Exhibit "A" or "A reason for this blog's being"

I didn't expect it to happen so soon.

It all started with the banging radiator promptly at 6:58am just two hours into my new found sleep. I'm sure apartment dwellers can relate but that my true-believers is a rant for another time.

Being cocksure and industrious, I reached for the wrench. Then I decided a little googlin' was in order before I ended up opening the scalding radiator water onto my unclothed early morning nether-regions. Somehow one bit of googling led to another (weird how that happens) and the next thing you know I found myself reading an interesting attempt at self-awareness by way of gentrification on the New York Observer site.

The writer posed the question, is she "Destined to be Gentrified and Gentrifying"

I read it and found the perspective to be what I've come to expect from recent transplants to brooklyn, visions from a tunnel painted with bright colors.

the link is:

http://www.observer.com/2008/brooklyn-borough-2#comment-427135

I think it's worth reading, and discussing. Which is why after I read it I wrote in my two cents.

The type of experience written about in that article is a lot of why I felt compelled to make this blog and I was surprised to see the very type of experiences I have been witnessing for the last nine years detailed so thoroughly just a day after I decided to write this blog. (hang on a sec the pipes are a bangin' again)

 

Okay um back. (for those who care I'm going with the radiator off method starting now)

So yeh, Brooklyn is, as New York is (and apparently most of the major cities in the western world at least) in transition. I'm as interested in this as much as anyone and I think essential in this transition is the expression and discussion of our viewpoints so we may all live as best possible while appreciating the city we've inherited (one way or another) and the people who are our neighbors.

I'll let you read the original Observer posting and the response but just to give some context here's an excerpt form the Observer column;

On a recent chilly night, I was bundled up and on my way to Boerum Hill to have dinner at a friend's apartment. As I walked down Washington Avenue the B45 bus pulled up next to me, and I hesitated. “Which would be faster, the train or the bus?” I thought. Before I could make a decision, the bus doors had shuttered. Luckily, the light at Atlantic and Washington was still red and I approached the bus and knocked on the door. The driver, a middle-aged African-American man, refused to open the door, gesturing to the next stop, three street crossings away, even though his bus was still idling perfectly in front of a designated stop. It was 15 degrees outside and I'll admit it, I felt like the driver was sticking it to me for being white.

So just to summarize one point of my response to this writing; for any who don't know; A New York City bus driver will not pick up, if you are not at the bus stop. No matter how close you are, what color you are, or how cold it is.

"Brooklyn! Brooklyn! always funky fresh"