Ghost Newsstands Haunt Subway as MTA Retail Vacancies Near 75%

Just under 27% of retail spaces in the subway are currently open, MTA stats show. In some empty newsstands, artists have found pop-up performance space.

By Jose Martinez

This story was first published in THE CITY on July 11 5:00am EDT

Inside the newsstand at the 66th Street-Lincoln Center stop on the No. 1 line, there is no escaping 2020.

Steps from the southbound platform, dozens of magazine covers serve as dusty throwbacks to pre-pandemic times — and grim indicators of how subway newsstands are struggling to survive amid major shifts in ridership and reading habits.

There’s a March 30, 2020, People cover blaring “THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS,” a Closer Weekly magazine from that same date about “HOW BETTY WHITE STAYS GOLDEN” and an April 2020 Allure titled “The Dixie Chicks Won’t Back Down” — months before the country trio dropped “Dixie” from its name.

“Listen, before times, before coronavirus, we sold the various magazines and various newspapers,” said clerk Sen Nitya Sanda, a Bangladeshi immigrant. “But after coronavirus, our business is slow and we don’t take the new magazines, we don’t take the new newspapers.”

As he spoke with THE CITY, Sanda sold a $3 bottle of water, but said he could not recall the last time anyone bought a magazine.

“Who’s going to want to read a magazine from 2020?” he said.

But at least the 66th Street newsstand is still open, for now.

According to the MTA, just 52 of 195 retail locations in the subway — or close to 27% — are currently open, with 20 under construction and 31 that are under negotiation. The remainder will be marketed to potential tenants over the next 15 months, said agency spokesperson Joana Flores.

That mirrors the challenges facing the broader newsstand industry, which, according to the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, saw its revenue plummet from $6.8 billion in 2006 to about $1 billion in 2022. Across the MTA’s regional transportation network, revenue from subway retail last year fell to less than $3 million , down from $9.5 million pre-pandemic.

Max Goodman, counsel to the New York City Newsstand Operators Association, said subway vendors are susceptible not only to fewer people buying single-copy magazines and newspapers, but to shifts in habits and the workplace. For instance, riders are more likely now to carry their own water tumblers than buy single-use plastic bottles.

“With the change in subway ridership patterns and the increase of working from home, that’s really hurt the newsstands,” said Goodman, whose association represents street-level newsstands. “It’s a business that is so dependent on foot traffic. It’s an in-person business.”

According to the MTA, paid weekday subway ridership is currently at around 70% of what it was prior to the spring of 2020.

Janno Lieber, MTA chairperson and CEO, said that efforts to fill subway retail space in Grand Central Terminal are “moving in the right direction” and added that the transit agency is also actively working to attract businesses to major subway retail areas at 47-50 Rockefeller Center, Times Square-42nd Street and 42nd Street/Port Authority Bus Terminal.

The MTA’s bigger challenge, he conceded, is filling subway retail spaces that once housed newsstands. At one shuttered stand inside the West Fourth Street station in Manhattan, the magazines that remain on display are from 2019.

“That is not a business that seems to be economic anymore for those folks,” Lieber said. “So we’ve been trying to figure out how to energize and enliven those spaces.”

Subway Art

The MTA last year announced plans to convert 30 vacant subway retail spaces for rent-free use by artists or non-profit organizations. The Whitney Museum of American Art and ChaShaMa are among those that now display artwork at five stations on structures that previously served as newsstands.

One shuttered stand on the northbound platform at the 81st Street-Museum of Natural History stop along the B and C lines is the first to be converted into a makeshift performance space by Art on the Ave NYC.

The non-profit was founded by city schoolteachers during the depths of the 2020 pandemic to exhibit local artists’ works in vacant Columbus Avenue storefronts. Now, the organization has expanded into the long-vacant subway storefront beneath 81st Street and Central Park West with acts that include a flute quartet, a violinist, Motown singers, a deejay and a Beatles cover band.

“When I come out in the subway and I hear someone playing something, it doesn’t matter what it is, I just feel that moment of relief,” said Barbara Anderson, a retired schoolteacher who started Art on the Ave NYC. “That’s what we’re providing, that joyful moment, that interaction.”

On Monday, the former newsstand at the 81st Street stop served as a stage for Natalia “Saw Lady” Paruz, who has been playing a musical saw in subway stations since 1993. As temperatures topped 90 degrees, she set up her performance spot with a bottle of Dasani water, an amplifier, some $10 compact discs and the bow that helps her make music.

“I was thinking, what a waste of space,” said Paruz, 45, who lives in Queens. “It’s space that exists and it’s just been sitting empty since the pandemic. Do something with it!”

Paruz picked up playing the musical saw years ago after seeing a man in Europe performing the vibrating-metal instrument for a crowd of tourists. She said she asked the musician for a lesson, but was rejected and instead told to “pick up a saw and imitate” what she had seen.

“It’s not something that your mother would send you to school for,” she said with a laugh. “It’s something that you pick up on your own, traditionally you would see someone else playing and then you just get hooked on it.”

Paruz said she enjoys fleeting subway moments with riders — “It makes me feel like I’m meeting New York City” — when she manages to catch their eyes, ears or tips via Venmo or PayPal.

“It cuts the stress a little to come into a subway station from working in the heat and then you hear someone playing music,” said Giancarlo Espinoza, a construction worker who tipped Paruz $1 as he waited for a train. “It relaxes me.”

That type of interaction is what drew Anderson, of Art on the Ave, to submit a proposal for the space that’s now occasionally serving as a performance venue.

“I notice every space that’s just sitting there,” she said. “Most people just walk by it and to most, it’s just another gate that’s down in the city.

Now, we’re filling another space, bringing joy to more people.”

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