and eating and eating and buying and buying and reading and reading and outraging and outraging but nothing sticks. It’s all so fast, this consumption. But we don’t learn anything. We don’t apply anything. We keep doubling down on this unsustainable world that is literally on fire. I can’t write fast enough so I won’t, I’ll go back to an interview from last month and an explosion from June, they’re not the past, and their impact certainly has not ended. This is all connected.

The word privilege has lost its teeth. We can all rattle off a list of how we are privileged and the land we are occupying and move onto our business. The business of us. But think of it this way…I am somebody’s rich person. I know I am somebody’s rich person, I have never been unhoused or hungry, I went to college and have choices about how I make money. I am a cisgender white woman—these aspects are wealth in this society because they protect me, moreso than others.

The problem with us, is that we use other people to feel good about ourselves, and the more we’re around rich people, the more fucked-up our perspectives and sense of what is normal become. Most of us are closer to eviction and the streets than the deck of a yacht.

This album. It’s good.

If we don’t figure out how to talk about money, especially with people with money, in a critical way, then we let them off the hook. There is nothing harmless about the hoarding of wealth, even if people have good taste. Especially if people have good taste. Good taste is not a pass for shitty financial deeds. We keep thinking the dangers of wealth are contained within the 1%, but this is an expensive world, and there’s a lot of rich people lurking about. We’re constantly exposed to their lifestyles, through articles like this and social media, their wealth is treated informally and haphazardly, like it isn’t a dominant factor in their success. It’s irresponsible of us to pretend like money and resources aren’t gained under exploitative means. Our willingness to look away to be polite is a problem. 

I went to a wedding in an impossibly beautiful brownstone on Washington Avenue in Fort Greene a few years ago. Friends rented it for their outside ceremony and party, the family was probably in another house outside of Brooklyn, it being COVID times and all. There was a high end turntable with a hand-written sign that read “Do Not Touch.” On top of the stack of records was a copy of Charles Mingus’ “The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady” LP and a very limited 10” of Jay-Z’s “Reasonable Doubt.” I mentioned this to a friend preparing food in the kitchen and he said “At least the people who live here are cool.” To which I answered “Having good taste doesn’t make you cool. It just means they have money. There’s a difference.”

1. https://www.grubstreet.com/2023/07/foxface-natural-nyc.html

2. Food has always had a great PR rep. Her name is Survival.

3. These people bought property for NINE MILLION DOLLARS and still had money to open a restaurant to do whatever they want? That is access to A LOT of money and I am putting words in all capital letters to emphasize how it is A LOT OF MONEY (NINE MILLION DOLLARS). It’s a lot of money. It’s not nothing. I’m tired of us pretending that money is nothing.