Making ends meet
Clothing, home decor seller to open first store in region this summer
New Yorkers supplementing income with gig work during pandemic.
Urban Outfitters is coming to the Capital Region.
For the past decade, there has been speculation the retailer known for its fun, funky clothing and small decor appealing to hipsters and apartment-dwellers would set up shop on Broadway in Saratoga Springs. Instead, you’ll find them in Crossgates Mall, in
Guilderland, across from the Apple store this summer.
“We are thrilled to finally be able say that Urban Outfitters is coming soon to Crossgates,” said Crossgates marketing director Jen Smith. “This world-known brand is joining our long list of unique shops that our guests love and have asked for.”
This is Urban Outfitters’ first and only location in the Capital Region. The next closest location is Northampton, Mass.
The Crossgates Mall store will span 8,588 square feet on the lower level of the center near American Eagle and Texas de Brazil.
Currently, Urban Outfitters has locations at two other Pyramid properties (Crossgates Mall is also part of Pyramid); one at Destiny USA in Syracuse and the other at Walden Galleria in Buffalo.
Urban Outfitters operates more than 200 stores throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe featuring clothing, accessories and home products.
For information, visit Shopcrossgates.com or follow them on Facebook.
World shares started the week off with a rally, as Japan’s Nikkei 225 index closed above 30,000 for the first time since August 1990.
European markets closed sharply higher on Monday, following an advance in Asia. Shanghai and Hong Kong were closed for the Lunar New Year. U.S. markets remained closed Monday for President’s Day.
Optimism that the U.S. government will come through on trillions of dollars of more aid for the economy and encouraging company earnings reports have helped stocks grind higher this month, along with hopes that the coronavirus vaccine rollout will set the stage for stronger economic growth in the second half of this year.
Democrats have decided to use a legislative process that does not require Republican support to pass the $1.9 trillion package proposed by President Joe Biden.
“Markets remain target fixated on the Biden stimulus and vaccine rollouts as the magic panacea for the world’s pandemic ills,” Jeffrey Halley of Oanda said in a commentary. That has translated into higher stock prices, with the world awash with stimulus funds seeking returns in a world where interest rates are around zero percent, he said.
Germany’s DAX gained 0.4 percent to 14,109.48 while the CAC40 in Paris rose 1.5 percent to 5,786.25. Britain’s FTSE 100 surged 2.5 percent to 6,756.11. U.S. futures also rose, with the contract for the S&P 500 up 0.5 percent. The future for the Dow
industrials rose 0.6 percent.
The strong buying in Tokyo was driven by news that the Japanese economy grew at a nearly 13 percent annual pace in the last quarter, and by strong corporate earnings reports. It was the second straight quarter of growth after a downturn drastically worsened by the impact of the pandemic.
The recovery should put the economy on track to recover to pre-pandemic levels by next year, helped by a recovery in demand for exports in the U.S. and other major trading partners, Marcel Thieliant of Capital Economies said in a report.
Japan recently re-imposed a state of emergency in Tokyo and several other prefectures to battle a resurgence of outbreaks. But sustained corporate investment and government spending are expected to help offset the impact on travel, restaurants and other sectors most affected.
“And while most economists expect a renewed contraction this quarter due to the second state of emergency, we think that output will be broadly flat in Q1 and rise more strongly this year than almost anyone anticipates,“Thieliant said.
The Nikkei 225 closed up 1.9 percent at 30,084.15. It was its
highest level since August 1990, just as Japan’s bubble economy was beginning to implode after peaking at nearly 39,000 in 1989.
Other Asian markets also saw strong gains. The Kospi in Seoul rose 1.5 percent to 3,147.00 and India’s Sensex climbed 1.1 percent to 54, 102.41. In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.9 percent to 6,868.90.
Thailand’s SET benchmark index gained 0.9 percent after the government forecast the economy will expand by 2.5 percent-3.5 percent this year after contracting 6.1 percent in 2020 as the government restricted international travel and imposed other limits on activities to combat the pandemic.
On Friday, technology companies led a late-afternoon rally on Wall Street that capped a week of wobbly trading. with the major stock indexes hitting all-time highs.
The S&P 500 rose 0.5 percent to 3,934.83, a record high for the second day in a row. It was its second straight weekly gain. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite picked up 0.5 percent, to 14,095.47, also a record. The Dow Jones Industrial Average likewise set a new high, edging 0.1 percent higher to 31,458.40.
Steven Yeun never felt quite as safe anywhere else as he did at church.
Looking back at his childhood in suburban Michigan, the 37-year-old actor realizes he hasn’t been able to recreate that sense of security, either. At his Korean church, he knew who his friends were. He could express himself by playing guitar and singing. He even acted in skits, a skill he didn’t pick up again until joining college improv, from where it would shape his career trajectory.
“Maybe I’m just talking about childhood,” he says, “but there’s something beautiful about that time.”
Yeun reminisces over Zoom in the midst of discussing his latest project,
“Minari,” an independent film about a Koreanamerican family who settle in rural Arkansas. The question of belonging is central to the immigrant experience; the children of immigrants often refer to feeling caught between two worlds, a phrase rooted in truth but ubiquitous enough to American media for it to have become a trope. There is an inherent loneliness to such an existence, even with its burgeoning population. Yeun, whose family left Seoul in
1988, refers to the community as “gap people.”
The gap is where Yeun spent his formative years as a Korean American kid in Troy, Mich. It’s where he currently resides as one of the most recognizable Asian faces in a White-dominated industry, thanks to an eclectic film career and years spent fighting zombies on “The Walking Dead.”
But “Minari” frames that existence differently: What if it isn’t about feeling torn between two disparate lives, but about bringing them together to forge a new, fulfilling one?
Based on director Lee Isaac Chung ’s childhood, the film picks up with the family’s Reagan-era move from California to a plot of land in Arkansas, where patriarch Jacob (Yeun) hopes to start a farming business. His ambition drives the story, overlapping with his efforts to quell concerns his wife, Monica (Yeri Han), has about finding a sense of community in their isolated town.
There’s a novelty to “Minari” for how gently it incorporates cultural differences that could so easily have played out melodramatically. Chung highlights the ties Jacob and Monica’s children, Anne (Noel Cho) and David (Alan Kim), maintain to their heritage in small, charming ways; David sips the herbal remedy Monica’s mother (Yuh-jung Youn) gives him to improve his health, and she, in turn, drinks the Mountain Dew that Anne earnestly describes as “water from the mountains.”
The loneliness that accompanies displacement still plays a role here, adding a layer of desperation to Jacob’s farming efforts. But the character’s emotional journey hits universal notes, a dynamic Yeun says he and Chung sustained by ensuring the character felt “honest and truthful.”
“We weren’t seeking to define this family’s existence through their oppression by the majority, but rather the confidence to speak from their own point of view, intrinsically,” Yeun says. “Their existence is valid, and they can just be. In some ways, what that is, is just an exercise in humanity.”
After emigrating from Seoul to Regina, Saskatchewan, the Yeun family moved to Taylor, Mich., a working class suburb southwest of Detroit. By the time Steven was in high school, they had moved to a townhouse in Troy, on the more affluent side of town.
The American Midwest continues to be underrepresented in most forms of media, a reality on full display in the months surrounding each presidential election. “Public discourse has been flattened these days,” Yeun notes of the false impressions outsiders often have of the region. “It’s so politicized.”
“I think the larger world misunderstands places like that and doesn’t give them the credit they’re due for how they uphold certain beautiful dynamics in this country, and just as people and humans,” Yeun says. “There’s just something there, and I’ve been finding myself nostalgic for that, but also carrying both (feelings) ... You can be hurt and love a place at the same time.”