What's it Like in Crown Heights?
That’s what Brooklyn Based has been asking, and two Crown Heights residents—a relative long-timer and a newcomer—are answering. The 12-year resident pays $864.72 for a fourth-floor walk-up, likes the transportation options and the West Indian Day Parade, and doesn’t like the violence, not surprisingly. Still she feels safe. The three-year resident moved to a one-bedroom…
That’s what Brooklyn Based has been asking, and two Crown Heights residents—a relative long-timer and a newcomer—are answering. The 12-year resident pays $864.72 for a fourth-floor walk-up, likes the transportation options and the West Indian Day Parade, and doesn’t like the violence, not surprisingly. Still she feels safe. The three-year resident moved to a one-bedroom for $1,100. She finds the lack of big box commerce—dry cleaners and fruit stands but few big chains—a reprieve from mall-ized Manhattan, and like the longtime resident, appreciates the new upscale restaurants moving in. But she makes a point: new residents, and the businesses that accommodate them, seem to have little to do with longtime residents. Crown Heights has long been known as a neighborhood of duality, with African-Americans and Orthodox Jews sometimes in conflict, sometimes in harmony, but now there seems to be another Crown Heights emerging. Thoughts?
Photo by sahadeva.
That’s my point bxgrl, you never said anyone was entitled, but people on this site are preoccupied with the concept, so everyone has to be aware of the implications of statements like those you made regarding blacks owning the neighborhood since the dawn of time. Sarcasm, humor, hyberbole don’t go down well on blogs, hence the reaction of jingle mail.
1842- lots of people on this site love to put words in people’s mouths and since I already tried explaining, as did you and MM, the problem is jinglemail’s. But I ask you to point out where I made any reference to entitlement- no where. I also wrote about the good things going on, the fact that I like the mix of old and new, and nowhere is there anything that smacks of “entitlement.” I get really tired of posters doing interpretations based on their own biases or neuroses on brownstoner. It sucks.
And jinglemail I’m calling you on your statement about facts. Just because you made a mistake and can’t gracefully see how to get out of it, don’t make it my problem. Once again, because you seem to be thick as a brick, is that this group of long time black homeowners has been largely ignored in discussions of crown heights. And if you can’t understand the concept of humor or being facetious to make a point I grieve for you. You claim to be so in love with accuracy- not doing a good job of it today are ya? Drop it- you’ve dug enough of a hole for yourself.
My street in Crown Heights is among the cleanest I’ve lived on in Brooklyn, and I’ve lived in Park Slope and Prospect Heights. Around 80% of the homeowners on my block sweep our sidewalks daily, something that rarely happened when I lived in the Slope.
MM – it may know no nationality but it certain knows cultures. There is a lot of variation in different cultures approach, or even recognition, of litter. We should make it part of NYC culture.
I know what you mean about fear of reprisal, and sometimes I have challenged people and other times I have not. I once had a gun pulled on me for taking a guy to task about not cleaning up his dog’s poop. When I was younger and more impetuous I did once throw a bunch of MacDonalds garbage back into the car of some guy who had had just defenestrated it. He was too astounded to react.
“Arent you forgetting the huge West Indian population that lives there too?”
The majority of West Indians in this country would qualify as African American. The first wave of West Indian immigrants to NYC came at about the time of the Harlem Renaissance. Montrose is correct that this group assimilated into the larger African American community. However, Bxgl is also correct. I have several African American relatives who owned homes in Crown Heights since the 1800’s. My grandparents first home was in Crown Heights and they purchased it in 1938. My uncle’s wife actually grew up in Crown Heights as did her mother and her parents before her going back to the late 1700’s as far as they can trace. It was called the Weeksville community and its borders were much larger than the current Weeksville site on Hunterfly Road.
The newest and biggest wave of West Indian immigrants didn’t come to this country until after the passage of the Civil Rights Act which also opened immigration to groups who were previously restricted. This second wave of immigrants maintains much closer ties with their homelands and do display a cultural pride not displayed by the earlier immigrants but this is the case with many recent arrivals to the U.S. Technology makes it easy to keep in touch with those back home and air travel makes it possible to visit.
MM – you came from a good family. Many in poor brooklyn neighborhoods don’t. There is definitely more litter in our transitioning hoods than other more well to do environs, no doubt. It ain’t all roses all the time. Some places do have more problems than others.
In any event, these neighborhoods will continue to improve, I think, and move back to being what they’ve been for most of their existence, upper class neighborhoods, but hopefully racially mixed.
MM- I neglected to mention that pterodactyls once lived in the house across the street and only moved when the T.Rexes moved in. I think about the same time Raquel Welch showed up in that outfit made of mammoth skins and taught us how to make fire.
Not thrilled with that either, bmfesq, but it certainly is not confined to Crown Heights, or Nostrand Ave. I followed a well dressed, white guy in midtown Manhattan who opened a brown paper bag with chips, a soda and a napkin, and watched him drop them all, one at a time, as he finished with them, while walking down the street.
General piggery and bad “fetchin’ up” knows no race, age or nationality. I wish it were different. If everyone had been raised by my mother, the streets would be shining like glass. We would never had had the cojones to drop litter on the street. Public intolerance of this would help stop this, but unfortunately, fear of reprisal wins the day, and I am as chicken as everyone else, sad to say.
MM. i don’t dispute that CH has long-standing black ownership and solid community involvement. i think that is great. bxgirl just sounds like a revisionist and i believe in being historically accurate. people pay big bucks to live in former lower east side tenements today. i think that is great too, but i still know what those buildings were originally built for and i wouldn’t try to say that hipsters have been living there since the dawn of time. but she’s never one to let actual facts get in her way. when someone calls her on it, she can just say she was joking.