bococa

Staples in the Neighborhood

A bird chirped in Brooklyn! Yesterday morning I woke up to a bright window and the normal BQE (Brooklyn-Queens Expressway) noises and then realized some of the sounds I heard had been a bird. I listened further and sounds of tiny little baby birds! Polar vortex surviving baby birds!

Groundhogs can say what they want about the spring coming, but PVS baby birds sing the rest.

So like I said, I had a whole post planned that just didn’t work out. It should be noted that at some point Port Authority history is coming your way. Now that might not sound particularly interesting – I realize its heavily large ship related; but some gangster stuff, some old school political machine stuff (think Tammany Hall) and some other stuff-stuff might be included. These are all just thoughts until the weather allows me to wander around without fear of slipping on cobbled streets.

So I scrambled for something new to say, did some errands and looked around. I had a photographer friend once tell me, look for the shapes that will form the picture. I figured this post could be similar, let me see the shapes in my writing.

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I live near a number of pretty impressive buildings, one of which are The Cobble Hill Towers. Originally built by Alfred Tredway White, who was a developer and architect that created a number of housing buildings (not projects) for city dwellers in the latter part of the 19th century. These buildings were intended to house workers who were in the shipyard, building unions or a variety of other menial jobs in the metro area.

You have to remember the other choices at this time included Lower East Side (LES, going forward) tenements. It doesn’t really seem like a tough choice when these buildings in Brooklyn included backyards and other open air spaces not as easily found in Manhattan during the 1800s.

These buildings were both an architectural statement and a statement that New York City stood for all of its inhabitants; and that they all deserved a decent place to live and play. It was a game changer for both new immigrants, but also those who had faced the dreary life of the LES. These Towers wanted to show there was a place where the American Dream was possible to all those who wanted to reach for it.

These Towers gave their inhabitants hope, and created a neighborhood along with it. Children were able to play in their inner courtyards, a novel feature in the late 1800s for NYC’s poor citizen; and all tenants could lend a hand. There was also protection for the outside dangers and exposure to violence, drugs or other street professions.

Things change.

The 1970s affected Brooklyn the same as the rest of the city. Long time dwellers of the Towers were secured in their rent-controlled apartments (meaning what they paid for rent did not match the inflation value of their apartment), coupled with the rising cost to heat the buildings because of the gas/oil crisis made it difficult to financially cover the routine maintenance. Apartments were empty, residents were cold, there was no money. Squalor had returned to #cobbled Brooklyn.

But where there is a developer with a dream, there is a possibility.

Next we’ll talk a bit more about Frank Farella, the actual architecture of the buildings and what happened to the towers. Pictures included!

Simply wandering,
bklyntenant

 

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I’m definitely looking for constructive criticism on this post – was it boring? Not informative? Too long? Too short? No direction? No theme? Weird transition? No interest in hearing what happened to these staples? No idea why they were/are important to Brooklyn? (well that one will be more clear in the next post)

To Argue

I was called a ‘Yuppie’ for the first time when I was 17 years old. It was the first time I had ever heard the term outside of a John Hughes movie, and I literally had no idea of the connotation behind it. Was I being insulted? Or just routinely labeled? At the time I let it go, the social situation was a new one to me and I wasn’t about to bring more attention to the fact that I didn’t fit in. I was surrounded by people who came from a place I hadn’t experienced before and used terminology, such as ‘flatlanders’, that I had never heard before.  I came to realize they were not particularly fond of my ‘flatlander’ background or so-called ‘yuppie’ culture. For those of you who missed the 80s, with the knowledge from only watching movies, I figured out it means “Young Urban Professional” or something similar to that. It’s applicable to those who survived their hippie, conservative, veteran or other Baby Boomer stereotypical parents to then move to the “Big City” and garner fast paced monetary focused jobs – generally (or so I thought) in the 1980s. I learned then that this is a term still alive and well.

I have no opinion on yuppies, nor will I disclose if I may or may not actually be one. Perception is everything.

Where am I going with this? Gentrification*. The 1980s meant a lot of things for New York City. After the cusp, with some social issues still thriving, of the race riots, civil rights protests, porn in Times Square (can I, a millennial imagine such a thing?!) and the AIDS epidemic, the Mayors of New York City made some drastic changes. These changes led Manhattan to becoming a tourist destination and a family friendly city again. Neighborhoods which once would have been dangerous to walk through now had attractive apartments, food and culture looking to serve a new generation who hadn’t fully experienced the 1970s in NYC.

Now that speaks for Manhattan. Which is only partially the subject of this post, and maybe occasionally in this blog, but it gives a very general introduction as to why New York City and its boroughs began to change. Brooklyn is experiencing a similar revamp, although slightly later and varied heavily by neighborhood. Queens is experiencing some remodeling as well, and to be honest the Bronx is so far north I forget about it sometimes – so I focus on Brooklyn. Brooklyn is what I know right now.

I’m here to talk about how the face of Brooklyn is changing. Maybe occasionally talk about why some neighborhoods get focused on more than others, and maybe why some neighborhoods lose their identity while others keep it completely in tact.

I have some fun ideas about food – both new diverse infused dishes and ones that have been native to their neighborhoods since their inhabitants stepped off the boat at Ellis Island (Yum!), how the a burgeoning art scene can bring in socioeconomic ranges of all sorts of people and in general how architecture and construction in a few years can change the economics of a neighborhood.

So its food, art and cool buildings (and realistically copious amounts of photos) – occasionally some fiscal nonsense but hey, it can only be expected.

There is also me – the so-called Yuppie. Those of us who have flooded various neighborhoods since the first round of gentrification in the late 80s/early 90s (I’m a baby Yuppie in this case; maybe second gen. Yupster – so much more fun than Hipster! Which probably makes me sound worse. And oh shoot, I admitted it!).

I’m here and talking about it, and I’ve got my eyes on a couple of different neighborhoods. Because in Brooklyn you walk a couple blocks in a certain direction and might as well driven 30 miles to a new state.

*Definition of GENTRIFICATION
:  the process of renewal and rebuilding accompanying the influx of middle-class or affluent people into deteriorating areas that often displaces poorer residents 

A fun photo article to get started

-bklyntenant