BusinessWeek Sells Bushwick Gentrification
Roberta’s: Delicious gentrification. (flickr/Paulie Gee)
BusinessWeek has an article on up-and-coming (or if you’re an ignorant real estate agent, “upcoming”) neighborhoods around the country, and Bushwick is featured prominently. Pointedly bursting the bubble of those who gloat that gentrification is over due to the subprime mess, the magazine notes that on the contrary, fringe neighborhoods are even juicier for investors and “pioneers” now that it’s a buyer’s market.
It’s always interesting how when you live in or are very familiar with a place it’s so easy to pick out all the wrong things reporters write about it. Some bones of contention: in Bushwick, more artists are buying to keep themselves from being washed away by the yuppies. We may be 40 minutes from Midtown, but we’re 15-20 minutes from Union Square or the Lower East Side. There’s a feature with photos and blurbs about 15 of the United States’ “next” neighborhoods, and the one about Wynwood in Miami (also historically Puerto Rican) mentions it’s “majority Latino” — as if all of Miami, including the wealthiest areas, were not also majority Latino.
Inevitably, those who think that if only the media would shut up about gentrification, it would end, will add this to their list of previous “gentro-bombs” like “Psst, Have You Heard About Bushwick?” and “Neighborhood on the Verge?” Unfortunately for them, economic trends are too big to be fomented by a few articles — the articles are written to document the trends.
September 24th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
And they used my pic! I never get to see where my pics show up so this is kind of cool…would’ve been better if I got paid for it but oh well…I am a fan of creative commons.
September 24th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Crime has dropped dramatically and activity is buzzing around the Morgan Avenue subway stop, the closest stop to Manhattan on the L train.
Uhh…….
September 24th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Very interesting article, though I wish the magazine had selected a better depiction of Bushwick in its slide show! Just a little too much contrast for my taste.
September 24th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
I say go easy on the reporter, he can only do what he can with the info he’s given. Hard to be the expert on a place you don’t live.
September 24th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
The article from South Florida is still my favorite. Buburg is the place to be!
September 25th, 2008 at 11:21 am
“Artists turned around Soho and the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, and then Brooklyn’s Williamsburg in the 1990s. Now you’ll find them in Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, and Astoria in Queens.”
Yikes…Bushwick & Bed-Stuy all in the same sentence!
September 25th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
All hipsters need to go home! HOOOOOOME!! They remove all urban flavor in the areas they invade and SWEAR they are doing neighborhoods a favor by being there. Go the fuck home and spend your trust fund money there! Bushwick once had FLAVOR, its been dulled to the point of no return! Stay in Manhattan if you want to be “hip”.
September 25th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
valuable contribution tee
September 26th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Who cares about ‘flavor’. I want safety, stability and starbucks.
September 26th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
I love the urban legend of the ubiquitous hipster trust fund.
September 26th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Bushwick seems as if it still has plenty of “flavor” to me. If that means dog shit, gross greasy places to eat, unattractive and out of shape people, loud music and general grossness. What flavor is that? Ass?
September 26th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Dresden pwns. “Flavor” is always a euphemism for violence, filth, ill health, and poverty.
September 26th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Thanks Sapienza. I didn’t know that.
It changes nothing. I still don’t like flavor then.
Go Blue team!
September 27th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
The article actually seems pretty accurate, more so than most. The “young families” moving to Bushwick are Mexican immigrants — though I’m not sure that’s what the speaker meant. Durham is indeed experiencing a renaissance, particularly of the culinary kind, and nearby Carrboro. N.C., is also a fantastic place to live (also more affordable and a lot less annoying than Portland, Ore.). The inclusion of San Francisco’s Mission District is a mistake. It was cheap in 1989; now houses there go for over a million; even in Oakland, a shack starts at $750,000. Nothing in the Bay area is affordable.