Last week, outdoor equipment store REI closed its downtown Manhattan location after 15 years. It’s not the only brick-and-mortar REI to close–the company is also shuttering stores in Boston and New Jersey–but its closure is notable, not just for having been one of the few places a New Yorker could buy stuff to escape New York, but for being the first REI to unionize, back in 2022. While I try not to be the kind of person who has feelings about a store, I’m super bummed about this one.
It’s not clear why REI is closing these stores; the company told The New York Times there was a “need to adapt to changing market conditions and customer needs.” The Times writes that the company has been losing money after a demand for outdoor stuff during covid cooled, and it’s not hard to imagine the multi-floor Soho space came with exorbitant rent. It’s also not hard to wonder if the union could have had something to do with it: Despite professing liberal politics as a co-op, REI has pushed back against its unionized workers at every turn, which unions have responded to with worker actions including a multi-day boycott.
For a lot of my New York life the REI largely served as the landmark by which I oriented myself when I got out of the subway at Broadway and Lafayette streets. My relationship to it changed when I got sober in 2019 and, like many sober people, started filling the time I used to spend at the bar with sports. I bought my first climbing shoes and climbing harness at that REI; when I left Kotaku in 2021 and started spending all day at the climbing gym, I went there for a grigri to learn to lead climb. As a worker talked me through my options, he politely noted that I’m very small, which could be a safety hazard if I was belaying someone much larger than me. He suggested a variety of strategies to deal with this, and I remember being struck that none of them were things he was trying to sell me–he just seemed to earnestly want to make sure I was safe.
When I moved to DC and got into bikepacking, I practically lived at the REI down there, constantly needing bike tubes and dehydrated meals and gas canisters for my stove. Ahead of one trip I realized at the last minute that I’d need a water filter, and just like back in New York, a worker spent far more time than necessary helping me find the right one. I was again struck by the fact that he wasn’t trying to upsell me–the filter he recommended was actually cheaper than the one the internet had suggested I get, but he talked me through how to use it and why he personally liked it better. He even remembered me the next time I came in and asked me how things had gone. Cashiers frequently saw the bike and camp stuff I was buying and told me about their favorite routes or trips they went on, and one, when I was very new to the area, even drew me a map of DC’s layout to help me orient myself. (The map she drew was so baffling that I actually thought it was a prank, but when she proudly pushed the paper over to me and said “See? It’s easy!” I realized she was serious. I lied and said I understood it.)
Again, I don’t want to be a guy who has feelings about a store, but maybe because the outdoors came into my life alongside my sobriety, my visits to REI always felt a little more weighty than just a shopping trip. And the best part was always the people who worked there: how knowledgeable they were, how they earnestly seemed excited that I was doing something outside, how much time they would spend talking to me about gear. When the Soho store won its union vote, I put on my WGAE hat and biked over for running toe socks I didn’t strictly need, just so I could congratulate the person checking me out on their win. I was horrified by the company’s union-busting, and I sent letters and boycotted the store and made a stink to REI leadership about its betrayal of the supposed values that had inspired me to become a co-op member in the first place.
I can, of course, still buy everything I need from REI online, even though I now won’t have anywhere to easily return or exchange things. But for me the main value of the store was actually going to the store, talking to an expert about equipment that I’m literally trusting with my life, or even that might just make my trip more comfortable or less annoying. It was good to have a place where I could actually try stuff on or feel how heavy it was before I bought it. And while it feels a little embarrassing to admit, it was also a place that felt like an embodiment of the different person I was becoming after I got sober. It felt good to use the money I would have spent on booze on bikepacking bags and running gels, to spend an evening browsing climbing shoes the way I once browsed the beer case at the bodega. It felt like a kind of personal growth to feel at home there, to be the kind of guy who needed what that place sold. And it felt good to know I could walk in and get real help from real people, and even more so when those people unionized.
The Soho REI was situated in the Puck building, which hosted New York University when I first moved to the city, and which currently also houses an OpenAI office on its upper floors. The building is owned by Jared Kushner’s Kushner Companies, who are reportedly seeking $6.3 million in annual rent. Whatever takes its place (and here’s hoping it’s not more OpenAI, though with REI embracing AI slop, it might be hideously fitting) won’t possibly have the same draw, either for me or for people just looking to use its bathroom and water fountains.
So many places that I’ve loved and relied on in this city have closed over the years, from the tea lounge I warmed up in while dogwalking to my special occasion Ethiopian spot to the place I used to buy saxophone reeds. Even the gym where I first learned to climb has changed hands, and the new one nearby has engaged in its own union-busting. Losing the REI feels like one more reminder that everything sucks a little more than it used to these days, that so many things are getting narrowed into interactions through screens. It feels like there are less and less places to go, and less ways to talk to a real person when you need to buy something. RIP, REI. Thanks for letting me return climbing shoes so many times.
It's Hater Week here on Aftermath. This week we’re letting the hate flow through us by examining what it means to be a hater (and… a lover?), venting about some of our biggest pet peeves in games and life, and giving others a space to do the same.
