Brooklyn, The Borough: A Case of Gentrification
“I was born in the South Slope on 11th Street off Sixth Avenue,” said Matthew Roff, 33, owner of the new Crown Heights beer garden Franklin Park. “Bar Toto was my bodega.”
Someday someone might say the same about the renovated garage that is now Franklin Park. The hip bar – which opened a few weeks ago at the end of the partially unsavory block on St. John's Place between Classon and Franklin – is simple and inviting. Closer to Franklin Avenue, the area probably looks and feels a lot like Park Slope must have when Mr. Roff was growing up.
The first time friends and I went to the beer garden it was Saturday afternoon. We walked down St. John's Place to Franklin. The four of us looked around — there was no bar in sight. We back tracked up the rowhouse-lined block to find a driveway peppered with outdoor seating. Beyond that, a garage door was raised to reveal a wood-and-tile bar. The indoor seating was full of young professional types. Outside, clouds hovered menacingly.
We sat at an outdoor table drinking $4 well beers. I positioned myself for people watching.
Upon seeing the bar - the indoor entrance of which is about 50 feet from the sidewalk - the facial expressions of pedestrians oscillated between surprise, skepticism and curiosity. With drab '90's radio rock floating through the open air, passers-by craned their necks in skepticism; when a catchy beat came on, they looked on at the presumed party longingly. It was like an improvised dance based on white yuppies looking for a cheap rental in a borough.
“People are coming from all over now on the weekends,” Mr. Roff said, though during the week he says it's mostly locals warming the seats. “[My partner and I] felt that if we were going to continue in our line of work then we needed to find an area or neighborhood that had some promise as well as affordability.”
This is the story of any of Brooklyn's gentrified neighborhoods – now and historically. The borough is populated with communities full of residents who find themselves in a place where they don't necessarily belong. But nor do they belong anywhere else.
Over the five months I've spent living in Prospect Heights, the neighborhood (including its border area with Crown Heights) has slowly revealed itself to me. Young professionals populate the areas closest to Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Museum. Further in, neo-hippie and hipster types might sell marijuana to get by on rent. During the day elderly people roll their shopping carts slowly up Washington Avenue. During after-school hours, packs of roving teenagers annex sidewalks to giggle, yell and shove. On a recent trip to my bodega, where you can encounter everyone from kids buying candy to drag queens dancing to booming salsa music, I emerged to find five such teenagers shoved up against a police cruiser.
This is the New York I remember from my childhood. That New York where, at one moment, my father could (and did) witness a drive-by shooting in front of our building on West 56th Street and the next he could walk five blocks to the Plaza Hotel and enter an entirely different universe. Not that Franklin Park could ever be confused with the Oak Bar, or that I or anyone else is nostalgic for a more dangerous city. It's the variety of life, in close urban proximity, that makes this city what it is. That's what Brooklyn stands to lose at some point, just as most of Manhattan did.
On a walk to my neighbor's place a few days ago, I arrived at my destination just in time to witness a disheveled-looking man buying an illicit substance from another very well-dressed man. I was less surprised at this unexpected encounter than I would have anticipated. The exchange took place in front of a run-down brownstone, where two other men were smoking marijuana. On the same block, two new glass condo buildings have gone up, sandwiching my friend's slumlord-owned building.
“I guess I can see the area becoming more like Park Slope down the road but it will take some time,” Mr. Roff said.
Don't get me wrong. I don't want to whine about gentrification, nor do I think I am actually in a position to do so. How I actually feel about this “emerging” neighborhood of Prospect Heights is a hard thing to pinpoint. I don't like crime. I do like nice bars and restaurants in close proximity to my house.
But authenticity is hard to come by when neighborhoods become only that, a place for people with money to spend it. The fact that the community is still a community is its major draw, as are the added perks. Like Franklin Park.
exactly what is so unsavory about that block of st. john's place? is it the old people's residence? the art gallery? the synagogue?? what a completely pointless and insulting article.
Having grown up in Prospect Hgts, I agree with poster #1.
The bar owner says he grew up in the 'South Slope', which name is itself a gentrified concoction. It was never called the 'south slope' in the 70s when he was born.
It was "South Brooklyn', a hard scrabble neighborhood, home to the likes of Pete and Denis Hamil, Al Capone, Joey Gallo, the South Brooklyn Boys and the Golden Ginnies.
Only Yuppies and real estate agents started calling it "south slope' to give it artificial panache and use it as an excuse to raise the rents for new transplants from Indiana.
Now he wants to gentrify Prospect Hgts. Please don't.
How many poor blacks are you going to displace in doing so?
How many more of your ilk - hipsters and yuppies - can Brooklyn contain?
How much longer will all you strive for in life is another new bar to seat yourself and your little vapid friends, drinking $4 beers and listening to your 90s rock?
Maybe some brother will rob these guys of their lunch money and Prospect Hgts will cease becoming the next Williamsburg or Park Slope. What's next? Stroller moms?
FYI the owner, that is a friend of mine, said "south slope" so you people that read articles on line and on blogs would undersatnd where he was talking about. If you want to meet him and see for yourself what kind of person he is, you may realize the 'yuppie" or "hipster" label doesn't quite fit. Yes you are correct about all those gangs of south brooklyn. Looks like someone went online and did some ridiculous research like the rest of the world with the internet. I'm pretty sure you never knew about the "golden ginnies" or the brooklyn bops and all the other bops. The Degraw boys and the Butler gents. Go back to your sociology class and think of some more glossary terms and complain more about something you pretend to know more about than you actually do.
go to the bar and get a beer fool.
Or you can just mope alone on your couch with a six pack of 'hipster" pbr because it doesn't seem as though you're the type to spend much more.
If I didn't know about the 'Golden Ginnies", then how the hell could I reference them, you dumb twat?
And if you don't realize my "Hilltopper" reference, then you don't likely know sh*t about Brooklyn, scumthroat.
So eff u and your little 'friend'.
Incidentally, here is an email a buddy from that neighborhood your kwif friend is trying to gentrify wrote me in response to your his new bar, and the kwifs like you who go there. Not only the people of color disdain you, the whites do to. So stay in Indiana or whatever shithole you come from.
i got this movie picture in my head, after reading your post.....there was a gang in my part of town, named the shamrocks....most lived on my block (lincoln pl. ). classon ave,, st johns pl.....nobody fucked with them, really........colin murphy made bombs in his tenement basement on classon ave.........they hung outacross the st. from sweeney's bar, in front of a chinks clearners......the storefront had a just right step in front, and the sun hit it just right........well, the chink was always callin' the cops, because he said they were interferin' with his business.........it seems colin had enough..... one night he lit off a bomb in the doorway that blew the whole fuckin' front of the chinks store apart.........the chink found another place ta' do business.......an aside.........in the late 60's or there abouts murphy fell ta' his death, cleaning windows on a high rise in manhattan.
anyway.......you talk about this abby cafe............the movie moves inside her place.......no shamrocks ta' be found there, sittin' on a soft couch, eating panini, filled with blue cheese,leeks, pears.....i keep lookin' for colin on his computer, wi-fin', listenin' to a poetry readin'........no.....no shamrocks on the soft couch......they were all hard ass.......well, the movie ends with colin playing with his toys in the basement...........he was a guy with answers.
So, douchebag, I hope some local brother feeds you a curb sandwich instead of your pannini, because Only the Dead Know Brooklyn and it's time you learned, panty boy.
That block is unsavory. Three men mugged me at Sterling and Classon a few months ago. The guy at Chavella's saw it happen and offered me his phone to call 911. The whole area needs more policing. When see I cops in the neighborhood, it makes me feel safer.
It's good that this new Franklin Park business is there. I hope it does well.
Safety is good for business. Businees owners in the area need to get in touch with Councilmember Letitia James and Community Board 8 to work with police to impove safety in this neighborhood.
JB
to: 4:51 PM
as much as 12:46 is a damage control 'tard.....
you may not like change and can capably harken back to a more sinister era but it doesn't sound like your "hood of old" is what brooklyn is now or is becoming.
describing incompatability of ethnic groups mixed in with violence, and, dare i say it, terrorism shows that any new blood in the area can only be better.
i would rather have franklin park and its ilk than the world you describe or its remnants.
it doesnt matter how long the indiana pack has been around, bombs and violence dont cut it in the information age.
signed: one of a myriad of people who have branched out into troubled, forgotten, ignored areas of what was, and still is, a fabulous boro even if its not your mama's boro.
hood of old?......your idea "of now" is throwing the people that live there out; then upgrading the neighborhood, and in ten years, sit on the soft couch in your friends bar, tellin' the late cummers that you bought in early, and be makin' a ton of money.......i was back last year to the place of my youth, and not much has changed.......it's as rough as ever, and i think the new blood you talk about might just be yours, splattered on the walls and floors of your upgraded "neighborhood".........your story might have worked in the mostly industrial areas of b'klyn, like williamsburg, greenpoint etc.,but in the neighborhoods like mine,it's another matter.
ya' see asshole,as i said, it hasn't changed that much........i gotta' 60 yr. history in my head-then and now.......to you and your kind it's about tryin' ta' ride a horse with three legs.....only stupid or rich people try that.......why don't you take your scumbag, wall st. money over the river, and find a nice little hamlet in n.j.....too expensive?........how about living in mahattan with the real outta' towners .....too expensive?
no,no....you gotta' invade b'klyn and try ta' steal houses from the mullies....the puerto ricans.........real estate scumbags is just another name for gentrificaton sleeze, with no regard for the people living there now........suck my ass,and get off your moma's nipple little boy........get real.
well.....just ta' show a kinda' side of me i offer up this idea......the next time you get off the train at franklin ave, wait awhile, and take the new lots line......hey.....get off anywhere.......i hear it's the next up and comin' place for people like you......you might be early in the cycle, but what goes ta' the early bird?..........in fact maybe a wine bar would do well,this time? i'll bet it would be the first in the neighborhood! you could put up a sign at franklin ave. that read.....next stop new lots.......i know you'd love it out there...your welcome.
something must have struck a chord. your venom is palpable. its a pretty wide brush you denigrate all people new to the neighborhood with because they are INVESTING time and money in THEIR neighborhood.
i am not in it for the money. i love what brooklyn has represented over the last 200 years. i stay because the new blood is invigorating old areas and making them someplace someone from outside the neighborhood might actually want to visit and be safe visiting.
you should be happy that each neighborhood can offer something positive to the tapestry that is new york instead of the national caricature brooklyn made of itself for 30 years when the only news outside the region about brooklyn was about shootings in projects or stupid kids who climbed into the polar bear exhibit at the zoo.
as for the pushing people out, get used to it. every ethnic group through brooklyn has been replaced over time.
just because you are the current group doesn't mean you will be or should be the future group. most of brooklyn has been down on its luck due to an incestuous self-perpetrating "i'll get mine, screw you" mentality you so aptly describe.
if you didn't buy in when your neighborhood was dirt cheap, you didnt value it. don't let the door hit yoou in the a** on the way out.
but if you stay, fix your public schools before you tell anyone about how outsiders are destroying what you remember.
till then, no extant group deserves any priority.
i havent been around as long as you, but have done 20 years in south brooklyn, flatbush and fort green/clinton hill/navy yard. not worried about your cluching at straws remembrances.
and as for your dig deeper into brooklyn new lots diatribe...
i am not a bar owner. i am not scoping out new places. but just because some new blood values the architecture and density that made/makes brooklyn special is no reason to call them out. i have no interest in anything related to franklin park, just thought you needed to be notified that old school seems to not know there was school before you and will be another one after you.
it wasn't as exciting as the gangland garbage you claim is positive, but will be longer remembered than all that stuff.
palpable?...venom?.....struck a chord?.......so smart of you to see that...you deserve a pin for your astute observation....maybe in your ass, like they do at parties.
the thing is your right.....tell me about it when some needy prick needs a bag, and he puts a face thing near your head and wants your work money......you must be blind ta' the area......maybe you live on eastern pk'way, with the beauty of the neighborhood across the street?........try takin' a walk down classon ave. ta' fulton st, and beyond to bed. sty.
you don't seem ta' have any respect for the people that live there now.....just dirtbags that need ta' move on because you and your asshole types wanna' cheap deal , and the recipients who live there, are the garbage bags ya' gotta' get rid of.........need ta' move out the trash, so the hipsters,the ass squeezers,the converters have a nice clean, safe place ta'live......education?.....create a two level ed. system, where your little boys and girls get put up, and the others fail...a place where the system works for your kind...don't talk ta' me about those that go on, and those left behind.
you people are the most greedy, self centered type known.....all about me, and fuck the rest.......you go find a place ta' live....not my problem.......i've got ching, and your neighborhood is history....live the dream asshole,and stay off the streets at night.
Chimella,
He/she and his/her ilk just don't get it.
He/she (hell, let's just refer to the person as 'it') is likely some white liberal who votes for Obama but has no problem displacing people of color to the outskirts of our city and our society, because 'it' is just too self-centered and important to care.
'It' talks about a Brooklyn caricature of 30 years, not knowing Brooklyn has been a caricature for over a hundred.
Why argue with such morons?
Right, your venom IS palpapble. Righteously so!
I get venomous too when I see self-entitled snots displace working class people in order to sit around and eat panini and exalt about the architecture of what had been cold water flats.
"no extant group deserves any priority.", it writes.
I guess 'it' feels the Indians got what was theirs, without any remorse. Another disgusting white liberal.
It talks about 'terrorism' when it and its landlord is terrorizing people out of their homes because it is tired of Indiana.
The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse is Displacement of People, along with famine, war, pestilence and death.
"It" is the Fifth Horseman, and is proud of that fact. Not a bit of remorse.
Shame, shame, shame.
Did they teach you no shame in Ohio?
hey brother......thanks for the support.....i don't usually go on like this, but the pushy attitude of some people who put it in your face,talk a yupperfied languge, disguised at do gooders, makes it necessary ta' respond.
thanks again.
hey brother......thanks for the support.....i don't usually go on like this, but the pushy attitude of some people who put it in your face,talk a yupperfied languge, disguised at do gooders, makes it necessary ta' respond.
thanks again.
and i usually ignore threads like this, but it was odd that someone would be a regular troller on the observer and claim solidarity with a neighborhood they abandoned.
way too much emotion here about race and economic status. not enough reason. good luck to those who continue to raise the boro up. its about time someone rolled up their sleeves. take a look at the pre and post photos on the franklin park website. then complain that they are ruining your neighborhood. if clean, attractive and friendly don't define your neighborhood after 40 years of neighborhood doiminance, you failed.
remember folks, its all about whether your kids can get a good education and be safe on the way home. all other neighborhood ideals are false idols.
Chimella, and your idiot friends:
You can bitch all you want, but all it does is make you a bitch.
You can hate on yuppies and hipsters all you want, but what does it say about you and your "working class" scumbags that yuppies can do in five years what y'all are too lazy and stupid to accomplish in 30 or 40 or 100?
Go on pretending that you like the streets full of trash crime, drugs, and boarded-up store fronts. Act like it's about race or class struggle. The truth is, you're a miserable fuck, and you want everyone else to be miserable too.
When you leave garbage sitting around for too long it starts to make a stink. It needs to be taken out. That is exactly what you are doing now. Making a big stink. Hopefully soon somebody will take you out.
That's right. Clean up Prospect Heights! Get all us dark folk out. Whiten up the neighborhood. Sparkling clean!
You're right. We need more rich yuppies and hipster boys to displace more people of color and the working poor. Those poor landlords need your help. You can do that!
Smith, you talk tough and cuss easily but why do I think you are fag as they come? Are you man enough to say it to my face? I'll meet you anytime at your bar and see how tough you are.
I guess anyone who doesn't have a nice job making $50,000+ plus a year, inherited a wad from daddy or has rich parents to help them through is "miserable". Is that what you say?
We lived here for years happily. It wasn't Park Avenue but it was home. Now the landlords see you suckers willing to pay high rents and they harass and force us out. Are you proud to displace poor families?
What is your last name, Custer?
Sorry if we're not "clean, attractive and friendly" like you.
Welcome to Soweto. The natives are not friendly.
Yes, I love throwing poor dark people out of the hood so I can sit and drink $6 pints in a glorified garage. Franklin Park is a pile of crap and Prospect Heights is the asshole it came from. Rich or poor, anyone who actually wants to live there is probably a retard.
It sucks to get priced out of your own neighborhood. I know, because I used to live in Carroll Gardens before the rents doubled and tripled. The point is yeah it sucks to have to move, but I don't sit here like a fucking retard mourning the loss of the crack dealers who used to roam Smith Street at night. I don't act like my life would be better if all those bars and restaurants and hipsters hadn't come and taken over my neighborhood. Carroll Gardens is a better place to go now than it ever was when I lived there. Now I can walk the streets without being afraid of running into someone who will "feed me a curb sandwich" as chimella poetically put it.
There are two kinds of people. One kind can look at a nice neighborhood and aspire to live in a neighborhood like that. The other kind looks at a nice neighborhood and wishes they could bring it down to their level. It has nothing to do with rich or poor, black or white.
Besides, if you're happy being poor and living in a shithole, what difference does it make which particular shithole you live in?
hey smitty........you must be squezzing your ass cheeks too hard when you walk, 'cause now, the shit is fallin' outta' your mouth.....working class scumbags?.....you must be talking about people that actually do something that keeps the city running, and just because they don't have the ching, they don't deserve a place ta' live?......move on?......you still don't get it.
an aside........why do gay men wear mustaches?.....to hide the streach marks!.....come on smitty....shave the stash, and get real.
snark has killed this thread.
no thought.
no progress.
no purpose.
chimella, the internet has its own slang. leave the street where it belongs. on the street. mixing the street slang with attempts at witty barbs while ignoring the central issue tells all. obfuscate at all costs when you have no substance.
move back to that neighborhood if you value it. buy a building. rent it out for peanuts. then you have credibility. otherwise you are a poser. just like hipsters you abhor.
to the anon person........the issues are out there. the hipsters are pushing the people that lived in that neighborhood for mucho years ta' where?...where does one go when the yuppies, hipsters move in, and take the place over and the rents get outta' hand........does the guy in the franklin bar give a shit?......i don't think so...maybe pop up the price another buck when there's enough of your type around.............garbage in the streets?..... get a group together and help the place out.
you neglect ta' see that cheap rent or housing that these people need are vanishing, ta' support a gentrification movement that leaves no room for people that live in places of my younger days ...these assholes just don't care about anyone but their likes.......where's the good will that you put up on the stage; and when it comes ta' doing, say let them do it, or move the fuck out.......nice........and, by the way, you can stick your internet slang in any one of your body orifices that you choose.
i see this is turning into more internet words, that people wouldn't have the balls ta' say ta' face......maybe this summer i'll stop by the franklin bar, and look for someome naned anonymous........hope the place is still open.
o.k.......i'm out, but you really shouldn't baby carriage the neighborhood......you stand out, and make it difficult ta' keep the boys on the stoop.
I only came across this discussion because you guys talk about the Golden Ginnies. I was a member of teh Golden Ginnies back in the early 50's, only we didn't go slummin in Brroklyn, we stayed along Tremont ave. Back then a neighborhood was safe because we made it safe and it was rough because we made it rough. I'm 73 years old now and I regret a lot of what I did. I miss the old neighborhood but now I live in Boca. I wish they'd bring back the Bronx of the 50's, sure, but I'm not into all these things you talk about. But I don't get why you wouldn't want the neighborhood cleaned up. That's my two cents, I'll probably never find my way back to this page again, so if you come back all fired up I'm sorry I won't be entertaining you with a response. One other thing, "your" is possesive, "you're" is a contraction. We speak better in The Bronx.
There were Golden Ginnies in South Brooklyn too, my friend, up to at least the mid-60s.
Prospect Heights has been clean for years. 'Anonymous' is one of these Yuppie scum from Suburbia who are moving in and shaping it into the shit dump they fled.
They displace poor people without remorse.
I'd take a homeboy any day to these self-entitled, privileged scumthroats.
The last time I looked; we were still in America; where anyone or anybody can relocate to any state he or she desires without any type of explanation to anyone!!! Don’t let these mother fv
Just a note here,
The Golden Ginnies weren't from south brooklyn,
They were from 18th ave in Bensonhurst.
The last time I looked; we were still in America; where anyone or anybody can relocate to any state he or she desires without any type of explanation to anyone!!! Don’t let these mother fv
The last time I looked; we were still in America; where anyone or anybody can relocate to any state he or she desires without any type of explanation to anyone!!! Don’t let these lowlife roaches…try to discourage anyone from “America”; from relocating to Brooklyn, NY or anywhere else in NYC!!! I, myself being a native NYer have witness NYC become a better place to reside in during the past five (5) yrs due to incoming people from all over the USA & abroad. It has also made NYC the safest city in all America. All new comers to the city; don't pay no sh!t to these naysayer's. There trying to use reverse “Psychology”; by giving you a guilt trip for relocating to NYC. The naysayer's want to continue the same B/Sh!t Status Quo (e.g., welfare, food stamps, section 8, rental assistance plus, keep people locked in poverty) so elected officials can stay in their paid positions & continue to give out free handouts (low rents) for people in their low-income districts in return for their votes @ election time! So in a way...you, so-called "Americans or Hipsters"; are a big threat to their existence. Don't believe all the hype about displacement of so-called "longtime" residents. It’s the biggest con game going! These roaches & water bugs see the writing on the wall; they know their con game is almost up. there trying to fight you tooth & nail on these blogs on how newcomers (Americans) are destroying the life of NYC; don't fall for any of those lies or hype; years ago NYC was full of crime, gang infested, dirty & basically financially broke with half the population on welfare. That’s the NYC of yrs ago. Yes...rents are going up; just like everything else in life. Now the lowlife’s have to move & start working in real jobs. Again, this is "America" where people have the freedom of movement to anywhere they choose w/out a guilt trip!!! Future “Americans” or so-called "Hipsters", you are welcome with open arms to NYC anytime. Don’t believe the hype & fv
The last time I looked; we were still in America; where anyone or anybody can relocate to any state he or she desires without any type of explanation to anyone!!! Don’t let these lowlife roaches…try to discourage anyone from “America”; from relocating to Brooklyn, NY or anywhere else in NYC!!! I, myself being a native NYer have witness NYC become a better place to reside in during the past five (5) yrs due to incoming people from all over the USA & abroad. It has also made NYC the safest city in all America. All new comers to the city; don't pay no sh!t to these naysayer's. There trying to use reverse “Psychology”; by giving you a guilt trip for relocating to NYC. The naysayer's want to continue the same B/Sh!t Status Quo (e.g., welfare, food stamps, section 8, rental assistance plus, keep people locked in poverty) so elected officials can stay in their paid positions & continue to give out free handouts (low rents) for people in their low-income districts in return for their votes @ election time! So in a way...you, so-called "Americans or Hipsters"; are a big threat to their existence. Don't believe all the hype about displacement of so-called "longtime" residents. It’s the biggest con game going! These roaches & water bugs see the writing on the wall; they know their con game is almost up. there trying to fight you tooth & nail on these blogs on how newcomers (Americans) are destroying the life of NYC; don't fall for any of those lies or hype; years ago NYC was full of crime, gang infested, dirty & basically financially broke with half the population on welfare. That’s the NYC of yrs ago. Yes...rents are going up; just like everything else in life. Now the lowlife’s have to move & start working in real jobs. Again, this is "America" where people have the freedom of movement to anywhere they choose w/out a guilt trip!!! Future “Americans” or so-called "Hipsters", you are welcome with open arms to NYC anytime. Don’t believe the hype & fv
These so called "old times" have not been here that long to even claim being an old timer. All the shitty areas in Brooklyn used to be all white and middle-class back in the 1950-1960's. Then an avalance of colored immigrants began moving in helped by the moronic liberals administrations of NYC. How do you know I am telling the truth? Drive through those neighborhoods and see what solid and beautiful buildings there stand, although now they are populated by "da poah black foks". Yeah, I say they are'nt moving out fast enough. Keep them moving.
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