On every single New York message board and every single blog, in every crowded car of the L train you hear it: that whiney, smug self-proclaimed artist complaining about Williamsburg.
It’s not just Williamsburg; it’s a product of massive fast paced gentrification that has spread around New York and oozed its way into Brooklyn. New Yorkers become loyal to a neighborhood in a vain, self-important way not unlike sophomores in high school thumbing the freshmen.
The complainers, the ones who put up the most fuss and noise, are the ones who moved in over the past five years. They are the finger-pointers, the screachers, the writers making fabulous claims of the value of their worth. They clog the internet with their shit. They react to rent hikes the way my parents’ generation reacted to the Vietnam war.
I have news for these so-called protesters:
Real estate is a mercurial enterprise. And neighborhoods in New York are all starting to bleed together — even, dare I say, humble Brooklyn. If you want to claim a bit of land as your own, a few streets to your people, I suggest you move to Wyoming and form a compound. Better yet, develop the poor land way upstate that young people are fleeing, leaving behind a wounded economy with little to show for it but acres of snow and blue collar contempt.
Unless you’re a Native American who has left the casino for a life of literary torment and low-brow astheticism, shut the fuck up about Williamsburg. Seriously. Shut the fuck up. It was never yours to begin with.
