Tag Archives: gentrification blues

Gentrification Blues part deux

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In the bit about gentrification I kinda glossed over the fight part.

This shit is scary. I’m a little girl (well not little in the Sarah Jessica Parker sense- see other postings) but I’m a girl. These little monkeys are crazy.

It was so easy. I’m rappin’ with my homey about the season finale of the most excellent show on television and how mind twisting it was; having a few cocktails and now it’s time for a delicious smoky treat.

We’re headed out to smoke and walking talking. There’s this couple hemmed up in the doorway and my homey (I guess I’ll call him BC cause I’m gonna confuse the hell out of myself like that) tries to open the door and tells this little brother he can’t do that here. I’m stepping right behind him and the next thing I know is that this little MF is screaming and pushing BC and yelling.

When I told my sister she asked what he was yelling. I said it was unintelligible. “I don’t know. Something like ‘I’m a man’; ’ I got two eyes’; ‘I didn’t get enough love as a child’; ‘peanuts make my feet stink’; ‘public education has served me poorly’…” (You get the point. it actually tickled the both of us so we went on for about 5 minutes.)

That’s when BC punched the fuck out of him. I’m running out all Tyler Durden waving my arms yelling “whoa, whoa, whoa” (when he was in front of the van- favorite scene) and screaming for someone to call the police. The supreme queen bartender was on it already as were most of the patrons (the newbies. I do distinctly remember seeing a pair of eyes only peeking over the back of the bar. Like Cleavon Little was gonna come in shouting “where all the white women at?”). I moved through the crowd of ruffians that have BC jammed up against the door to the apt building and that’s my turf, so I kinda snapped a little. And remember it was like the Smiths in the Matrix so like a hundred dudes dropped out of nowhere (I think it was like 10 in the end).

So I get in front of BC and put my arms out tiger style and stood in front of him yelling, “STOP!” (Think Gandalf and the dragon thing). Then it was suddenly just the skinny troublemaker woozy looking and rising up in front of me. Then I was suddenly like shit, this kid’s gonna hit me. WTF? So before he could fully stand up, I kicked him in the chest. Kinda a bitch move- but I am a girl. I even had on a skirt and my Keds. Then he just staggered away. Remember when the LA cops said that Rodney King was on PCP and acting all hulk-like. Well that’s what this kid was like. Just not there.

Then BC calls my attention to the white body being dragged in the street and it’s another homey and that’s when I started shaking. For some reason that’s when it got real. And real scary. He was limp and this kid is a firecracker. These little animals were dragging him in the street. Do they even know the implications of that? I want to drop them in 1950’s Mississippi and then we’ll see when they drag someone in the street.

This is my home. This neighborhood is where I’ve spent my formative adult years. I’ve become an adult here. Now that’s not to say that I haven’t been called an ugly bitch from my door to the end of my block. And I was shocked because I’d never been called an ugly anything in my whole life. And ironically enough one of the ruffians was the grownup boy who called me out back then. He’s going to jail. And he has a baby now. Pity. But why come after people who look like you? And despite my animus for the newer residents, I also don’t want them to suffer at the hands of “angry black youth” but damn man.

Come On Brooklyn: or, Do I Have to Tell You Babies Don’t Belong in Bars?

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I don’t think this should be necessary to write but:

It’s not cool to take a screaming baby into a bar on a Saturday afternoon and then proceed to breast feed it while drinking a beer.

I know I have an antiquated set of social mores, but last Saturday I really almost snapped. It was hot and I couldn’t figure out how to set up my new home theater so I decided to go get a beer and sit in a little AC.

I walked in, said my hellos and then noticed that my skin was crawling. Nails on a chalkboard. As my teeth were sitting on edge and after I realized no one was playing The Whispers or Ashanti- I heard it. A SCREAMING baby. My shoulders hunched, my jaw was tight and as I looked around for the miniature offender I saw- a breast.

I have breasts. I’ve even been known in some circles as a bit of a flasher. Breasts are cool and I was breast fed. I believe the only reason women have breasts is for feeding babies. But not in the back of a bar with a beer in front of you. (Now I’m probably exaggerating about the beer. I don’t know if I actually saw it, but between the screeching and the breast I might have began hallucinating a bit.)

I couldn’t stay. It was so cool in there. It’s so hot in my apt. The beer looked delicious. I just wanted to shout “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?” Must adults be told this? I’m clear on the arguments that it’s natural and all that. I honestly believe that. There is nothing more natural than a mother feeding her child. But it was a sunny summer day. There’s a gi-normous park across the street. If it’s the AC factor there’s also a library across the street. I dig you want to be with your friends and socialize- but we can’t do it all at once.

New parents want to live the same lives they did pre- progeny and I don’t believe it works like that. I don’t have any children for just this reason. I like being able to get shitfaced in the middle of the afternoon if I want. And I’m not begrudging a new mother a cocktail. But perhaps the two acts are mutually exclusive. The topper was one of her friends coming out of the bar telling someone on the phone “no, no dogs, but we’re all here”.

Like babies, dogs shouldn’t be allowed in bars. Actually, if a dog is found in a bar, the bar owner could lose their liquor license. It’s unclean. And really?

I know I’m not particularly dog people. I like my friends dogs to a point. Some have more agreeable personalities for me than others, but where my cocktails come from- I don’t want to negotiate dog hair.

So, Come On Brooklyn. I know we’ve become all warm and fuzzy and suburban like, but again:

BROOKLYN IS NOT THE SUBURBS.

My Heart is Broken

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This is one of my favorites from Cakes:

Monday, June 02, 2008
bloody knuckles

i got into a fight.

it was in front of the bar. it started out as an innocent confrontation that turned into a shoving match which then mutated into a beat down and finally evolved into an all out brawl. i dont think i started it, but i guess, in a way, i did.

it all started with a cigarette, or more to the point, my desire for one. i was at the bar having an animated conversation with my friend CT when the very familiar urge to inhale nicotine swept through us both. we put napkins on our drinks and headed towards the door. no one was fighting yet.

the door opens outward and in front of it, preventing our exit, was a kid, about 20 years old, shirtless and in sagging shorts, pushing a girl around his age into the door. it looked as if they were playing – one of those aggressive, sexual games that involve a lot of contact – and i just said to them, “you cant do that here, you have to move out of the doorway.”

thats when the kid freaked out. i dont know what his problem was, maybe he and the girl werent playing, and he was really angry at something she had done. maybe he misheard me and thought i’d actually said, “i fucked your mother.” maybe he had taken some bad steroids and they’d just kicked in. maybe he has father issues and i look just too damned similar. i dont know what it was, but the kid was furious.

he’s screaming at me unintelligibly. angry, hateful gibberish that im sure we have all spouted off at one time or another. at first im kind of shocked, then confused. remember, i’d initially figured he and the girl were just having fun, so the change was so sudden it seemed like i had hit some dreadful switch in his psyche that indicated BRING THE PAIN. i had to stare at him a moment and gather if he was serious or not. i’m not a small man, and although he had his shirt off and could act extremely peeved, i wasnt as afraid of him as i was bemused.

he was pushing up against me with his chest, a torrent of curses and challenges roaring from his mouth to my face. i pushed him away from me and i think said something to the effect of, “you better back up off of me kid.” he didnt. his tirade just grew in fury. he was pushing me, still wild and screaming. i stared at him a second, hoping maybe he would calm down. he didnt. he pushed me a few more times. i waited for him to throw a punch but then he just pushed me again.

so i socked him in the jaw.

the next two seconds were long and somewhat dramatic. the first second was filled with us looking at each other. he looked confused that i had hit him and i looked confused that he looked so confused. the next second was filled with a gasp. then someone said “ooooh.”

then they were upon me.

the rising sounds of grunts and yells swelled in the street. voices heading my way. an army of growls. i look and see about ten kids storming my way. fist clenched. all baggy clothes and screwed up faces. a herd of angry teenagers barreling straight towards me. thats when i think “ok, im gonna get my ass kicked. i better just brace myself for it.”

i move from the doorway so as not to be trapped. i push someone, i dont know who, away from me, and three kids are already at me. i cant remember if they are punching or shoving or what. i see a long arm come at me from over the top them and it connects with my temple. there is that ringing white light you see and hear when getting hit hard. more yelling. hands everywhere. i’m pushing people away. shoving. not throwing punches, trying to keep my arms close to protect myself. more kids are on me. fist rain down on my head and body. my shoulder slams against a wall. i continued shoving and pushing, keeping my arms close. my friend Griddy comes from no where and punches a guy whose hand is clawing for my face, connecting squarely with his jaw. i see the kid crumble a bit. then half the kids go for Griddy. then im backed in a door way with 5-7 kids on me and im pushing them away. someone is pulling kids off of me and someone is saying whoa! whoa! whoa! and arms are flailing everywhere. it is pandemonium.

there is a small moment of calm while everyone assesses the situation. i am in front of a door and three kids are in front of me. one of them being the kid i hit. he makes his approach and then a foot flies from no where and kicks him back. i wonder where it came from and i realize im standing behind CT, towering so far above her i dont even realize shes in front of me. she says, “you better get back!” and the kid steps back. i just stand behind her, waiting, when i see some guy on the ground getting kicked. its Griddy. so i race over there and start pushing kids off of him and lift him from the ground. he is a little hurt but he stands firm, adrenaline firing on all cylinders. fist still clenched. we look around, prepared, but the kids then scatter. all of them. they leave. up the block. under cars. behind bushes in the shadows. suddenly they are gone.

the police come and ask questions. my hand is bleeding where i split my knuckle. i tell them what happened and we all just shrug our shoulders and say, “kids.” i go back in the bar and we talk more about what happened over whiskey shots and beer and cigarettes. a complex rush of violence, fear, and testosterone shivers through me. i ask myself over and over weather or not i should have hit the kid but can only come to one conclusion: what else could i have done?

now i have to be wary of the neighborhood i work in, which is unnerving to say the least.

posted by -jkg at 5:16 PM

Come On Brooklyn: or, Do I Have to Tell You Babies Don’t Belong in Bars?

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I don’t think this should be necessary to write but:

It’s not cool to take a screaming baby into a bar on a Saturday afternoon and then proceed to breast feed it while drinking a beer.

I know I have an antiquated set of social mores, but last Saturday I really almost snapped. It was hot and I couldn’t figure out how to set up my new home theater so I decided to go get a beer and sit in a little AC.

I walked in, said my hellos and then noticed that my skin was crawling. Nails on a chalkboard. As my teeth were sitting on edge and after I realized no one was playing The Whispers or Ashanti- I heard it. A SCREAMING baby. My shoulders hunched, my jaw was tight and as I looked around for the miniature offender I saw- a breast.

I have breasts. I’ve even been known in some circles as a bit of a flasher. Breasts are cool and I was breast fed. I believe the only reason women have breasts is for feeding babies. But not in the back of a bar with a beer in front of you. (Now I’m probably exaggerating about the beer. I don’t know if I actually saw it, but between the screeching and the breast I might have began hallucinating a bit.)

I couldn’t stay. It was so cool in there. It’s so hot in my apt. The beer looked delicious. I just wanted to shout “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?” Must adults be told this? I’m clear on the arguments that it’s natural and all that. I honestly believe that. There is nothing more natural than a mother feeding her child. But it was a sunny summer day. There’s a gi–normous park across the street. If it’s the AC factor there’s also a library across the street. I dig you want to be with your friends and socialize- but we can’t do it all at once.

New parents want to live the same lives they did pre– progeny and I don’t believe it works like that. I don’t have any children for just this reason. I like being able to get shitfaced in the middle of the afternoon if I want. And I’m not begrudging a new mother a cocktail. But perhaps the two acts are mutually exclusive. The topper was one of her friends coming out of the bar telling someone on the phone “no, no dogs, but we’re all here”.

Like babies, dogs shouldn’t be allowed in bars. Actually, if a dog is found in a bar, the bar owner could lose their liquor license. It’s unclean. And really?

I know I’m not particularly dog people. I like my friends dogs to a point. Some have more agreeable personalities for me than others, but where my cocktails come from- I don’t want to negotiate dog hair.

So, Come On Brooklyn. I know we’ve become all warm and fuzzy and suburban like, but again:

BROOKLYN IS NOT THE SUBURBS.

Gentrification Blues #3

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This weekend was hot. It was the official beginning of summer. I barely left my house. When I did I was again confronted with the changes in my neighborhood. It’s like the rats on a ship or roaches in the dark metaphor. Into the blinding sunlight and mildly scorching heat came the ghostly bodies of my new neighbors. Mouthdryinglypale and still without manners. It’s going to be a fun summer. I love sitting on the stairs of the library, now known as my office, and having to stare down the ParkSloperwith the baby crying because it’s hot and mommy can’t take it in the library SCREAMING like that to cool it off or leave because she’s got a great spot to get some sun on her legs.

So here I am sitting alone listening to myiPodscribbling furiously on the stupid story I’ve been hacking away at, I mean writing, for like 2 years now…. “Sorry, what? No, no one’s sitting there.” What could I say? No one was sitting there. I wasn’t prepared to act crazy and have imaginary friends. So down she sits and my table’s perfectly placed for two ways to get sun and put the baby under the umbrella. The screaming baby. The baby screaming so loud that my ErikSatiemakes my head hurt and hands shake cause it’s too loud and grating. I stare at the mother who apologizes profusely, but what am I supposed to say? “I accept your apology, but it would be better if you took your SCREAMING MONKEY home.”

She started doing all the things mothers do to make their children shut up, to no avail. I start shifting. I’m already hot and uncomfortable and writing outside and feel weird. How do I describe how I felt with the future sitting there raising hell and a mother who kinda didn’t give a shit. (Now, let me say that I have friends with kids and I know it’s a tough job and adults don’t want to be cooped up with kids all day. But I also know that that’s why I don’t have kids and really resent being subjected to other peoples problems.)

I guess it’s just that I’m seeing something more and more that disturbs me about this neighborhood I love so much. Too many babies. When I’m dictator, I’m putting amoratoriumon procreating in Prospect Heights. Go to Queens to fuck up your kids.

Gentrification Blues part deux

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In the bit about gentrification I kinda glossed over the fight part.

This shit is scary. I’m a little girl (well not little in the Sarah Jessica Parker sense- see other postings) but I’m a girl. These little monkeys are crazy.

It was so easy. I’m rappin’ with my homey about the season finale of the most excellent show on television and how mind twisting it was; having a few cocktails and now it’s time for a delicious smoky treat.

We’re headed out to smoke and walking talking. There’s this couple hemmed up in the doorway and my homey (I guess I’ll call him BC cause I’m gonna confuse the hell out of myself like that) tries to open the door and tells this little brother he can’t do that here. I’m stepping right behind him and the next thing I know is that this little MF is screaming and pushing BC and yelling.

When I told my sister she asked what he was yelling. I said it was unintelligible. “I don’t know. Something like ‘I’m a man’; ’ I got two eyes’; ‘I didn’t get enough love as a child’; ‘peanuts make my feet stink’; ‘public education has served me poorly’…” (You get the point. it actually tickled the both of us so we went on for about 5 minutes.)

That’s when BC punched the fuck out of him. I’m running out all Tyler Durden waving my arms yelling “whoa, whoa, whoa” (when he was in front of the van- favorite scene) and screaming for someone to call the police. The supreme queen bartender was on it already as were most of the patrons (the newbies. I do distinctly remember seeing a pair of eyes only peeking over the back of the bar. Like Cleavon Little was gonna come in shouting “where all the white women at?”). I moved through the crowd of ruffians that have BC jammed up against the door to the apt building and that’s my turf, so I kinda snapped a little. And remember it was like the Smiths in the Matrix so like a hundred dudes dropped out of nowhere (I think it was like 10 in the end).

So I get in front of BC and put my arms out tiger style and stood in front of him yelling, “STOP!” (Think Gandalf and the dragon thing). Then it was suddenly just the skinny troublemaker woozy looking and rising up in front of me. Then I was suddenly like shit, this kid’s gonna hit me. WTF? So before he could fully stand up, I kicked him in the chest. Kinda a bitch move- but I am a girl. I even had on a skirt and my Keds. Then he just staggered away. Remember when the LA cops said that Rodney King was on PCP and acting all hulk-like. Well that’s what this kid was like. Just not there.

Then BC calls my attention to the white body being dragged in the street and it’s another homey and that’s when I started shaking. For some reason that’s when it got real. And real scary. He was limp and this kid is a firecracker. These little animals were dragging him in the street. Do they even know the implications of that? I want to drop them in 1950’s Mississippi and then we’ll see when they drag someone in the street.

This is my home. This neighborhood is where I’ve spent my formative adult years. I’ve become an adult here. Now that’s not to say that I haven’t been called an ugly bitch from my door to the end of my block. And I was shocked because I’d never been called an ugly anything in my whole life. And ironically enough one of the ruffians was the grownup boy who called me out back then. He’s going to jail. And he has a baby now. Pity. But why come after people who look like you? And despite my animus for the newer residents, I also don’t want them to suffer at the hands of “angry black youth” but damn man.

What would Obama do?

Gentrification Blues

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I live in Brooklyn. I live in a really beautiful part of Brooklyn. It’s near Prospect Park and it used to be populated with really cool people. Until Williamsburg and Lower Manhattan shook itself out into my neighborhood. Key word: NEIGHBORHOOD. I’m neighbors with the people I see and have seen everyday for the last 12 years. I nod “how do” and smile at the people walking down the street. Even if I’m in a shitty mood, I acknowledge the people I see.

Sunday I formally decided to be an urban nuisance. Let me back up. Friday at my favorite bar I kicked a young man in the chest who was going after a friend of mine. Punches in faces, brawling, dragging another friend in the street, police, nothing. The kids, the black kids, were just wildin’ out. It felt like when the Smiths descended in the Matrix and there was this kind of hopelessness. Not hopeless because of the fighting situation (my friends weren’t badly hurt and said it felt like a bunch of soft punches); but hopelessness over the environment that created these young men. This skinny little thing was a boy. And obviously crazy as hell to go after a man who was at least a head taller than him.

So fast-forward to that Sunday. I’m going to help another friend move back into the neighborhood and as I’m walking to the train a couple comes out of a building on Sterling. They’re walking beside me (white man & Asian lady) and I’m bopping along to my walkman (okay- iPod, but walkman shows my age better). The girl starts whispering to the man as we reach a light and they’re now trying to get away from me. AWAY FROM ME!!! Dude, I’m so offended. They’re the ones walking side by side with me. Then they start walking really fast and I’m like “are you fucking kidding me?” So I start walking faster with them. Step in step. These assholes. Then they start walking slow, and I start walking slow. Now I’m obviously fucking with them. I’m wearing my Howard t-shirt for christssake. And I wanted to fuck with them. I know you think that just because your dumb ass is paying 3x my rent to probably live in ½ my apartment that doesn’t mean you get to be afraid of all black faces. Then these geniuses just stop. I guess they just stopped because by now I’m laughing out loud. But I’m so offended by the behavior of the people who’ve moved here in the last year, priced out the people who built this NEIGHBORHOOD and now think they own it. If you’re that goddamn important then I guess you should have stayed your white asses in Manhattan. And that’s not to be racist- it’s only whites moving here. And they call the places retaining blacks “the bad part” of the neighborhood.

So now the ugly assed glass and steel monstrosity is almost finished and they get to share my gym. This is going to be a real treat. I don’t mind the neighborhood changing, what I mind is the privileged behavior of people who can’t afford to live in Manhattan anymore, came over here cause Miranda moved here on Sex and the City, and give the current residents their asses to kiss.

And NO! It’s not okay to change your baby’s nappy IN THE WINDOW OF A BAR! NOT OKAY!