Planet of the Grapes

14th Street between 5th and 6th Aves.
From the coast-to-coast chain store that brought you celebrity endorsements from John Mayer, Melissa Etheridge, and the guitarist whose name you can’t remember from that band whose name you also can’t remember, Guitar Center was built on 14th Street perhaps in an attempt to appeal to the hipsters and [...]

610 6th Avenue and 18th Street
Old Navy—which is not old, naval-themed nor contains only navy blue clothing—is the third chain owned by Gap, Inc., the other two being Gap and Banana Republic. It has always presented itself as more casual than Banana Republic and less sterile than Gap while remaining the most affordable of the [...]

153 East 53rd Street
The Citigroup Center building is the one that we used to joke about skiing down as kids because of its angled top. Clearly, you’d have to have some kind of hang glider, as you would fly off the side and still have about fifty stories between you and the street. Clearly, we [...]

14th Street, Union Square
While it may be seen as trendy, if natural foods chains like this keep popping up and help the American diet move beyond soda and potato chips for dinner, then we’d say that’s a good thing. Strategically located at the crossroads that is Union Square, this Whole Foods is a huge destination [...]

1215 Lexington Ave and 82nd Street
Somehow, some way, a lot of men named Ray go into the pizza business in New York City. Or at least that’s what they want you to think. Not to get involved in ancient pizza feuds, we’ll just say there was an original followed by many impostors using the name [...]

33 East 17th Street
And here we find ourselves at another Barnes and Noble, at what can be called one of the centers of Manhattan (or the furthest uptown that hipsters will venture), Union Square. There are facilities on both the second and third floors, although they are so similar that two separate reviews are unnecessary. [...]

14th Street and 4th Avenue
Circuit City offers a plethora of electronic gadgets, computers, televisions, electric-heated diapers, and digital portraits of 17th Century Chinese Dynasts. But Circuit City is not just another electronics chain. It understands the needs of today’s power-consumers and shopaholics. If you search hard, you can find the home theater section where they [...]

83rd Street and 5th Avenue
Part four of our Met tour takes us to the Far East, which according to the museum map is to the far east (rimshot). A great amount of thought appears to have been put into laying out their collections. Among this collection is a traditional Japanese garden where one can walk [...]

35th Street & 5th Avenue
Time makes fools of us all. With so many bathrooms reviewed, it is inevitable that one of our readers finds their way to a reviewed facility only to realize it has been completely renovated (or perhaps desecrated). Have our ratings struck fear in the hearts of the store or [...]