A flea market and some hipster crochet glued onto the side of a building that's owned by one of the pre-gentrification residents of the neighborhood.
In other Brooklyn gentrification news, there's "White Guy Who 'Settled' Downtown Brooklyn Tells Us Why He Lashed Out At Stroller Couple":
"When I came down here, Myrtle Avenue here, it was abandoned. When I used to go down to the liquor store down there, the black people would all run, because they thought I was a cop! So when I tell you I’m having a fight about white privilege with this man, I’m slightly guilty because I’m moving in to gentrify a neighborhood, except I’m the first one here when nobody wants to live here."
Posts
52 comments:
"That's a bad place to get hit." --Eddie Murphy
What absurd, harsh and hypocritical attitudes Brooklyn and Harlem residents have towards "outsiders" and gentrifiers. No wonder Mr. Trump polls so well with Blacks! There just like White-Americans, awful!
Is it just me, or is Narmeen hot.
Somebody call Ailes, we've got a replacement for the on-air talent that is nearing expiration.
What absurd, harsh and hypocritical attitudes Brooklyn and Harlem residents have towards "outsiders" and gentrifiers. No wonder Mr. Trump polls so well with Blacks! There just like White-Americans, awful!
Don't forget that these "outsiders" feel like they can plaster stuff all over your house w/o bothering to ask if you'd like them to do so.
You'd think cons would take some sort of property rights pov in this situation.
Another story about an insular individual suffering from racial dissonance, hoping to cure his prejudice or phobia through exaggerated prostrations.
This is happening in the Soviet of Seattle. My daughter has a house on MLK Way. It was all black, and transients.
It has become all white, and asian. Her property value is going through the roof.
Sure, she still has gang-bangers getting killed within viewing distance of her house, but she is armed, and they don't seem to see white people.
When I was a kid, I NEVER would have ventured in her neighborhood.
I don't see how it's white privilege. It's well-to-do hypocrite hipster privilege. The irony is that the hipsters drone on and on about white privilege, but they're really only talking about white squares, businessmen and flyover types.
Anyway, white privilege is the ultimate conversation ender. It's basically saying someone shouldn't waste their breath because what they have to say is worthless due to their race.
You never go full hipster.
"My daughter has a house on MLK Way."
For the record, that's still the bad side of town.
Much more dough, pretty much, everywhere else. Amazon decides to have 10 mil of office space downtown, Allan can't put up condos fast enough, some folks just put in plans for the highest building (by far) on the west coast, not to mention Microsoft, Nordstrom, Costco, Starbucks, REI, Boeing, biotech, etc = even the shitty parts of Seattle are worth dough, but they're still the shitty parts (no offense intended.)
But, Seattle does go through your trash to make sure you're not throwing out recyclables. And they spend $66,000 on a handful of gay-painted crosswalks. So, you cons should stay in Greensville SC, and the like. You're not needed here (by "here" I mean my non-shitty-area Seattle house that I only go to for a few days a year.)
"Gentrification" is simply the inverse of the sociological reality that as the number and concentration of black Americans increase in a community, its livability decreases. A tipping point is eventually reached during which all those with the economic resources (i.e. the white people) pursue more desirable locales. Gentrification is white flight in reverse, not retreat.
Molly moved in from the suburbs
an English degree from Brown
and managed to perturb
some locals, crocheting all over town
'Please take my art, my spirit, my knitting
It's for the community...
I didn't think I was shitting
all over Bushwick, see.'
Faces hardened
A voice spoke up from a backyard garden
'You're driving up rents
go home.' Some local gents
cared not for $9 lattes, craft beer.
Art, the authentic, destiny
lay on the horizon, a single tear.
'Ain't nothing for free,
Go home'
-From 'Cry Of The Honeybee'
You put your "art" on someone's house? You thought you were just making people happy, but it never occurred to you that the owner would be unhappy with you defacing his property? I feel for the locals who have these obnoxious 24year olds from Michigan telling them they need to chill out and enjoy their art. Fuck her.
It's hard to put into words when you have acquaintances you meet who look down their nose at you in Queens (omg? You live there??) who would only live in the People's Republic of Park Slope 7 years ago, now moving to my area (very close to Bushwick ) and they are from Chevy Chase MD!! They think they are more NY than people who have been here since forever! They come in expecting everyone to adjust to their whims. Like stupid crocheted art!!! Honestly even Park Slope wasn't so filled with so many assholes 15 years ago. It was nice, it just wasn't hip. People looked down on them 15 years ago (ugh, BROOKLYN? Filled with people who grew up there. Ew!" Or these kids who were from Maine or St Louis and moved here after college and didn't act like they invented Park Slope, or Greenpoint or now Bushwick. Now they act like they own Greenpoiint, priced all the Poles and Irish out with those ugly glass high rises with the granite countertops and stainless steel everything, their hairy arm pits, artisanal cheese, heirloom tomatoes and "critical mass" bicycling thugs who have decided my car is evil and I need to go.
I guess I feel strongly about this. It's just fake and pretentious. So much so, I had a friend visiting from CA say of my hood, "it's weird, all your neighbors are from NY." How weird is that? I thought, yeah, that's true. And we know each others names.
J Farmer, these aren't all "black neighborhoods." They were just low-middle to middle-income. It's people priced out of Manhattan deciding to erase neighborhoods with deep roots. It's not necessarily an improvement.
I suppose my 'Artisanal Tuba Sleepover Bowling Night And Mustache Contest For Brown People Too' is scratched.
Damn.
Think I can still get on NPR if I make it about Syrian refugees and honeybees, though.
That was a little harsh, says my better half, but I made her laugh before she could help herself. Then she stopped and thought about it some more.
Ah, making a woman you admire laugh. There is some nobility there.
Why go all "white privilege" when property rights suffice to get it taken down? I think if I'd lived there, I'd have wanted it taken down. Or an appropriate rent paid on the space.
Notice how the Liberals in this story think they know better how others should enjoy their own?
They didn't build that, after all.
@CatherineM:
"t's people priced out of Manhattan deciding to erase neighborhoods with deep roots."
Deciding to erase? What is the basis for assuming some kind of collective intent? Do you believe people are acting in a coordinated manner with the intention to "erase neighborhoods," or is this simply the collective result of individual people pursuing perceived self-interests? I'm inclined to believe the latter, and I'm not sure how much can significantly be done about it.
Solution: SMOD
Not a good place to be when the EBT riots start.
I'm amazed ISIS hasn't hacked them and brought the system down. Within a week, every major American city would be in flames.
LMAO! White Privilege guy is such a tool, such a poser. "I'll kill you with one punch! I fight for a living!" LOL! A 49 year-old self-employed "personal trainer". That interview with him opened up into his whiny, class-warfare mindset, but in the comments section he wrote and keeps re-posting a long "explanation" detailing his life in NYC with a sample of some of the fights and arguments and screaming matches this idiot gets into with strangers every where he goes, which has me thinking this guy should be institutionalized before someone wastes him.
Hmmm.
"Gentrification" is simply the inverse of the sociological reality that as the number and concentration of black Americans increase in a community, its livability decreases. A tipping point is eventually reached during which all those with the economic resources (i.e. the white people) pursue more desirable locales. Gentrification is white flight in reverse, not retreat.
What about all of the history having also to do with Asians, the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, and so on, and so on, and so on, and so on ... ?
What about the history of neighborhoods, period, in pretty much every Big City in this vast land of ours? Or even smaller ones. How about that, as well?
You betray your lack of interest in the history of actual, specific, neighborhoods within cities all across this great, grand land of ours.
What you're interested in is justifying your limited interest, which means you're mostly interested in focusing on black people and having your primary interest justified in exchange for your enabling others to focus on the same.
FTR, BTW, I absolutely do not think it's OK to "crochet" or do any other sort of crafty, buildy, techno-y, statemen-ty thing on other people's property, anymore than I think it's OK to paint, spray-paint, sculpt, or any other damned thing on other people's property. I find that utterly reprehensible, as I always have, damn it. Always. I despise and find utterly disgusting property-takings as well. Full stop. I'm very consistent in a a few very specific ways, on account of principle, as I have been all of my life. Here you are seeing one of them.
Just because the racist accusation is, and has been, thrown out too often--and, by all that's true! it absolutely has been, stupidly, ignorantly, and, above all, malevolently--doesn't mean that the accusation is never justified. In fact, there are plenty of examples of that accusation being justified--and more than plenty justified, to be clear. As I pay attention to unjustified accusations (and. make. no. mistake. I. do.), I also pay attention to justified accusations (and. make. no. mistake. I. do.).
I am so glad to see Fen make an appearance here.
To this day, I absolutely do admire the law that he put forth and in which I believe, to wit: "The Left doesn't really believe in the things they lecture the rest of us about."
I do. Full stop. I do.
That said:
"The True Conservatives don't really believe in the things they lecture the rest of us about."
They don't, you know.
"Social Conservatives don't really believe in the things they lecture the rest of us about."
They don't, you know.
"Tea Party Mavericks don't really believe in the things they lecture the rest of us about."
They don't, you know--at least not for long, in terms of what and/or whom they'll stick to. They're like weather vanes, subject to the wind.
I object to the notion that what these entitled, precious children have done is based on white racism. It isn't. I doubt these hipsters decided to put up their crocheted art after noticing that a woman of color lived in the house. No, these people are raised on the belief that EVERYONE, regardless of color, creed or race, is in love with them and all that they do.
Incidentally, I bet most of the people agitating about white privilege, the evils of gentrification, how the flea organizer is racist, etc., are white hipsters who live in Bushwick. Possibly skewing towards those from an earlier wave who've lived there more than 2 years and seen their rents go up. They probably like to think of themselves as working class, only better (because they're "creative"). They get to expiate their guilt by condemning those who are like them, only "worse."
I do want to clarify: Back in the day, Fen didn't use the word "leftist." He used a different word. I remember. He shifted (more than once, in terms of the word). Still, I agree ...
... along with everything else I wrote, and by which I will stand, above ^.
He claims a troubled childhood because of a single mom and welfare. How can that be? Being raised by a single mom on welfare is the liberal dream.
The white guy in Brooklyn comes off really well in the story. He sounds like a great guy to get drunk with.
I like the mural, but how stupid are these people that they didn't bother to knock on the door and talk to the owner first? (I thought the blackface would be the problem, it's kind of refreshing that it's a stupid thoughtless hipster problem.)
She fastened it with a glue gun. Yikes! Taking it down is going to take a while. Her Xanax™ fog is going to wear off.
i wish the guy, the big guy, in the blue shirt had cold cocked that settler.
I do want to clarify: Back in the day, Fen didn't use the word "leftist." He used a different word. I remember. He shifted (more than once, in terms of the word).
Hmmm? I don't remember this. I recall the original quote was clumsy and went through some edits to tighten it up. Maybe you could remind me?
Installing the mural was a real property trespass and the flea market guy violated the house owner's real property rights. Should have gotten permission or PAID the house owner.
Story isn't about race. It is about money.
If someone puts something on my property that I don't like, I remove it. Is that so hard?
If someone tells you "Check your privilege" I think the proper response is Why?
Is it OK to reverse this sentiment? The La Azteca Meat Market going in where the Piggly Wiggly used to be is not a good sign. "We are worried about the power ghettofication has over the native families. There was an entire culture, an entire group of people with long standing roots here, right?"
Just doesn't have the same ring.
The offence in this story is the so-called art. Crochet art about young love?
Once again, we see the unquestioned anti-white racism in the terms 'white flight" and "gentrification".
As if people wanting nice neighborhoods free of street crime are some sort of snobby, classist aristocracy.
If someone tells you "Check your privilege" I think the proper response is Why?
You're far too nice. "Check your privilege" is an attempt to assert unearned privilege over another, based on skin color.
No, lady, even if I were convinced that is art, it is vandalism. Were it my wall there would have been hell to pay. And the cleanup would have had to be meticulous. In fact criminal charges would likely have been filed.
The above feelings are absolutely independent of any racial or other factors.
"And the sign said,
"The words of the hipsters are crocheted on the gentrified walls
Of old tenement halls
And whispered in the sounds of white privilege."
I am Laslo.
When I first heard this story I was thinking, how do you "settle" a place that has had over two million inhabitants for the last 100 years? Did he clear away the redwoods, drain the marshes and drive-off the savages? Maybe some of the latter, but he seems repellent to all.
The comments at Gothamist on the crochet graffiti were hilarious, top comment: "It just boggles my mind that someone would think that it's OK to glue/staple/whatever these things to the side of someone's house without asking permission, and then get self-righteous when that person gets annoyed."
This person would undoubtedly call spray paint graffiti "street art".
My 15-year-old daughter has been blowing me shit about being a "the privileged white man". I challenge her to see if it is her own thought, or one planted by some left wing teacher.
I've asked her, "So my privilege is working everyday to support by family, and spending the money I earn on everyone else but me? That's a privilege?"
Her best line, which I gave her credit for wit, was "Why do all white men think everyone else if full of shit?"
I replied, "See...some stereo types are true."
It is hypocritical that "non-white" people who are staunchly pro illegal immigration, are pissed off about white people moving into their neighborhood. That's racism. No?
White privilege guy, who "fights for a living" needs to get his ass kicked--he was begging for it. Assholes are assholes, whether they're in NY and claim some sort of nonsensical racial reason for being an asshole or not.
Gusty Winds, that's a good conversation you're having with your daughter. Sounds as though she's thinking things through, and you're engaging her in that.
I sometimes have trouble with my kids. Some of them want to debate, and others back off. I've been told I'm intimidating, which seems really weird to me, because any one of them could kick my ass in a brain or brawn contest.
Engage!
So you moved into the neighborhood first. You don't own the neighborhood, only your little place in it. If more people now want to move there good for them.
"Why do all white men think everyone else if full of shit?"
Probably because we are the ones who created Western Civilization.
You should have her read "Gun, Germs and Steel".
When whites leave a neighborhood, it's "white flight" and they are to blame for the destruction that follows.
When whites move into a destroyed neighborhood and make it better, it's "gentrification" and they are to blame for destroying the vibrant and diverse culture that was there before they moved in. You know, the kind of diversity that has only one race and culture.
Everyone knows the only correct way for white people to move into a black neighborhood is to let the hispanics displace the blacks first, then let the gays displace the hispanics, then pay outrageous prices for the now-trendy area!
You've gotta let the people with more pokemon oppression points do the dirty work!
Fen,
"You should have her read "Gun, Germs and Steel". "
Great Ghu, no! GG&S is modern just-so stories by, and for, hipster SWPLs.
This is a private-property issue, pure and simple. You don't glue-gun your crochet work onto other people's houses without their permission, period.
Somehow it's turned into a gentrification issue: "white privilege," hipsters, disrupting vibrant cultures, "making people happy," yada, yada yada.
It's not. It's about trespassing onto someone else's property and defacing it. If someone glue-gunned a big crochet mural onto my house, they'd hear from me in court.
I feel kind of sorry for the "artist" who made that hideous yarn-bomb. It's going to take her and her arty friends forever to get rid of that thing.
Post a Comment