Today the clouds came, the sun vanished and the temps plummeted. It's still mid 20s here but you can feel winter edging in. The stores are selling off flip-flops, new products are at least 75% lambswool and all over the city people are stripping down whenever they see a human being sized pool of light.
Meanwhile the 'gentrification' of Williamsburg continues unhindered. The new condos cast a literal and figurative shadow over the community and we're all left looking at the biggest building boom in 45 years and wondering "where are the neighborhoods going to go?"
It seems that people are attrected to the grit of the Bowery, the flighty here today gone tomorrow squalor of the lower east side and the skinny jeaned hipsterism of Williamsburg and will pay top dollar for ivory towers that afford them the best views of these places - yet fail to see taht the very act of moving in changes the neighborhood beyond recognition. That's not always a bad thing but it's not what anyone signed up for either.
My solution? Well I don't have one. I say build massive homeless shelters. Have free needle exchanges in very public places. And encourage more 'affordable housing' not near but IN the new towers of glass and bamboo flooring. Maybe that will attract the right kind of money and scare off the tourists. Said he from his too expensive, security camera'd loft
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