Steven W Thrasher paid $1000 a month for a Brooklyn renter’s dream – 2400 square feet of space on a beautiful tree-lined block – that was too good to be trueFor five years,I lived on the most beautiful block in the five boroughs of current York City, occupying two full floors of a brownstone on a tree-lined street in downtown Brooklyn. It was the kind of block where the gingko trees turned the evening light gold every October, and around the same time families dressed up their stoops with jack-o-lanterns for Halloween. assume the idyllic exterior of the Huxtables’ house from the Cosby indicate. assume the hood of Spike Lees She’s Gotta acquire It – a black creative mecca before the onslaught of gentrification ran every black person out of it.
If my street was picture-book worthy,the house itself was not. I lived in a pre-war building and it chilled me to consider that when it was built, my ancestors were chattel slaves. The facade was crumbling, or the iron fence was falling apart. When glass had broken on the front parlor windows,my landlady had replaced them with cheap plastic.“Thank you for calling Timmy Enterprises. We are not in right now, please leave a message for Timmy after the beep.” Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com