neighborhood news

Williamsburg Business Owners Blame Weekend L Train Outages for Poor Sales

Last weekend, the L train wasn’t running. The whole weekend. It’s happened more than ten times since July, and there are going to be more weekend-long outages coming. It’s pretty damn annoying if to you happen to live on the line, but small business owners in the neighborhood say the lack of service puts their business model at risk, according to the Daily News. >

When I check my numbers, and I see a significant drop, that means the L train wasn’t working,” said Misha Anderson, co-founder of the Woodley & Bunny hair salon on N. 10th Street, four blocks north of the Bedford Aveune stop on the L.

“Don’t they know how these cuts impact North Brooklyn?” she asked. “In February, no one will want to walk here from the (J and M) trains on Broadway.”

Anderson said she loses about $20,000 in sales each time the train is shut down due to the weekend repairs. It’s made her sympathetic to store owners along the proposed Second Avenue subway route on the Upper East Side.

Sympathy between the Upper East Side and Williamsburg isn’t the only unlikely alliance to emerge from the Great L Train Drought of 2011. “We are a tourist mecca now,” another shop owner told the paper.  “And we can’t get tourists when there are no trains.” Worse than having tourists in the Williamsburg: not having tourists in the ’hood?

Weekend L Train Outages Result in Poor Sales