FIPS Broken News: NY Observer Says Brooklyn is Over

And I'm over people saying things are over. We get it!  Brooklyn is too expensive to live in, drink in, shop in, take a dump in. It's sold out in too many ways to count. It's become the destination of young private equity barons, who have been successfully driving up property values for years now. There are far too many things being made with "Brooklyn" slapped on the label. We have one too many HBO series that take place here. Spike Lee now hates us. Blah blah blah. We get it!!!! But honestly this article from the New York Observer made my head hurt. Not because it isn't true, because it is just trying to preciously state the obvious: Brooklyn has changed. 

Anyway, in response to last week's New York Times Article about that "artist commune" in Ditmas Park, the New York Observer took it upon itself to make the statement: "Brooklyn is over. Done. Finished. Brooklyn as a brand has overtaken Brooklyn as a place, turning itself over fully to the project that was always its greatest work in the place: the cultivation of luxury living." Why? Because this commune called BKLYN1834 has devoted itself to supporting artists who are "dedicated to selling Brooklyn's image beyond its borders." 

The author's gripe (I think) is that the commune is not devoted to cultivating real art or artists like the salons of Gertrude Stein or Alice B. Toklas where "artists empowered each other to be more creative" but instead, BKLYN1834 helps artists sell out by capitalizing on Brooklyn, or more specifically, the Brooklyn lifestyle.

As aptly stated:

A brand, like any parasite, requires a healthy host. Members of the Clubhouse [BKLYN1834] might not be concerned with questions of authenticity; they might even see their arrangement as akin to a record label or publisher paying an artist, but a lifestyle that sells art and art that sells a lifestyle are two different things. Sooner or later, people will catch onto the difference, even in a world in which the boundaries between culture and corporations have become increasingly blurred, a situation that few people seem particularly concerned about. 

The article gets all French Revolutionary-ie here:

And the borough’s cafés and bars, rather than serving as public spaces where artists and writers exchange ideas, have become ends unto themselves, temples of consumption where the conversation revolves around the provenance of the product being sold: the brewery, the roaster, the bitters. It is a celebration of consumption for consumption’s sake, consumption as an art, more fitted to the court of Louis XIV than the woodsmen and hillbillies from which Brooklynites take their stylistic cues.

So I guess my problem is this: It's time people stop saying this is a problem and do one of three things: either own it, move or change it. My opinion: we need to stop finger pointing, being too cool for school, saying things are over and then running to bars for $7 craft beers and then saying BK is donezo because of $7 craft beers. Brooklyn as a borough, as a brand, and as an idea is flourishing because of the old adage "the right place at the right time." Why? Fuck if I know. Over the last decade there has been a clear demographic shift to urban areas all over the country. Brooklyn has always been an attractive place to live for many groups over it's 300 plus years of existence. So it just makes sense: Nice place to live + great location + lots of space = here come the folks (even populating its not so nice areas). Is it wrong people are using it's image to make money? I don't know, is it wrong that Nathan's Famous Franks have been sold in supermarkets across the country for years? I doubt Nathan Handwerker would say that. Even Coney Island itself has been a brand, selling a certain image for years. I think there's just a helluva lot more of it going on now. 

Actor Anthony Mackie said it best when Spike Lee was talking smack a couple weeks ago: "The people who want to live in Brooklyn, live in Brooklyn." And this borough has been and forever will be Brooklyn, no matter how many t-shirts are made, or condos are built. Like the city it was incorporated into in 1898 (talk about people saying Brooklyn was over) nothing stays the same for very long here so love it or leave it or make money off of it while you can because 10 years from now, we'll be talking about something else.... and probably living in Detroit.