A real estate website marketing expensive luxury condos in Fort Greene, Brooklyn boasts that former neighborhood residents “include household names like Malcolm X.” In fact Malcolm X never lived in Brooklyn, though he did love gentrification.
Fort Greene is one of the loveliest, and most expensive, neighborhoods in Brooklyn. It's the neighborhood that inspired Spike Lee's anti-gentrification rant earlier this year. Wealthy Fort Greene dog owners will not put up with homeless people, in the park.
One of the many reasons you will never, ever be able to own a brownstone in gentrifying Brooklyn: European, Israeli, and Australian firms are methodically buying up all the inventory.
Police in Fort Greene say two shootings and a stabbing earlier this week were the result of a cheap wings deal. Put down the buffalo sauce, and step away from the bucket.
There's nothing like a flea market to bring out the religious sectarianism in people. Last night, the Queen of All Saints Church in Fort Greene held a meeting — the third of its kind — to discuss how the Brooklyn Flea was destroying the community. Racked's Paul Caine was there (he wasn't supposed to be; see picture) and reports that the issues before the house included the pile-up of garbage, parking and bathroom headaches, and the strange fact that Jews never seem to get inconvenienced on their days of rest. Kathleen Walsh, one church parishioner said: "Sunday is a very special day for us, [and] we look forward to that day. It is a day that has been impeded on by the commercialism and hubbub of the flea... I muse aloud, would such an entity be allowed across from a synagogue?" And then they came for the antiquers, and I did not speak because I wasn't an antiquer. More seething Bronze Age hatred couched in Brooklyn gentrification worries after the jump:
Fort Greene is not gentrifying fast enough! At least that's the experience of cultural critic and dude about town Touré. The single-named author was living right across from a crackhouse on South Oxford street in Fort Greene, only a block away South Portland, Time Out New York's most desirable place to live in 2006. But even with a sushi place on the next corner, there was still a crack house across from his apartment. After a bout of black liberal guilt, Touré tried to get the po-po to clear the streets, but they ignored his calls. We don't judge Touré's conflicted anti-neighborhood crack house stance—since the advent of Google Maps, Mole Edition, we are all snitches now. [NYT]
Former Daily Show executive producer Ben Karlin seems like a decent fellow, right? He was responsible for some of the smartest comedy to air on American TV since basically ever, that Daily Show book was pretty funny, Deborah Solomon couldn't make him seem like as much of an asshole as she does most of her interviewees. And, as he said last August, when announcing his HBO production deal, he is a man of ideas. Hundreds of ideas. "At least initially, he said, he planned to revisit some of the half-formed notions in his notebook, which he likened to the aging Russian nuclear arsenal. “'Many of the weapons I have may still be good,'” he said. “'Others may not go off.'”" Apparently the idea which did go off was the one he borrowed from a guy in his building!
Details Magazine executive editor Greg Williams was caught by a Times reporter sipping Snow Mosquitos, twee blueberry/ mint/ vodka drinks, at a terrifying den of yuppiedom called The Hideout in the already teetering hood of Fort Greene, Brooklyn . Look how precious:
Keri Russell has officially taken up residence in Fort Greene, which is why you keep sending in stalker sightings from there. She drinks coffee! She does her laundry! She holds her baby in a sling! And so on and so forth. [Set Speed]
