It has become common for long-time Brooklynites to see a crowd of artists and students, dressed in the seemingly trendiest fashion, wait on the platform of the L train with their Trader Joe shopping bags. How far down the tunnel are these twenty-something-year-olds stopping: trendy but now overpriced Bedford Avenue, the up and coming Lorimer Street stop; or for the urban pioneers, all the way into Bushwick, starting with Jefferson Street?
On average, it takes 45 minutes to take such a jaunt to and from Manhattan for Seventh Generation toilet paper and organic pears. And yet a number of these new residents complete it, in frigid winter or sweltering summer, without considering local alternatives to shop at in their own neighborhood, like the corner dollar store or an Associated grocery store. The reason?
“First, it’s the price and then it’s the quality of the products,” according to Jillian Sharp, 27, who has lived in the neighborhood for 2 years. But one would never traditionally think of Manhattan versus Brooklyn for its affordability. On average, a two-bedroom apartment in Bushwick goes for $1,200 to $1,300, excluding utilities and other expenses. In Manhattan the trendiest neighborhoods, like the East Village, studios can be found for $3,500 and then it skyrockets up from there, according to recent listings on Craigslists.com.
Getting off at the Jefferson Street subway stop and walking down Starr Street toward Maria Hernandez Park you see, on first sense, the neighborhood’s rough condition. Along the street there are several boarded up buildings deemed unlivable by city officials; a rat or two might scurry out onto the sidewalk from a pile of garbage followed by an emaciated cat; weedy parking lots exist to shelter several cars behind a barbed wire fence; one or two passersby, with their heads down, trail along with you to the heart of the neighborhood.
Like anywhere in New York, it then changes, from block to block, as much as it does from season to season. You come to the intersection of Knickerbocker Avenue and everything is more alive: a grocery on one corner, a Mexican bakery exists across the street. Along the block a number of Latino restaurants, fish markets, produce stands, and bodegas dot the street, most owned by the local residents, all there to serve the community. Even a typical New York Chinese take-out restaurant, where C14 on the menu is always the General Tso’s chicken combo platter, is located down the block. But Bushwick wasn’t like this.
According to the New York Police Department crime statistic report for neighborhood, crime overall has dropped 52% from 10 years ago, with 663 burglaries reported in 1997 versus only 33 reported so far in 2007. From two decades ago, the change was more drastic. Leslie Caraballo, a CUNY journalism graduate student, completed several video pieces as an intern for the New York Times, one documenting how Bushwick transformed in the last 30 years after the blackout in 1977. In the video, Sam, a long-time resident of the neighborhood describes how looters decimated shops along streets such as Knickerbocker Avenue.
“The neighborhood for years appeared like Berlin after World War II,” he says. Caraballo then shows (using a video fade effect) how specific areas in the last decade have been restored from their former neglected past.
Bushwick today is still recovering, with 30 percent of its residents living on assisted living. As reported by Manny Fernandez of the New York Times, 132 buildings in Brooklyn have been cited by The Department of Housing Preservation and Development with over 20 serious housing code violations. A majority of them are located in Bushwick.
“In Apartment 4L, Amalia Perez, 50, said workers removed her broken refrigerator months ago and never gave her a new one,” according to the article. “Family members bought her a small one that she keeps in her bedroom. She said the heat and hot water recently started working in her four-bedroom apartment. She used to boil water to take a bath, but had to use an electric burner because her unit had not been getting gas.”
Bushwick, like its residents, has become very diverse. For all the dilapidated apartment buildings and abandoned warehouses, several on each block now can be seen with green polka-dotted curtains and stacks of paperbacks in their windows.
Jillian Sharp is one of these new residents. Her apartment is far from appealing from the outside: a large metal door, splattered in graffiti and a fence guard by what seems like the entrance to a military compound. Walking inside, a narrow path leads to a cement front yard with an old refrigerator, old tires, paint cans, and litter strewn on the ground. On the second floor, up a set of creaking stairs covered arbitrarily with different patterns of linoleum, is her two-bedroom apartment. You would expect to see the same condition inside and yet, upon entering the kitchen, Sharp’s apartment looks livable and remarkably cozy.
She has all modern appliances—a working gas stove included—and trendy yet appealing decorations, such as purple Urban Outfitter rugs covering her floors. There are, however, certain indications of a more decrepit past: a scratched palm tree and happy face stands out on the inside of the bathroom door, there are areas of chipped paint along the baseboards in one of the bedrooms, and pin-sized holes dot one of the walls in the kitchen. The holes, according to her landlord, Joe Carenez, 31, were not the result of bug infestation however.
Almost five years ago a previous tenant–a mother and her son–lived in the apartment.
“Conditions in the neighborhood were far from safe during that time,” Carenez said, who has lived in the neighborhood all his life. “The Mother would never let her son out on the streets because of all the gangs.”
One day, as Carenez recalled, a heavy package came in the mail that was addressed to the boy. In it were over a dozen ninja stars. Everyday day the boy would fling these stars into a section of the wall, and thereafter would hide the damage with a picture of Jesus when his mother came home late from work.
“During that time you would hear gunshots on the streets and inside this apartment the boy was pretending to be a ninja.” Carenez said.
When asked what he thought of the recent influx of students and artists moving into the neighborhood Carenez shrugged, “At least I can afford the motorcycle I always wanted.”
And that seems to be the consensus of other long-time residents in the neighborhood. At Ortinz Fish Market, a family-run fish market located on Knickerbocker Avenue, the Ortiz family has been selling salmon cuts and sea bass for nearly two decades to a traditionally Latino clientele. When asked what they thought of the new residents moving into the neighborhood, one of the workers, José, remarked, “business was better because of them.”
“Them,” the students and artists like Jillian Sharp, see the neighborhood for its price and convenience but also do not want to see it gentrified any further to become the next Williamsburg. “This isn’t a crack-infested place anymore,” she said, “but I also don’t want yuppies and trust fund kids moving into this area.”
The adjacent neighborhood of Williamsburg was in a similar condition over a decade ago and now has two-bedroom condominiums going for $700,000, with the Finger Building, nicknamed by local residents for its design and obscene hand gesture to the culture of the neighborhood, as the epicenter of this building boom.
Bushwick, like most of New York City’s history, is full of contrasts. One month, there might be a boarded-up apartment and the next a “hip” café, like the Northeast Kingdom as described by Time Out New York as a “…modest little spot as Brooklyn’s very own Freeman’s—a too-cool-for-school rustic restaurant in a nonintuitive location (Bushwick). The theme inside the 28-seat dining room is one part cabin-in-the-woods (wide-plank wood floors and ceilings, chunky wooden tables) and another part Grandma’s living room (flowery vintage wallpaper, fabric-covered wall sconces).”
And yet, many new residents want the neighborhood to stay as it is today: affordable living that is close to Manhattan. They fear of what is happening in Williamsburg will happen in their own backyards, well, what little of backyards they may have.
“I love living here, doing my thing, able to pay my rent, and being close to Manhattan,” remarked Dave Stalles, 24, while sitting outside another “hip” café, the Wyckoff Starr, sipping his tea, “but I can’t afford to live in Williamsburg anymore.
Unfortunately that may change in another decade or so. As documented with neighborhoods like the Lower East Side, SoHo, and now Williamsburg, investors and builders follow the trend setters, the urban pioneers. In the end, it comes down to how organic a city like New York can be; it changes, from block to block, as much as it does from season to season. It’s just unclear how far down the tunnel on the L train these pioneers will travel and hunker down, possibly ending up in Bedford-Stuyvesant or even East New York. As long as the lure of New York City exists, new tenants and new money will follow. As Jillian Sharp said, “a young kid anywhere else sitting on a sidewalk will have nothing happen to them, but in the city something will happen.” With this, only more will come.