Kind of scary right now…

My exterminator was marveling at how nice — comparatively, I can only assume — my finished basement is, despite my current problems evicting some four-legged squatters. He said that instead of putting up new drywall to replace some damaged walls, I should have the foundation stone repointed and sealed “like in the Park Slope basements I do.” It sounds nice in theory but it might look rather dark, despite the windows. Thoughts?

Troutman Street is a strange animal. As recently as a few years ago it was the worst street in Bushwick for drugs and crime. Now it seems to be, along with Jefferson and Starr Streets, part of the residential and cultural backbone of the new Bushwick. Its entire length is being transformed, bit by bit, by developers, investors, entrepreneurs, and artists. Often those categories overlap. Oh, you can definitely still buy a rock on Troutman between Knickerbocker and Irving — I walked right through a transaction one night a few weeks ago.

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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.

Earth to developers: if high-priced nice condos didn’t sell in Bushwick at the tail end of the real estate boom, crappy condos are not going to sell for even higher prices in a relative real estate bust. Sure, they did a decent job on this previously rickety frame building, adding another floor so it made financial sense and even preserving (if painting rather hideously) the original front doors. Oh, are we letting the faux-saltillo tile — yes, they were so cheap that they used thin ceramic tile colored red-orange — slide? I don’t think we should, it’s nasty, and they paved the whole front area and the stoop with it.

All this could be forgiven if the apartments at 76 Jefferson Street were $200,000 one-bedrooms. But instead we got a “luxury penthouse duplex” with 2 bedrooms, two baths, and an office. Admitted pluses are the awesome city view and huge roof terrace.

“The apartment features a kitchen with granite counter tops, stainless steel appliances and classically designed cabinets. The apartment has 2 bathrooms which features, top of the line marble, granite counter tops, wall to wall mirrors, and a Jacuzzi bathtub in the master bathroom. The condominium has select oak floors with mahogany borders and a fire place. The apartment has its own stack washer and dryer.”

It’s not just marble — it’s top of the line marble! And you can’t build “luxury” without hurling a chunk of the cheapest granite into the kitchen, right? Wall-to-wall mirrors!? Wow. People were already removing tacky junk like that 15 years ago.

It would have been easy to make this building appealing to someone who is in the market for a three-quarter of a million-dollar apartment, but the problem with low-end developers who reach for the high end is that they have no taste. Even if they spent the money, it would be misspent, on stuff like gold-plated faucets. Might go down well in Brighton Beach but not in the “it’s close to Manhattan” market.

This shit shack will not sell for this price or any price they will drop it to in the near future.

Bushwick Avenue brownstones. Photo from Forgotten NY

The cool folks at Reclaimed Home, a site for people renovating their houses on the cheap, gave a shout out to Bushwick today…such as it was. News flash: Bushwick is not being newly populated only by hipsters. In fact, it’s probably being evenly newly populated by whites and (non-white) Mexicans. But I already digress. Not all white people are hipsters, for christ’s sake. Gah.

It’s cool that they mentioned that yes, Bushwick has brownstones, rare as they may be. And they linked to us, so their points double.

But bathtubs in kitchens? That was never something that went on in these parts, that was for the overcrowded tenements of the Lower East Side (in which my great-grandparents slummed it after fleeing the Bolsheviks). Am I wrong?

This weekend we couldn’t resist any longer: we took out the stupid wall that formed a ridiculously wide hallway between the front and back of the apartment, and boxed the living room in darkness and stagnant air. There are so many other projects we haven’t yet completed, like finally finishing the new paint job in the entrance hall — but with that wall gone, we can literally breathe easier while we watch tivoed Simpsons episodes.

This is the dangerous part for the amateur renovator. All those sexy, exposed ceiling slats and that slutty hint of bare plank floor seem to draw my crowbar toward them like a powerful magnet. It’s a single, practical, easy demolition — but that’s the gateway drug to an all-out superfluous wall steamrolling from one end to the other. How I ache to expose those naughty raw planks under the decades of crappy linoleum and cheap parquet! How I long to jam my reciprocating saw heavenward to tear out all the ceilings and flaunt the fresh nakedness of the structural beams above! I shudder with delight to think that all that would separate me from the blue sky itself is a few 130-year-old planks of wood and a sheathing of rubber.

Of course all those boring questions of practicality nag: Will my heating and cooling expenses rise significantly? If I screw up, can I afford to have a professional fix it? But the danger, too, excites.

Maybe if we just hurry up and drywall over those suggestive holes we’ll forget about the urge to go bad…or have we opened Pandora’s box? Have we bitten the ripe forbidden fruit that will now never let us forget the possibility of 14-foot ceilings?

God help us! — we have plenty of extra paint brushes.

Moldy old wine barrel taps and an old cork

BushwickBK reader “Dusty” just bought a grand old brick and brownstone house in Bushwick with a giant carriage house in the back.

“My husband and I bought this place about five weeks ago. We were really mostly interested in owning the carriage house which is set back at the far end of the double lot, perpendicular to the house. We are fixing up the house and will rent it out (it’s a two family), to pay the mortgage, and slowly transform the driveway into a private courtyard with gardens. The carriage house will be used as work space. One of the best things about the place has turned out to be the neighbors, who are super nice. It’s a pretty tight knit family block. My favorite time of day here is when the sun is setting and the light streams in through the big windows of the hayloft.” She goes on to say “the ground floor [of the carriage house] was a three-horse stable that was converted to an automotive shop in the thirties. It closed about twenty years ago.”

I can’t wait for the after pictures of this oasis-to-be.

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