Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Media Times Portrays Williamsburg in 2002 As Crime-Ridden Ghetto
Posted by Henry Stewart on Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 8:57 AM
Nope. 2002!
While there may well have been casings littering Grand Street sidewalks less than a decade ago, the imagery's implication of a gun-infested ghetto strikes some as ludicrous. "Anecdotal evidence from agents of gentrifications about 'how the neighborhood used to be' are always suspect," Williamsburg resident and gentrification-critic Dennis Farr wrote on his Facebook page. "Five years from now, when interviewing agents of gentrification who will be moving into Williamsburg then, there will be reference to 2005 as 'the bad before,' and for agents after that it will be 2010, and so on and so on. The point is that this fictional terror is used by real estate to make a sale, not to tell about a community."
"When agents of gentrification describe 'crime' in Williamsburg," he continues, "it is typically vicarious, not directly expressed or suffered. Here, there is no gunshot fired, no gunshot struck, no gunshot heard—merely '9-millimeter shell casings' found."
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