Yesterday the Times profiled Franklin Avenue in Crown Heights, the rapidly gentrifying boulevard and the "epicenter of renaissance" previously seen in Park Slope and Williamsburg. Though there are plenty of residents in the historically black and Hasidic neighborhood that welcome the influx of students, young professionals and families, a Crown Heights native and Medgar Evers professor notes,"There's a social cohesion gap right now." And Nick Juravich, a Columbia grad student and Crown Heights blogger, tells us, "There definitely is to certain degrees. But there are also signs that the groups living in the neighborhood are becoming remarkably integrated." more ›

As part of Brooklyn's booming boutique hotel business, Boerum Hill is about to get a large B&B next month for the authority-eschewing set: Brooklyn's House of Detention is going to be used to house prisoners again. Worried that no one will buy the condo you just paid $500K for in 15 years because "discarded shivs" don't count as an amenity? Relax! See the miracle of modern incarceration for yourself. Cobble Hill Blog alerts us to a CB2 press release announcing a public tour of the jail next Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. more ›

The yuppie goyim are TAKING OVER Crown Heights, turning the once idyllic neighborhood into a wicked G-dless hellhole known among interlopers as "ProCro," a veritable Sodom where they party half-naked on rooftops and corrupt the area youth! So says one local landlord, who has fired off an open letter begging fellow property owners not to rent to these licentious libertines. In a desperate missive titled "Take Back Our Neighborhood," the anonymous landlord writes: more ›

Hell's Kitchen residents are up in arms over the decline of their neighborhood, which, despite its roots as a gang-and-hooker filled, ahem, hellhole, has been a perfectly nice place to raise your kids for the past few years. Until now, because dastardly legions of drunk twentysomethings are getting drunk and being loud and puking up mango-flavored vodka all over the sidewalk. more ›

Do you guys miss the old days of Williamsburg, like before The Edge and $5 pour-over coffees? And we're not talking that one time you went to Kokie's bar in 2001 to score some snow, we're talking the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, when shit was real. Click through for a look back at the gentrifiers before the gentrifiers, or at least before the commercialized PBR/American Apparel-brand hipsters, and like, way before the yupsters moved in with their bohemian-chic lifestyle and rock n' roll playgrounds. more ›

Brower Park in Crown Heights is ground zero for what the Daily News is calling a "turf battle" between residents and roving bands of teenagers who "skip school, smoke pot, and drink alcohol during the day." 13 people have been shot in the area this month, including Denise Gay, who was killed. While an NYPD spokesperson claims they "will do whatever it takes until they stop shooting," they acknowledge that "these kids are trying to take over the park. It's a problem." more ›

Our apartment has never had the heat cut off out of spite, and we've never been subjected to threats of eviction if our rent was a few days late. But perhaps that's because we pay market value for our place on Delancey, and aren't Chinese. An article in the Times details how Madison Capital, an Upper East Side real estate firm, is reportedly using strong-armed tactics to "persuade" Chinese rent-stabilized tenants on the border of Chinatown and the Lower East Side to leave to make room for gentrifying rubes like us. more ›

Last night, as most people in the neighborhood were dodging raindrops, a modest street party formed to protest the overly gentrifying East Village—a "LET EM EAT CAKE/EAT THE RICH/NO COMFORT ZONE street party," if you will. In lieu of making a cogent, forceful statement against a specific enemy, it was an opportunity to weird out the B&Ters pounding the pavement to make their 9:30 at Momofuku. more ›

The Gray Lady tackles the gentrification of Bedford-Stuyvesant today—and essentially, what they are saying is that Bed-Stuy is now the domain of organic bodegas, tricycle riders, foie gras-filled doughnuts, and doughnut summonses. But we're just grateful that they didn't ask if Bed-Stuy is the new Paris. more ›

Say what you will about the perils of gentrification, getting pistol whipped and robbed out of house and home should make one an honorary member of the neighborhood. A group of Brooklyn college students and musicians moved into a cheap apartment on the eastern edge of Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn, and only two weeks later were robbed at gunpoint of thousands of dollars of musical equipment and beaten with a pistol. more ›

As a bookend to our video showing Crown Heights locals reacting to their neighborhood's hip new name (ProCro), please enjoy this vintage educational film reel "on how to gentrify your neighborhood." Recently "recovered from a brownstone in Brooklyn," the video serves as a handy a step-by-step guide for the novice urban gentrifier. more ›

A Williamsburg man believes he may have captured some type of UFO hovering over Brooklyn on Monday night on camera...and perhaps unlocked the key to the gentrification of Brooklyn as well. Community activist and self-proclaimed "regular guy" Phil DePaolo took the below video of a round, pulsating object in the sky around 11 p.m. above North 6th street. The object moves around, changes colors, flashes intermittently, and just generally freaked him out: more ›

If you moved to Brooklyn because you were looking forward to living the "gritty" life you were promised on the TV (but not to actual gritty Brooklyn because, ew, poor people), congratulations! You may be responsible for more economic crime, and consequently that street cred you're dying to brag about. NYPD stats show that many northern Brooklyn neighborhoods that have been known for gentrification pushes in the past few years have been hit with more economic crimes like muggings and break-ins. One Greenwood Heights resident said, "The police told us [the robbers] come down from other parts of Sunset Park and look for places that look richer." more ›

Question: If Blue Bottle Coffee became really successful and started setting up shop on every block of every major city and suburb, would the Williamsburg residents currently championing it turn their cold-hearted backs on it and procure their coffee elsewhere? Currently the creative young locals who took over the neighborhood are fighting change, which is being brought in with the new luxury condo-dwelling residents. Hipster enemy #1: Duane Reade, formerly a little store owned by three brothers, currently a chain that's been acquired by Walgreens. more ›

The Battle for Williamsburg is going down, and the lines have been drawn... on Facebook. As with any great cause these days, a page has been created on the social networking site, titled: I'm Boycotting Duane Reade to Save Williamsburg. Sure, boycotting Duane Reade isn't going to save Williamsburg, unless you also burn down the Edge and blow up Sea on North 6th Street whilst boycotting it, but it is representative of the turmoil and change happening over there. more ›

This week amNewYork asked: Is Queens going Brooklyn? The borough, at 110 square miles, is huge—so there's certainly room for experimentation—but what about gentrification? The paper talks to Borough Historian Jack Eichenbaum, who says of its size: “Outsiders may perceive a complicated whole, but insiders mostly relate to their neighborhood rather than the borough as a whole.” more ›

Specifically, the residents of South Elliott between Lafayette and Dekalb Avenues discuss life on their block with the Times, from the Bad Old Days to the recent influx of "white girls." Between rummy games, pig roasts and block parties, longtime Fort Greene residents have seen a lot of change recently. About 40% of the neighborhood is white now, up from 24% in 1980, and the median income now surpasses the national average. Resident Mike Harsh said: more ›

The Times' Thursday Style section comes to the rescue of Williamsburg's Latin nightclub Alma, which was greeted with "sarcastic sneering" by websites like ours when it debuted at the beginning of April. The Times cheers the upscale club as a much-needed nightlife alternative for the predominantly Puerto Rican neighborhood, which has been recently besieged by a wave of upscale bars and restaurants catering to... different tastes? more ›

It's been more than four years since urbanist and activist Jane Jacobs passed away, but the issues she focused on during her life seem more pressing than ever: how to build successful neighborhoods and cities, the economic survival of small business in the face of development, and the effects of mega-projects like Atlantic Yards. This month, New Village Press published "What We See: Advancing the Observations of Jane Jacobs"- we asked Stephen Goldsmith, one of the books editors, about Jane Jacobs' life and legacy. more ›

A new luxury condo building in Bushwick was originally advertised as an upscale addition to the neighborhood, one that neighbors hoped would lead to gentrification—but a twist in the story has reduced those same neighbors to agonized cries of "KHAAAN!" Instead of hipsters, helpsters or breeders moving in, a halfway house for drug addicts moved into the building on Willoughby Ave. And it's run by Ashley Khan, a 35-year-old ex-con who runs a for-profit company, Global Humanitarian Service (which doesn't have a website). more ›

Bread Stuy, a Bed-Stuy purveyor of lattes, Panini and time-wasting WiFi came this close to closing recently (the place was saved grace of three customer-run fundraisers), but does that really mean that gentrification in the neighborhood is failing? In an area that houses a good number of cafes, but also its fair share of bodegas and bullet-proof Chinese, Bread Stuy somehow became the ultimate symbol of the neighborhood’s efforts to nice-up. “It’s no longer just a place for people to go in and drink their coffee — it’s part of the fabric of the community,” said Crystal Bobb-Semple, whose own a nearby store, Brownstone Books. “It’s all about creating a better neighborhood.” more ›

The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA) is unveiling a new exhibit this week called "The Gentrification of Brooklyn: The Pink Elephant Speaks." Curated by Dexter Wimberly, the show will open on the 4th and runs through May 16th. more ›