Anti-Climacus

While Hamley's probably is the greatest toy store in the world, I disagree with Alan Jacobs slightly about whether it's a sign of New York privilege to refer to it in terms of F.A.O. Schwartz when the latter is comparatively new. I say this simply because the opposite seems to imply an even greater example of YPIS: the average New Yorker (ostensibly the target of the New York Times) has probably not been to London, and it would be weird to assume that they had. Better to relate the store to something more likely in their frame of reference, which F.A.O. Schwartz is likely to be. And, having been to Hamley's, you can't really compare it to very downmarket and more common U.S. toy store experiences, because its fundamental organizing principle is very different from Toys 'R' Us (or was when I was there, which admittedly was in 2004 and so it may well have changed). So I'm not sure what the preferable option is supposed to be, assuming the article's author wants to make a comparison of Hamley's to something their reader will recognize.