I’m fighting tooth and nail to stay, however my girl and roommates are quite ready to throw in the towel. I won’t lie, it has brought a whole lot that I like; there are more and more enjoyable cafes & restaurants, the quality of groceries available has improved, and it is cleaner and safer each day. My thing is that if I suffered through the crack vials then I insist on enjoying the good times. Also if those of us who have made it into the professional class just take off it will be that much easier for the new residents to trample all over the natives if things ever get heated.

Amauri, how does it feel to live in WaHi? I caught wind of that abbreviation last year, and my stomach almost literally fell to the floor. It’s gross, and there’s no alibi for that kind of dumb renaming. It was one thing for Wall St. to hand out these fat bonuses to yuppies, and it’s quite another when it comes at the expense of “the people.”

bonnie, I think I know the place you’re talking about, and I agree. It’s getting worse than Starbucks, even, and that’s a hard thing to say.

MDC, I saw that happening when Bill came in, but even with that movement, Harlem still hasn’t been completely transformed the way the LES has, or the Upper East Side has for that matter, and that is a hat tip to the people exerting their will upon that neighborhood. They don’t want Harlem to become the next Seneca Village.

mzvirgo, check the blogroll under “Save New York City”. You’re definitely not alone.

I was raised in N.Y., (Queens) so I am really saddened to see what’s going on. I have been reading about the gentrification going on in Harlem. A lot of people are saying the Bill Clinton choosing Harlem for his office started a second wave of gentrification there.

The interesting thing is that in Harlem many of the new people are Black. It appears that what used to be an issue of race has become more about economics.

With that said the result is the same. People are displaced. Where do they go?

Another interesting case of gentrification happened in the late 90’s in Columbus, Ohio. There, it was gay White men moving into a historically Black area. The city even got involved by declaring the neighborhood a historic zone. This meant that the homes had to meet a certain standard. Of course many of the poor Black residents could not afford to do the work to their homes to satisfy the strict historic codes. So as you can guess they were fined and many eventually lost homes that had been in their families for generations.

Only when people in these areas that are ripe for gentrification hold their Politicians accountable will this process become more humane.

The replacement has just opened.

Guess what, it’s a shiny trendy deli. With glass cases. Pastries. Panini. JUST LIKE TEN OTHER FRICKIN’ TRENDY DELIS IN THE ADJACENT 5 FRICKIN’ BLOCKS.

I miss that pernil…

Even for someone knee-deep in finance it is difficult to tell where things are going economically, but guys like you and me know what NYC looks like when Wall Street & Midtown stop handing out fat bonuses or building fancy new HQ towers. It will be interesting to see if the trend reverses once crime & grime return, but somehow I doubt it.

AAPP, maybe you can help a little with the project we discussed on the Afrospear.

pre_k, that’s as abstract as it gets. that’s the problem in general. there’s no sense of equity.

ensayn, i’d like to hear more about SoCal and ATL. I can always ask around, but it just intrigues me …