The Grocery Report

My friend Richard Rodriguez sent this to me last night; it's an entry from his amazing blog entitled Everyone's In Love With You. He has a post called Food Corp that details the types and numbers of grocery vendors in Bed Stuy, from Bodegas to Organic Markets. It's amazing how those of us that live in "urban" which translates into "black and latino" neighborhoods in this city have to leave our neighborhoods to get good, healthy, food. Let me start the body of this post by stating that I am for the most part a humanist who would eventually love to live in a world where the construct of race is irrelevant. We are not there yet.

It's not until neighborhood's gentrify that organic and green markets start coming into a community. Gentrification is an interesting word and topic because black and latino neighborhoods often go through a class gentrification before a racial one. Young black and latino recent college graduates and artists usually move into these neighborhoods because the rent in cheaper and they feel more comfortable (somethimes) around their own. They take it upon themselves to open up coffee shops, bookstores, bars, and small restaurants in order to have places where they and their peers can meet. Once the word gets out more recent college grads and artists move in and eventually the neighborhood that was once a hardcore hood becomes a new young vibrant middle class black scene. That was Ft. Greene in the 90's when it was at it's height, that scene spawned Saul Williams, Erykah Badu, Mos Def and a host of others. There was some tension between the classes but at the end of the day it was all black folks so there was at least an understanding kind of like cousins who went seperate ways but still love eachother. So you have it; a community full of negros that are smart, working, and culturally open, white folks love these negros. Stage two, culturally astute white folks start to pioneer the neighborhood and easily blend in because they are usually very similar in sensibilty to the black kids that live there. They are politically left and have taken African dance classes and minored African American studies; they have huge jazz cellections; they've read Morrison, Fanon, and Bell and listen to Fela and Omar, so they are cool. And they are cool and the culture of the neighborhood thrives and black college grads from all around the country start moving in; even the really conservative corny one's and they bring with them good incomes and the young black entrepreneurs are able to open juice bars and more coffee shops and bars to service them.

It's awesome until stage three happens. Somehow the neighborhood gets features in Time Out New York as one of the hottest neighborhoods in the city. Well...that's it; they start moving in. And when I say they I mean "regular" white folks; and they don't mean any harm, they want to be around the "good" blacks in this funky little neighborhood that was created out of a former ghetto. "I live in Ft Greene" "I live in Red Hook" it's cool to say when you are originally from IOWA. All it takes is a few pioneers from "them" and within a year the neighborhood has been completely gentrified. Ft. Greene today is neighborhood or cornball blacks and whites, it has completely lost its culture and flavor but it has more fine restaurants and gourmet and organic grocery stores than you can count. I was one of those black college students that class gentrified Ft. Greene and once it started to flip a bunch of us moved to Bed Stuy and did it again; that was in 2001 and now Bed Stuy is moving into the begginings of Stage Three. I wonder how long it will take for this grocery map that Richard has sent me to change? Where do we go next once this isn't cool anymore? I guess we flip it and move to the suburbs, maybe "they" will chase us there and we can have our ghetto back.