Read more about it one local business owner here: http://blogs.journalism.cuny.edu/interactive2010/2009/11/20/the-polish-of-south-brooklyn/

but i’ve made supermarket shopping kind of a sport and you cna get good, fresh food int he hood if you do a little research

raskin’s fish market on kingston and union has the cheapest, freshest fish in this area and they will clean, scale and fillet the fish to whatever your liking is.

for meats..drive up beford to the stop and shop on flatbush and church…that super market is sooo slept on…the prices are great (buy one get one free on brand name and organic groceries) and they have a free parking lot on the roof.

no excuses for the long lines and terrible cashiers in super foodtown and the atlantic center pathmark but as long as you shop at those spots before 11am you should be in and out (and in pathmark’s defense..they’re open 24 hours)

as for veggies..you’re right..no excuse for the poor quality produce at key food or met…i say support the farmers markets or go to fairway..what can i tell you..

One of the main things that I remember from growing up on Prospect Place and Nostrand is how truly and unbelievably crappy our Key Food and Met Food on Nostrand were as compared with the Key Food in Park Slope on 7th or the huge Walbaums in Queens, where my mom would shop sometimes on the weekends. When I say crappy, I’m talking bad meats and produce, subpar customer service and limited selection. Having moved back here in 06′, I’m still disappointed in the area’s supermarkets. My Mom still has the two crappy supermarkets that I mentioned earlier to shop, unless she wants to wait in ridiculous lines at the Pathmarks on Fulton or at the Atlantic Center. Western Beef has great meat, but the rest of place isn’t air conditioned and thus smells like ass (which I don’t mind so much anymore, but some folks can’t deal with).

As for the supermarkets near me (I’m near the museum, on Lincoln Place), I have the worst Key Food EVER on Lincoln and Washington (all of the meat and veggies are crap) and my very own shabby Met Food a few blocks down. The only places I can go for decent groceries nearby are the farmer’s markets or at the Western Beef (if I need meat). So lets not rip on ‘white kids carrying Whole Foods bags from the train’. If you work near a Whole Foods and you live in Brooklyn, its not unreasonable to shop there.

I’m a big proponent of mixed income communities anyway. Wish we would see more intentionally planned mixed income developments and communities around the city…

One can argue that we have all rehearsed our various positions regarding gentrification, and the subject itself has become a nomadic rhetorical enterprise looking for an online home.

I wonder if Nostrand Park is opening itself up to be the home, even if a temporary one for this debate? And if not, what is the purpose of this exercise? Is it a ploy to get hits? If so, what’s next? A poll on sex positions?

That said, and since you asked, an uncommon indicator of gentrification is a silencing and disavowal of poor whites.

If you compare the rate of gentrification in the Lower East Side and Williamsburg, you’ll see a big difference in the speed at which it happened. The gentrification of the LES started years before it did in Williamsburg and in some ways is still less complete than the changes in Williamsburg. I put this difference largely on the housing stock.

Most of the tenement buildings in the LES are protected by the 1943-47 rent control laws, and most of the rest are covered by the rent stabilization law of 1969. Basically, any rental building that was built before 1947 is covered under the old rent control laws (an FDR relic) and anything built between 1947 and 1969 is rent stabilized.

The rent control laws gave many more rights to tenants and restrictions on landlords than the later rent stabilization laws. The owner of a rent controlled building can’t kick you out so long as you pay the rent and don’t destroy the place. Under current law, rent controlled buildings that have more than six units are supposed to put those units into stablization once a tenant vacates. So in addition to waiting out a tenant indefinitely, the landlord must wait the duration of another lease before they can push the unit to market rate.

The Williamsburg housing stock had long since been taken out of the rent control system as many or most of the buildings in that neighborhood have fewer than six units. The spread of gentrification happened like wildfire there, because as soon as the landlords realized that they could triple the rents, they did. There was nothing to stop them from doing it every time a lease expired. It left the people of neighborhood completely priced out within a couple of years.

Despite the desire to do so, the landlords of the LES were more constrained in their ability to double and triple rents. The result is a slower change. I haven’t even gotten into home ownership, but here’s my point, anything that stops situations where people are forced out of their apartments because they can’t afford a %200 rent increase will slow down gentrification. Home ownership will definitely do that, and that’s probably why this neighborhood has been and will continue to gentrify more slowly than Williamsburg.

I’ve read about Homeworks. There’s actually this great story some years ago, I think it was in the Times, about a woman out in Harlem who purchased a place through Homeworks years ago. Her property value later shot through the roof, and she was able to purchase more properties and parlay her modest investment into a couple of million dollars in assets. And I want to say that she was making under $50,000.

@ db – I totally disagree. Too much emphasis is on renting.

I know or have spoken to dozens of residents around Central BK who had the opportunity and ability to purchase a place in the neighborhood back when things were affordable, but didn’t. What stopped them? A deeply entrenched renter’s mentality – an inability to see themselves as an owner. Now they are getting priced out. In some ways it’s sad, but in others it’s their own fault.

Long term leases are like adjustable rate mortgages – the question is, what happens after the lease expires. Plus, a long term fixed rate lease ignores the realities that landlords face ever rising costs. What landlord would ever buy into that?

Why not have programs that subsidize down payments so that ultimately people can afford their own mortgage rather than focusing on having them pay off someone else’s.

Like it or not, our legal system protect owners – not "long timers". Therefore, ownership = self-determination. Renting = being at the whims of someone else’s determination. I think it’s extremely important – particularly for low and middle income communities of color – to start being owners of the communities in which they live.

Too much emphasis is placed on home ownership. It’s not a cure-all. Rather, long term leases (think 5 years, think 10 years, etc.) will help stabilize neighborhoods much in the way that increased home ownership is idealized to do. Longterm rentals can be a better financial plan for many city residents. (And, of course, we need to see increased subsidies for the middle class. More Mitchell-Lama-type projects, for instance.)

Just after we moved in, I was coming home one day when a black woman stopped me and asked me what I was doing here. I told her I lived here. She said, "So, you’re a pioneer?" I told her I didn’t like that term and what it implied. She asked me if I felt sorry for the people who were being priced out of the area. I told her I did, but we had to live somewhere and Crown Heights was where we could afford to live. She told me she didn’t like seeing people like me moving into the neighborhood. I took that to mean white people. I told her that I didn’t think the color of anybody’s skin had anything to do with it. It’s economics. She walked away. I saw her a couple if times after that and she just said, "You’re still here?" I told her I wasn’t going anywhere.

We know our neighbors. They know us. This is also our neighborhood. We do spend money here, and I’ve noticed an improvement in the quality and selection of the food at the Met supermarket on Nostrand where I shop. I like that, and if that’s gentrification, that’s okay with me. I don’t want the West Indian businesses to go out of business, but I would like to see some more variety in the types of restaurants and stores in this area. I guess that will happen with time.

I also like that the amount of gun violence seems to be dropping. I don’t hear anywhere near the number of shots that I used to hear. I want my neighborhood to be clean, safe and quiet. I think everybody wants that, and I think having dialogue like this helps everybody understand each other.