I started reading the New York Magazine piece on Red Hook’s supposed degentrification expecting to roll my eyes all the way through it and then smugly declare the author to be a moron for sounding the death knell of gentrification itself, for heralding the beginning of the end of New York as bobo paradise, like the Big Bang snapping back in on itself once the universe stops expanding. I am confused to report that someone at NY Mag knows something about economics. The article, while there was a page there where I thought the snark would just choke me to death, is more or less solid. It’s not the ridiculous piece it’s been introduced as on various blogs. It’s a sane analysis of an interesting blip in the supposedly standard formula by which gentrification advances. That blip is Red Hook.

I have never been to Red Hook. But I did look at it on Google satellite view once, and went “projects, docks, lots more projects, 3 blocks of probably cute crumbly old houses, more docks, a warehouse, projects.” But if there was all this buzz, it had to be something, I figured. I must not be looking at the right area or maybe, just maybe, glancing at an overhead view of a neighborhood isn’t enough to judge its merits. And then something else clicked into place, recently. I wanted to go to a nursery so I could find some bougainvillea to grow outside in the summer to remind me of home. They’re all in Red Hook. There’s no subway to Red Hook. What the fuck is this neighborhood!? Apparently, it’s not much. Hence, its so-called deadification (though many commenters on various sites have noted that a few businesses closing in a neighborhood that was never exactly a retail haven isn’t any kind of alarming trend).

NY Mag mentioned all this and more: developers and landlords getting ahead of the market, and that Red Hook may be a neighborhood with too much gap between what the “sowers” of gentrification seek in a neighborhood and what the “reapers” are looking for in a finished product.

The piece also mentioned, in case you were wondering, that this is no kind of death knell for gentrification itself. And neither is the subprime “crisis.” A few thousand people who couldn’t really afford what they bought will be thrown to the sharks — a lesson they would have eventually have had to learn anyhow. The rest of us who can actually afford where we live are unaffected except that there is a slight dip in the rise in the value of our properties. There are still “too many” people trying to crush into this underbuilt city. The population of the country is not going to shrink — we’re the China of the industrialized world in that regard. There will always be high demand for the limited space in New York City unless we get nuked. And even then…

Gentrification, however, is not a train barreling on toward infinity. That makes no economic sense. The “poor” (they only have two chromed-out SUVs and –gasp! — one 42″ flat screen!) will move to farther out areas until people are no longer willing to pay, as the NY Mag piece put it “a million dollars for an apartment more than an hour and a half from work.” The reason an erstwhile bombed-out hellhole like Bushwick is being gentrified is that it is 15-20 minutes — 4-5 miles — from Union Square. That is simply too close to stay a dump, although the Lower East Side likes to prove me wrong (zing!).

So for those whining that some people will eventually have to move to Scranton and commute to New York to clean toilets, get a grip. The market — gasp again! — contains itself. Workers will not be pushed out of the city, because it makes no economic sense to not have workers close enough to get to work in a reasonable time. That means that City Line and Hollis are probably safe. That doesn’t mean that these areas will not continue to clean up and their prices rise to a level of other decent places. We’re moving into a time where most vestiges of the Third World, due to a general rise in affluence, will give way and even the so-called poor will no longer be able to complain that they don’t have as much as the next guy up, because it will seem ridiculous to every reasonable person. As opposed to now, where the whining of the alleged poor in the United States is just ridiculous to those of us who take the time to think and compare their situation to almost literally every other country in the world.

The impressive NY Mag piece even mentioned the positive side of the inflation and devaluation of the US dollar: Eurotrash, Koreans, South Americans, and even Canadians (the US dollar on Monday bought you 93 Canadian cents) will see us as a cheap but safe place to dump their money.

Gentrification is not over. Red Hook, even, is not over, but it is certainly a whole different animal than your typical transportation-adjacent and housing stock-rich New York neighborhood. The center of the City is not finished filling up and building out. But gentrification is not a phenomenon which will plant a wine bar on every corner from Woodlawn to Rockaway. So knock it off with the hyperventilating.