postcard from new york

Shopping duty - They came from Yonkers, they came from Long Island, they came from Brooklyn and Queens. They came, single-snap purses gripped before them in red-lacquered claws as a kestrel clutches a fieldmouse, from the brittle day-spa and ceramic bric-a-brac neighbourhoods of the Upper East Side. They came, flashing braces, blond ponytails, and parental credit cards, from the suburbs and the Upper West Side. Everywhere New Yorkers mobilised, determined to devote the day to removing their clothes in one building after another, up, down and across town on a day so cruelly cold that a steaming cup of coffee would turn into an espresso gelato before a person carrying it out of a cafe could reach the kerb.

Only the most irresistible call could roust so many New Yorkers out of their drowsy, steam-heated homes into the slap-on-the face of the January freeze. That call came from no less authoritative a pair than New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and the state's governor, George Pataki: it was the "Call to Shop", and in a stirring spirit of civic duty and stern pride, Manhattanites leapt to answer it. It was cold, yes; but what was a frostbitten ear lobe to the commercial viability of the metropolis?

New Yorkers have long been proud of the venerable boutiques and department stores that encrust our city. There is Macy's, memorable for its role in several films: Miracle on 34th Street, Arthur, Moscow on the Hudson and Splash. And no one would omit Tiffany's, the playground of Holly Golightly.

Certainly these places are widely known and respected among new Yorkers; but it was not until last week that the understanding gradually dawned among New Yorkers that they had been expected to buy things in these New York stores, rather than to treat the shops as museum-places in which polite visitors might admire the articles in the glass cases, but ought not to touch let alone buy.

For a long time no one has thought to buy anything in New York, because businesses here defray the expense of rent by doubling or tripling the price of their wares, and because New York suffers from a tax of more than 8 per cent on shoes, scarves, martial arts attire, bathing suits, gardening gloves and other necessary items of dress. Suburbanites prefer to hop into their covered wagons and head off for nearby New Jersey, which has no tax, and many useful malls.

But last week Mayor Giuliani, braced by having won the first battles in his city crime war, dug in for a new campaign; stealing New Jersey's marketing fire. For seven days, beginning Saturday, January 18th, he announced, New York City shoppers could buy clothes without paying the sales tax. All day Saturday, the wind howled through the revolving doors of Lexington and Madison as the consumer crusaders marched. Hats, scarves and gloves flew off the racks and the people who spray passers-by with perfume ran out of stock. In New Jersey, nail-biting merchants slashed prices, but it was too late; by the time New Yorkers returned home from day one of their tax-free, guilt-free spree, no money was left for New Jersey - and New York shops had, of necessity, reverted to museums.