Anyone who’s ever lived on the Upper West Side of New York, or traveled there from the depths of downtown, knows Big Nick’s restaurant on the corner of 77th and Broadway. I first learned about it when I moved to the city in 1995. My then-girlfriend and I lived in a brownstone at 77th and West End, and we quickly became acquainted with this local icon. Tucked into a tiny, 1000-square-foot space in which not an inch was wasted, Big Nick’s had the best burgers in the area, great fries, pizza, and a ridiculously long menu with some surprisingly ambitious entries. I used to love watching the food be prepared, as its cooks seemed to find various ingredients tucked away in shelves and drawers and refrigerators invisible to the eye, like something out of a Harry Potter story. Big Nick’s was open 24 hours a day, and it was a great place to end a night on the town. My girlfriend used to love the tuna melt, which must have weighed about a pound. (She had the metabolism for it.) On weekends, we would wake up late and order pancakes delivered to our apartment, all of a block away.

So…you know the end of this story. After 50 years at the location, Big Nick’s is being forced to close; its rent is going up from $42, 000 to $60, 000 a month. For 1000 square feet.

The owner of Big Nicks’ space is the owner of the Belleclaire Hotel above it, which has been a terrible neighborhood tenant. I lived in that apartment for a decade. During that entire time, the sidewalk along the Belleclaire was completely dominated by a scaffolding, because it was cheaper for the hotel to pay for the scaffolding than to actually make the repairs that required it for the protection of pedestrians.

For a decade.

You can guess what’s taking Big Nicks’ place: a bank.

I don’t live on the Upper West side anymore, haven’t for almost almost ten years—the mall-ification of the area is a big reason why—and certainly this process has been going on there for many years. But this is the official death knell of the Upper West Side, which needs every bit of local color it can get. What a shame.