As the variety store disappears from the high street a new set of sharper, hungrier competitors fills the gaps.
'When the demand for whale oil dried up around 1890, those who ran the store disappeared overnight,' says Brenda Figuerido, the owner of this gloriously characterful guesthouse.
That store disappeared last year, but now one just like it has returned, and this time around, it's selling "Apple Certified" iPhone 5 devices.
Once-respectable high street stores disappeared, to be boarded up or replaced by chancers flogging marked-down colanders.
Over the last 10 to 20 years the stores disappeared, victims of Transit Authority crusades against litter, vermin and clutter, and of station rehabilitation projects.
The industry group is taking comfort from the comedy rise as it counts the cost of more than 800 Woolworths stores disappearing from the high street.
He said that during the 1970s, because of the growth of big-box stores and malls, "there were a lot of vacant properties" downtown and the four grocery stores disappeared.
While the neighborhood's days of large department stores disappeared decades ago, these streets still thrived as a shopping district for lower-income households, anchored by the city's 222-year-old Lexington Market.
"You see stores disappearing one by one, I return to the same place again and again," Peress explains his process of watching the changes.
We're already seeing it as those dire predictions of brick and mortar stores disappearing from the landscape fade and businesses successfully launched on the web - think Warby Parker - seek to open more retail locations with sales people trained to help humans.
