Ears On

Here's to the mating of the ampersand and the asterisk. Mayor Michael Bloomberg is expected to attend tomorrow's grand opening of J&R Express at Macy*s in Manhattan. Founded in 1858, Macy*s has been the city's leading department store for generations. It's a major tourist attraction and its advertising props up the city's newspapers. But Federated Department Stores, owner of Macy*s, has never found a way to make electronics retailing work in NYC. J&R's story is totally different. It started as a great little record shop back in the pre-CD days, then successfully branched out into electronics, but until recently never aspired to move beyond its peculiar cluster of far-downtown spaces near City Hall. Locals love it, but most people reading this probably know the Internet operation better than the stores. So now Macy*s will have the ideal partner for selling electronics, and J&R will expand into midtown, with its flocks of tourists and shoppers, just down West 34th from the Empire State Building. BTW, the weeping statuary pictured is a memorial for Isidor and Ida Strauss in tiny Strauss Park at Broadway and West 107th Street. Isidor acquired Macy's (then with no asterisk) in 1896 and moved it to the current iconic location in Herald Square. In 1912, he and his wife Ida went down with the Titanic.