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New York Today
The Renaissance of a Chinatown Bookshop
Yu & Me Books was nearly destroyed in a fire. Its owner reopened the shop with the
community’s support.
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By James Barron
June 10, 2024
Good morning. It’s Monday. Today we’ll hear how a bookstore in Chinatown was brought back
to life after a devastating fire. We’ll also meet the editor of a high school newspaper who
became the subject of an article in the issue that came out last month.
Image
Lucy Yu, owner of Yu & Me Books in Chinatown.Credit...Hiroko Masuike/The New
York Times
Yu & Me Books was the first bookstore in Manhattan to be owned by an Asian American
woman when it opened in December 2021. It was heavily damaged little more than 18
months later — on the Fourth of July last year — when fire destroyed an apartment
upstairs in the same building in Chinatown.
By the time the fire trucks left, Yu was already thinking about what it would take to
reopen the store, even though a thousand books had been ruined and she had lost
$60,000 in inventory. My colleague Jordyn Holman followed Yu’s struggles after the
fire. I asked Jordyn to explain how she came across the story and why she found it
meaningful. Here’s what she said:
“My editor noticed Yu’s GoFundMe campaign and, knowing that I’m an avid book lover,
suggested that I reach out to Lucy, as I came to call her.
“I cover the retail industry, which usually means writing about big companies that most
people have heard of like Walmart and Macy’s. But retailing is also made up of millions
of small businesses that dot our neighborhoods. I figured that following Lucy’s story
would be a way to give readers insight into the mind-set of an entrepreneur who had
been forced to rewrite her original business plan.
Image
Yu in her Manhattan bookstore in August, weeks after a fire damaged it.Credit...Hiroko
Masuike/The New York Times
“In our first conversation, Lucy, a first-generation Chinese American who was then 28,
told me that as a child she had dreamed of opening a bookstore. When she was growing
up in Los Angeles, her mother would take her to Chinatown, where they could eat her
mother’s favorite cuisine and speak Chinese. Lucy would also take art classes there. Her
mother would wait in the car, in a CVS parking lot, and read — there were no bookstores
for her to go.
“Lucy moved to New York in 2019 to work in supply-chain management. During the
pandemic, like many of us, she started re-evaluating life and her goals — and revisited
her childhood dream of a bookstore.
”Lucy found a 1,000-square-foot storefront on a block in Chinatown that included a
laundromat and a dumpling restaurant. With the help of friends, she painted and built
furniture to create a cozy living-room vibe. The store had a nook, a basement reading
area and a bar.
Image
The building in August 2023, about a month after the fire. Credit...Hiroko Masuike/The
New York Times
“Yu & Me became a community gathering spot. Authors gave talks, and Lucy teamed up
with other businesses in the neighborhood like Bahn by Lauren, selling their Vietnamese
American and French pastries in her bookstore. It was a positive development for
Chinatown, which was reeling from a string of anti-Asian attacks.
“Lucy wouldn’t let the fire be the end of the store’s story. It’s not just a story about one
really determined businesswoman, but also about a community that rallied behind her.
She was able to welcome customers back to Yu & Me in late January, in time for Lunar
New Year, reopening the shop in a little more than half the time fire officials had
expected it to take.
Image
Customers at the reopening of Yu & Me.Credit...Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
“These days, on any given afternoon, Yu & Me is brimming with people browsing the
books on the shelves and tables, sitting on the bar stools or chatting with friends in the
nook. Lucy has been thinking about the ways she can expand her reach. She has been
applying for grants. But for now she has Yu & Me Books, a dream no longer deferred.”
WEATHER
Enjoy a sunny day in the high 70s. The evening will be partly cloudy, with temperatures
in the low 60s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Wednesday (Shavuot).
The latest Metro news
Image
Credit...Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
• How the governor decided to kill congestion pricing: Gov. Kathy Hochul long
feared that the program might hurt New York City’s economy, she said, but she
kept her reservations to herself.
• An all-nighter in Albany: The State Legislature ended its session, capping a
nearly six-month slog that, in the end, was defined by what failed to happen.
• Alex Jones seeks to liquidate his assets: The Infowars conspiracy theorist wants
to deliver the proceeds to Sandy Hook families. He owes them more than $1.4
billion in damages for lying about the 2012 school shooting.
How a student editor handled an article about a subject
she knew well
Image
Credit...Karsten Moran for The New York Times
One of the top articles in the latest issue of What’s What, one of two student newspapers
at Hunter College High School in Manhattan, was about students’ mental health.
Another article looked at food trucks where students get their lunches.
Deep inside the 24-page newspaper was an article that a co-editor initially had doubts
about. “I don’t think we should do this,” the co-editor, Sophie Gao, recalled saying. “It
would be weird — like, a conflict of interest.”
The article was about her. And What’s What went ahead with it.
“There are three of us who are editors-in-chief,” Gao said. “One of the other editors-in-
chief, she said, ‘Well, I think it’s a big deal — we should write about it.’” Gao assented.
The article said that Gao was a Top 40 finalist in the Regeneron Science Talent Search,
chosen from among 2,162 applicants from 712 high schools nationwide.
Her science project was about how a cancer drug behaves in the body and what happens
in cellular pathways adjacent to the one where the drug inhibits cancer cells. She used
fruit flies to model the effects of such a drug.
As an editor, Gao faced a question that sometimes vexes editors at big-name newspapers
when they make news: How involved should they be once the reporter has done the
interviews and handed in the article?
Gao said the article about her went through the normal editing channels, meaning that
eventually it went to her. How much did she change?
“Not that much,” she said.
There was a quotation she did not touch, she said, even though her first reaction to
seeing it in the article was “I could’ve said this better.”
Her decision to leave the quotation alone, she said, is the same approach that What’s
What takes when quoting teachers. Teachers and administrators can review articles for
factual inaccuracies. But “if you just want to take something out to make yourself sound
smarter,” she said, “we discourage that.”
Image
Gao and Nicole Cusick, an English and journalism teacher at Hunter College High
School who is the adviser to What’s What.Credit...Karsten Moran for The New York
Times
Gao said the other paper at Hunter, The Observer, did not write about her. “They write
more, like, global news,” she said, adding that “we tend to write more about local news”
and school events. What’s What’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, for example,
focused on students’ connections — relatives in Israel or Gaza.
As a Regeneron finalist, she received a $40,000 scholarship. Hunter also received
$4,000 in prize money.
As a student journalist, she said, one of the most memorable articles she worked on for
What’s What involved an interview with Donna Shalala, the president of Hunter College
in the 1980s and now the interim president of the New School.
The interview came about after Lisa Siegman, the director of Hunter College Campus
Schools, met Shalala. As Siegman recounted the conversation, Shalala said that “one of
the biggest dramas she had to deal with” as president of Hunter involved the high school
and the rights of student newspapers.
“I said, ‘I’m sure the students would love to hear that story,” Siegman said. “She said,
‘Send them down.’”
“She was really cool,” Gao said, recalling that Shalala had served in the Peace Corps and
had been the secretary of health and human services in the Clinton administration. “She
seemed like a person who had lived a lot of life.”
METROPOLITAN DIARY
Wiggly
Image
Dear Diary:
I dropped off my well-worn boots at a shoe repair place near the office that I had found
online and that had good reviews.
Expecting a street-side shoeshine parlor, I instead found myself ascending a freight
elevator and fumbling down an old, winding hallway.
Inside a large bright room was a man behind a counter with a small cactus that had one
pink flower on its side.
After getting the estimate and paying the deposit, I noticed a series of old photos. One
was a close-up of the man behind the counter playing an instrument.
I asked if he was a musician.
He said he was, and then asked if I had an extra moment.
Not really, but I’ll try, I said.
He pulled out a case, took out a clarinet and proceeded to play a sinuous, wiggly tune.
Did he write it?
“I just made it up,” he said.
Was it Middle Eastern-style jazz?
“Not quite,” he said. He told me he was from Uzbekistan — Bukhara to be exact.
Benny Goodman? I asked.
“Not just him,” he said. “All.”
— Mia Tran
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team
at [email protected].
Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
James Barron writes the New York Today newsletter, a morning roundup of what’s
happening in the city. More about James Barron
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