One of the first times I took the J train out to the Halsey station, one of the many reasons I felt like I had stepped off the map was the station itself. All the stations prior to it (and after it if you get to Broadway Junction) have decorative colored glass panels adorning the platforms. Halsey had no such thing, favoring beige-painted solid walls, interrupted only by a small section of chain-link fencing at one end (and there’s probably some code thing that insists on this). Because of this disparity, Halsey seemed especially forlorn, like the MTA just didn’t care enough about our little stop.

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I went to a house party on Saturday night, and the host sent Anna to get cream for coffee at the nearby Associated on Knickerbocker. “What do you want, half-and-half or heavy cream?” I said, if they have organic half-and-half, get that, but if they don’t, just get whole cream. She came back in a few minutes: “They had both organic half-and-half and whole cream, so I got both.” I pulled both cartons — marked with a hefty price — from the bag and held them up for the whole room to see. “From the Associated,” I announced. Luis’ jaw actually dropped. I’m pretty sure “the Ass” is the first place in Bushwick proper you can buy organic cream. Sweet.

Update that Organic Milk Continuum chart — next stop, bodegas carry organic milk.

Normally graffiti wouldn’t call much of my attention, but this is no ordinary doodle. In case you can’t see it well, it says “PARE EL DESPLAZAMIENTO” — Stop the Displacement. I don’t know what kind of spray paint can-wielding defacers you come across, but in my experience, there are few who tend to think about heavy subjects like urban demographic trends. What struck me even more was the idea that, even if they knew the word “displacement,” that they know how to spell it. Call me doubly surprised when they spell it flawlessly in Spanish. Now I’m having trouble believing this is a random youth tagging a building. This person is educated. This person is an activist.

This is a ridiculous attempt to sheath ivory tower ideas about what causes and constitutes gentrification in a veneer of organic, ground-up dissent. To me it’s offensive in its characterization — mockery, really — of the grass-roots in Bushwick as property-destroying rabble.

The choice of target is just as unbelievable: these mediocre two-families aren’t displacing anyone but the rats who lived on the empty lot. And they’re not exactly luxury homes, despite what the developer claims. Ultimately, they mitigate displacement by providing more housing. So now we just have an activist displaying his ignorance of basic housing economics. Embarrassing.

So the question remains: who, or what organization, is behind this?

Troutman and Wyckoff at night, by Anna D’Agrosa

Office-ally Bushwick: The Times profiles the guy who owns new Williamsburg hot spot Hotel Delmano about his new palatial digs — in Bushwick. Remember when this was on the apartment roundup?

C It Ain’t So: Sara feels guilt over the DeKalb C-Town’s expanded variety of products and aesthetic makeover. She doesn’t do anything about it, as she plainly admits, but doesn’t it count that she at least kinda thinks about it?

On a Roll: In this piece, local culinary hero Chris Parachini of Roberta’s explains that it is the laws of economics, not hipsters, who are gutting the economically ignorant “East Williamsburg Industrial Business Zone.” Also, shout-outs to several local food spots both dumpy and fabulous, and more obligatory and simultaneous whining about, and celebration of, gentrification. Not from Chris.

Schmack Work, Indeed: Jimmy Legs: Either the MTA is suddenly going all stealth “social justice” on us by messing with the J, or they hate Jews. Why else would they have the J skip all of Bushwick after Myrtle on Passover? I mean, think of all those Jews living off Halsey!

I think I have developed a fool-proof method of judging the degree of “shadow” gentrification in a neighborhood. By “shadow,” I mean all the rental apartments being newly occupied by people considered by most to be “gentrifiers.” They’re not as obviously present as the residents of shiny new condos or those populating the loft districts, but they are the majority. That’s why it’s only now that those of us who live in regular residential Bushwick proper are starting to get more restaurant — and likely soon retail — options, while those in the loft areas have had amenities for a couple years.

Yes, I hypothesize that by merely glancing at the milk cooler in grocery establishments in any neighborhood, one can make an educated guess as to the level of gentrification. I declare Bushwick to be in the “2%” phase. That means when I visit local grocery stores, I find the organic milk selection to be advanced up to the level of 2% milk at the Associated and a couple bodegas I have been in. Exceptions exist: Mr. Kiwi’s now offers organic whole milk. Why are food markets the place to look? Because they respond to demand almost instantly when people request items. They are the perfect barometer for measuring population trends.

Why organic milk? People who demand organic food are health conscious. Health conscious people tend to prefer lower-fat items. So until critical mass exists for those who like to put half and half in their coffee and don’t want Polysorbate-80 in it, too, the organic milk selection will trend toward lower fat.

I propose entrepreneurs trying to gauge demand in a neighborhood for certain services look at what kind of milk is available. As Bushwick approaches the “whole” phase, I look forward to being able to wander into any corner store and get a pint of organic cream for my coffee. Until then, I’m off to Brooklyn’s Natural.

It’s been a while since we have paid specific attention to the area on the other side of Myrtle, what we jokingly call “SoBu.” Well dry those eyes, my co-neighborhoodists to the south, for I bring news: a building is going up at 342 Eldert Street and Irving Avenue, right across from the scamps at 345 — and by the same owner. Contact Luis S., who lives on the same block, took photos and even called the developer, but all the info he could get from them was that it would be a rental. Asking about pricing is of course pointless at this stage. “It looks like it’s going on three stories, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it went to four,” he said.

To the hood rat who spray painted “FUCK KONDOS” on the construction barrier: I note your vain and misguided expression of anger with glee.

Tick. Yeah, that’s the Gentrometer yet again, emitting the sweet sound of ascent.

Residents finally moved into the gut-renovated Bushwick Initiative buildings across the street from me this weekend, four months after they were completed. Oh, the Bushwick Initiative? That’s where the City uses your tax money to fix up someone else’s private property for them, with a guarantee that all the people who lived there before can move back in afterward — with the same rent, of course. Where these families have been warehoused for the past two years, I can’t imagine, I mean — what are they, cattle? Don’t they have plans and dreams? They just live wherever the City plops them? What is the point of this?

Well, whatever, it seems like a great deal for everyone involved: the landlord gets his building overhauled for cheap and doesn’t even have to hire his own contractors; the tenants get fancy new apartments for the same rent which they can somehow — isn’t the point of regulated rent to help the poor? — then afford to fill with a truckfull of new furniture (see photo above); and the political bosses get to keep their subjects in Bushwick, while appearing far-sighted and magnanimous. Who am I missing? Oh yeah, the taxpayers who fund all of this, especially the losers who were unsavvy enough use their own damn money to invest in this neighborhood only to be spit in the face by this whole crooked, corrupt “Urban Renewal, Fourth Time’s a Charm!”

Is it even necessary to mention that Bushwick is exactly as rundown as its proportion of rent-regulated apartments would suggest? The Bushwick Initiative is just the City putting a sad little band-aid on the giant ax wound it created in New York’s housing situation.

The bright side is that ultimately, none of this matters. The desperate fight against the natural order of the market, though backed by practically unlimited pools of cash looted from middle class pockets, is failing on the most important front: the big picture. For all the City and “private” organization RBSCC’s idiotic talk of “revitalizing commercial corridors” though this or that program, it’s happening without them as entrepreneurs take their own initiative. So they renovated a handful of crappy apartments here and there in an arbitrary bit of Bushwick? Well, sorry, no medal for them — developers and landlords have rehabbed and built thousands of units in Bushwick in the same time. Bureaucracy is so dumb and lumbering it doesn’t even realize its much-touted grand efforts are but a drop in the bucket compared to what ordinary people, working mostly in their own interest and of their own direction, have done for Bushwick.

That’s initiative.

That’s it, people. We’ve hit a major point in the evolution of modern Bushwick: Bushwick is getting its first Thai restaurant. On the way home from the Associated the other day, we saw for ourselves what Armstrong has been saying for a couple weeks. “Long Do” will open “soon” at 214 Knickerbocker. A peek in the windows displayed several tables and lots of “this place is Thai” decorative touches.

We all know that the Thai restaurant is the ultimate harbinger of Hipsterdom. Soon, we’ll have 7 within a 60 second walk of each other.

You may have noticed, but the big warehouse at the corner of Bogart and Moore — between Ad Hoc gallery and Roberta’s — has been making a lot of noise lately, and filling up a couple dumpsters in the process. I hear that they will be three retail spaces, and one is already taken by a “photography studio/gallery/print shop.” The other two are “waiting for serious tenants.” Please be more food.

I have also heard that the empty lot on Moore now used to store junk cars and other industrial detritus — to the west of Roberta’s — could be recruited to host a possible farmer’s market. That is still very up in the air.

So let’s look at the landscape of this one block of Bogart. There’s a grocery store (which I hear now delivers, btw), a coffee and and DVD rental shop, a large gallery that hosts many events, three new storefronts coming on line, a bar around the corner one way, a wood-oven pizza place around the corner the other way, and one rumored farmer’s market next to that. This is shaping up to be a sort of Main Street for “Morgantown” and those of us in North Bushwick who use the Morgan stop area’s amenities as well as transportation (the Bogart entrance to the L is now open 24/7).

It looks like we’re hitting critical mass for a new retail boom. The Gentrometer bumps up a notch.

UPDATE: The three new storefronts will be a vegan bakery, a felafel joint, and a burrito spot.

You heard it here first, through several grapevines: 116 Troutman, aka “Troutman Gardens,” that gigantimus concrete thing going up on Troutman Street and Central Avenue, is not to be senior housing. It is not to be subsidized rentals. It is not to be income-restricted coops. It is to be at least 146 condominiums, with one-bedrooms for $300,000. I attempted to get more info out of the developer’s office but the number I scraped up just rang and rang.

It lands with a thunderous fist in the middle of this gap-toothed, half-burned-down, industrial fringe part of Bushwick proper. Several hundred people with upscale tastes and the wallets to back them up will descend on this one little block to live in a megapalace built on the former site of the Castle Braid Company factory. This development, together with several new-construction condos and rentals going up within one block — not to mention the thousands of students, artists, homos and hipsters already flooding into the immediate area — is sure to transform this part of the neighborhood into a bustling, amenity-packed enclave.

The developer is Mayer Schwartz, the owner of the “mini-mall” on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, and the Opera House Lofts on Arion Place in Bushwick. As someone who seems to understand how to manufacture “cool,” I’m guessing Schwartz won’t leave us with an eyesore like the Nightmare on Grove Street. This building, at least, fronts the street properly and adjoins its neighbors, the way things are traditionally constructed in New York.

The prices seem steep, but not as steep as the stagnant 979 Willoughby. 54 St. Nicholas had no problems selling out at $300K for 6 smallish one-bedrooms, though they were undeniably lovely, and a very different product.

More info as it comes!