We haven’t lived here so long that we can claim to have watched that many neighborhoods crest the tide of gentrification, rising our caucasian entitlement boat right along with it, but we’ve been here enough to feel frustrated that we didn’t strike decisively in this place or that. It’s a downside to being a fan of navigating the city on foot as both a practical matter and as a form of entertainment. Of course, we forget that this doesn’t signal any inherent ineptitude, only that we have always lacked the familial largess that has sowed the seeds of so many ‘Lives’ that will cause fleeting anger for the interminable future.
But, in a victory for soiling precious neighborhoods of the future, or only signalling that the next round of gentrification will be truly suburban, the Ikea Red Hook plan got a little boost (though the extent won’t be known for several weeks, when the final vote occurs) yesterday at its planning hearing, reports the Daily News. It took some free shirts and bus rides to get the vote out, but they managed a roomful of supporters. Given that it will bring jobs and cheap, poorly manufactured (but attractive) furniture to what is still ostensibly a working class neighborhood (as well as being reasonably accessible to large swaths of Brooklyn that truly are), you can see why it upsets some people, particularly those who fear it will obviate the opening of a West Elm. But the opposition may have a point about the surface parking; given that hundreds of millions of dollars is being pursued to ferret out the last vestiges of parking on the Hudson River, isn’t letting Ikea have the cheap way out (which is par for the course for them) a little short-sighted?
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Ikean’t wait.
We haven’t lived here so long that we can claim to have watched that many neighborhoods crest the tide of gentrification, rising our caucasian entitlement boat right along with it, but we’ve been here enough to feel frustrated that we didn’t strike decisively in this place or that. It’s a downside to being a fan of navigating the city on foot as both a practical matter and as a form of entertainment. Of course, we forget that this doesn’t signal any inherent ineptitude, only that we have always lacked the familial largess that has sowed the seeds of so many ‘Lives’ that will cause fleeting anger for the interminable future.
But, in a victory for soiling precious neighborhoods of the future, or only signalling that the next round of gentrification will be truly suburban, the Ikea Red Hook plan got a little boost (though the extent won’t be known for several weeks, when the final vote occurs) yesterday at its planning hearing, reports the Daily News. It took some free shirts and bus rides to get the vote out, but they managed a roomful of supporters. Given that it will bring jobs and cheap, poorly manufactured (but attractive) furniture to what is still ostensibly a working class neighborhood (as well as being reasonably accessible to large swaths of Brooklyn that truly are), you can see why it upsets some people, particularly those who fear it will obviate the opening of a West Elm. But the opposition may have a point about the surface parking; given that hundreds of millions of dollars is being pursued to ferret out the last vestiges of parking on the Hudson River, isn’t letting Ikea have the cheap way out (which is par for the course for them) a little short-sighted?