PLG? Yeah you know me.

So last night Bighead and I saw and put in an application for an AMAZING one bedroom in Prospect Lefferts Gardens.

(Crosses fingers)

The PLG was not a place that either one of us had ever considered, but when our awesome real estate agent Mike drove us down Washington Avenue and stopped at a building in front of the Botanical Gardens and then opened the door to the largest one bedroom we’d ever seen it took all of twenty minutes (18 of which was trying to convince ourselves that it might not be the place) to decide.

(Crosses toes)

I’ve spent the morning reading about the area and stumbled across this article here. What’s really refreshing is that even though the article is full of shish-kabobbed crap the responses from the residents of PLG have really made me want to live there. What I like about the responses is the shared sense of neighborhood pride that the residents have. I also like the frank discussion about gentrification.

It’s interesting for me to think about because one of things that I like so much about the Slope is the opportunity to have some of those trappings of gentrification. And yet, while I’m put off by the idea of having to find another coffee shop (and being presented with the idea that there may only be one and that it may be super crowded all of the time) or a regular brunch hangout I’m kind of excited about what the lack of those things feels like.

Gentrification is such tricky business in a city that moves as fast as this one. I think, most specifically, that the word is misused. Not that gentrification (which is, as Merriam Webster defines it, a CLASS issue) isn’t happening. It’s that people seem to see gentrification solely in terms of race. In NYC when people say gentrificants they mean Whites. They assume that there is only one middle-class and that that class is solely made up of White people.

There are quite a few areas (in Brooklyn especially) where that simply is not the case but people really seem to forget that. So the fear and frustration about gentrification always seems to boil down to the anger about White people moving in to Brown neighborhoods and forcing the Brown people out. True gentrification is that Middle Class people are moving into poorer neighborhoods and forcing the poorer people out.

Where things get all fucked is the higher percentage of White people in the middle class. Frankly, fairer skin sticks out like a sore thumb in a brown neighborhood so it’s easier to see the White Middle Class as the only Middle Class.
Where things get especially fucked is the fact that I’m brown but Bighead is not. I gravitate to Middle Class areas (with a healthy does of White people) and those amenities because that is how I was raised, that is what I expect, feel entitled too and strive for.

So, I do not know that I won’t be a gentrificant when we move to PLG.
I like to think of myself as Middle Class but Experian would like for me to believe otherwise.
From what I can tell Prospect Lefferts Garden is already Middle Class (Brown Middle Class).

But what I do know is that some of the other neighbors, based solely upon my browness won’t perceive me as a gentrifcant threat in the same way that they might perceive Bighead because of her fairness (despite the fact that I am way more bougie than she will ever dream of being).

Especially if we get approved.

(Crosses legs)

So we’ll see. New neighborhood. New possibilities. New things to ponder.
Let’s just hope that we get accepted.

(Crosses everything possible)