Ridgewood, Queens is The New Brooklyn, For Now

Image via Google Street ViewThe hipsters have spoken and the Ridgewood, Queens is the new, new Brooklyn (this week). According to the New York Times’ Fashion & Style Section, the Queens neighborhood has started to exhibit signs of early onset Brooklyn-style gentrification. They’re seeing broke artists, trendy ethnic food, vegan options and the next generation of “bohemians” (which is NYT code for hipsters).

Geographically, Ridgewood is northeast of Bushwick, making it highly susceptible to infection by hipsters and other artsy-types who may accidentally stumble across the border. It is served by both the L and M trains at Myrtle-Wyckoff station, which is quite a few stops out from the city, as evidenced by the fact that the new residents are calling it a “quiet neighborhood.” But rents are cheap, up to 20% less per square foot than Bushwick. This makes the remote but accessible neighborhood extremely appealing to those dirty hippies. Some are even going as far as to call it “Quooklyn” or “Ridgewick,” desperately trying to convince their peers that, yes, this really is the new Brooklyn, for real this time.

Excited by taking over a new neighborhood that once belonged to working class families, people like Caitlin White, 26, who works as an editior at MTV News, are already acting like it’s 1492 and they’re Columbus pretending to discovered America. “Creative people love to be the ones that explore new territory,” she told the New York Times, referring to the neighborhood that’s been populated for over 100 years.

As the ratio of poor hipsters to normal people increases, we should expect to keep seeing more symptoms of gentrification until Ridgewood is all but consumed by the infection in a couple of years.