okay, i know i risk getting flamed here and i really really really am not trying to be contrarian, but.....
perhaps i have lived in new york city too long (as in 25 years), but i remember a time when people didnt expect every single neighborhood to have every single possible amenity within a five block walk. where we actually celebrated the fact that neighborhoods had their own character, as opposed to a nice, neat "one from columns a,b, c, d, e" and so on kind of thing. the character is the reason i moved to and continue to live in jackson hts as opposed to one of the completely cookie-cutter neighborhoods that make up a good chunk of brooklyn.
am i saying a 99 cent store is inherently better than a wine bar? no. but in reality -- not in pie in the sky theory -- there's a domino effect. replace one too many storefronts providing needed services and you lose those services for good. commercial landlords have proven, again and again and again, that they are both greedy and short sighted, and usually end up evicting the hardware store paying "x" per month for the imported tea emporium paying three times that, only to have the latter go under in six months and have a) a vacant storefront and b) a public that needs to take a subway to buy paint.
i don't know about you, but in reality, i need dry cleaning more than i need mesclun.
