Introduction

The most common analogy for gentrification is disease or a virus. On many levels it makes sense: disease has a root origin, perhaps an original location or a patient X. It spreads slowly and overtime overwhelms seemingly healthy areas until nothing is left. A virus likewise seeks to systematically destroy all that is good in a healthy body.

But these analogies are inaccurate. To call gentrification a disease or a virus would imply that there is a cure, that the symptoms of the phenomena are somehow reversible. We all know that to be false. Once an area is gentrified, it cannot be un-gentrified.

A more apt analogy for gentrification is perhaps a black hole. It shares the common root origin of a disease and also moves slowly. However unlike a disease or a virus, a black hole uses the immutable forces of space to slowly and surely consume all within it's sphere of influence.

If we think of gentrification as not a virus that spreads, but instead the inevitable pull of gravity towards a sure demise, then the furthest point at which gentrification has spread in any specific area would be known as the event horizon. The event horizon of a black hole is the demarcation in which once surpassed, nothing (not even gravity itself) can escape.

East Williamsburg was slowly suffering from the mighty pull of gentrification that is firmly rooted in Williamsburg. The event horizon is slowly but surely moving steadily past the neighborhood and in short time will leave in its wake artisanal coffee shops, frozen yogurt eateries, spinning gyms and million dollar condos.

This is a blog that documents the places that were and the places to come in East Williamsburg, a small neighborhood wedged between the black hole of gentrification that is Williamsburg and the temporary hipster enclave that is Bushwick.