gentrification
i live in new york city. the borough i live in is brooklyn and the neighborhood is called "williamsburg." this is, nauseatingly, according to conde naste, one of the 2 hippest neighborhoods in the nation, along with the mission district in san francisco. i've lived in williamsburg for, i'd say a little over 8 years. first i lived on the south side - right at the entrance to the bridge and now i live on the east side - the montrose stop on the l.
when i first moved to the south side, i was one of only a handful of white people who lived there. i had an amazing space - massive. the building was a former burned out crack-house converted into artist's lofts. most of the large industrial buildings still standing were gutted shells with every window broken by kids in the neighborhood. those gutted shells have been converted into "luxury" loft buildings and now house a multitude of new york's elite. my apartment was much closer to the j train than the l train and i often used it in my daily commute. the j train was completely working class, unlike the l train, where you would see trainloads of hipsters getting off at bedford ave, a handful at metropolitan and a baker's dozen at graham. when i used the j train i never had a problem. the puerto rican, dominican and black folk who used the train could have cared less about me. i was invisible.
if you look at a map of manhattan and brooklyn, you see the pattern of gentrification. hipsterdom started in greenwich village, west of broadway and over the years worked it's way east(east village) and south(soho & tribeca) and north(meat packing & chelsea). you see why the northside of williamsburg gentrified first. after the east village gentrified, there were two options, the lower east side, with it's terrifyingly small apartments or williamsburg, with it's industrial(warehouse & factory) detritus. it was one subway stop from the east village and it's subway - the l train - is one of the most convenient in any borough as it crosses almost all the subway routes in manhattan, for easy transfer.
as an aside, my first visit to the east village was in 1989. squatting and anarchist ideology were still a major factor there. it was anarchy. you could feel it. i've never felt energy anywhere like that again. eventually the squatters were squeezed out, with the exception of c squat, which i believe is still around and the last squat in the east village. the empty lots, squats and a few community gardens pioneered by the puerto ricans were eventually turned into "luxury" loft buildings.
artists and such needed a place to go, so they headed east. north williamsburg was inhabited by a mix of relatively middle class poles and italians and required little effort from the "pioneers" who first settled there, unlike their counterparts of a decade plus earlier in the east village and alphabet city, who had to dodge junkies and crack-heads at every stage in their day. after a time, kids started spreading out again. so they headed further east(the italian mafia section), north(to greenpoint, which is inconvenient because of it's lack of subways) and eventually south(the south side). the south side was avoided for a quite a while as it was spanish and therefore was considered dangerous. i remember telling people that i lived on the south side and took the j train and they thought i was crazy. instead of going to the south side, most of them headed east, until they reached the end of italian east williamsburg around bushwick ave., which turns spanish. the availability of lofts large enough to throw rubulad sized parties immediately vaporized these suburban white kids' fear of the south side and they started to move in in numbers. once a sizable community of white people was established, it was suddenly ok to live there and everybody and their uncle was moving in. folks who'd lived in the neighborhood before gentrification hit started getting nervous. white people = higher rents. a simple equation. and sure enough, rents skyrocketed. the rent for my apartment increased a few hundred dollars every time the new lease arrived in the mail. all kinds of old factories were being converted into lofts. new businesses catering to white folks, like wine shops and fancy restaurant, bars and the ubiquitous boutiques started sprouting up like weeds. the original locals' restaurants were closing. their bodegas, going, going... apartments and entire buildings were being pulled out of rent control.
towards the end of my time on the south side i started to feel real resentment directed at me because to the locals, i was just another white faggot. in fact, people did call me faggot to my face. people hated me. whereas before i was just some white dude, now i was threatening their heritage, their way of life, their culture.
i had to leave my apartment as the owner of the building decided he wanted to convert it to condos. i had unwittingly become a "victim" of the same gentrification that i'd helped implement.
i took part in gentrification. i am not trying to put the blame off on someone else. i did it. i did it twice, once on the south side and now on the east side. actually, i did it in san francisco too, when i lived on oak street and i'll do it again. i didn't do it out of malice or for any negative reasons. i didn't do it because i just love real estate tycoons and don't think they make enough money. i didn't do it because i wanted all the ethnic people to leave the neighborhood they'd grown up in and have to move somewhere else, miles away. i did it because i needed a decent apartment, without too many roaches and rats, that i could afford.
gentrification is a completely natural phenomenon. neighborhoods change hands several times in the span of a few decades. harlem and bed-stuy were not always black folks. the east side of williamsburg - where i live now, which is currently hispanic was originally all italian. the south side was jewish/eastern european, then spanish and becoming white again. park slope was until recently inhabited by lots of black folks, but now it's streets are jammed with bugaboo pushing white folks.
gentrification happens and when it happens to you, you pick up and move on.
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