Ethnographic Profile of a North Brooklyn Neighborhood. Pictures by Jessica Lawson
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Vacant lots. Family neighborhood. Drugs. Hipster haven. Blight. Real estate opportunity. Depending to whom one talks, this north Brooklyn neighborhood of Bushwick conjures up a farrago of images.
Settled by the Dutch in the seventeenth-century as a farming community, Bushwick by the late 1800s was a residential and industrial area with over 14 breweries in a 14-block area. Several mansions erected by beer tycoons on Bushwick Avenue attest to the prosperity of this era.
What had become a middle class enclave of two- and three-family homes built up by waves of German and later Italian immigrants, Bushwick started a steady decline in the mid 1960s. In questionable housing practices similar to today’s predatory lending scandal, real estate speculators bought homes from Bushwick residents for an average of $8,000 apiece, used fraudulent appraisals, and through a federal mortgage program sold them to low income blacks and Puerto Ricans at prices they couldn’t afford, on average about $20,000 per home.
Many homeowners defaulted, leaving the properties abandoned. By 1972 it was estimated that 500 Bushwick homes lay empty due to the faulty loan program; more were abandoned as local property values became deeply depressed and buyers feared investing in run-down Bushwick.
Perhaps Bushwick became notoriously famous in the wake of the massive riot that erupted on the evening of July 13, 1977 during a citywide blackout. Residents looted the Broadway shopping district, grabbing anything they could, from consumer goods to iron gates. By the next day, 134 stores had been looted and 44 set ablaze. The fires spread to residential buildings. After the riot, Bushwick was never the same. A third of its businesses were shuttered, 20 percent of its housing stock lost and many residents fled.
Throughout the 80s and early 90s Bushwick was notorious as a hotbed of drugs and crime. Knickerbocker Avenue was one of the city’s centers for heroin and crack. Prostitutes abounded in the blocks around today’s Maria Hernandez Park. Bushwick had one of the highest murder rates in Brooklyn with 77 murders in 1990.
Meanwhile, Puerto Ricans, and later immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Mexico tried and continue to try to eke out an existence. Among the vacant lots and drugs, low income families raise children the best they can in sometimes-derelict housing. Nevertheless, Lourdes Guillen, a 22-year-old City College student, has fond memories of growing up in Bushwick in what she described as “such a family neighborhood.”
She recalled her apartment on Wilson Avenue, which she shared with her mother, as “really rinky dink.” A two-bedroom railroad apartment, typical of Bushwick housing stock, it only had windows in the front and back rooms and was freezing in the winters and sweltering in the summer. As a child, Guillen, of Puerto Rican descent, would play with her cousins who lived down the block, in an empty parking lot next to her apartment.
Dion Millington: “I always felt safe when I was a little girl."
Said Dion Millington, 25, a lifelong resident: “I always felt safe when I was a little girl. My neighborhood, everyone were the children’s keepers.” Millington grew up in several different apartment buildings surrounding what used to be Bushwick High School. Despite her rosy perspective on growing up in the neighborhood, she experienced some pretty terrifying incidents.
“At PS 106 around lunchtime, all the kids were outside, it was a nice day. And then someone decided to shoot up the yard. I remember having to wear a tissue box because I lost my shoe running for my life,” she said. Franco, a friend from elementary school, was shot and killed while playing video games with his friend. Apparently the doors all looked the same in the apartment building and the perpetrator mistakenly shot through the wrong unit, killing 9-year-old Franco and wounding the friend. Dion believes it was “definitely” drug-related.
Sheila Rodriguez, 28, grew up in a railroad apartment on Bleecker Street between Irving and Knickerbocker Avenues. “We were one of the first Dominican families in the building, probably the block,” she said. “Everyone knew everyone else’s business – who has a drug habit, who has an ACS case. Neighbors were close knit.”
She recalled the corner of Irving and Bleecker where something was always going down. “My mom had a window that faced the street and she saw a lot of stuff – muggings, shootings, stabbings. A fight would always end up on that corner.”
She said her first day of school at IS 291 was one of the scariest days of her life. For the first time, she was venturing out of the safety zone of her block and going to school in a different area with people she didn’t know. She described the atmosphere as “violent” and said there were “always people looking to fight, but I had the grace not to fall into that.”
She credits her mother with instilling a strong set of values in her and for being strict with her and her siblings. Rarely did they leave their block or stoop. “I didn’t feel unsafe,” she said. “Mom was really attentive of us and didn’t give us a chance to feel in danger. I was 15 years old, and she was forcing me to come inside, it was kind of embarrassing.”
Rodriguez, who manages a Starbucks in Soho, recently moved into a two-bedroom apartment on Decatur Street and Irving Avenue where she lives alone with her three-year-old daughter. She searched for months to find a suitable and affordable apartment. Bushwick has the highest incidence of serious housing code violations in the city. “I was looking at $1,500 a month apartments that were smelling of piss and had bottles on the floor,” she said.
"Sometimes touted as the next Williamsburg, Bushwick is a continual obsession of publications such as the New York Times, New York Magazine, and blogs like Gawker."
In the last several years, Bushwick has been going through a revival of sorts. Artists, students, and other creative-types who have been priced out of neighboring hipster Mecca Williamsburg have flocked to Bushwick’s north side. Numerous galleries, coffee shops, vintage clothing stores, bars, restaurants, and DIY venues have sprung up around the Morgan and Jefferson L-train stops. Bushwick now has a “cool-factor” that is registered by the city’s hip. Sometimes touted as the next Williamsburg, Bushwick is a continual obsession of publications such as the New York Times, New York Magazine, and blogs like Gawker.
While incredibly affordable for Manhattan and even Williamsburg standards, rents are increasingly out of reach for many of the neighborhood’s long-time, low-income residents. According to a study released by the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, Bushwick’s median rent in 2007 was $795. Finding an apartment close to that median has now become impossible. A troll through Craigslist apartment rentals reveals two-bedrooms going from $1,100 a month to over $2,000.
This deeply worries Nadine Whitted, the District Manager of Bushwick’s Community Board 4. “Most of the housing that is being developed is expensive and low-income people can’t afford it,” she said in a telephone interview. “In the last five years, there’s no more vacant lots. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but they’re being filled with homes that people can’t afford. There’s often no subsidies on them and landlords can charge whatever they want.”
She hoped that if Bushwick continues to experience a boom in housing “then at least the type of housing that will come our way will be affordable to all people,” she said. She suggested that Bushwick would benefit from by making affordable housing available using a three-tiered income model based on Area Median Income or AMI.
A walk down Knickerbocker Avenue on a Saturday afternoon reveals a bustling shopping district. Maria Hernandez Park, formerly a haven of drugs, was named after a community activist who stood up to drug dealers and was subsequently shot and killed in her apartment on Starr Street. Now, children frolic and play families stroll and picnic and the park is even home to a Greenmarket. New bars and restaurants are underway in surrounding blocks. The newest addition on Troutman Street, Tandem, opened up the third week of April. New residents continue to flock to this increasingly attractive neighborhood.
Patrick Pope, 24, moved to Bushwick in December 2007, from North Carolina. “I liked that there were so many families here because it seemed safe,” he said. “Everybody smiles and waves. I sometimes feel like an asshole because I didn’t wave first. People are nicer than me!” Indeed, Bushwick is a much safer neighborhood than it was in the past. Violent crimes and felonies were down almost 75 percent in 2008 compared to 1990 stats.
Chris Person, a 23-year-old School of Visual Arts graduate, moved to Dekalb Avenue one year ago. He lives in a two-bedroom new construction and splits the $1,300 monthly rent. He appreciates Bushwick, he said, for its affordability, attractive women and surfeit of parties. Asked his feelings on gentrification, Person said, “Morally ambiguous and an inevitability.”
He said the problem was not with gentrification itself, but more of a reflection of the existing social system. “There is a distinct problem with the way affordable housing is underfunded and how building projects never solve problems. There will always be ‘douchebags’ and 20s living on the fringe and raising the rent.”
Not all long-time residents are opposed to gentrification either. The many changes that have taken place in her neighborhood have pleased Dion Millington. She left Bushwick in 2005 to live in Florida. Millington, of Haitian descent, was in a bit of shock to see white faces in her neighborhood after she returned in 2008. “When I came back and I’m getting off the train, and it’s like midnight, I’m seeing all these new faces. I’m like, did I miss something? Has Brooklyn become like this new hip, chic place? I love the fact that there are new people coming in. It’s nice to see other people come in and show that it’s okay and cool to be different,” she said.
For Rodriguez, a single-mother raising her daughter with the help of her family, Bushwick still has a long ways to go. She noted that the area around Myrtle Avenue remains underdeveloped, and shopping and culinary options are limited. She still has to go to Manhattan to take her daughter to educational and cultural activities. “I would like to see my community cater to children. The community centers that are present have nothing – no play dates, activities for toddlers. I would like to see more arts accessible to everyone, music, workshops, community outreach for the youth and more education,” she said.
With the country in the midst of an economic recession and the real estate market in the city at a standstill, no one is quite sure what the future of Bushwick holds. The rather hastily built condominiums that have gone up in the last couple years sit empty. Bushwick-as-the-next-Williamsburg has lost much of its steam. The never-ending concern of gentrification will undoubtedly rage on, but one thing is for certain, Bushwick has come a long way.
