Radio Clinic was a fixture in Manhattan, through the early days of radio to the Depression, from the post war boom to the bust, from the best days to the worst days and on. I bought my first air conditioner there when I moved into the neighborhood, though it was no longer called Radio Clinic and radios were only a tiny part of the store. Jen Rubin, a fixture in the store as a teenager, recounts the life of a store that her immigrant grandfather started, and her father inherited. The title We Are Staying is from a sign posted on the store after the 1977 Blackout and looting. It didn’t ruin them, they persevered.
Let’s start with her grandfather, the founder. He was a Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe in the 1930’s, got into radio repair, worked out of a small store, and moved up to the store on 98th and Broadway. Rubin’s book is a window into the history of the Upper West Side, both in economic and personal vignettes. Her grandfather put his business in the neighborhood because there were more people there, thanks to the huge buildings, and the extra money of the residents didn’t hurt either. Even poor people had radios, and the profit was in fixing the cheaper ones. When FDR began his famous fireside speeches, radio became even more valuable. She also writes about how tax breaks encouraged the building owners to subdivide apartments into SRO’s, and they brought bad elements into the community.
There’s a funny story in the book about how her grandfather got involved with the Soviets. Two diplomats came in to buy a TV, and they tried, without success, to haggle a lower price. They were shocked to find that her grandfather, Leon Blum, understood Russian, and it brought in a ton of business. The Soviet customers – diplomats and ballet directors, mostly – would come into buy loads of electronics (though I suspect they were taking them home to unload on the black market.) Soon the FBI got wind of the huge Soviet clientele, and the old man now had a side gig as an informant.
This book also has a lesson on family business, and how working with relatives can create problems. The author’s father never got along with his relations in the business, especially when it came to how much they should pay their employee, Raymond. He was a Black American who’d worked in the store for decades, and he was much older than the new management, and believed that he deserved a raise. Raymond could’ve owned his own store, but where would he have gotten the capital? No bank would given a business loan to a Black man in the 1950’s.
The business stayed (hence the title) after the 1977 Summer Blackout, when the huge power outage created opportunity for looting. She says that everyone blamed everyone; first it was Con Ed, with faulty wiring and violations, then the stretched-thin NYPD, then it was the famously unready mayor Abraham Beam (who couldn’t handle even the smallest emergency.) She quotes sociologists who blamed the looting on “disenfranchisement” of minorities, and given the demographic of the looters (Black and Latino bums who lived in the SRO’s) the theory may be true. The stores that were hit the hardest were the ones with the small, quick-selling items, so Radio Clinic was hit hard. At the same time, the blackout saved some merchandise, because you needed the hoist to get the heavy air conditioners up from the basement. Most retail stores had some theft, but the pizza joints were safe; nobody breaks into a pizza place to steal the ovens.
Jen Rubin devotes a full chapter to how her father’s store recovered. He spent a full year begging for loans, haggling with the city for grants, and begging suppliers to delay the bills. He said “I’m responsible for 25 families, mine and those of my employees. He father’s efforts to sustain the business are worthy of being a college course, and all that he had to do can’t be learned at Harvard Business School.
The store closed by 2008, thanks to online competition and rising rents. It’s impossible to run an independent mom-and-pop electronics appliance store, there’s too much competition and the big chain stores have easier credit and capital. It’s true what Jimmy McMillan says, “The rent IS too damn high,” especially for the little guy. But the store lasted decades when others did not. Her father chose to stay, rather than collect the insurance and declare bankruptcy.
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