Signs of Gentrification

*Note: If you are not from NY, this might be less interesting for you though maybe not. Gentrification is every where but all of the Brooklyn neighborhood references can be off putting.*

When I googled Crown Heights, Brooklyn to find pictures to go with this entry, I found this one. This place is a few blocks away from Tavern on Nostrand, a restaurant that L. Britt and I had brunch at today. When we were there, the owner mentioned that he was opening a new Japanese/Korean fusion restaurant across the street. This is when it was confirmed: The neighborhood is changing.

It all began when I was living in Fort Greene, Brooklyn years ago and they opened a Sushi place around the corner. Soon after, the neighborhood became filled with trendy restaurant and lost many of its artsy multicultural clientele. A few months ago, they opened a Sushi restaurant in an area that they are trying to call Prospect Heights (Dean and Franklin Avenue). It is huge and I know many coffee houses and expensive restaurants will follow.

I never know how to feel about gentrification. My father used to say to me that gentrification is me. I like fancy coffee shops and I like nice restaurants. Just because I am black, doesn't mean that I am not a gentrifier. I specifically moved to Crown Heights because, from my lifetime living in New York, I knew it was the next big neighborhood on Brooklyn. I could have a nice place on a pretty block and be walking distance from "hipper"neighborhoods.

I also liked the idea that I could live in a neighborhood where people looked like me. It is more important to me than I thought it would be. But how long will my neighborhood have people that look like me?

Comments

[Beebs]

So does it mean that the people won't look like you? Doesn't Fort Greene and Clinton Hill and "prospect heights" have peeps like you? I am really asking- its not rhetorical. Cause when I walk through Fort Greene I see a lot of expensive clothing on beautiful multi culti faces and bodies and no body looks like my boring poor white ass.

more importantly- you need to write that book!!!!!!

[L. Britt]

Beebs, good question. Though I'd like to think your ass is more pinkish. :)

[tuckergurl]

It is a good question. I realize that sometimes when I write entries I can be a bit vague. I think part of it has to do with knowing that there are contradictions to what I am saying but feeling comfortable that my blog community will call me on it and help me think it out.

Fort Greene and Clinton Hill have fewer and fewer people that look like me and I predict that that will only increase as years go by. I am sort of concerned that it will become very Brooklyn Heightsesque and be pretty but loose some of it's "flava" so to speak. (We all know that if The Cosby Show was created now the Huxtables would live in Fort Greene and not Brooklyn Heights.)

But gentrification has as much to do with class as it does with race. Yes Fort Greene is still fairly multi culti in the main scheme of urban neighborhoods but a middle class person can not live there and that is what I used to consider myself.

So maybe I more mean people that look like me and have a lifestyle similar to mine. (Not the lifestyle that I have when I am living beyond my means which would be when I go to Fort Greene but a lifestyle like mine. The groceries cost what I think is reasonable, etc.)

One interesting point. Do you know that $75,000 a year is considered middle class in New York! I heard this on NPR. I was immediately shocked. I don't make that and thought that I was middle classed. If I did not have student loans and a shrink, my salary would actually take me pretty far. I assume that salary is for a family but maybe not. Just one to think about.

[Beebs]

$75,000 sounds kinda right to me. You have a pretty low rent and you actually spend a lot less then you think- you are good like that. But yes - I guess thats what I was getting at. But all in all I think a larger problem with New York in general and I don't know if the term gentrification even covers the whole scheme of things, there is no place for middle class. You are either poor, or making it in a really large way. Its not just the rents. The salaries are not rising. Out of an average of say 5000 peeps who enter entry level jobs in a something like an advertising agency nation wide- only about 500 move on to the next level. What happens to the other 4500? They leave New York. I actually think that there are more places for poor people to live in NCY right now than middle incomed people like our selves.

Put this info together with your entry about Colleges and their entry stats and you have a very bleak economic picture of the united states- atleast the east coast.

As per my ass- its actually more of a peachy color I would say.

[L. Britt]

Beebs, you're hilarious...and right on combining these stats with the ones from college admissions. It is a proven fact that all things being equal, education is what moves people into higher economic classes.

The thing that makes this all even more confusing, especially in a city like New York, is the dividing lines between classes are so blurry. So women like tuckergurl or me or Beebs, who have graduate degrees from an ivy league school, aren't considered middle class because of our income. Yet to put us in any other class is ludicrious! And yes, you can say those of us who majored in the arts are different, but I don't think we're THAT different. I know early people in their 30s who are lawyers, investment bankers, etc. and they live on the outskirts of the city, or have roommates. That isn't middle class living, is it? Or maybe it is in this city. See how confusing it gets?

[beebs]

I'm getting depressed. Iheart you too L-britt

[summer]

i just finished a novel on gentrification in harlem. it's by mat johnson; it's a satire. you might enjoy it.

[summer]

*sorry* ^^

it's called HUNTING IN HARLEM. (the title might help, huh?)

[Angela Tucker]

I read mat johnson's first book and I will run out and read that one. Thanks for reminding me!

[Jordans 3]

This post really had me thinking about this particular issue in way I havent before. Its something I do believe we need to talk about more. Thankyou.

[Steve]

Thanks for this post; it helped me a lot in my research for a school paper!