Changing Communities. Changing Traditions.
Edited by Keidra Chaney

As with religion, family, or cultural heritage, many of our traditions have been shaped and passed down from our communities. As neighborhoods and communities evolve over time, so do the traditions and rituals that define them. Many of the nine essays featured below deal with gentrification. Too many of us have seen our neighborhoods displaced and local landmarks like a cherished family-owned restaurant or corner grocery store closed down. But gentrification is not the only story of neighborhood transformation. New traditions, like neighborhood activism and cultural revitalization emerge when individuals organize in their communities to create change. The following personal essays and narratives are from writers, activists, and everyday people who have witnessed the ebb and flow of tradition in their own communities — and a few who are creating new traditions of their own.

Waiting for the Landlord’s Call

When I moved to the edge of the Ukrainian Village three years ago, I shopped for groceries at Edmar and Carniceria Jalisco. For a hot dog, I stopped at Odge’s; for a beer, I stopped at Cleos. For a greasy diner breakfast, I could go to Lorraine’s. There were more trees and fewer buildings, so my street felt both green and sunny.

These days, Carniceria Jalisco, with its butcher counter and produce aisle, has remodeled into the Rio Balsas convenience store; Edmar will be a Dominick’s in a year. I can still go to Odge’s and Cleos, but now we have a Subway. A new breakfast diner catering to less greasy tastes has opened. Several new condos have gone up, and their ground floors house insurance offices, realtors and dry cleaners. On my street, trees have been cut down for no reason we neighbors can think of. And when the city broke my old sidewalk to lay down a new one, they let big chunks crush my small garden. Now, my neighborhood feels both brighter and colder.

Sometimes I wonder when my landlord will call us to ask if we can meet him to talk about the rent. I’m waiting for him to raise it so it’s competitive with the rest of the Village. I’m waiting to see if any of my predominantly Latino neighbors will move out, which would spell an end to our annual Fourth of July family block party. I’m waiting to see who my new neighbors will be in the condo windows across the street from me. I’m waiting to see if the city will chop down any more trees. Someday I won’t be waiting any more; then where will I say I live?

- Amber Smock, Chicago

God’s Unchosen Cornerstore

As a child, Sundays were a ritual for my family. The three of us, Mother, sister and I, would go to church, which was then followed by a visit to our local green grocer. Being a 10-year-old who was more interested in Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation video clip, the idea of going to church didn’t excite me the way my mother would have liked. And it seemed that the only reason I would be dressed and ready for ten-thirty morning mass each week had less to do with genuflecting and lighting of candles to save our souls and more to do with the pilgrimage to Joe & Nancy’s Fruit & Vegetable Shop.

 Each week, Joe, Nancy, and their flock of hard working fruit sellers put on a mouth-watering array which put the lesson of temptation to shame. There were always plump strawberries, in gleaming enviro-plastic punnets ready for picking up and eating. Sometimes Joe would have washed and de-stemmed the berries so that eager shoppers could sample what was heaven on earth within deep red berry flesh.

 Soon enough puberty hit both my sister and me, which brought the weekly pilgrimage to the house of JC, as well as to Joe’s, to a screeching halt. Puberty may have hit the fruit shop too, as with the least ideal timing, the small business went under. It happened on what would have been any other regular Sunday, which saw the habitual act of shoulders disappearing beneath the blankets, each time my Mother would yell, “Wake up! You are going to be late for mass — again!” It was the Sunday which saw the three of us walk up to Joe & Nancy’s where we were met with striking red paint across white cardboard.

The sign read, ‘Because the bank refuses to help us, we can no longer help you. Thank you for your support over the years.’

 This put a stop to any redemption I was supposed to be involved in at the age of twelve, and soon enough video clips on Sunday were the only form of soul saving for a pre-pubescent teenager angry at the system which took away the Joe and Nancy’s of the world. It was so sudden than no amount of praying would have brought back the joy our ritual or the simple pleasures, which the fruit sellers brought a young girl of the Rhythm Nation.

- Saffron Lux, Belmore, Australia

Don’t Move. Organize!

I used to go to street fairs and poetry readings with my Aunt Dawn Alvarado, who lived in the Mission District for two decades. Now, I have to drive three hours to go visit her. I’m pretty sure that there are a lot of people here who would trade all the new cool cultural amenities for a simple dinner with their displaced friends.  And yet, as a lower-middle class single guy, the damage gentrification has done to me, personally, is relatively minor.

Is the glass half-empty or half-full? If the glass is full of rancid milk it doesn’t matter. The only good that has ever come from the displacement game is the good that organized communities have fought tooth and nail to make happen. Last November, I took a walk through New York’s Lower East Side with neighborhood activist Chino Garcia. Through the haze of a neighborhood turned into a playground there were tangible results of social struggle: many hundreds of units of permanently affordable housing, neighborhood centers, bike repair co-ops. Almost every single site where Chino’s community still lived or worked, he started off the story with “They were trying to kick the tenants out of there, but we organized and...”

- James Tracy, San Francisco

Bittersweet Brooklyn

Some changes are subtle. And those are the ones that seem to get to me the most when I walk around my beloved Fort Greene, Brooklyn. The patisserie that’s a block from my apartment. BAM Rose Cinemas showing independent films. And of course, there’s the new Starbucks. But the giveaway is the much greater number of well-groomed vanilla figures waiting for the C train at the Lafayette Avenue stop. I enjoy the fruits of the yuppie invasion, but deep down I can’t help resenting what brought them here.

Extreme overpricing of real estate in Manhattan has resulted in Brooklyn becoming the latest conquest for affluent but price-minded homebuyers and renters. Brownstones that could have been purchased in the 1970’s for the cost of a Honda Civic are now topping out for prices as much as $1.5 million. Rents have doubled, even tripled since when I first moved to New York ten years ago. At that time, Fort Greene was being “revitalized” from a drug and crime-torn afterthought to a mecca for African American intellectuals, artists, and professionals. Spike Lee, Chris Rock, and Erykah Badu all lived a stone’s throw from my studio apartment on Carlton Avenue. Fort Greene was the hip-yet-frugal place to live for young, free-thinking folks of all races. But what really made Fort Greene a home for me was not just the celebrities and the beautiful architecture and the open-mic poetry night at Brooklyn Moon Café. In Fort Greene, lawyers and bankers shared the same block with teachers and bus drivers. Single people and families. Young adults and the elderly. Different races, ethnicities, and economic stratas made Fort Greene what it was, a true melting pot.

The rising cost of living in Fort Greene has forced many of those deprived of six-figure incomes and rent-controlled leases out of the area. After losing my lease on my affordable studio, I also left the neighborhood for two years. I’m now back in Fort Greene, only because I’m sharing an apartment with two roommates. And I get my hot chocolate from Starbucks.

- Faith Pennick, NYC

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