Zev Weitman was hunched over his sooty workbench in a small diamond-cutting shop several stories above Manhattan’s diamond district. His mind ran through a crystalline chamber, retouching facets to extract a brilliant symphony of light from the diamond he was working against a cutting wheel.
“I’m always improvising, always looking for the perfect cut,” said Weitman, 68, who started cutting 40 years ago, when thousands of jewelry stores filled a single block of 47th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. Back then, there were also thousands of cutters like Weitman.
Now, Weitman says, only a few hundred remain in the district, focusing on repairs, rush jobs and the kind of high-end work he does. His dozen or so apprentices have left and he is only obsessed with stones. None of his four children — nor, presumably, none of his 28 grandchildren — will follow him in the trade.
The death of the diamond district has been announced for years. Most of the diamond cutting work has been outsourced abroad. Online shopping has reduced showroom sales. The pandemic derailed supplies and devastated foot traffic. Cheap, lab-grown diamonds have rocked a seemingly unshakable diamond economy. Many longstanding mom-and-pop stores have downsized or lack succession plans.
And now, a mega-developer has demolished more than a dozen buildings in the district to make way for a super-tall tower and luxury hotel. This, some old-school jewelers fear, will change the unique character of the district.
But this gloomy prognosis has another facet. Directly across the street from Weitman’s cutting studio is a gleaming counter studded with rap star-like jewelry. The aura of the store, TraxNYC, couldn’t be more different from the Old World austerity of Weitman’s establishment.
The display cases are filled with jewel-encrusted charms and gold chains dangle from graffiti-adorned jewelry displays staffed by a young and diverse sales staff. There’s also a lounge for preferred customers, where guests peruse employee-presented jewelry along with complimentary premium liquor, marijuana churros, and video games.
TraxNYC has a team of twenty-somethings seated at a communal table, noisily busing sales online and over the phone and taking custom orders created on the fly with design software and 3-D printers.
“We are transforming the industry and these are the young people who will take over,” said owner Maksud Agadjani, 36, whose designs are popular with clients like Cardi B and Busta Rhymes.
“People may want to see the old diamond district on film and television, but the truth is that people don’t want to go to the diamond district anymore,” he added. “So the old ways have to go to waste.”
But the old ways have not yet disappeared. As Midtown has been transformed by tourism, rising commercial rents and chain stores, the Diamond District stands out more as an anachronism than ever. Makeshift synagogues and kosher restaurants are sandwiched between jewelry offices. On the sidewalk, Hasidic diamond dealers haggle over flip phones and town criers try to lure passers-by into the showrooms.
Agadjani makes fun of all that. Who needs a town crier when his Instagram and TikTok posts get him millions of views a day? He has been in the district for 18 years and his store generates more than $30 million in annual sales.
He gets publicity from fighting with rappers and reality TV stars. His feud with rapper Tekashi69 turned to gold when 50 Cent came to Tekashi’s defense and called Agadjani “a jerk.” It didn’t matter that Agadjani was ridiculed; the post went viral.
The Jewelry District emerged in the 19th century as a cluster of stores in Lower Manhattan. Later, Jewish diamond dealers fleeing Europe before World War II began settling on 47th Street.
Even with all the challenges, the diamond district’s jewelry, gems, and precious metals still rank among New York State’s most valuable exports, and the stores around 47th Street are a conduit for roughly 90 percent of diamonds imported into the United States.
The high-end pieces that end up for sale at Tiffany and Harry Winston often start here as raw materials.
For Agadjani, who grew up in Queens after his parents emigrated from Azerbaijan when he was 7, this is the culture he knows. “My father told me, ‘This is a place with real opportunity,’” he said. “I got the measure of the United States pretty quickly.”
At one point, he dressed one of his sales agents in a squirrel costume to make a silly post egging on a rival.
As far as Agadjani distances himself from the district’s more traditional business methods, he admits that location is crucial.
“I don’t get my jewelry from Walmart,” she said. “I have to make it, and this block is a factory. They are all critical. One is polishing, another is melting, another is welding.”
Although Agadjani and Weitman seem opposite, they are similar in their obsessive pursuit as jewelers, to the point of losing sleep.
“I’d like to meet him,” Agadjani said as his team attached some mock graphic elements to the squirrel video and posted it. “I am here thanks to guys like him.”
By: COREY KILGANNON
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6748843, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-06-06 22:50:08
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