The Cicada Apocalypse!: or 5 Ways Brooklyn Has Changed In the Last 17 Years
Back in 1996, the news coming out of Brooklyn (at least as reported by the New York Times) was markedly different than the news coming out today. For one thing, there’s just more of it now. That doesn’t mean more things are happening, just that Brooklyn has entered the public consciousness and record much more. As BLYNR shows, the percentage of Times that mentioned Brooklyn went up from 3.1% in 1996 to 4.7% in 2012. Williamsburg alone went from having 117 mentions to 538. Those cicadas are going to be totally shocked at what’s happened to Williamsburg. I mean, Max Fish is moving to Williamsburg. Back in 1996, that place defined the Lower East Side.
And we’re all familiar by now with the international obsession with all things Brooklyn. Everywhere from France to Sweden to Russia wants a slice of the Brooklyn pie. But lest the cicadas think that hipster gentrifiers only arrived on Brooklyn’s shores in the 21st century, let me point them to an article in the Times from 1996, an article about a family who bought a home in Prospect Heights (Vanderbilt and Bergen) for only $75,000 (!). The couple who bought the house were artists that dabbled in real estate and the viola, who undertook the huge renovation project of a $75,000 townhouse because they saw a future in their new neighborhood. So maybe you can’t buy anything in Brooklyn for 5 figures anymore, and maybe the world’s perception of Brooklyn (and the Times’ perception) has changed dramatically in the last 17 years, but really, it’s not so much like there’s been the kind of crazy, sudden break from the past that many people believe gentrification caused. Much of the development of Brooklyn has been slow and organic, and much of it continues to progress in the same way that it always has. It will, without a doubt, be fascinating to look back in another 17 years. Although, if $1.4 million for a town house in Red Hook ever seems like much of a deal, I think I might burrow underground for a while myself.
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