My Experience with Gentrification
By: Ananda Davis
The first time I experienced gentrification was when I was walking down a block near my neighborhood- Crown Heights (Brooklyn,NY) and I saw a mayonnaise shop and it was a store that sells nothing but mayonnaise that the store's chef makes in small batches. That’s when I realized that my neighborhood was coming close to being gentrified. Then about a year later I started seeing a bunch of old apartment buildings on my block being restored and renovated. Around this time I started seeing a lot more white people in my neighborhood than before. The area where I live it’s a predominately Hasidic Jewish and Afro-Caribbean neighborhood. Meaning the only type of white person I would normally see would be a Hasidic Jewish person. This continued for about a couple of more years and it’s still going on now and on the corner of the block next to my house there’s a “trendy” bar where there used to be a hat and scarf store that was on the corner since I was three years old. There’s also a small cafe across the street from my house along with a irish pub and a bakery. Along with a dunkin donuts on the end of the block and a starbucks across the avenue. There’s also a new condo building with a fancy two floor penthouse on the top. That’s the moment when it had finally hit me that my neighborhood was being gentrified and that Franklin Avenue would never be how I remembered it again.
