Meryl Meisler “A Garden Grows in Bushwick (Snake in the Grass)” 1984-90, detail
It’s too bad I’m hijacking a story about the “Up From Flames” exhibit to complain about this, but at the very end, the journalist asks “So is Bushwick destined to be the next Williamsburg?” Gag. If you plant a new garden at home is it the next Versailles?
The answer to this insipid, hackneyed question is even worse — “The question is who will win the battle—are the Latinos going to maintain ownership, or are they going to be priced out by gentrification?” I love how to many white people, The Latinos is some monolithic group, characterized possibly by brownish skin and a Spanish last name. And “ownership”? In what sense does the vague group “The Latinos” own Bushwick? Does a migrant worker who has been here 6 months “own” more than a white artist who has been around for 10 years because the former has darker skin? And does this assume a Mexican is the same as a Puerto Rican or Dominican? It’s all so ignorant-sounding and just plain tired, and using the phrasing “battle” borders on the irresponsible.
But I didn’t want this to turn into another gentrification debate. My real complaint is: why must every neighborhood that artists and their media cheerleaders suddenly discover be a continuation of some other? Is Williamsburg the next East Village? Maybe it is. Shit. I like Bushwick. It doesn’t have to be the next anything, though it could be a whole hell of a lot nicer version of itself. There’s enough indigenous history and architecture here (hell of a lot more than in Williamsburg) that if anything — our neighbors to the northwest are the old Bushwick.
Despite my complaints, you should go see “Up From Flames” at the Brooklyn Historical Society (through August 26).
