I was in East Williamsburg. On Metropolitan Avenue. A young Puerto Rican mother was pushing a stroller on the sidewalk, with her boyfriend. I was behind them. A young hipster on a bike came blazing past us, on the sidewalk, ringing his bell. He bumped into the stroller and just kept going. The young mother began screaming after him, but he biked away.
This would never have happened in Park Slope. This is the difference between the Yuppies and the Hipsters. Gentrification in New York is not new and it is not always bad. 15 or 20 years ago, a group of young professionals from the Midwest or South (not all white, this isn't about race, it's about community) moved into Park Slope. When my mom was a kid, Park Slope wasn't a great neighborhood. It had beautiful homes, but it was run down. These Yuppies moved in and built a community. They had children. They stayed. They renovated their brownstones and increased the actual property value. They put in new stoops and new kitchens. They replaced windows and kept with the codes of Historic Districts. They respected the history of the neighborhood and the architecture. Now Park Slope has middleschoolers and highschoolers. The young professionals who moved in years ago are aging. They have good jobs that add something valuable to the city. They've created a community that is safe and beautiful. They put down roots. They stayed. It was about building community and commitment. Park Slope Dads don't hit young women with strollers.
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I am not against gentrification in general. But what is happening in other neighborhoods like Williamsburg and Bushwick is different. When a Hipster moves into a run down loft in Williamsburg they like that it's rundown. They come in waves and leave in waves. They rack up the prices without racking up the property value. What's scary about the gentrification of the Hipsters is that it is not guaranteed. I look at Malcom X Blvd on the edge of Bushwick and Brownsville. An area with poverty and crime. Yet the Hipsters are moving in because it's edgy and underground and cheap. They will move into rundown apartments. They will demolish old buildings, not bothering to renovate, and put in something modern and ugly. There will be no respect for the history or the architecture. They will rack up the prices. The community that is already established there will be priced out. Then, when the Hipsters get bored of the neighborhood, when they move on, what will happen?
New York is my home. I was born here. I will raise my family here. New York is a community.
Last semester in my accounting class, a Cuban girl and a first generation Bosnian boy started dating. I was talking to her, during finals week. She lived in Astoria with her family. And she was telling me that she wants to pursue music but she knows she will not be able to pursue music and stay in New York. "I can't afford to move out. I can't afford to move anywhere." She was crying, knowing that she could never rent an apartment in the neighborhood her parents moved to forty years ago.
I have heard too many of these stories. Middle class people. The children of cops and firefighters and taxi drivers and nurses and public school teachers. A friend who was evicted from his three story walk up because the landlord was selling the whole building to be demolished. So a developer could build condos. A single girl who was being priced out because her landlord wanted "white families." I am thankful I have to take a bus to the subway. Maybe it will keep my neighborhood from changing.
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Hipsters come to New York for fun. It's a summer romance. They think it'll last forever, but once it starts getting cold, they back out. Once things get hard and ugly. Once they have children. Once their dad offers them a better job back home. They leave. There is no commitment to community. And it's not right that communities with roots generations deep are being displaced for people who don't care about the future of their neighborhood. A cool bar scene does not constitute community. Underground clubs do not make community. And I am scared for the future of my city. I am worried about my friends and their futures here. I am worried about whether I will be able to grow old here, comfortably. Whether I will be able to raise a family.
Living in New York means making sacrifices and it always has. No backyard. No washing machine of your own. I just don't understand why I am being priced out of my city for weak, short-sighted party animals who won't be able to bend under the pressure. Young people, obsessed with being cool. Selfish people. Short-sighted, slightly racist, stuck-up artists who just don't care. People who will break the first time their downstairs neighbor screams at them to shut their kid up. The first time their bike gets stolen. The first time their elevator breaks down.
I don't understand why I am being priced out of my city for these people who don't want to invest. (They might say they do, but I haven't seen the results.) These people don't want to build beautiful, elegant, flourishing communities. Hipsters have the time and the money to turn any neighborhood they touch into a Park Slope. But they don't even bother. At the very least, if outsiders are going to move in and change neighborhoods and increase the rents, they could also increase property value. They could create something beautiful. They could invest for the future of New York- their future. My future. But their children won't have to live with the consequences of their actions, because their children probably won't grow up in New York. My children will.
The whole problem here is attitude. A sense of deserving. I see two ginger bearded men, and they are sitting on the back of the bus out to Rockaway. And they are dressed like Popeye, playing on their matching iPhones, with their linen bags filled with snacks for their beach day. They have nautical tattoos. I can't tell if they're twins, best friends, or gay lovers. But the looks on their faces are clear. The bus is crowded. There are little boys being rowdy. Young teenage girls laughing. Older women with their grocery bags. This bus is theirs. It belongs to the little boys and the teenage girls and the old women. But the Hipsters are scrunching up their faces and taking up empty seats on the crowded bus with their linen tote bags and they think they own this bus. They are mildly disgusted that they have to share this bus with these "normal" people. They left their Utopian bubble of wherever they live- Greenpoint, Long Island City. And now they have to interact with normal people. I hear their snide comments. It's always the same.
I can not abide the casual racism any longer. The sense of deserving. The disregard for history, community, and culture. They are chaotic. Their actions are unpredictable. They smoke their pot and graffiti up the warehouses just like everyone else always has, but now it's cool. Now it's art.
I can not abide these people any longer.
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If you moved to New York recently, all I am asking is that you seriously think about your actions and how they are effecting the communities you live and work in. Think about what you are putting into this city. If you are not here for a long time, if New York is just a stop along the way, then leave this city better than you found it. Please. New York is not your playground or your summer camp. Your actions here matter. They have a lasting effect on other people.
Invest in your apartment. Improve your neighborhood. Support preexisting businesses. Do not ride your bike on the sidewalk, stop hitting young mothers with strollers. It's stupid and makes you look like the douchebag you really are. Respect people around you. Just think about the imprint you are leaving on New York. Invest, not in your bar scene, but in the city as a whole. Invest in the history and culture that is already here. You don't have to make your own.
I thought people moved to New York City because there was something here that called to them. If that is true, come and invest in that. You don't have to create your little Hipster Utopia in the middle of a preexisting community. You could (surprise, surprise) try and learn about that community, and adapt to it, instead of instantly feeling the need to bring in your Dairy Queen and Chick fil A or whatever you are so homesick without.
You came here. For this city. If you keep changing New York at the rate you are going, it will no longer be the city you came here for. Think about that.
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I don't have an answer, I just know my heart is breaking for this city. I know we are losing something, our originality. Our history. We are a city of immigrants, and each wave brings something new and interesting, shakes things up a bit.
But Hipsters are not an immigrant wave. They are not here desperate to succeed, invest, work, and build. They are here for fun. For a laugh. That's the difference and the problem.
If you are a Hipster, if you moved here recently, think about that. Think about the sacrifices that the Irish, Germans, Italians, Polish, Russians, Puerto Ricans, South Americans, Mexicans, Indians, Koreans, and Chinese made to come here. Think about how hard they worked, and how much they appreciated the city they were lucky enough to live in and work in and commit to. That's how you need to be behaving. Because New York is a unique, rough, and scary city. And you're not adding anything to it if you came here for an art scene and a laugh or two.
Give something meaningful. If you just moved here, be more than a Hipster. Be a Yuppie. Be an Immigrant. Give of yourself. Serve and work. And then maybe this growing, widening chasm between you and me, us and them, will be able to close and mend itself.
