Gentrification takes on new meanings when you live in Brooklyn/New York. The all-encompassing, rapid, commercial take-over is astounding. I moved into my Brooklyn home in 1998 after living in an apartment for five years. I was a public high school teacher with a savings account from the Municipal Bank, got a home loan through FHA, and moved into what we called back then, an “FHA neighborhood.” My down payment on my house cost less than the broker’s fee+lease agreement for most Brooklyn apartments back then. “FHA” meant that I got a fixer-upper in a neighborhood where I was once robbed by a crackhead— or rather, accosted, since the crackhead didn’t get anything off of me (as quiet as it’s kept in this world that treats crackheads like scary monsters, they are actually physically weak so, in other words, it doesn’t take too much to whup one’s ass which is exactly what I did). The crackheads that weren’t jacking wallets and purses were hookin on the street corner. Those days are long, long gone now though. A new 14-story high-rise dots every five blocks on the avenues. A typical 2-bedroom apartment (maybe 800 square feet) will run you $3500.00 right now. Needless to say, ain’t no crackheads in these parts today!
There are many places that give wonderful social, economic analyses of the calculated displacement of brown and black peoples in 21st century Brooklyn/New York (older, white residents still desperately try to hold on to rent-controlled apartments and get treated so much more sympathetically by NY media venues). That’s not what I want to talk about though. I want to talk about the thing that no one mentions in terms of gentrification in Brooklyn and all of these so-called improvements: the everyday aesthetic demise. Continue reading
My father and his closest friend, a man I call an uncle, discovered an easy way to save money: always wet your toilet paper and paper towels. Apparently, once these rolls dry after you have wet them, they no longer roll as easily because ripples have been created. This will slow down your roll, LITERALLY, if you take too much toilet paper when you are on the throne, for instance. People use less paper products, the fewer paper products you need to buy, the more money you save: it’s all a vicious cycle. I hover back and forth between two adjectives for this practice… CHEAP…and… RIDICULOUS. It does, however, offer me endless opportunities for shit-talking with my father. I could tell any array of such stories to convey how frugal my father is, but I hope this lumpy toilet paper saga will suffice.
I was sitting in my office one evening, getting some work done before I left for the day. A student happened to pass by my door and stopped to talk about my office artwork and decoration. I had never met or seen this student before. He rightly assumed that I did work related to African American and African Diasporan cultures. I was curious about his interests and became even more curious when I heard he wanted to teach English overseas, especially in the Middle East.
This fall, I taught a writing class where I introduced students to 