Blaglash.com

I live in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and I love it.  It is home to me.  The people who live here really care about their neighborhood, which is true about most NYC neighborhoods.  If Brooklynites seem like they don’t care about the way their neighborhood looks, they still care about their neighbors.  

I moved here about two years ago and was immediately at home.  I am Polish, and it was amazing to me to live in a place where I could speak Polish to strangers, order my dinner in Polish, go to a Polish grocery store and buy my favorite Polish foods.  I’ve also introduced my boyfriend to a lot of things, like kabanos, a long dried Polish sausage, which he loves.  We’re getting to know our neighbors, the deli guy always talks to us for like 5 minutes when we buy our soda, and a lot of our friends have moved here. Brooklyn is undergoing a crazy change, and I am part of it.  People are moving here from all over, people who are vastly different from the people already living here.  Native Brooklynites take offense as transplants take over their neighborhoods- especially in Williamsburg and in Greenpoint.  People keep moving here, it gets more expensive, the neighborhoods acquire new coffee shops, bars, stores and restaurants, and the natives get priced out or even just dissatisfied with the changes they’ve witnessed.  Meanwhile, Brooklyn is at its heart still very untamed, in parts dangerous or unsafe and all in all a risky place to stake your claim.Yesterday, everyone in Greenpoint lined the sides of Manhattan Avenue after a car chase (maybe shootout?) led to the death of a woman crossing the street.  A man in a stolen car, being chased by an unmarked police car at high speeds, struck and killed a neighborhood woman yesterday afternoon.  She had the light and the driver hit her, causing her to fly through the air and land a block away.  The driver continued to speed away and ended up in a three car pileup on the end of Manhattan with a broken toe.  I watched the beginning of this tragedy happen and I have heard about it from people around the neighborhood since.  There were candles and flowers near the scene of the accident last night.  There was a shooting a month ago at a newly opened bar called The Production Lounge on Franklin St.  No one was killed and for a week after there were flyers all over Greenpoint calling for some sort of action to prevent further crime in our area.  I saw these flyers and felt guilty and sad.  I am happy I live here.  But I feel as though these things happen and people are still surprised they happen.  Moving here is like asking to get robbed or at least taken advantage of.  When cities change so rapidly, there is bound to be leftovers and there are going to be people who don’t understand what they’re getting into.  I still don’t know the whole story of what happened yesterday afternoon and I watched it happen.  I live in a neighborhood and city I love, and still I am always confounded and amazed; I see new things good and bad every day.