Richmond Hill, Queens, N.Y.
What the hell is up with this bank? For some peculiar reason, NYCB decided to end human interaction customer and teller service at this Liberty Ave. branch back in April and has only made this bank available for ATM service. But only for withdrawals and not deposits. It’s like one of those crappy looking machines you see by bodegas or barstaurants except it’s an entire commercial storefront version of it.
And it looks super shady too, right to the blackened doors and window. With all the small businesses closing shop in the five boroughs because of exorbitant rents and taxes, this is a colossal waste of space. What was once a bank now looks like a place to score weed or a hastily improvised mafia social club. (Actually, this would have been a weed shop financed with a loan by NYCB if Cuomo and those wimps in Albany would have shown some goddamn sense and full on legalized it.)
And to top off this bizarro sight, it was just recently visited by National Grid and they left a door handle card stating that they missed their scheduled appointment! I wonder why they had to leave? Maybe it’s because there’s not a physical person working there?
I don’t know who owns this building or this commercial space, which I presume is the bank itself, but this gives off as much suspicion of malfeasance and plain bad vibes as those mailbox stores in Williamsburg, Brooklyn containing boxes rented by LLC owners of apartment buildings. And despite the little mirror and camera there, this machine will make any customer taking cash out an easy victim of a knifepoint holdup or even by some skell zipping on a scooter or bike snatching your cash out of your hands.
NYCB should close this down now or at least rent out the space for some enterprising folks, which is what I thought that they were in business for, like making loans for new businesses. Because this just looks really bad and cheap for this mostly local quasi-national bank, especially after they just lent Steve Croman millions of dollars to buy a landmark bar after he robbed them.
Hell, even another 99 cent store or barstaurant on Liberty would be a better than this money spewing hovel. As long as there are few extra people who can get jobs.
But please, not another hookah joint.
Impunity City 
Yes, that National Grid notice is exactly for what you said. No one was there to answer the door.
I love the irony of this being called a “community” bank, too.
A local business should go there but unfortunately, in our neoliberal/corporate fascist state where only chain stores and corporate behemoths get to open businesses (thanks, Reagan!), that most likely won’t happen any time soon. The space is probably too cost prohibitive for a regular mom and pop, but who knows? I guess it remains to be seen.
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