Yesterday I wrote about an excellent piece on gentrification, with a note that lucid analyses of the subject don’t appear all that often. Today, a counter-example, courtesy of Bushwick blog BushwickBK.
Barrett Brown (who, full disclosure, I used to edit at the A.V. Club) writes a weekly column there called Freelance Wasteland. The newest essay is titled “In Defense of ‘Hipsters’ and the Controversial Practice of Moving to a City Not of One’s Birth,” which makes its point sort of laboriously but basically asserts that native citizens of Bushwick shouldn’t criticize recent arrivals to the neighborhood, as they themselves are unable to fill the numerous creative/media jobs in the area that need filling and which “hipsters,” as it were, tend to fill. I’m not sure it’s his finest work:
There are also, contrary to popular belief, many such gigs available in this city. They are almost always awarded to those of us who came to such places as Bushwick from elsewhere, as the alternative would be to depend on the talent pool found in such as places as Bushwick. For some reason, the city’s editors, producers, and the like are disinclined to do such a thing, although this will certainly change if more outlets end up needing people to honk at parked school buses, throw old televisions out of windows, play shitty Top 40 dance music from parked cars at 600 decibels, scream at bodega clerks, avoid branch libraries, give money to Pentecostal preachers, buy t-shirts that say “Hi Hater” on one side and “Bye Hater” on the other and then wear those t-shirts in public, await the Jewish Messiah, worship the Christian Messiah, and play the lottery.
Anyone who’s ever moved to a dense urban area from somewhere more affluent and suburban has likely felt this, at least in passing. The break from one’s comfort zone leads to the indulgence of stereotypes that liberal-arts college degrees are supposed to get rid of. But stereotypes aren’t truths in disguise—they’re the opposite—and it’s lazy to present them that way. Not that the comment section is any better:
Brooklyn in another year or two will be completely overrun with pasty-faced, talentless hacks like yourself and turned completely into a faux Portland. Only natives can see how tragic that would be.
I should mention at this point that my favorite Scorcese film is Gangs Of New York.
