Here's a long article at a website called Narratively:
The Ins and The Outs
Along one of New York's most rapidly changing boulevards, a look below the surface exposes what—and who—is really driving gentrification in Crown Heights.
By Vinnie Rotondaro and Maura Ewing
It's predictable for awhile, but gets interesting toward the end.
What goes unmentioned in the article, but which all New York readers above age 40 will instantly recognize is the significance of the name "Crown Heights." In retrospect, the 1991 riot in Crown Heights was the Gettysburg or Stalingrad, the historic turning point in New York City.
My recent surmise that the Powers That Be in contemporary New York City can be summed up with some accuracy as a conspiracy to drive out African-Americans doesn't seem too far off the mark.
You definitely want the real estate agents in your neighborhood to be on your side, whatever your side is. When I was a gentrifier in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood in 1988-2000, the local real estate lady organized most of the neighborhood parties and encouraged residents to talk up the merits of that overlooked neighborhood. It was almost worth that she hustled you into a lowball price if you hired her to help you sell your condo.
On the other hand, local real estate agents actively destroyed my wife's parents' Austin neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago from 1967 onward by stoking white panic selling in order to make fast commissions. Austin had been a terrific place for families to enjoy the benefits of urban living: safe, densely populated, excellent public transportation, tons of kids playing on the sidewalks and walking to school or to their grandparents' apartments. All gone ...
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| Frank Lloyd Wright's Moore House (The house where my father was born is visible in the background to right. |
In contrast to the superb upkeep of the house where my father was born in Oak Park (a constant stream of international tourists walks past it to visit all the Wright houses on the street), the two-flat where my wife was born a couple of miles away in Austin appeared to be abandoned when she drove past it a few years ago.
The destruction of Austin next door threatened to spread to Oak Park, with its spectacular stock of Frank Lloyd Wright Prairie-style homes. But the city fathers responded with a wise (if presumably wholly illegal) racial quota system. The "black-a-block" system restricted real estate agents in Oak Park to selling only one home per block to a black family.
Yet, as James Kabala pointed out once, it's hard to find any mention on the Internet of Oak Park's "black-a-block" quota, presumably because it violated federal law, but was winked at because important people felt it worthwhile to save Oak Park's architectural heritage.
The free market was allowed to run amok in Austin, but government regulation of real estate agents was deftly used in Oak Park to keep the black population down to a manageable number. You can see why this isn't talked about all that much, but, damn, it's an important bit of history to know about.
The free market was allowed to run amok in Austin, but government regulation of real estate agents was deftly used in Oak Park to keep the black population down to a manageable number. You can see why this isn't talked about all that much, but, damn, it's an important bit of history to know about.
Fortunately, I discovered that The Encyclopedia of Chicago explains how Oak Park was saved in some detail:
Oak Park's eastern neighbor, Chicago's Austin neighborhood, had long been characterized by tree-lined streets of gracious homes and small bungalows, with residents who had lived in the community for generations. Both communities, however, also had aging housing stock and weak zoning and building codes. Over 50 percent of Oak Park's housing comprised apartment buildings, most concentrated along its eastern border. Oak Parkers watched first-hand in the 1960s as Austin's residents fought desperately to defend their community from a destabilizing influx of African American home-seekers, with little success—resegregation was rapid and tumultuous.
I.e, most of Austin went black and underclass. There have been 450 homicides in Austin over the last 12 years according to this New York Times map.
Oak Park devised a different strategy, which would use planning to ensure that desegregation would not lead to resegregation. The village board created a Community Relations Commission charged with preventing discrimination, forestalling violent neighborhood defense mechanisms, and setting a high standard of behavior as the community prepared for imminent racial change.
Village officials, often joined by clergymen, visited blocks to which families of color might move and carefully sought to control the fears and rumors generally associated with neighborhood succession. They identified white families who would welcome the newcomers. They encouraged African American families to disperse throughout the village to counter concerns of clustering and ghetto formation. In 1968, after lengthy and angry debate, and the passage of the federal Fair Housing Act, the village board passed an open-housing ordinance allowing officials to control many aspects of racial integration that otherwise were likely to lead to resegregation. Real-estate agents were banned from panic-peddling, blockbusting, and the use of “for sale” signs. A community relations department would address rumors, monitor the quality of services and amenities throughout the village, and establish block clubs to promote resident cohesion and local problem-solving. The police force expanded by one-third, with a residency requirement whose impact was magnified because police generally lived in areas most likely to be threatened by resegregation. An equity assurance program for homeowners would reassure residents that they were financially protected against a downward spiral of property values. Leaders acted on a vision of Oak Park as a community strong enough to achieve integration, and able to challenge the Chicago pattern of block-by-block resegregation with a policy of managed integration through dispersal.
The most controversial policies involved racial steering. A group of residents led by Roberta (Bobbie) Raymond established the Oak Park Housing Center, which retrained real-estate agents to prevent racial steering and encouraged black home-seekers to live throughout Oak Park. The center worked with the village to improve areas that white home-seekers or residents might find unattractive and steered whites towards these areas to limit the concentration of black residents in a particular neighborhood. A public relations campaign targeted white home-seekers across the country to promote an image of Oak Park as a multicultural, cosmopolitan middle-class community, close to the city, with good transportation and schools.
Despite these programs, during the 1970s the village experienced a net loss of 10,000 white Oak Parkers, coinciding with a net increase of only 5,500 black residents. Urbanologists' predictions that the ghetto would roll over Oak Park, however, proved inaccurate. Oak Park maintained its majority white population through extensive and white-oriented planning, and has remained an integrated village. Pockets of racial segregation have persisted, but the community has succeeded in maintaining a public culture that takes pride in racial diversity.
I believe Oak Park has a sizable white gay population, attracted by the fabulous aesthetics.
In 2012, Obama won 82.5% of the vote in Oak Park.
Look, you can whine about the hypocrisy of white liberals all you want, but you'd be better off studying their methods.
Race quotas have been popular with the Establishment in hiring and college admissions, so why, since they worked out well in Oak Park, weren't they encouraged elsewhere in housing?
In 2012, Obama won 82.5% of the vote in Oak Park.
Look, you can whine about the hypocrisy of white liberals all you want, but you'd be better off studying their methods.
Race quotas have been popular with the Establishment in hiring and college admissions, so why, since they worked out well in Oak Park, weren't they encouraged elsewhere in housing?
"Who? Whom?" of course. Race quotas to increase the numbers of Designated Victim Groups are good, race quotas to limit their numbers are bad, and that's all you need to know.
I can recall reading about Oak Park's "black-a-block" quota in a newsmagazine, probably Newsweek in 1988. As a young idealist, I was totally against racial discrimination. Yet, having taken my father and uncle to visit their boyhood home, driving through the endless desolation of un-quotaed Austin only to suddenly arrive in suburban paradise as imagined by F.L. Wright in Oak Park ... well, maybe there are worse things than racial quotas ...
I can recall reading about Oak Park's "black-a-block" quota in a newsmagazine, probably Newsweek in 1988. As a young idealist, I was totally against racial discrimination. Yet, having taken my father and uncle to visit their boyhood home, driving through the endless desolation of un-quotaed Austin only to suddenly arrive in suburban paradise as imagined by F.L. Wright in Oak Park ... well, maybe there are worse things than racial quotas ...
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48 comments:
Why NYC is allowed to save itself and Detroit, Phily not?
There is LOTS of money to be made from both White Flight and Gentrification via real estate sales, development, and redevelopment.
That is why quotas have never been used to control it.
I lived in an apt building in NoVA with a "no block-busting" sign. Considering that the whites in the building could be counted on one hand, and it was a rental building, the sign was probably at least 30 years out of date (40 years?) And yet it was still up there, on the side of the building, near the "report gang activity" sign.
The secret to pushing horrible blacks out is pulling haute blacks in.
If white urbanites tried to push all blacks out, blacks would get pissed, and black elites would lead blacks against ALL whites.
So, whites and Jews must separate the head from the body.
The head is the elites of black community. Body are the masses of blacks.
Black masses sometimes riot and act crazy but never know how to lead themselves. They need people to lead them.
When whites urbanites tended to be wary of all blacks, black leaders led blacks against whites.
But once white urbanites figured out a way to buy off and win over black leaders and elites, the latter were willing to work with whites to get their share while sticking it to lesser blacks. That's how Obama won support of Chicago rich whites and Jews. And Al Sharpton learned the same game, and is even schmoozing with the gays.
So, gentrification is good for urban whites and haute blacks--who are welcomed into the gentrosphere--, but it's not so good for lesser blacks.
But the people who suffer most are suburban whites and working class whites. Though lesser blacks are relocated out of the city via section 8, they get access to white suburbs and white small towns. And all their stuff is paid for by the gubment. Meanwhile, middle class and working class whites find dangerous blacks dumped into their neighborhoods.
Conquis use people of color against Yanquis. It's time white Americans riled up browns in Latin America against conqui whites. It's revenge. If conquis do it to yanquis, yanquis must do it conquis.
And since rich white libs push section 8 on us, we should have rallies calling for section 8 homes to be built in rich white and Jewish areas.
It's time for class revenge.
Libearlism is essentially rich white/Jewish warfare on middle class and working class whites.
And when are we white trash folks gonna have Occupy Harvard by taking over the campus en masse as 'undocumented students'?
The Right lacks a sense of theater.
Let's see now, the Oak Park powers that be exercised strict racial quotas with one Black per block and that has allowed them to swell with pride at their neighborhood's racial diversity.
This is pathetic stuff. I fully support keeping Blacks and Hispanics out of nice neighborhoods. I've seen my own ruined completely when it went majority Hispanic along with a really malignant Black presence.
I moved out as fast as possible because my possessions were no longer safe, the behavior around me was abysmal and the neighborhood became dangerous.
Now there is one Black on my new street. And they are just about as disfunctional as it is possible to be. They are the only house were you hear earth-shaking sub woofers going for hours and hours and hours. The coming and going is extremely suspicious. Their backyard is full of pot plants. Etc.
The real problem is that the Oak Park powers that be can't openly say, "We are keeping this neighborhood White."
Until we can say that, the Leftist tyranny will continue to flourish and metastasize like the deadly social cancer that it is.
One of the most malignant tumors of that cancer is Obama himself. The fact that an affirmative-action parasite like Obama can even be considered for public office is a sign that the U.S. might just be terminal.
"resegregation" - that's just beautiful. People who can use words like that can never lose.
Anybody know offhand the current per-capita homicide rates in Austin and Oak Park?
In ethnic makeup, presumably Austin is stable at >80% black, with some Hispanic.
Is Oak Park's mix stable?
Nitpick: using "African American" in the Crown Heights context is incorrect because a high percentage of the blacks in the area are Caribbean.
Peter
This piece leaves out the fact that for probably the last 60 years Oak Park has been dominated by Mafia kingpins. That certainly kept a lid on any black "problems" that might have arisen.
With the decline of Chicago and Illinois overall, and the decline of Big Labor and thus mob power, I expect Oak Clark to eventually go the way of Austin.
The Right is so used to defending power and privilege that it still feels protective of power and privilege... even when power and privilege today are concentrated among Jews, gays, and white libs.
Rich Jews and rich lib whites dump on American conservatism, but GOP defends Wall Street and the globalist rich.
It's time for rightist socialism.
If you can't block a black, black-a-block.
I wonder if there is any tie into the current New York City school bus strike. The bus drivers are mostly minority and certainly by NYC standards very low income. I am wondering if the result of this will be a large scale reduction in the number of paid bus drivers and therefore another exodus of poor blacks from the city.
What happens if there is another situation that requires a bail out and the rest of the country decides not to pay up? So far 9-11, the financial crisis and hurricane Sandy were all big payoffs to the city and all in less than a decade. In some sense the new gun laws are a gift to New York City (and other urban areas) from the agricultural and mineral areas of the US that are currently responsible for most US exports. No bailout and certain white people may discover they are in the middle of a sea of unemployed poor people, many of whom are new immigrants.
conspiracy to drive out African-Americans doesn't seem too far off the mark.
Two points:
the crown heights riots origins are never mentioned: an hasdic driver hit and killed a black girl, while she lay dying the hasdic jewish only ambulance came and whisked the hasdic guy away - he only had a few scratches.
Yes, there are jewish only ambulances (and buses) in New York and Christmas trees are banned....
second, the hasdic population is exploding in Brooklyn, I predict they will team up with muslims and start enforcing kosher/hal-al laws and enforcing modest dress on women.
Should be entertaining to see in oh-so liberal new york.
"The secret to pushing horrible blacks out is pulling haute blacks in."
I hate to say this, but I think that such blacks are so few and far between--on a statistical level--that you can never get a critical mass of them to feel any sense of self that would actively pus against the black underclass. The Cosbys and Sowells of the world are destined to be iconoclasts.
It works with Hispanics, though. At least, it has worked in decades past when the Hispanics weren't, err, actually Amerinds.
The suburbs between L.A. and San Bernardino--the western Inland Empire--are teeming with middle or working class Hispanics who have by and large rejected the ghetto chuntaro underclass. Hence why they're in the suburbs.
...you can never get a critical mass of them to feel any sense of self that would actively pus against the black underclass.
"Pus" is not a verb.
A little OT - but - does anyone remember the 70s black disco/rock group Crown Heights Affair?
"This piece leaves out the fact that for probably the last 60 years Oak Park has been dominated by Mafia kingpins." Sam Giancana was killed there, for one...
The story is about metro Chicago (Oak Park), not New York.
I don't know the area or its history.
Other than allowing only one black family per block, what is "white-oriented planning"?
Examples please?
Not allowing for sale signs?
"Oak Park maintained its majority white population through extensive and white-oriented planning,.."
"My recent surmise that the Powers That Be in contemporary New York City can be summed up with some accuracy as a conspiracy to drive out African-Americans doesn't seem too far off the mark."
If this were true, Bloomberg would have razed at least some of NYC's projects by now. But in fact not a single public housing building has been razed. There are projects in the middle of the priciest Brooklyn neighborhoods, there is a project in the middle of the Upper West Side no less. Big financial incentives to do it for a lot of people, yet it hasn't been done.
I know that projects have been razed in Chicago, with the residents being given section 8 vouchers. Has this happened in other cities too? No one's even talking about this in New York.
My assessment of Bloomberg is that he's a stereotypical liberal. Example: he supported the construction of that mosque near the WTC. He's got plenty of hypocrisy, like all liberals, but none of it seems to be conscious with him. I suspect that he consciously believes in every bit of liberal ideology.
The number of traditional US blacks in NYC has fallen by a lot. But was this because the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations consciously worked towards that goal?
I suspect that the main motivating factor was a rise in rents. The difference in housing prices between NYC and the rest of the country has increased. Why? Presumably because a lot of wealthy people have moved in, pushing up prices in New York. Why? Upscale people from all over America have always wanted to live in NYC, but they used to be scared off by crime. For whatever reason crime dropped all over the country starting in the early 1990s, so it became less dangerous to fulfill that particular SWPL dream. Why did crime drop? Probably more imprisonment + abortion + who knows what else.
My father spent roughly 1961-1966 in Oak Park and he still has a friend or two there and had a friend or two by Lake Michigan (Gold Coast I think) until a few years ago. It sounded like a nice area, except for the Cubs.
Risto
Anonymous Moron who wrote the following along with other nonsense:
Two points: the crown heights riots origins are never mentioned: an hasdic driver hit and killed a black girl, while she lay dying the hasdic jewish only ambulance came and whisked the hasdic guy away - he only had a few scratches
The reason why this is "never mentioned" is because when it comes to jooz (and probably a lot of other things) you don't know what you're talking about. The wikipedia article that Steve LINKED TO mentions the origins of the riots in deep detail.
Learn to read before you write.
"If this were true, Bloomberg would have razed at least some of NYC's projects by now. But in fact not a single public housing building has been razed. There are projects in the middle of the priciest Brooklyn neighborhoods, there is a project in the middle of the Upper West Side no less. Big financial incentives to do it for a lot of people, yet it hasn't been done."
Good point. I think libs cannot simply raze and push out all blacks. What they are trying to do is contain the rot.
So yes, there are projects but they aren't expanded and the surrounding area is gentrified so that the urban rot will be held in check.
So, there are ponds of poverty that don't flood into a lake.
It's like population damming or irrigation. You can't totally drain the swamp but you can control its size.
Dam the dang.
Chicago is a special case because so many of the projects were built in one massive area. Daley wanted it that way to keep the blacks where they are.
Lookup the articles about the acheivement gap at Oak Park River Forest High School
. They can't seem to figure out why there is an achievement gap between the races
.
Fools.
There are projects in the middle of the priciest Brooklyn neighborhoods,
he has been slowly purging them of blacks and replacing them with chinese.
. The wikipedia article that Steve LINKED TO
oh yes, and very fairly covered too, like like most wikipedia articles concerning scots-irish.
The Right lacks a sense of theater.
The word you are looking for is dignity.
Steve, both Oak Park and NYC are Pyrrhic victories. Chicago as a whole is doomed. It is pure fantasy to think that Chicago's gang members will simply restrain themselves to the south and west. They will move north and east as well. I would not give you two cents for the long-term (10 + years) value of real estate even the best in both cities.
NYC has a politically (a Dem will soon be mayor) unsustainable stop and frisk policy, with a growing Caribbean Hispanic underclass and a large group of poor, angry Black people sensing victory. If Blacks formed flash mobs and beat the hell out of people in say, Times Square, do you honestly think the NYPD would be allowed to shoot?
Same with Oak Park, those murders won't just respect boundaries. Guys who will shoot up toddlers who look like their cousins won't quibble at the odd home invasion followed by more. Come in stealth, come in force, avoid the video cameras, dominate and humiliate, weak and defenseless mostly White suburbanites? Utterly predictable.
The Hasidic ambulance service would not pickup any non Hasidic person?
Pinker, Chomsky, Whiskey, me...?
goatweed
The _Encyclopedia of Chicago_ sounded awesome, but I've never actually seen a copy. Thank you for the post that shows that it really is.
No Christmas tree in NYC??
In ethnic makeup, presumably Austin is stable at >80% black, with some Hispanic.
If you go here http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/explorer and type in Austin, IL you'll get the racial breakdown by block. If you go to Google Maps and type in Austin, IL you can find the borders of that neighborhood. Based on this it looks like about 4 square miles of 90%+ blackness, with significant chunks of it 98% black.
It's unreal what a 'border' Austin Blvd seems to form between Austin and Oak Park. It's hardly a major thoroughfare. I don't think it qualifies as even a minor arterial road. Yet on one side it's 98% black and on the other majority white (sadly not 98% white). It's the kind of thing that gives me hope that if enough people wanted official resegregation (with ample allowances for mixed neighborhoods, you figure) it would not be hard to achieve; what's lacking is the will (and good sense/understanding).
jews also get their own taxpayer funded police force:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/orthodox_cops_separate_and_unequal_KC3tF7T2mdzkNO7 AQ03mIJ#ixzz1ThorTFtD
Orthodox cops: Separate and unequal
New York City should stop funding separate, private police forces for Jews
By MICHAEL LESHER
Earlier this month, a horrified New York City reeled under the news that 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky, a Hasidic boy in Brooklyn’s Borough Park, had been abducted on his way home from a nearby day camp and, the next evening, smothered to death and dismembered by his captor, who was also an Orthodox Jew.
The public got a second shock when it learned that Leiby’s disappearance was only belatedly reported to the police, and that a privately run, Orthodox Jewish “patrol” called Shomrim reportedly had video evidence that went unused during the crucial hours before the murder, while untrained Jewish laymen tried to handle the investigation themselves.
And now comes what ought to be shock No. 3: Jewish vigilante groups like Shomrim, unskilled and ill-equipped for police work, and all too often driven by religious proscriptions to keep their community’s crimes out of the public eye, are being paid to interfere with the authorities by New York City taxpayers — through the generous offices of some City Council members.
roundeye
Lookup the articles about the acheivement gap at Oak Park River Forest High School.
There is an article from 2003 which gives numbers about the achievement gap at Oak Park River Forest High School.
In a cursory look at more recent articles about the achievement gap at Oak Park River Forest High School, no numbers are given.
Apparently in recent years the achievement gap can be mentioned, but it is not polite/politically correct to state numbers which show the magnitude of the gap.
While Oak Park is a "suburb" of Chicago, the population density of Oak Park -11,037 /sq mi- is about the same as the city of Chicago- 11,874.
It would be interesting to compare black academic achievement in Oak Park compared to the adjacent Austin neighborhood of Chicago.
If Oak Park had gone 85% for Romney, Obama might have made noises about having to integrate their neighborhood. But they protected their interests by going with the mulatto kid.
To Cail Corishev;
I don't think 25% of blacks have 100+ I.Q.'s. I think the percentage would be a lot lower.
I don't think 25% of blacks have 100+ I.Q.'s. I think the percentage would be a lot lower.
It's about 15%.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-iePNyoSW0
http://lyricstranslate.com/en/fuer-mich-solls-rote-rosen-regnen-it-should-rain-red-roses-me.html
And now comes what ought to be shock No. 3: Jewish vigilante groups like Shomrim, unskilled and ill-equipped for police work, and all too often driven by religious proscriptions to keep their community’s crimes out of the public eye, are being paid to interfere with the authorities by New York City taxpayers — through the generous offices of some City Council members.
Jews did the same in Alexandria during the Greco-Roman period, read the Emperor Cladius letter about the jews... nothing changed.
@CailCorishev
Got it in one. As soon as welfare became accessible by Unwed mothers, black people with money began to run away from black neighbourhoods. Why? Simply put, Unwed mothers fall into two types: negligent due to overwork and negligent due to stupidity/selfishness (the ridiculously high levels of feminist indoctrination that most of the women received pre and post-receipt of benefits didn't help, either.)
So, when the single mothers began popping up, two scenarios became incredibly common.
1. Unmarried "I can have it all!", workaholics who were insulted by the idea that their child(ren) were anything but perfect. Their untethered kids (who the women believed were being taken care of by Uncle Sugar) would run rampant. When the older men would try to supply some discipline, the feminism-replete mothers would respond by declaring this men "child molesters" and "patriarchal oppressors", leading black men with families to "go their own way".
2. Unmarried "If my heart says it's right, it must *be* right!", hedonists who did what unfettered women with guaranteed housing and food budgets are known to do (namely, pursue hot guys, hang out all night abusing drugs, bring their enablers home as role models for their child{ren}, etc.) Those children became the proto-criminals/gang leaders who turned most urban neighbourhoods into slaughterhouses. When rebuked by their elders, the elders received the same treatment as with the first group (child molestation claims, etc.)
My own childhood was a step-by-step document of what happened in the black community.
When I was a small child, my (still married) mother has no problem with me going to my friends' houses. When she decided to divorce, suddenly I couldn't go over to their houses unless their mothers were home (and I had to make sure to come home if their mothers went to the store and left us unsupervised with their fathers.) When she suffered an accident and was "convinced" to apply for Section 8/disability, suddenly I wasn't allowed to go into "men's homes" *at all*, *for any reason*, for fear of molestation (in retrospect, my mother's comments about not letting my friends' fathers "touch me" was a misunderstood sign.) But it all started when she entered the government money trap (initially through the divorce lawyers, then engulfed by the welfare matrix.)
But, from that viewpoint, it all begins to make sense.
Give single mothers free money, then make them sit through multiple sessions of male neutral to misandric speeches to collect that money , create ghettos for the "newly liberated" single mothers to spread the information, then watch and wait for the renaissance. If the mothers do well in the absence of fathers (lol), trumpet the findings. If the mothers do badly, trumpet the need for "more money", "more police", "more counselors", "more more more!" It's a win-win situation *if you're dealing with the government*.
"No Christmas tree in NYC??"
Hardly.
http://www.rockefellercenter.com/tour-and-explore/the-tree-at-rockefeller-center/
Then again, the behaviours are thoroughly predictable.
You create an environment in which black children are not only (essentially) unsupervised, but are taught from kindergarten that "If it feels good (and a *man* isn't forcing you to do it), do it!", and any people who tell you not to do something are demonised as "oppressive" or "racist", you're going to end up with dysfunction. You're going to end up with girls who chase bad boys, boys who become bad boys to get those girls, leading girls to chase the baddest/"realest" of the bad boys, leading to boys becoming badder to attract more girls, which ends up with a scenario in which even the poorest and least suitable of girls won't pay any attention to any non-exceptional boy (good or bad). So, the boys with innate talent get first pick (the athletes, singers, pretty nous, etc.), the "bad boys" pick up the second-rate girls (and randomly cuckold the guys with the "good girls"), and the rest of the boys get nothing. Unfortunately in this scenario, being "bad" becomes much easier than being "good" (rudeness is easier than changing your looks, drawing graffiti is easier than getting good enough at a sport to make the school team, selling drugs on your own time is easier than getting a job with a set schedule, owning a gun and shooting people is less dangerous than actually standing up to a bully who will hit back...) And the entire area turns to trash because the mothers are either overwhelmed or negligent.
I haven't been to Crown Heights in over a decade, but I used to go there every weekend with my father to buy paint at a very good discount. The store was near where the old Ebbets Field was, next to the extrordinarily violent Empire Rollerdome, and the view from the main roads we traveled was one of unrelenting ugliness - this working class suburban white was fascinated by it. What wasn't broken, was run down and dirty. If that place can gentrify, there is hope for everywhere.
I don't know why down and out Brooklyn had this incredible resurgence and not the Bronx. I guess the "Bronx is Burning" era drove off EVERY white person of influence. My friend from Westchester told me that he noticed when he was younger that northern suburbanites always considered Brooklyn to be the last place you'd ever want to get abandoned while Long Islanders feared The Bronx.
"I don't know why down and out Brooklyn had this incredible resurgence and not the Bronx."
Brownstones. They're beautiful and there are a lot of them in Brooklyn. Gentrified Brooklyn is sometimes called "brownstone Brooklyn". Hipsters are the world's primary producers of ugly "art", yet they love good 19th century architecture, which is an example of real art. Just one more bit of hypocrisy in their ueber-hypocritical lives.
I think the Bronx is mostly made up of those boxy, ugly 6 and 7 storey brick apartment buildings. There are small neighborhoods like that in Brooklyn too, and they haven't been gentrified.
*All* of Brooklyn is being gentrified. During my childhood, Caribbean immigrants bought up all of the houses in my neighbourhood (average house cost-$50K). Now, in 2013, the average cost for a house in this section of Brooklyn is $500K. As the current residents have hit their 60's, there are plenty of hipsters and Scots-Irish waving 6-figure checks in their faces. My old neighbours are moving back to the islands as virtual millionaires ($400,000 lasts a lot longer in Curaçao than in NYC.) My new neighbours, well, they're "making changes".
Well, there are a lot of bad Mexican suburbs in La: East La, Huntington Park and Maywood. Orange County has a lot of low class Mexicans in Anaheim and Santa Ana. The older towns in the 1970's in La and Santa Ana and Anaheim suffered because you no longer could put up barriers against minorties to rent or buy.
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