16 CommentsThe new Manhattanville campus, aka PrezBo’s baby, is swallowing up more and more of our beautiful city. The newest casualty: the McDonald’s at 125th street.
This morning, the Columbia community was informed via cursory email that THE MCDONALD’S AT 125TH AND BROADWAY IS CLOSING BECAUSE OF MANHATTANVILLE. The email – which also included nice developments like improved campus disability access and new gender-neutral bathrooms – stated that the closure was because “Columbia has begun design for development of properties east of Prentis Hall on the south side of 125th Street.”
It is HARD to get a soft paper bag of McDonald’s limp fries or a half-mixed Oreo McFlurry around campus. The only other location within walking distance of Butler is at 104th street aka a hike.
I personally was a frequent client of the 125th location. It was the PERFECT place for film students to stop for a milkshake on the way to Lenfest, or to grab a burger after hitting the studio at Prentis. It was a home away from home! Change is scary and McDonald’s are the same everywhere. Columbia may be the home of Canada Gooses but McDonald’s is basically for the proletariat.
Below, some bittersweet memories of the McDonald’s, may she rest in peace.
- “i tried to go this summer to get an ice cream cone and i waited for thirty minutes and no one took my order despite there being no line. that mcdonald’s is the schermerhorn extension of mcdonald’ses”
- From a Bwog staffer’s alumna mother:
- “couple days ago I went and wanted a chocolate milkshake and for some reason they could only give me vanilla”
- “I went there once late at night w someone and the drive thru was open but not the walk in sit down part, so we tried walking up to the drive thru window and the lady just looked at us thru the window and said ‘no’ even tho we clearly had money and they were open”
A serious note: the encroachment of Columbia University, the largest landowner in New York City, into Harlem has had serious impacts on the area’s residents. Another term for “future development”? Gentrification.
Gather ye vanilla cones and Big Macs while ye may: the golden arches close officially on September 9th.
Golden arches via Wikimedia Commons.
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16 Comments
@Hil I can’t believe anybody would bemoan the closing of a freaking McD’s, purveyors of some of the shittiest and most unhealthy food of the century. Grow up, folks.
@Anonymous i can’t believe anybody would fail to understand that whatever their personal moral crusade about food is, the facts of life are that you have to eat and a lot of people in this area depended on mcdonalds as one of the very few things they could afford in a neighborhood overrun by rich children and surrounded with overpriced bullshit.
@Anonymous Do you not realize there are two other McDonalds just on 125th Street including one just two blocks away?
@Anonymous wow, you’re not even gonna think about how real people who live here (non-students) eat there? and maybe even mention how all the overpriced crappy food near campus is a huge part of gentrification? the problem is not just that housing in this area is unaffordable. it’s also that the bougier the stores and restaurants get, the less people can afford to do anything in their own neighborhood even when there is an attempt to retain some number of “affordable” units. this is some real myopic bullshit.
@Anonymous Columbia has owned that land for decades. McDonalds is very expensive and probably one of the least healthy places on the planet. It’s twenty bucks for an unhealthy burger, fries, and a drink. They also abuse their workers in terrible conditions and pay less than the minimum wage. You should be happy this abusive place that feeds neighborhood residents heart attacks is closing.
@it's a banana Michael, what could it cost? ten dollars? have you ever been to a mcdonalds? there was a two for four breakfast deal. five dollars could get you enough to keep going when you had to skip lunch that day. not to mention the dollar menu’s existence. and what do you suggest people who are struggling have to eat now that it’s gone? a twenty dollar bowl of subpar ramen? a fifteen dollar salad coated in “unhealthy” dressing? a ten dollar craft beer? maybe next time think for two seconds about your classist attitudes and what it’s like to be poor and have the places where you live and eat disappear just because some elitist twenty-something transients don’t approve of your food.
@Checkmate if those people didn’t commit so much crime in the first place, their area wouldn’t need to be gentrified would it?
@Anonymous What are those people?
@Anonymous My nutrition handbook says hamburgers have two hundred calories. How do theirs have one thousand?
@Anonymous I am from Chicago, and I walked away from the democratic party. The polices that are in place here in the Chicago political machine have done nothing for the people. I will be voting for Trump in 2020, and getting out of Chicago. The democratic party is going down a very dangerous path of socialism. I have never seen so many double standards in my life my the democrats. People need to learn the history of the party as well , and do some real research of there policies.
@sir this is a mcdonalds
@Anonymous It is actually slated to become a new student center, gym, and physical fitness center as well as expansion of the School of the Arts.
@Anonymous so…useless.
@Anonymous Thank god! No one ever went there. Better things to come and better eating places. This will be a big improvement to the neighborhood.
@Anonymous i eat at mcdonalds every day of my lfie
@Anonymous Get your cholesterol checked.