The demolition notice for the Glad Tidings Tabernacle on 33rd Street was stapled to the contractor's shed sometime between Monday and today, and the work of stripping the building down to its skeleton has advanced quickly. It's the same on my own street, where the Vespa storefront was razed overnight, reopening in a newly rehabilitated space a few doors down from my own building. Last Saturday morning, the small lot next to the laundromat was a patch of raw earth; by the afternoon, it was a poured concrete foundation. Soon, I suspect, it will be the next in a growing number of luxury apartment construction sites.

They're the latest overnight sensations.

I don't feel nostalgic, exactly, though I understand those who do, aching with resentment and only able to ease their pain by tacking up flyers inviting the neighbors to protest high rise development. But I don't feel excited  about the changing skyline, either, even though I understand those folks, too. The city has always been changing; like so much in our lives that we think is unique to our own time, the cycle of development, destruction, development is nothing new.

What I care about are the stories. As old places disappear, their histories tend to dissolve, too. "What was that building?" I asked a cop on the beat on 33rd Street. "I dunno," he replied, "I think I heard somebody say it was a church." Our memories are startlingly short. If we don't capture these stories, they're gone. And who will we be then?