You don’t say.

Avella’s participation here stems directly from the fact that the guy has Mayoral pretentions. Thus, as long as he remains under these delusions, expect him to nose his way into many non-district events. (He would be far better served lowering his sights a tad and trying to oust Padavan from his State Senate seat; but that’s getting away from the subject.)

Apropos Jimmy question regarding where the local elected officials stood on the lot contra affordable housing question, I recently read the City Planning Commission’s report that approved the housing. It noted that the local community board – CB1 – supported the proposal by an overwhelming margin. This would not have occurred if Reyna – or someone like Vito Lopez – actively opposed the housing. So on this issue, the merchants clearly stand alone.

Bottom line: For anyone to argue that an empty parking lot is better to have in your neighborhood than housing – be it from a residential or even a commercial perspective – is out of their mind.

The race issue comes up around here an awful lot. It seems like a lot of people are afraid of the changes Bushwick is experiencing and are lashing out. Since the newer group of people moving to Bushwick are a different color, that has to be the problem! (Since type does not convey sarcasm well, that was sarcasm.) Get over yourselves. You think there are a lot of people here now, wait 15-20 years. NYC is projecting another 1,000,000+ people in the city by then. And guess what, most of them are going to be Asian. Guess who will be replacing many of us?

Juke box, if you know ANYTHING, anything at all about the history of NYC, there is a constant influx of people from different parts of the world, and the city is only so big. Rich and poor, black white hispanic, too many religions to list, have all been dominant in some part of the city at some time, and they are not dominant in that area any longer. NOTHING in New York is constant! Just look at Bushwick, used to be farms, used to be breweries, used to be mostly white, used to be largely italian. Now, dominantly hispanic. Where did they come from? Whom did they replace?

I know these words coming from a middle class white guy who owns his house, they will automatically be deemed racist by someone. That Someone is an idiot.

And yes, just because a lot of poor people happen to be minority, saying that poor ghetto folk put too much money into blinging out their cars and not enough of it into their financial future or their childrens’ financial future is only racist by statistics (and I would be willing to bet that if you take a representative cross section of poor folk, look at how many of those people were white, you would see that the tendency for imbalanced pimping of said rides were evenly distributed toward po’ white folks and po’ peoples of colors).

I would agree that the lower class that I know (and I would actually qualify these people as friends and neighbors, just with a totally different set of values), spend a dispoportionate amount of money on things like cars and jewelry, while middle class guys like myself have absolutely zero gold, diamonds, and cars.

I am, however, planning on saving up to make myself a grill by using a retainer + a bedazzler (google it). Then I will out pimp all yall.

Wow. Shit like this makes me happy I don’t live in Bushwick anymore. I can’t even imagine what would make you jump to these kinds of conclusions with absolutely zero evidence as to the sorts of people who shop on Graham Avenue other than your own assumptions.

and:
“separately, the car thing is out of control. if the city council wants to do something useful they should sponsor a propaganda campaign to get people to stop buying cars and use public transportation more often. sadly, they’re too busy banning cellphones in movie theaters.”

Not that I wouldn’t be thrilled to see fewer cars in the city, but as an L-train commuter, I can’t imagine the train being able to handle any new influxes of people at rush hour. The system simply isn’t prepared to handle it. While I’d love to see a carless city, I definitely don’t want even more mornings where I have to wait for a half-dozen trains to go by before one stops with enough room to squeeze onto.