Category: Gentrification

Side-by-Side on the LL

NOTE: I submitted this piece to the Brooklyn Nonfiction Prize and it was selected as a finalist. Yesterday was the reading and though I did not win, I am proud to have participated. It always feels a bit risky to put yourself out there, but if you don’t you can’t grow. My family has been very supportive and encouraging and I thank them for that!

  Rockaway Parkway was my subway station, where I got on the LL (today the L)  to go to The City. In Brooklyn we referred to Manhattan as The City. End to end the LL traveled from Canarsie as a mostly elevated line through Brooklyn and ended up at 8th Avenue and 14th Street, the upper reaches of Greenwich Village. I rode that line countless times growing up in the late 1960s and 70s.

            After the train left Canarsie it headed into East New York, followed by Brownsville, went underground in Bushwick, continued on to Greenpoint and Williamsburg. It traveled under the East River and emerged in Manhattan. In the 1970s it amounted to a grand tour of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Brooklyn.

            The LL sat at the open-air Rockaway Parkway station waiting for passengers, the trains arriving and leaving the station according to some mysterious, unpredictable schedule. The cars were covered inside and out with graffiti. It looked and felt like chaos.

            Aside from the physical appearance, the trains were unreliable. Countless times it would lurch into a station along the route, followed by a garbled announcement that it was going out of service. I heard the collective groan of my fellow travelers. Everyone would exit and crowd onto the platform to wait for the next one. Standing in the bitter cold or sweltering heat -it never seemed to be a moderate temperature – I tried to place myself strategically so that the doors would open in front of me. This was not a time to be timid. When the doors opened, I readied my elbows, and walked with purpose to claim my spot. This is how a New Yorker is made.

            I rode that subway line acutely aware of the danger. In the ‘70s, when it was on the brink of bankruptcy, New York City was the murder capital of the world. Muggings were common. On the subways, chain snatching, where a person would grab hold of a necklace and yank it off, fleeing as the doors slid shut, became a fad. We put our jewelry in our purses and held them close to our chests; when we arrived at our destination, we put our rings and necklaces back on.

            Since the LL traveled above ground, I could see pigeons perched on the fire escapes of the tired tenements that abutted the tracks. I watched the subway doors open and looked at the people who got on the train from those stations, almost all were brown and black, joining the white folks who had boarded in Canarsie. My neighborhood was 80% white, in fact the block where I lived was 100% white. I wondered about the lives of those who got on the train at New Lots Avenue, how was it for them to live in a neighborhood with such a bad reputation. Here we were, side-by-side, but living in different worlds. 

            I was 12 years old the first time my friend Deborah and I took the LL, just the two of us, into Greenwich Village. We emerged from the station to see a protest – people carrying signs, chanting, marching in a circle. We didn’t know what they were protesting but we thought it was the coolest thing in the world. It scared us at the same time. We looked around and quickly headed away from the hubbub, looking for bookstores, of which there were many.

            When I was 16, I got on the LL by myself to go to downtown Brooklyn to apply for my learner’s permit. There was only one Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) office to service all of Brooklyn and the DMV was spectacularly inefficient so you had to plan to spend hours there. After I got on the train, I realized I had forgotten my birth certificate. I was too afraid to get off at any of the stops until Broadway Junction.  I wouldn’t turn around at 105th St., New Lots, Livonia, Sutter or Atlantic Avenues – five extra stops. Each time the doors opened, I looked at the platform and thought, “Should I risk it?” Each time I decided I wouldn’t. Even though it added so much time to my trip, I wouldn’t take the chance.

            In my travels from Canarsie, I frequently changed trains at Broadway Junction where the A and C lines met the LL. I descended the stairs from the elevated platform, took a deep breath and held it as I walked as quickly as possible through the underground passageway, which was damp and reeked of urine. I gulped the fresh(er) air when I got to the other side.

            One late afternoon I was riding the LL when there was an announcement over the PA. Those announcements were usually so static-y as to be indecipherable, but this one came through quite clearly. “Move away from the windows! There are reports of gunfire. Move away from the windows!” There weren’t very many of us on the train at the time. Most of the people looked incredulous, a few moved tothe windows to see. Some ignored the message entirely. I shifted down on the bench so the wall of the subway car was behind my head. Fortunately, nothing happened.

            Riding the L today reveals almost a whole new Brooklyn. Several neighborhoods have gentrified, especially Williamsburg and Greenpoint. Parts of Bushwick have become desirable real estate, as well. Brownsville and East New York are still impoverished. Compared to the 1970s, the crime rate has fallen all over Brooklyn, but the problems in those communities persist.  The neighborhood of my youth, Canarsie, has also changed. Though it is still middle and working class, the racial composition has flipped. Today it is 90% black.

            The more things change, though, the more they remain the same. People living side-by-side, riding the L, the haves and the have-nots, perhaps still leading segregated lives.

All Things Must Pass

I arrive at the corner of Bleecker and Sixth Avenue with a decision to make: continue clearing out Aunt Clair’s apartment or head home. I take a breath after running around to three banks to close out Clair’s accounts and dropping off her cable equipment. Despite the sunny skies and unseasonably mild weather, I am overtaken by sadness. It hits me: an era has come to an end. Clair’s apartment is just a block from where I stand, having made her home in Greenwich Village for 60 years. Though I know I can return any time to wander these streets, window shop, sit at a café, or see an Off-Broadway play, it won’t be the same.

It isn’t just Aunt Clair’s passing that accounts for my unsettled feeling. Everywhere I look I see empty storefronts, signs advertising retail space for rent, shop windows papered over. Empty booths for outdoor dining line the already narrow streets. It may be mild for February, but it is still too cold to eat outside. The sidewalks are busy, though. A steady stream of people coming and going. I hear hammering, metal striking metal, and look up to see construction workers on a fire escape working on a building. Greenwich Village is in transition again.

Memories of other visits to the Village flood in. Like many neighborhoods in New York City, the Village has gone through many incarnations. When I was a teenager in the 1970s there were multiple independent bookstores, side by side with headshops and record stores. I would come with a friend, and we would go in and out of those stores. I loved browsing the aisles of Azuma, a store featuring decorative items imported from China and Japan. SoHo wasn’t a thing yet, there was nothing but empty loft space below Houston Street. Though I enjoyed walking the neighborhood, I was wary of the strung-out junkies hanging out on the corners, the panhandlers, the odd characters who mumbled to themselves and the general seediness. That was the ‘70s and ‘80s.

Photo captured from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf206HJ55ts  – retrieved 2/13/2022

As the decades passed, the bookstores left, New York University expanded its footprint, chain stores moved in, and the Village changed. It was strange to see the same stores (Gap, Banana Republic, American Eagle) I saw in the mall near my house in upstate New York, now just blocks away from Washington Square Park.

Like other parts of the city, the change was a mixed bag. The neighborhood no longer felt seedy; it felt safer. Some of the charming shops remained, but pricier restaurants replaced the mom-and-pop places. SoHo became trendy featuring interesting art galleries. Rents went through the roof. Aunt Clair’s building was bought by a fancy property management company. She was fortunate to be grandfathered into the rent-control program; it was the only way she could have stayed in her place. In fact, she likely could not have afforded to live anywhere in Manhattan had she been forced out.

One of the last times I walked through the Village with Aunt Clair, not long before the pandemic, change was already afoot. Some stores were vacant, much to her consternation. She explained to me that for large real estate companies there was some kind of tax advantage to taking a loss on these properties – there was no incentive to rent to a fledgling new business, hence the empty retail spaces. In her estimation, the neighborhood was paying the price to protect the interests of the rich and powerful – something that violated her sense of fairness. Not knowing enough to question her, we went on to other topics, but her analysis stayed with me.

My travels this morning, to settle Aunt Clair’s affairs, also took me past the NYU-owned building where my mother sublet an apartment for several summers. After my dad died in 2005, my mom hoped to fulfill a lifelong dream of living in the Village, a prospect distinctly unappealing to Dad. Aunt Clair, Dad’s ever resourceful sister and devoted to Mom, found a list of apartments offered for sublet by NYU professors when they went on sabbatical or taught abroad for a semester. Aunt Clair got Mom on that email distribution list and found a place for her. Mom spent at least three summers seeing shows, going to museums, and meeting up with Clair and other friends and family, a dream fulfilled.

As I stand on the corner, I think of all the experiences on these streets. I am grateful that I noticed as I ran errands that morning that three of Clair’s favorite shops – a coffee roasting/tea shop (Porto Rico Importing on Bleecker), a homemade pasta store (Raffetto’s on West Houston) and Rocco’s Bakery (also on Bleecker) are still open for business despite the pandemic and the economic turmoil that comes like waves over the decades. Some things are constant – or seem to be, until they aren’t.

I continue standing on the corner lost in reverie. I consider my options: stay and try to accomplish more clearing out of my aunt’s apartment, the essentials are done but the task could be never-ending, or get on the road to head home with enough time to beat rush hour. I look at the time on my I-phone. It is about 2:00 in the afternoon. Rush hour can be an all-day affair in New York. Driving uptown any time after 3:00 can get hairy, with schools letting out and some trying to beat an early exit from work. I haven’t eaten lunch and I still have about an hour on my parking meter. I stand there paralyzed with indecision. Slowly I realize I have had enough. I am worn out.

I walk to my car wondering when I might be back here and what I will find when I do. Whatever happens, it will be without Aunt Clair there to witness and offer her unvarnished, insightful  commentary.

Thoughts on Neighborhoods and Change

Note: This is an edited and reworked piece that I thought was timely. I continue to struggle with what is happening in our nation. The combination of Covid-19 and racism is toxic. I can only hope that we come through it to a better place, having begun to reckon with our history. I will look for opportunities to do my part. I think writing about difficult subjects, which many find hard to talk about, is one way. I would like to have those conversations. I’m not sure how to go about doing it other than to post it here. I welcome other perspectives.

In 1980 I was in graduate school. I lived in a studio apartment on West 80th Street and Columbus Avenue in Manhattan in a building owned by Columbia University.  Gentrification was taking place right before my eyes as the block transformed brownstone by brownstone. Drug addicts, homeless and working-class people were displaced. Mom and Pop stores were shuttered; boutiques and trendy restaurants moved in. I can’t say I was sad about the changes. Slowly but surely the neighborhood felt safer.

I commuted to campus by subway. I gave careful thought to my route to the station to avoid the junkies and panhandlers. My shoulders hunched, eyes surveying the street, almost always in daylight, I walked quickly. I welcomed the neighborhood changes that allowed me to relax my shoulders.

These issues of community change were being discussed in my grad school classes. The question was: Can the market provide low- and middle-income housing when there is so much more money to be made in high-end housing? What is the incentive to create housing for the poor and working class? Is the government’s role to create that incentive? If so, how should it do it effectively? Almost 40 years later, we are still grappling with those questions. Meanwhile gentrification has marched through other areas of the city, particularly Brooklyn, the borough where I grew up.

I had reason to think about the changes wrought over the last three decades in New York City when I did the Five Boro Bike Tour, cycling through Greenpoint and Williamsburg in Brooklyn in 2018. Those two neighborhoods were off limits in the ‘70s and ‘80s. They were hollowed out, drug infested and crime-ridden. I wouldn’t have considered visiting either one, much less bike through them. In contrast, in 2018 I cycled past art galleries and craft beer breweries.

I thought about how change happens in neighborhoods, and whether the changes were, on balance, positive. Gentrification is understood to be a bad thing especially for poor, immigrant communities. Activists who fight it paint a picture of an invading force that disempowers the current residents. While there is truth to that portrait, I think it is oversimplified.

There isn’t one monolithic army encroaching all at once – there isn’t one homogenous group of rich, white people. We need to acknowledge that when demographics are changing, it is a dynamic process. There can be hostility and an unwillingness to work with newcomers that contributes to the failure to integrate. Some may come to a neighborhood expecting their every need to be accommodated, without regard to those already there. But, not all come with that baggage. Some may come precisely to live and/or raise families in a diverse community.

I may be particularly sensitive to integrating across economic class based on my experience moving into a suburban development outside of Albany, NY. I grew up thinking suburbs were homogenous, but I learned otherwise as an adult. In my subdivision there were those who were stretching to their financial limit to live there, and there were others for whom it was very comfortable (my family fell into this latter category).

Our daughter became friends with a girl down the block. We made overtures to invite the whole family over. We were politely rebuffed. Over time, and as a result of a number of comments, I came to believe that the Mom made assumptions about us because my husband is a doctor. Maybe I was wrong, perhaps she just didn’t like us, but I think there was something more. They were of more modest means. We never got beyond neighborly friendliness. Eventually they moved away. An opportunity was lost to both of us. Economic differences can create awkwardness. It is something that is difficult, if not impossible, to talk about.

Economic status can be one barrier within communities, race is certainly another. Canarsie, the neighborhood in Brooklyn where I grew up, underwent a huge change in racial composition. Canarsie’s story of change is not one of gentrification.

In 1972 the New York City Board of Education adopted a plan to bus black students into the two predominantly white junior high schools in Canarsie.  My junior high school was 98% white. My mother supported busing and I did, too. How else would we achieve integration? The plan was received with tremendous hostility by white parents. A group was organized, Concerned Citizens of Canarsie (CCC), to protest. The choice of CCC as a name, which carried echoes of the KKK, was probably purposeful. The CCC slogan ‘neighborhood schools for neighborhood children’ seemed reasonable enough on the surface. A car, with a bullhorn on the roof, cruised through the neighborhood admonishing parents to keep their children home. The vast majority listened. Even though I was only 13, I believed that racism and fear was at the heart of their objections.

A boycott of the schools went on for weeks. I was alone in my 9th grade classes; just a teacher and me. I remember walking in the main entrance through a path defined by uniformed police and sawhorses. Adults stood behind the barriers, yelling epithets at the few of us who went to school. My sense that the parents were racist was born out by their behavior.

Ultimately, the boycott failed and the busing plan was implemented. There was personal fallout; my friendship with Pia got caught in the crossfire.

Like many who lived in Canarsie, Pia’s family had recently moved from East New York to attend better schools and escape the violence. The plan to bus black students signaled the beginning of the end to them. After the boycott, Pia never invited me to hang out at her house again and she kept her distance at school.

In the aftermath, there was some white flight, but the neighborhood remained stable for a number of years. In 1972 Canarsie was about 10% black, by 1990 it shifted to just under 20%. By 2010 the neighborhood was over 80% black. While the racial composition changed, its economic status remained stable as a middle class neighborhood.

Caribbean immigrants who made Canarsie their home were looking for the same things that Jews and Italians sought years before. According to a New York Times article from 2001, “Canarsie had what many Caribbean immigrants wanted: single-family homes with backyards for barbecuing and growing roses or tomatoes, decent schools, affordable prices, quiet streets, proximity to family…”

These were shared values, but the white residents didn’t see it. It is sad that it wasn’t possible for the community to truly integrate. The exodus of white families accelerated in 1991 after the firebombing of a real estate agency that was showing homes to black families. Ironically, the firebombing was intended to frighten blacks away, but white families left. The neighborhood became homogenous again – today it is over 90% black.

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Me in front of our house in the mid 1970s in Canarsie

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My block in Canarsie from GoogleMaps taken in 2018

In reading and thinking about the issue of neighborhood change, commonalities emerge. Problems start with assumptions based on stereotypes and ignorance. There aren’t effective mechanisms to get beyond that. We have no language to talk to each other about these subjects. Perhaps that is something we can remedy.

One essay I read analogized different segments of a community living together to ‘parallel playing,’ like toddlers who play with a set of blocks at the same time, building their own structures, but not interacting. This seems like an apt description. Maybe neighborhoods can be helped to mature beyond the ‘toddler’ stage. Perhaps opportunities can be created, by local government structures or nonprofit organizations, to facilitate community conversations, to break down assumptions and stereotypes.

We must find ways to do better. Forty years from now, I hope we aren’t asking the same questions about how to integrate communities across race and economic status.

Neighborhoods and Change

When I was in graduate school I lived on 80thand Columbus Avenue in Manhattan. It was 1980. It was my first exposure to gentrification. I hadn’t heard the term before, but it was taking place before my eyes as the block transformed brownstone by brownstone. Drug addicts, homeless and working class people were displaced by wealthier folks. Mom and Pop stores were shuttered and boutiques and trendy restaurants moved in. I wondered where the displaced people went, but I can’t say I was sad about the changes. Slowly but surely the neighborhood felt safer, I could walk comfortably on more blocks. Though the ice cream from the new Haagen Dazs shop may have been expensive, it sure was delicious.

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The Upper West Side today.  Photo credit: Chang W. Lee/The New York Time

Some lamented the changes, either because of the injustice to those of lesser means or because of the loss of authenticity (everything new, shiny and expensive was phony) or both. I certainly understood the former. The gap between the haves and the havenots was growing steadily, it was and is unfair. But, longing for the days when New York City was gritty and dirty, was bizarre to me. I didn’t enjoy being afraid. I was unsettled by the strung-out junkies hanging out on the stoops of those brownstones. That era, the 70s and 80s, when the city nearly went bankrupt, and the lack of support showed in crumbling buildings and overflowing garbage, is not romantic to me. (The website Gothamist ran a series of side-by-side photos of Central Park, showing the condition of the park back in the day. Take a look.)

More recently I had reason to think about the changes in the last decades in New York City when Leah and I did the Five Boro Bike Tour (which I wrote about here). We cycled through Greenpoint and Williamsburg in Brooklyn. Those two neighborhoods were off limits in the 70s and 80s, I wouldn’t have considered visiting either area, much less ride a bicycle through them. We rode past art galleries and craft beer breweries. Much like the gentrification of the Upper West Side, these areas in Brooklyn were now home to a wealthier professional class.

I thought about how change happens in neighborhoods and how complicated it all is, and whether the changes were, on balance, positive. I did a bit of research, including reading a book, The World in Brooklyn: Gentrification, Immigration and Ethnic Politics in a Global City (2012), edited by Judith DeSena and Timothy Shortell. The book is comprised of 16 scholarly essays, including one entitled, Revising Canarsie. (Note: I believe that the title was meant to be Revisiting Canarsie, not revising, because the premise of the piece was to take a look at the neighborhood and compare it to an earlier examination by Jonathan Rieder, entitled Canarsie: Jews and Italians of Brooklyn Against Liberalism(1985), a book I also read and found very insightful.)

The book, The World in Brooklyn, in general, makes the case that gentrification is a bad thing for the poor, immigrant communities. It paints a picture of an invading force that disempowers the current residents. While I believe there is truth in that picture, I think it oversimplifies things. The books presents the ‘gentry’ as one, monolithic thing – as if it is a homogenous group of rich, white people. The book doesn’t take into account that when demographics are changing, it is a two-way street. There can be hostility and an unwillingness to work with newcomers that make true integration across economic classes (not just racial differences) impossible to achieve.

I may be particularly sensitive to this issue of integrating across economic classes because of an experience I had when we moved into our suburban neighborhood, which was a new development (new, developing neighborhood). As may be the case in many suburban neighborhoods, there was a range of economic circumstances. There were those who were barely able to make ends meet to live there, and there were those for whom it was very comfortable, and, of course, families in between. Though Gary and I were in the more comfortable range, we thought of ourselves as more modest people since we had grown up in middle class families. Leah, our daughter became friends with a girl down the block and they often played at the friend’s house. We became friendly with the parents and made numerous overtures to invite them over. We were politely rebuffed. Over time, and as a result of a number of comments that were made, I came to believe that the mom made certain assumptions about us. Since Gary was (and is) a doctor, we were Jewish, we were from downstate originally, the mom, in particular, was not comfortable socializing with us. Maybe I was wrong, perhaps she just didn’t like us, but I think there was something else at work. As Gary and I became more comfortable economically, I became more aware of how that can create awkwardness, even when trying to be sensitive. It is something that is difficult to talk about. We never did get beyond neighborly friendliness and eventually they moved. The experience, and others like it, made me more aware of economic factors that can create social barriers.

My experience growing up in Canarsie offers another perspective on neighborhood relationships in the midst of change. Canarsie’s story of change is not one of gentrification, it would appear to be just the opposite. I have written before about my experience in 1972 with the boycott of schools because of the plan to bus black students from East New York into predominantly white Canarsie schools (here). There was some white flight in response, but the neighborhood remained fairly stable for a number of years (my parents left in 1989 when they retired from teaching). In 1990 Canarsie was less than 20% black; in 2000 it was 60% black (and I use ‘black’ because many of the new residents were immigrants from the Caribbean who may or may not have identified as African-American). By 2010 the neighborhood was over 80% black. Though the racial composition changed, the fact was that the economic status remained stable. The new residents weren’t poor and they weren’t uneducated.

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Typical block in Canarsie – Photo Credit: Anthony Lanzilote

The Caribbean immigrants who made Canarsie their home were looking for the same things that Jews and Italians were looking for years before. According to a New York Times article:

‘A house to the Caribbean man is something very important,” Samuel E. Palmer was saying. ”He has to have a house, as opposed to an apartment. Whatever happens, the house comes first, so you can have a family and your friends can meet there. So, when I came here, the desire also was to achieve this house, this houseness.”

Canarsie had what many Caribbean immigrants wanted: single-family homes with backyards for barbecuing and growing roses or tomatoes, decent schools, affordable prices, quiet streets, proximity to family. They were loyal to Brooklyn; they had no interest in Queens or Long Island. As Mr. Palmer put it, if you move, you have to build all over again: friends, neighbors, all that.

Canarsie is teeming with new and newly revitalized civic associations these days, many of them headed by newcomers like Mr. Brazela and Mr. Duncan, lobbying and agitating for improved street lighting, road repairs, better drainage.”

THE CENSUS — A Region of Enclaves: Canarsie, Brooklyn; ‘For Sale’ Signs Greet Newcomers – NYT, June 18, 2001

The essay on Canarsie in the book that I cited above, supported this anecdotal account with  research-based findings. It is sad that it wasn’t possible for the community to truly integrate. The exodus of white families accelerated in 1991 when there were three bias incidents (against black families/businesses), including the fire-bombing of a real estate agency that was court ordered to show homes in Canarsie to blacks and Hispanic buyers. The neighborhood became homogenous again – now it is over 90% black.

In reading and thinking about the issues raised by changing neighborhoods, I think there are some commonalities. Problems seem to start with assumptions made based on stereotypes or ignorance or both. And, there aren’t mechanisms to get beyond those assumptions. We have no language to talk to each other about these issues. One of the essays in the World in Brooklyn analogizes different segments of a community living together to ‘parallel playing,’ like toddlers who might play with a set of blocks at the same time, building their own structures, but not interacting. This seems like an apt description. There is some learning about each other as groups coexist, but not true integration. Of course, there are exceptions, some individuals have successfully broken down barriers, but it doesn’t seem to translate to whole communities. The question is, how do we integrate across race, economic status, religion? What have we learned from our past experiences that can help us? How can we do better?