Grab that Cash with Both Hands and Make a Stash

Green Grape Rotisserie Chicken and Butter Bean side

As the high rises go up, the neighborhood markets are catering more to the 1%.  Occasionally we can pretend we can afford to live here by partaking in the new conveniences.  Like this organic free range rotisserie chicken, roasted potatoes and Butter bean salad from Greene Grape Market.  Worth it but somehow feels extravagant to pay restaurant prices for market food, even though it's just as good.  If we were light eaters, it would be about 4 meals.  And I try to use it all up, usually making a soup out of the carcass.

Getting priced out of this neighborhood may be inevitable. Actually it already happened. Not a word needs spoken yet you can just tell all around that we are not long for this rent.  We always knew this spot was magic, minutes walking distance to downtown and a bunch of subway hubs.  Now there is a Trader Joe's and a Whole Foods a couple of blocks away.  No one is immune to the changing and gentrifying of areas. It's what this town is built on.  It's just that Fort Greene had a little old time magic and it makes me sad to see any of it go, but especially us.  So many of our big cities are experiencing this right now so it's nothing new.  Neighborhoods that lasted for decades with little change, are seemingly transformed overnight. There are still thriving places but many of the black owned businesses have been replaced by other young hip shops and bars and the patronage has changed hues.  That can only mean bigger money moving in and manageable rents disappearing. 

A renter can never feel relaxed enough to make roots in BrooklynGrab.