castle-fort-greene-0708.jpgGiven all the outpouring of nostalgia last week for the good old days of more crime and fewer flea markets, this excerpt from a recent Onion article titled Nation’s Gentrified Neighborhoods Threatened By Aristocratization provided some much needed comic relief:

Many of those affected by the ostentatious reshaping of their once purely upmarket neighborhoods said that they often wish for a return back to the privileged communities they helped to overdevelop just a few years ago. Among the first to feel the effects of the encroaching aristocracy have been local business owners like Fort Greene, Brooklyn resident Neil Getz.

“Around here, you used to be able to get a Fair-Trade latte and a chocolate-chip croissant for only eight bucks,” said Getz, who is planning to move back in with his parents after being forced out of the lease on his organic grocery store by a harpsichord purveyor. “Now it’s all tearooms and private salon gatherings catered with champagne and suckling pig. Who can afford that?”

“It’s just a terrible shame,” Getz continued. “There was this great little shop right across the street from my duplex apartment where I bought my baby daughter a Ramones onesie a couple of years ago, just after she was born. That whole block is an opera house now.”

Just as long as the aristos don’t tie their horse-drawn carriages up to the castle scaffolding, everything should be okay.
Nation’s Gentrified Neighborhoods Threatened By Aristocratization [Onion]


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  1. q4q- Funny how you can justify your prejudice when it is about “brownstoner yuppies”. Do you really think that you know anything about the lives of thousands of people? I’m sure that my story would not fit your perception. I’m not really trying to bust your chops too much. I am as guilty of judging haters like you. Do you really think that there aren’t any brownstoners who have relatives fighting this stupid war? How naive and disrespectful.

  2. “good old days of more crime and fewer flea markets” – LOL! My, my, my, aren’t we full of ourselves todays. :p Yes, everything has gotten better because of Y-O-U and people like Y-O-U. Smooches!

    The Pentagon should send a few hundred Brownstoner yuppies and a couple Chase ATM Branches to Iraq and Afghanistan to help gentrify those poor slobs….

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