The
big G is coming to
my neighborhood. Slowly. In the last few months I've noticed things changing. My favorite place to get ground coffee is now an art gallery with more openings than space. Across the street in a gourmet, organic Chinese resturant (organic? really? fuck anyone who goes there). The, although
shittastic, grocery store in the neighborhood (the only one that
isn't Chinese) is threatened to be replaced by high priced condos - I guess those people don't eat. Although, I will admit, every once in awhile I get Fresh Direct just to avoid the people in that grocery store. It mostly started when
Flight of the Conchords aired - although I might be blinded by my love for them, I cannot blaim them. They filmed on the outskirts of Chinatown, my hood, riding around lower Ludlow and East Broadway (PS: the New Zealand consulate - that looks like it's in the
middle of nowhere in Queens is actually a doctors office surrounded by large public houses and I applaud them for setting up tables outside a Montgomery Street pawn shop and pretending it was a cafe -
more here - and trust me, there ain't no outdoor cafes on Montgomery Street).
Gentrification is coming to my neighborhood -
slowly but surely. It's the outskirts of Chinatown that will get hit first. The Lower East Side (
of the most endangered areas in the United States) has dripped its cookie cutter boutiques and overpriced bars into Chinatown as Chinatown expands to fit its population. Trust me, Chinatown is just like China - communism rules and it's
not Mao Tse-tung, it's the little old Chinese woman with shopping bags from the
Hong Kong Supermarket. They are ruthless. The outskirts are the places where natives actually live and shop - not Canal street but a place that is like DUMBO, just on the other side.
I shouldn't complain.
I have no right to. I live in a new building in the area and yes it's overpriced but as a white chick - getting an apartment in Chinatown is almost impossible - renters and landlords, who are Chinese, usually if not exclusively rent to their own. I secretly wish there was a
non-sketch bodega downstairs where I could get milk, but there isn't. The closest is two blocks away in a corner I call
Calcutta due to the fact that there are blankets set up with junk to be sold, food all over the street and cats eating scraps of meat from the gutter. No lie. There are two delis run by men who, I could be wearing bagging pants and a hoodie and still get really unnecessary and inappropriate comments. It would come in handy if I were under 21 and desperate to get booze. A wink, smile and "I'm 22!" usually gets me any beer I want.
I also secretly wish that more things were
subtitled in English and it was easier to communicate with the workers at the bakery across the street. I need to know what that puffy thing is, it looks good but I have a feeling it's stuffed with red beans and I really don't like mixing red beans and deep fried pastry.
I also wish that the fish markets would have better air conditioning service in the summer because when those babies break down the smell is, to say the least, unbearable although my cat might disagree. This has nothing to do with gentrification
but should be noted.
I'm waiting for the day of the high rise
(yes, there are several of those large generic public houses, the X shaped ones that ruined the neighborhood before it). The day when construction starts on an overpriced condo building.
Not because I
want it to happen, because I
know it will happen and like a band aid I'd rather it come right off - I'd rather start the realization that this neighborhood is in trouble sooner rather than later. The only structure I want looming over me in the
Manhattan bridge,
beautiful and blue with the trains running underneath and in the distance City Hall. I want nothing blocking that one corner (
Cherry and Rutgers Street) where I can see the Williamsburg bridge, the Manhattan Bridge and the Brooklyn Bridge. It's the best. I love it
(even though I wish that the generators nearby didn't make that weird meow sound that sounds like a lost kitten and I always go looking for a cat).
So when people talk about Red Hook, Brooklyn loosing it's touch as
Ikea opens next month (I honestly thought it wasn't going to happen - it was only a myth), the
Real World moving to Downtown Brooklyn, the West Village laundrymats having to close because of rent costs and stretches of Broadway and Lexington with boarded up windows, we can't be ignorant as to think that
our neighborhood won't be next. The artists move in and things start to change. I know, I'm an artist and I moved in. If it doesn't have high-cost apartments,
it soon will. We can't stop it. It's like a vine, it'll just spread and climb but things go in cycles and neighborhoods return to what they were, get popular again and then go back to "ghetto" status. The only thing we can do is not go to the Duane Reades or Starbucks (poor Starbucks, always the sign of bad things to come) and get our fruits & vegetable from the stands nearby or the farmers parked out on Grand Street (they have yet to come back for the summer but I'm drooling for some fresh sourdough bread) and support the family business
that make a neighborhood a neighborhood and not wish for those things that will change it.
You know what's
