Williamsburg is a neighborhood in Brooklyn that has overcome its humble, fairly anonymous beginnings  and looms large in my memory. Like an old friend I've fallen out of touch with, it was once an intriguing and somewhat hidden gem that is now barely recognizable. Yes, there are little pockets of real estate here and there that achieve a kind of transcendent Brooklyn cool, but all around these moments are places that make me want to roll my eyes all the way back  in my head. It is the prototypical gentrification story, which makes talking about it kind of boring but also inevitable. Every neighborhood in the world has undergone the outlines of the same transformation that happened there but this being New York City it's played itself out in bold capital letters with an exclamation mark. The pattern is now really clear and has been perfected to a dark art form by those who profit off it. Generally the story goes like this: a lower-middle class or working class neighborhood going about its business starts getting targeted by adventurous and/or poor students and assorted young people for its cheap rent. The influx helps local businesses and raises the rents a little and  then maybe even a few brave souls open their own businesses there. The place starts getting called "cool" and "hip" by those who are neither. Then people who are a little less cool and a little less poor want in on it and are willing to pay above market price for a crappy little apartment. Then the investment bankers and developers look up from counting their money and hear the siren song of exploitative profit...then all hell breaks loose. Condos go up, national chains move in and local businesses and the poor trailblazing folks who started it all (and will never tire of telling you how things used to be) are pushed to the outer boroughs to be replaced by cleaner, richer and (usually) whiter versions of themselves doing jobs that gets progressively squarer and more abstract. 

That's about the size of it. But it happened with such violence in Williamsburgh, it still amazes me every time I confront the aftermath. Which isn't often. Everyone's timeline for when a place was cool is different. Mine stretches back to the early part of the millennium and lasts about a decade before I lost touch with what was happening. (Older folks and New York natives will tell stories of the good "bad" old days when coke was sold openly in bars, cops were on the take and the mob ruled freely like an old Scorsese movie, reveling in the fact that their timeline contained such a dramatic narrative arc.)

Consider the state of pharmacies. When I was in the neighborhood there was one major drugstore - a glorified mom-and-pop operation that had a limited selection and limited hours. We all knew it was doomed even before the huge Duane Reade opened up across the street or the Walgreens on the ground floor of one of the huge towering condos that made the place feel like Miami Beach. Of course good services are important and yes, an Apple store on the main drag soon became a no-brainer, but the things it replaced — an electronics repair shop that looked like it belonged in a small California surf town with a ping png table dominating the space — felt like a losing bargain. Gradually all the imperfections of the area were smoothed out like it had gotten a round of botox. The food choices improved dramatically and there was now a Gucci store, rooftop bars and endless hordes of people marching down Bedford Avenue I didn't want to have anything to do with.

I remember the first time I saw the neighborhood. I visited a second-hand clothing store and there was still a kind of underdeveloped feel to the place. There were big gaps between interesting destinations and large spaces between the people walking around.  It was fairly nondescript standard-issue Brooklyn blocks of bodegas and low-key restaurants. And lots of sky. Old Latino men in wife beaters loitered outside apartment buildings with signs that warned that they were drug-free zones. But it felt like something was brewing for sure. It became the neighborhood where I rented my first apartment shared with three other strivers in a loft space with recently constructed walls. The racket made by the elevated subways nearby reminded me of old film noir movies when elevated trains roared past the windows of desperate characters. Within a few years I began seeing more frat boys and preppy girls who seemed to be able to afford to live in the city without working a terrible job. Then there was the day a developer cornered me coming out of our building saying that if I was willing to move out he'd pay me a bonus... Gradually me and everyone I knew got priced out or got sick of the vibe. I remember the day a friend's book shop  got displaced by a high-end cheese shop and I helped her move her entire inventory into a moving truck. An era ended and was carted away. After I moved away it still seemed like the center of some sort of universe for a few more years until features started appearing in things like Vogue and it obviously was getting mentioned in all the travel guide books. Then the locus of cool shifted to other neighborhoods and it became a place for people who got the news later than everyone else. The last time I went there was still the remnants of what I remembered. Street vendors and flamboyant weirdos provided the local colour on Bedford Avenue. Venerable old businesses clung on amid the gloss of foodie spots and high-end boutiques. Seeking refuge inside a new bookstore I had a nice chat with a sales clerk about my purchase and we bonded over a shared love for graphic artist Daniel Clowes. For a second there it felt like old times...