November 18, 2013
It Can Happen to You
This is a piece i wrote for the Citylife that never ran...
When I moved to the Arts District several years ago, my neighborhood was in the early phase. A few art galleries, a few thrift stores, the old-school family-run restaurant and the two dive bars – but even more vacant storefronts, abandoned motor courts and fly-by-night businesses. Now Main Street is lined by windows full of starburst clocks and art deco coffee tables, as attractive young couples in fedoras wander along, smiling at their reflections. At night, the sidewalks are wide and brightly lit, the sounds of cocktails being shaken as you pass an open door, the distant music from a gallery opening floating in the air.
Gentrification is usually a consummation devoutly to be wished, whether you see it as an opportunity to change a neighborhood for the better or a chance to buy low and sell high, or a bit of both. I spent years in lower Manhattan, moving from tumbledown tenement to semi-finished loft and back again. As I came to each place, they seemed to change in ways that were initially pleasing, but ultimately disheartening. The thrill of finally having a “cool” coffeeshop nearby gave way to the dismay of passing an atelier specializing in high-end custom wedding dresses on the way to my $11 an hour job. The “established in 1964” drugstore and the stationary/ notions store run by the little old man who seemed to have everything “in de back, somevhere, I check” disappeared, but a mega Duane Reade popped up. I didn’t like it, but I also knew it was somewhat my fault: Me complaining about gentrification is like Typhoid Mary bitching that everyone around her dies.
I made the mistake of visiting my old NYC neighborhood on a Saturday night recently – an experience best described as cognitive dissonance horrorshow. In the past, the changes has made me a bit melancholy, mostly bemused, but suddenly it seems the whole Lower East Side has turned into the Las Vegas Strip, packs of out-of-towners teetering on high heels or back-slapping their “bros.” The punk rock bar has been a tiki bar, a pool bar, a martini bar, is now an oyster bar; the current iteration of the Polish diner I used to eat breakfast at is French bistro -- after Mexican, Latin fusion and retro Continental. Let us not even speak of the John Varvatos boutique where CBGS’s used to be. There’s nothing wrong with change, but wiping out longtime small businesses for an endless turnover of flavor-of-the-month doesn’t feel quite like progress, but more like running in place. Like on a treadmill. And we know how interesting that is.
I suppose that’s why gentrification unnerves me. You can’t throw on the brakes and say, “We stop here! Right here! With only three bars, five boutiques and somewhat improved but still cheap housing!” But you can’t. It’s hard to push a community up to a new level, but once the highest point is reached, the ball just keeps rolling downhill. Las Vegas has enough neighborhoods designed for people who don’t live in them: Let’s hope mine won’t be one more...