Of course, I'm not the only one. Almost everyone has read it, most noting this line, from the mind of the great Ron Artest:
Ron Artest, small forward for the Sacramento Kings, recently asked his publicist and executive assistant to set up a summer basketball camp in Beijing and find the best kidney-tumor specialist in the world for his 4-year-old daughter, Diamond. Mr. Artest's personal assistant, who grew up with him in the projects but is paid by Mr. Artest's management company, fields late-night requests for organic cookies, is developing Mr. Artest's line of athletic wear and was asked recently to remove what Mr. Artest thought were giant snake eggs in his backyard. They turned out to be mushrooms.
Yes, we at SML got a good laugh at picturing Artest's boys from the QB stomping some freaking mushrooms in his backyard. In Artest's defense, us urban people aren't good at outdoors stuff. Some things NYC-raised children are generally not good at:-We usually don't get our driver's license until our mid to late 20's.
-We usually don't swim. Again, it's a generalization, but... no one's ever swum their way out the projects, right?
-Bike-riding is usually a tough one, too. Depends on the borough - Manhattanites may not know how to ride bikes. I myself never rode a bike as a kid, though, as an adult (or whatever you want to call 19-year old SML, back in 1998) I went ahead and brought a motorcycle anyway. I wanted a Ninja, but settled on a black FZR (the predecessor of the Honda YZF).
And we don't do the outdoors very well. I wouldn't be surprised if, as DJM put it, these guys thought the 'shrooms were Giant Snake eggs, as opposed to giant Snake eggs - um, meaning they thought some Serpentor-sized creature was going to come out of them eggs.
And while we wait for the inevitable photoshop of Ron Artest, looking like Samuel L. Jackson, with his boys wrestling with killer snakes, let's go on a SML ramble for a bit...
All you guys over the weekend, particularly my NY heads - The Last Poet, Greek Prof, Dominican Biz, etc. - you guys should check out my boy BK Ernesto's blog. It's call Clinton Hill Chill, and it's about the point of view of an old time Brooklyn head raised in the Fort Greene/Clinton Hill area, and his history of the neighborhood and the changes going on right now, in terms of gentrification and stuff.
As NYC-raised people, we've both talked about gentrification and how it effects our neighborhoods, in great detail over the past year. Usually over many drinks, too. We get animated about these things, as NYCers do! It's not that we don't appreciate the urban economic realities... it's just something to see the swiftness of gentrification . The three steps generally happen like this:
1. Encroachment. Simply means you start seeing young gentrifying people getting off on the subway at stops they never used to get off at, or walking down the streets in places they never used to walk down. Oddly enough, the only place in Manhattan that isn't gentrified to this stage yet is the neighborhood I lived in for four years, before moving to Queens - East Harlem. I still ride the 6-train, and yes, on occasion you see gentrifying peeps going past the 96th Street stop, but it is still rare. And East Harlem is still mostly Latino (Mexican having replaced PR and Dominicans as the primary Latino group in this neighborhood) and black. Certainly it is the least gentrified neighborhood in Manhattan, which is shocking considering how more "dangerous" neighborhoods like Washington Heights, Inwood and Central Harlem ("real" Harlem) have become favorites of the New Hoboken crowd.
Case in point: A friend of mine (originally from the suburbs of DC) brought an apartment up in Inwood three years ago. This same guy, five or six years ago, was looking for an apartment to rent. I was living on 116th Street and 1st, in a brownstone. I had my own floor in a four-story walkup. $700 a month for about 1200 square feet, with 14 foot ceilings. I used to jump rope in my bedroom - that's how much space I had. The second-floor apartment was available for $800/mth. The landlord woman, who lived on the first floor, was always looking for people to recommend her potential tenants, since she wanted only people she could trust to live in a building in which there are only four apartments, right? I told this dude to look at the apartment, which he loved. But he was shook of the neighborhood. This same guy ended up buying a place in Inwood three years later?!? Beats me. Maybe it's like my Greek friend (not the Professor, another one) told me in college: "White people really do dislike Mexicans. They can tolerate Blacks, Puerto Ricans, even Dominicans... but they won't live around Mexicans". Not saying he's right... just saying I can't explain it!
Anyway, this is the step that Uptown is now at.
2. Gentrification.This step is the one where those business that have serviced people in the neighborhood - "poor" people if you want to label them that, but honestly, that's not always the case - gets replaced with more "friendly" businesses that service the new, more affluent, arrivals and their tastes.
The bodega you went to as a kid? Now a vegetable-selling grocery store.
The nail salons, 99 cents stores, and barbershops? Now the nail salons are run by different people, the barbershops are hair salons, and the 99 cents stores are small neighborhood coffee shops. Any trace of the old neighborhood is met with disdain, and there are attempts to get rid of those old "eye soars" that have no meaning to these newcomers.
This is the step that Brooklyn is now at.
And now those small, neighborhood coffee shops is a Starbuck, and the grocery-store is a Whole Foods. And now the gentrification crowd is complaining about gentrification (see Downtown Brooklyn, and the new Nets arena), and complaining about how the new hi-rise housing towers are destroying the beauty of the neighborhood, and how the greedy businesses don't care about the "poor" people in the neighborhood. The trot out the few remaining poor people who survived stage two to put a face on the neighborhood. The same face that, well, these gentrifiers weren't exactly proud off in stage two!
The newcomers now facing the same fate they bestowed upon the original inhabitants of the neighborhood - being priced out.
This is the step the L.E.S., Alphabet City, Chelsea, Hell's Kitchen (all of which were "poor" and even "dangerous" neighborhoods just 10-12 years ago), plus Downtown Brooklyn, are at now.
Okay, that's my rant of the day. Go check out Clinton Hill Chill, which is far more diplomatic and better written than SML in these topics, plus also has great posts up on the history of that neighborhood, including pictures from back in the day....
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You don't get your drivers license until your mid 20s? Very interesting. Though I suppose people who grew up downtown Chicago would be the same way- living down here for two years now, I haven't had a car and would never see the need for one.
Check out the NYC Subway map for white people, hilarious:
http://www.streeterseidell.com/whitefolksguide.jpg
@Prez: Damn, I meant to include you in that list of NYers who would like that site. I thought you was from BK, though, not the Bronx...
@Rickhouse: Exactly.
@Jon: Inwood (and most of the Heights), I think, was Irish and Greek until the 70's, when they moved out (Greeks to Astoria, Bayridge, and eventually Bayside) and the Dominican population exploded. The Greek Prof would know better than me, though....
I guess I hate being trashed for being white and moving into "your" neighborhood. Guess what, there are plenty of white folk who also can't afford to live in "white" areas like the Upper East Side. Enough social commentary, I love this site for it's Knicks/random other stuff coverage.
Jon: I understand the economics of the issue. My point isn't so much with the need for affordable housing - I get it, everyone needs a place to live. But as someone who has seen gentrification occur first hand in several neighborhoods... there is a underlying attitude that the "new people" have, often dealing with sort of stereotypes and assumptions about the people that lived there before.
Part of that is what my boy from CHC wants to delve into; you know, Clinton Hill wasn't just a "ghetto" - there were lots of working class families there, too. And those kids that grew up in the neighborhood, and their families - their voices need to be heard more. Because too often the new people don't see or understand the value in certain things, because they have different expectations of what "neighborhood" means. It may have come off as a "us" vs. "them" statement in my post, which is why I recommended the site in the first place - he's a much more diplomatic poster than I am. I actually understand everyone's view - I'm a homeowner, shoot, so I'm all in favor of rising prices - but too often the opinions and voices in this discussion are coming from only one side, in my experience....
@SML
Affordable housing does exist. Is it here in NYC? Depends on what you consider affordable. Does that mean that people should have a right to live in NYC at what they deem affordable (i.e. below market rates)?
The entire socialist housing system in NYC is screwed up. Housing prices should be set at what the market can bear.
Rent stabilization and rent control should be abolished. NYC should be no different than nearly every other city in the US which allows the market to dictate prices.
Indian Playa,
Then where will the transit workers, civil servants and city employees, etc. live?! Who will do these jobs if the people who now do them can't afford to live here? You can't compare NYC to other places beacause it's a different creature. In my neighborhood houses are going for almost 2 million dollars but the median income of the area is 28,000. Rent stabilization and control were established for a reason.
Good post and very on point by the way SML..I think it's cool to step out the lane sometimes.
yo ive been lookin for a site like that for a while...considering im only 19 and grew up in the bronx, which for the most part has stayed similar for the last decade as opposed to the other boroughs, it's good to see some other perspectives on change in nyc put into writing.
good post, man