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New York mag has a provocative article about how Red Hook’s failed to live up to the substantial hype pegging it as Brooklyn’s next great frontier for gentrification. (Evidence of that failure, according to the article, includes the closure of the Pioneer bar, bistro 360 and the Hook, as well as the claim that real estate values appear to have peaked.) Red Hook’s used as a springboard for a deeper examination of how many of us have come to assume that there’s always going to be another neighborhood ripe for transformation:

In some ways, Red Hook was a Realtor’s dream, boasting Manhattan views, a salty maritime history (working piers! Brawling sailors!), and a brochure-ready name, all of which would play perfectly on some theoretical condo prospectus. Seeking waterfront living with a dusting of urban grit? Then drop your anchor in Red Hook! More crucially, Red Hook was simply next. Because if we’ve learned anything in the last twenty years of gentrification in New York, it’s that there will always be a next.

Do you really think Red Hook’s time has come and gone or is it just taking a breather?
The Embers of Gentrification [New York]
Photo by Betty Blade


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  1. your “brownstone owners don’t ride subways” is absurd.

    totally absurd.

    some of you are so out of touch with reality, it’s scary.

    get out and take a look at something other than your tv once in a while.

  2. when I moved to NYC some years ago I was told by a savvy friend that the term “middle class” was meaningless in the city. It meant everything and nothing. There are only two classes of people in the city, she said, those who ride in the subways and those who do not.

  3. Firstly, Alma is NOT in Red Hook. Red Hook does not begin until Hamilton Avenue. All the streets on Columbia leading up to that are considered Carroll Gardens.

    Second: Red Hook real estate is a terrible investment simply because of the flooding issue, which will only get worse over time.

    I happen to love Red Hook, but given all it’s problems it’s never going to be “the next big thing.”

    And stop calling Carroll Gardens Red Hook…

  4. Where are all these rich brownstoners who take the subway? Most days on the trains I don’t see anyone that can afford a new winter coat let alone a brownstone.
    Is this a NYC myth? The subway-taking gentrifiers?
    Have you been on the subway on the weekends?
    Tourists and poor folks is about what you see. Where are all the rich gentrifiers who require mass transit? Or is it for their nannies and housekeepers?

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