Third Video!

My apologies to Valerie, who wasn’t supposed to turn out looking like an anonymous informant.  I’m still learning.  At least the sound worked perfectly this time!

Slideshow!

Here it is.  Thanks again to Ryan for the soundtrack.

(I’ll keep trying to embed it in the post but it doesn’t seem to be working at the moment.)

Fastly fastly

Maira Kalman’s latest piece in the Times expounds in a beautiful way on the point I made a few weeks ago about the unavailability of good food, depending on where you are.  It may or may not bring tears to your eyes.  *sniff*

Sunday Sounds

A foray into audio.  Yet another way to appreciate your surroundings.

Oh, the humanity!

Not that I’m not all for relatively innocuous (rather than distressing) news about Crown Heights in the Times, but it must be a slow day.

Competing coffee shops: definitely not an anti-status symbol.  (See below.)

Which CH?

Looking at these great photos on the Crown Heights Picture Blog, I’m reminded of how there’s so much more to this neighborhood that it sometimes seems, living where I do.  There’s definitely more than one Crown Heights, though accessible, I think, to differing degrees.  Just makes me love it more.

Anti-status symbols

I was intrigued to read on NostrandPark last week the idea that a preponderance of neighborhood bloggers is a sign of gentrification, along with an ever-increasing number of coffee shops and housing forums. 

I’d like to make a list of anti-gentrification holdouts:

The ubiquitous dollar store.  I submit as evidence the Indian-run joint on Franklin Ave and Lincoln Pl, a prime example of the nongentrified business, conceived and run as purely utilitarian.  This store is a miracle of well-used space and convenience, so densely packed as to present a landslide hazard.  Televisions are wedged in between maternity bras and melamine dishware.  Think of something that may or may not even exist: a hair product that doubles as caulking, perhaps?  The dollar store has it.  In more than one brand. 

Dog poo impunity.  (see previous post.)

Every single Chinese take-out place is equipped with (what I assume is) bullet-proof glass, those two over-lapping panes that force you to bend your arm through to exchange food for money.

The gentleman who stands on the corner of my street.  He’s as close to the Mayor of Crown Heights as I can imagine.  He’s a drinking man, to put it mildly, and not at all shy.  If there’s an ambulance or a gathering of police cars in the vicinity, chances are the Mayor is at the center of it, yelling.  He’s always surrounded by people in a similar state of , um, relaxation, and he’s taller than most of them, making him something of a leader in these parts.

Cops.  Everywhere.

Fall in the Nabe

All photos courtesy of my husband, Ryan Wilson.

Where’s the Produce?

While I was interviewing Carleen Houghton (of Bristen’s Eatery) last year, she mentioned, half in jest, that you know your neighborhood has arrived when Fresh Direct begins to deliver there. 

I would expand this to say that I wish the luxury of fresh greens was available to us mere residents.  That is, the one thing that consistently bothers me about living in Crown Heights is the fact that I have to walk pretty far to get really good quality vegetables and fruit. 

Now, it’s hardly a revelation that lower-income communities tend to have access to sub-par nutrition, which partly accounts for the weird irony that obesity tends to be a greater problem among America’s poor.  When I lived in Austin, Texas a few years ago, Fiesta was acknowledged as the cheap option–mostly targeting the immigrant and migrant population–where the lowest quality produce and most highly adulterated food products were sold.  Generally speaking (I know there are exceptions), I’m finding this to be true of Crown Heights’ groceries.  The selection in supermarket chains is noticeably small, and what produce there is tends to be a little sickly.  And, worst of all, it’s not really much cheaper than what’s sold in the gleaming half-mile of fruit&veg in the supermarkets of more affluent Brooklyn neighborhoods (where, by the way, there seem to be two healthfood stores to a block!). 

I don’t claim to know or understand the real forces behind this inequity, besides the the obvious facts of supply-and-demand and corporate investment in certain communities rather than others, but you don’t have to wish for less wrinkly zucchini to see that there’s something very wrong here.  Especially when you hear about residents of Queens joining the Park Slope Food Co-op because of the slim-pickins in their own communities! 

 

Second Film

Introducing Ferentz Lafargue, professor, blogger, activist and Crown Heights resident.