Brooklyn Is Over
All of it. Over.
Well, I guess there are some parts of Brooklyn that are still breeding grounds for the bohemian creative class, but let’s see, it’s 4:15 p.m. Yeah, by the time you hop on the train and get down there, they’ll be over, too.
Queens is also over. There’s Astoria, which never was under enough to truly be over and Flushing, which never really stood a chance due to its popular thriving Chinatown district. Pre-existing prosperity disqualifies a trendy neighborhood. Unless, of course, the prosperity is unknown to the New York Times, in which case, it isn’t yet over. But it will be soon because the arc of the trendy universe bends towards everything going out of style.
Don’t even bring up the Bronx. It’s so over. Every time the D train deposits a fresh throng of Yankees fans at 161st St, the entire borough sinks deeper and deeper into a reality in which it will never not be over.
One could argue that Staten Island isn’t over. But that is more suggestive of its inability to really even begin. Plus, it’s difficult to sell a neighborhood as a subversive trading post of hipster ideologies when you can’t bike there, you know, because it’s an island.
There’s a spot uptown in Manhattan, along the Hudson that a few vagrants were gathering earlier this year to smoke pot and hula-hoop to the recorded sounds of people filing through junk mail, but a real estate developer stumbled upon the place and whoosh!– over. It should be noted that the real estate guy was off the clock at the time and really just sort of passed by on his bike, but that’s enough to warrant a place over these days. There is an intersection in Gramercy that technically no one has ever looked at because passersby are either too absorbed in their smartphones or they’re patients at the nearby New York Ear & Eye Infirmary and are, to be blunt, blind. That place has it, though by the nature of me writing about it, it’s now over, too.
Surely there are places that are just bubbling up now, fresh new spots on the globe, perhaps outside of NYC, like in Hawaii on the mountainside of young and active volcanoes. Those untouched parcels of land are prime real estate for the hungry artist to work and live somewhat untethered to a world full of norms and suits. But you know what they say about volcanoes and hot lava creating new and untouched land: media frenzy. And as soon as those news choppers catch site of the Kava cafes and cooling magma, well those volcanoes are sure as hot hell over.
The best bet for the young radical looking for an alternate landscape void of Starbucks and Kinkos is to stay home. Don’t connect with one another. Don’t meet up. God forbid you try to create something. No one is going to blow up your spot at your parent’s home. It’s safe there. Besides, it can only fit six or seven people max. Keep your dreams small and manageable and don’t move anywhere because as soon as you do, before the ink dries on your lease, it’s over. And unless you’re an artist working specifically in the medium of a post-burst bubble, it isn’t worth it. And if you are an artist working specifically in the medium of a post-burst bubble, give up. I’ve just written out your M.O. and surely a hundred more post-burst bubble artists will spring from my mention of it. It, much like this article, is now over, too.
