At the moment, I'm reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (by Betty Smith). Yesterday, I came across this passage about my very own place of res, Bushwick Avenue:
"Bushwick Avenue was a high-toned boulevard of old Brooklyn. It was a wide, tree-shaded avenue and the houses were rich and impressively built of large granite blocks with long stone stoops. Here lived the big-time politicians, the monied brewery families, the well-to-do immigrants who had been able to come over first-class instead of steerage. They had taken their money... and settled in Brooklyn."
My question is: What the FUCK happened!?
Well, we know the answer: the lure of the suburbs was too much for all those "big-time politicians" and "monied brewery families" to resist. They all moved to McMansions out on Lawn Giland and left Bushwick to the working poor. I'm sure the building of those elevated JMZ tracks right along Broadway did not help either. I wonder what Smith would make of the "high-toned boulevard" if she were alive to see it today! Not much, is my guess.
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