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Gothamist was struck by the themes and photographs (left and below) of two stories about new development and construction in the city in the NY Times. First, there's a story in the Metro section about tons of gravestones being dumped aside in College Point, Queens, as a development of 86 homes will go up there. Then, in the Arts section, there's an article about Williamsburg artists having to move out of their lofts to make way for luxury condos. One artist, Jack Warren, who has been moving into smaller and smaller spaces, says:
It's the classic scenario of getting dummied into pioneering an area, building a community and having that community usurped into another sort of community that you can't be a part of. It's just going to be a another sterile rich person's neighborhood.
The image we were struck by is Ting-Li Wang's picture of Karlis Revics (left) destroying his sculpture to get it out, which made us think of a quote in the gravestones-in-the-field story - "It feels eerie. Like desecrating something." These are two very different areas of NYC, one will be a haven for sophisticated and urbanites while the College Point development is slated for three-family homes, but it's still development and trying to find room for people to live.
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It's the classic scenario of getting dummied into pioneering an area, building a community and having that community usurped into another sort of community that you can't be a part of. It's just going to be a another sterile rich person's neighborhood.
Wow, for a second there I could swear I heard the world's smallest violin, playing just for him. "Pioneering?" Jesus, could you lay the unintentional irony on any thicker? I'm sure that the "Injuns" that Warren and his cronies priced out of Williamsburg two years ago are crying bitter tears that he in turn is now being displaced by a higher-rent brand of settler. Not.
Anyone who, in 2004, is shocked and surprised that this is how NYC's real estate market works is, point blank, an idiot.
obligatory poltergeist quote: "You moved the headstones but you didn't move the bodies!?!"
Just the way the cookie-crumbles, art-whiners. If you don't own, you can't really do much about population shifting. Keep moving, that's what NYC is all about.
Artiste': The gentrification is forcing us to move!
Me: Move to Staten Island or Jersey
Artiste': I'd rather die.
Me: Boo-fucking-hoo
the real scandal is all of the environmental damage that excavating and building this site entails. this was an unregulated dump for 40 years, now they're gonna build some houses on it? can anyone say love canal?
That article is about Dumbo, not Williamsburg.
Washington Street, Two Trees, Gair Building....yah, zats DUMB0.
Hmmm....maybe someobody could start a DUMBOIST blog....
i used to write graff in the warehouses at the end of n 6th street on the water when i was in high school. To think that those bombed out warehouses with 30' tall piles of rubble, dead homeless people, drug dealers and graff artists is now all ultra bougie condo land is pretty amazing. I think its pretty funny that people with money want to live there, the place is still a post industrial wasteland. Its sooo ugly. It will take a lot of time and money to make it into a really nice neighborhood. My guess is that it will lose its coolness, and in about 5 years will stabilize back to being a middle to working class neighborhood.
I think the Big Apple needs to be changed into the “Big Bamboozled.” How the Real Estate flim-flam Men have made two of the ugliest, crummiest run down neighborhoods [Williamsburg & Dumbo] into Brooklyn’s Gold Coast is a marvel.
Williamsburg with its wood row houses [for pictures, see dictionary under “fire trap” or “kindling”] abandoned factories and desolate waterfront was a haven for artist pushed out of SoHo. Not it’s metastizing to a boutique tumor.
Dumbo, one dark god forsaken stretch of hell factories and teeth rattling streets is now to be home for shark lawyers and coked up models.
The director John Carpenter was prescient with his movie “Escape from New York” except that the poor, middle class and artists will be living on barges in the Hudson and East River.
Richie, you are awesome.