Don't Be Denied

I love Brooklyn. And now most of the country does too.  There are attractions in Brooklyn that I wish we could preserve, as they existed before people like us starting migrating in.  Couples from the states with hopes to somehow mingle in without disrupting the terrain. But numbers change everything. Without knowing we brought higher rents.  All the social clubs that existed just 10 years ago, older gentlemen with hats and Cuban shirts sitting outside smoking cigars, one of the reasons I fell in love with the borough.  Living beside them playing dominoes on folding chairs was such a treat.  All the amazing mom and pop immigrant restaurants that served up heaping Styrofoam platters of take out for a dime are dwindling.  The absence of anything corporate or chain related was one of the biggest scores.  We walked all the way to the end of Cobble Hill to go to our bank. Now there are so many within blocks of each other.  

With new money coming in great stuff happened too, like the dirty smelly bodegas were replaced with fresh organic markets.  We have high end pizza slices, chef run BBQ joints and gourmet burger spots within feet of our door step.

The immigrants have changed as well.  No longer the dowdy scarf wearing squat types scraping to make a living from Russia, Poland, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Ireland.  But now tall thin wispy upwardly mobile consumers from everywhere like Australia, England, France, Italy, Spain and Japan.  And lots of Americans, again, coming from a much higher tax bracket that are edging into our local spots and taking them over.  This is what New York was built upon but it never stops feeling harsh and unfair.  You can't stake a claim in sand, instead you just drift and pray you stay in the shallows without a wave taking you out to sea or worse, Jersey.

There are benefits, like Alamo Drafthouse Citypoint Brooklyn.  A chain, movie theater out of Texas but good Lord this place is heaven.  Clean, well run, huge metal bowls of popcorn to your table....fresh baked cookies, flatbreads, burgers, alcohol, $5 cans of beer, milk shakes, ice cream with liquor for the people who like to do that.  Which by the way, who are those people?

New York is this unbelievable place that seemed to have the perfect amount of people when we got here 21 years ago.  If we could have just shut the door on the city that day and put the old Studio 54 doormen to man the incoming after that point, perhaps this could have worked. A million in, a million out.  It's as if no one left and now as we continue to flow in we must fight it out.  The dollar being the muscle.  And well, you see how this will end.

Hot Hungarian Paprika Chicken with baked sweet potatoes, brown rice and a side salad.  That's what's for dinner on the 3rd floor.  I wonder what the millennials on the lower newly refurbished apartment are eating? Perhaps delivery from the Turkish corner restaurant that we've wanted to try but haven't found the occasion yet to spend $16 for a gyro.