Did you know that last week was Bed-Stuy Week over on BushwickBk? Apparently it was–they couldn’t stop talking about us over there! The latest Bed-Stuy post by Jeremy said that his Bushwick neighborhood was better than Bed-Stuy. He even goes so far as to call our neighborhood Pig-Stuy!
Beyond being the Run-Down Bodega Capital of the world, what has Bushwick had to offer us? Oh yeah, it’s the neighborhood that gave us Rosie Perez. Yeah, thanks Bushwick. Thanks a lot.
Look, Jeremy, you and the rest of Bushwick can drop the eminence front. Everyone knows that Bed-Stuy is better. Even the people in Bushwick know that Bed-Stuy is better. Let me break it down for you: if Bed-Stuy is Chaka Khan, then Bushwick is Taka Boom. (For those of you who may not know, Taka Boom is Chaka Khan’s younger and CONSIDERABLY less talented sister. If you need evidence for this, then click here to see Taka Boom in action.)
Let’s take a look at the data:
Architecture – Our buildings are better. We’ve got beautiful brownstones and tree-lined blocks. We have a house tour that has been going strong for 29 years. Do they even have a house tour in Bushwick? Even the new construction in Bed-Stuy is better than the new construction in Bushwick. Bed-Stuy’s Kodachrome Building could put the smackdown on Bushwick’s 358 Grove any day. On this measure alone Bed-Stuy wins.
Star Power – Bed-Stuy gave us Chris Rock and Mos Def, and Bushwick gave us Rosie Perez. I’ll let you do the math on that one. Bed-Stuy wins.
Human to Feline Ratio
If it weren’t for the compassion of the T-N-R King Jimmy Legs, the cats in Bushwick would outnumber the people 77 to 1. For God’s sake they bring the mobile spay unit TO BUSHWICK just to try to stem the rising cat population over there. Sure, we have a whole population of inbred, unintelligent, unsocialized pit bulls that walk around with their unintelligent, unsocialized owners, but compared to the feral cat overpopulation issue over in the Wick, our pit bull issue is nothing. At least there aren’t any stray pit bulls in Bed-Stuy. Bed-Stuy wins.
The YMCA Factor – The Bed-Stuy Y is reason enough to rate our neighborhood over Bushwick. They don’t even have a YMCA, do they? The horror! Bed-Stuy wins.
The Subway Factor – Ok, this might be where they get us. The two neighborhoods share the JMZ lines, so the battle is between our G line, which is notoriously lame, our A/C line and their L train. Bed-Stuy is underserviced when it comes to train lines, but Bushwick’s L train is no keeper. It’s crowded and the last time I took it those little train arrival signs (the ones that are supposed to tell you how many minutes you’ll have to wait) were waaaay off. Let’s call it a tie. Bed-Stuy and Bushwick both lose.
The Blaring Car Stereo Factor – The stereos on our chromed out SUVs blast the latest from Kanye West, while the stereos on their chromed out SUVs blast the latest from Aventura. This is a no brainer–Bed-Stuy wins.
The Chicken Factor
Pollo Tropical? Gone, baby, gone! Bushwick couldn’t even support a halfway decent restaurant! Pollo Tropical opened in Bushwick this year and closed unceremoniously THIS YEAR. If they’d only set up shop on this side of Broadway, they would still be in business. I’d be hard pressed to think of a chicken joint that didn’t survive in Bed-Stuy! Bed-Stuy wins!
When Blogs Attack
Bed-Stuy has a better blogging community than Bushwick. Let’s face it, the only Bushwick blogs worth reading are BushwickBK, Got the Jimmy Legs, Last Night’s Dinner and A Dash of Bitters. A whole four. Bed-Stuy has at least 8 excellent blogs that I can think of off of the top of my head: Lambent, Vast & Ruthless, Antbed.com, This is the Diaspora, El Blunt and Beautiful Nomad(o), Bed-Stuy Banana, Do or Die, Tres Chic Style Blog and of course, the Bed-Stuy Blog. There are more, but I simply don’t have the time to list/link them here. TOP THAT, Bushwick! Bed-Stuy wins!
Considering they’re on the losing end of a lot of battles, just when did Bushwick get so damn saditty?
Dearest Bed-Stuy neighbors, let’s hold hands across the internets and give thanks this holiday week that we don’t live in Bushwick. I’ve listed just a few reasons why Bed-Stuy is better than Bushwick. If you can think of more reasons, list them in the comments section before you head off for the holiday. Let’s put Bushwick back in its place!
Shares crash
Hopes are dashed
People forget
They forget they’re hiding
Behind an eminence front
It’s a put on
-The Who
Eminence Front
#48. Meaning since you are friends with him you don’t step in when you should during his rants, mean comments, and put downs for people, etc. on the site. When he took a break from blogging he wrote “all my enemies get a break.” It’s the people that may help improve an area, but so many have been turned off by him, with people like you on the sidelines letting it all happen. We tried to get to know him,it wasn’t much better.
@Jennifer Hess: LOL! Dressing as Taka Boom for Halloween! I wanna do it too. I think there will be room for 2 Taka Booms next Halloween.
@Hrag: Hmmm. You offer a very interesting proposal. An Open Spaces event in Bushwick. I think I might have to attend this event. Will anyone there be sewing sock monkeys? (Just kidding! About the sock monkeys, not about attending. I really think that it sounds like a cool event. Is there a website for it?)
@Leo: Leo, can you tell us more abou this Long Island University partnership?
I also feel that I need to step in in defense of Jeremy. We’re friends, so it’s hard for me to read the comments that mention him and his BushwickBk blog in a negative light. We all have a right to like or dislike any blog, but I cannot stress how wonderful a person he is. And he can make maduros.
#51 So let me get this straight. It’s not cool for Petra to praise blogs done by “friends of Jeremy” because we don’t step in and make him play nice on his own site? And we’re supposed to feel like we have some obligation to do just that? Please.
Sometimes I agree with what I read on BushwickBK. Sometimes I don’t. Often, I think people miss the subtle humor and sarcasm contained in certain posts. Mostly, I keep my opinions to myself.
Jeremy doesn’t need me or anyone else to defend him, nor does he need me to influence his behavior online or elsewhere. BushwickBK is his site, and as such he has every right to speak his mind and air his opinions there. If you don’t like what those opinions are, you can choose not to read them. Even better, if you don’t like how BushwickBK portrays the community, why not start your own Bushwick-centric blog? There’s plenty of room out on the internet for different voices.
And who can forget Dr. Frederick A. Cook (http://www.cookpolar.org), the Bushwick explorer noted for his arctic travels and his claim to be the first person to travel to the North Pole! Now that’s amazing!!!
Hey Changling (did I mention this discussion has been great?!)…here’s the site for the Bushwick arts event (http://www.artsinbushwick.org), thought the org is new and has posted not much more than a hold page at the moment.
The main Bushwick Open Studios event is in June and I blogged about it here: http://hragvartanian.com/2007/06/03/bushwickopenstudios2007/
And BushwickBK has this past event’s map here: http://bushwickbk.com/archives/46
you ALL have GOT to be kidding! the architecture in bed stuy “LOOKS GOOD?” from the outside. Just don’t get shot standing outside looking at it. If you live in bed stuy and need something to eat. Bring it BEFORE you come home. There’s not a vegetable or a palatable restaurant within 3 miles of where you live. You can tell bed stuy’s a Victorian neighborhood, cause the cops had to resort to bringing out the horses everyday at 2 o’clock for crowd control cause cars and guns just weren’t enough to fend off the brush weilding villians….Yeah bed stuy looks soooo much better than bushwick (heh!) just don’t walk down lafayette or quincy or marcus garvey or Hull st or chauncey. How can bed stuy NOT look better after 5 years they finally took down the rotted scaffolding on the corner of Albany and Fulton… and let’s face it what neighborhood has more “matching projects” than bed stuy. I mean it’s so hard to distinguish between breevoort projects and tompkins projects and those things on lexington vs. gates and marcus garvey. For now, I’ll take Bushwick Ave. over all that crap but listen, if the rate of foreclosure goes up any higher I look forward to buying all those $600 and $700 thousand dollar homes next year for $399,000 -$450,000.
another great blog out of bed-stuy:
urbanbotany.blogspot.com
check her out…
http://www.shopbedstuy.com
BEDSTUY GET TO KNOW YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD EXPO
THURSDAY NOV 29TH 6PM-9PM JHS 258
141 MACON STREET BTW MARCY AND TOMPKINS AVE.
THE EXPO INCLUDES BLOCK WATCHER TRAINING
INFOMATIONAL AND VENDOR BOOTHS
AND A SCAVENGER HUNT
Both of you are transplants and have no true history or ties to Bed Stuy or Bushwick… which there is no competition between the 2. Both communities are made up of working class citizens who blood sweat and tears build the vibrant areas you boast and brag about in your blogs all in an atttempt to gain social acceptability for your growing egos. Its young gentrifiers like you who are causing distruction while ruining the social integrity of our communities.
Bed Stuy to i–
Don’t kid yourself. These neighborhoods need new blood desperately.
What these communities don’t need however, is a racist. like Jeremy. It is truly disheartening that his Red Hook post is being defended.
And I know sarcasm when I read it.
Hi all,
I love both neighborhoods…as a former Bushwick resident, and a current Bed-stuy resident. I have to say I’m quite disappointed in in this blog, as a self identified afro-boricua I take offense to “kanye west winning aventura music” that comment goes beyond a battle of neighborhoods into a place I know we don’t want to be at…cause it should NEVER EVER be Black vs. Brown. Jeremy’s postings are racist, and are NOT representative of Bushwick folks. Just like THIS posting is not representative of Bed-stuy folks. Let’s not indulge their opressive writing.
Bushwick and Bed-stuy are currently facing some incredible challenges in preserving the beauty of our communities which I hope is not run down by gentrification. Our communities can NOT afford to be divided…because this is a crucial time for us to join in the effort to put a stop to gentrification, or at least make sure our people benefit in some way…ie: making sure a percentage of new developments are affordable units (just to name one tactic).
Lets embrace the beauty both neighborhoods have to offer…and figure out ways to uplift one another. Communities United will Never be Defeated.
xol
“Oppressive writing?” Xol, what are you talking about? And West’s music is better than Aventura’s, in my opinion, and that has nothing to do with their backgrounds or black vs. brown. Where is your sense of humor? I certainly hope that YOU are not representative of this neighborhood!
I think anyone who thinks they are the “real” neighborhood and others are not are full of shit…we all choose to live in a place and get an equal voice.
I’ve learned quite a bit about Bed-Stuy from this string.
Wow, this just keeps going on. All this just buttresses further my observation that New Yorkers are a bunch of whiny, overly-sensitive, humorless, reverse-provincial brats. Fuck, how many times can you people call me a racist without citing ANY evidence? Can you please cite one thing? And every negative mention of my “Red Hook” post (uh, actually it’s about gentrification in general, and not subtly at all, I add) is also free of citation.
So make with the photos of me in my white hood or quit your whining. You embarrass yourselves — though you do contribute to my and Petra’s well-being through the healing properties of laughter.
I can’t help but notice that no one mentioned the white people who came from Bed-Stuy.
Carl Sagan, one of the world’s most famous scientists was born and grew up in Bed-Stuy. Jackie Gleason was from Bed-Stuy. Because it is mostly black now, does that mean we sweep this neighborhood’s white history under the rug?
I wonder if any the black people who want to “rise up” and “protect THEIR neighborhood” from the hipster influx realize that white people were in the neighborhood far before any blacks set up roots here?
White people built all those nice brownstones, and white people lived in them for 50 years before blacks ever came to the neighborhood. It’s a dirty secret I know, but it’s true.
of course the counter to your statement, ben, is that while white people may have settled the neighborhood and built homes here they eventually left when it took an economic turn for the worse, let it fall apart, teeter on the edge of urban blight, and was resuscitated by the black community gradually over the last couple of generations.
also, it is not as if there are no cultural or historical ties for the black community here. check out weeksville as evidence of that: http://www.weeksvillesociety.org/node/2
my point isn’t to argue with you, it’s just that it isn’t quite as simple as that. and every single neighborhhod in new york city has seen the populations change over their histories in terms of economics, race, religion, etc. what is at hand here is that people are very affected by the change that is actively taking place before their eyes, not being read about in the history books.
It’s not simple, that is true. It’s usually presented in simple terms from the other side however. That it is a “black neighborhood” that whites have their eye on. Harlem, sure… but Bed-Stuy has been a white neighborhood for at least a majority of its history.
I don’t believe Bed-Stuy should be a white neighborhood in the future. But I do believe that it should be an eclectic mixed neighborhood, given its eclectic mixed history.
By the way, it isn’t so far ago that it is “in history books”. My father, who is white, was born and raised in Bed-Stuy… as was his mother, also white. Unlike say Harlem, it Bed-Stuy a very real white history that was not very long ago. I’d like to visit it again someday when whites are a part of the neighborhood fabric again.
Not sure about the cats point – on my (Bed-Stuy) block, the chicken places seem to attract stray cats. Note to chicken lovers: don’t toss bones up and down the sidewalk on your way home, OK?