Yuppie Slum, NY

According to Wikipedia is:

A yuppie slum refers to any neighborhood that is largely populated by a young well-off crowd, but often has other connotations of gentrification and rising rental and dining costs in a previously low-rent neighborhood.

This is where I live. This is where I continuously seem to move to. Our last neighborhood on 5th Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn was the typical low-rent neighborhood when we bought our small studio apartment. However, by the time we left we couldn't afford to eat in any of the hip new restaurants, or to shop in any of the charming little boutiques. We sold our 340 sq. foot aspartment for 4 times what we paid for it only 4 years earlier. To a yuppie.

This is crazy.

I don't know where the people went who were living there when we first moved in. The low-income families with multiple children. The Crack dealers who hung out at the corner Bodega. I realized they were displaced. But to where?

So we took out little windfall and bought a new, larger apartment in another low-rent neighborhood. This one riddled with store front chicken churches and boarded up buildings. The little park across the street has been lovingly referred to as the Bum Motel in honor of the many folks who sleep on the park benches from time to time.

Now they put up a luxury condo building across the street.

Ratner is going to build 17 60-story buildings with luxury condos and offices. Frank Ghery is designing the new Nets NBA stadium. In our neighborhood.

Bizarre.

Now they tell us this apartment can easily sell for 3 times what we paid for it 3 years ago.

Where did all of the low-rent people go this time? Where will we go when our windfall can no longer buy us a new place in the next closest low-rent neighborhood? To CT? Maybe. NJ? Too expensive. Ditto Long Island and Westchester.

Who are these Yuppies that are creating all of these Yuppie Slums in Brooklyn?

At first I thought we might be turning into Yuppies, but then I realized that the Yuppies are actually driving us out of our neighborhoods with their bistros and over-priced martini bars (or wine bars, which are actually much more trendy these days). So I have safely come to the conclusion that we are not Yuppies. Which makes me feel much better because for a few minutes there I was thinking I was some sort of sellout.

Deanne didn't write this, but I am logged into her blog as her, so it says I am Deanne. Which I assure you, I am not. I am Nancy. The big one.