As I type this from my living room/office in Long Island City, on the Southeastern tip of Queens, through the window I’ve got a prime view of the luxury real estate company setting up shop in the abandoned paper factory immediately across the street. Yesterday, they boarded up the upper windows and hung signs; today, they’ve parked three pedicabs with their logo on the sidewalk–because buyers who have been priced out of the Manhattan condo market are apparently so humbled by the experience that they couldn’t bear to walk a block and half from the sales office to the property.
Yes, the neighborhood’s changing, which is not altogether a bad thing–after almost a year and half in this apartment, the novelty of having to take the subway into another borough to get to the supermarket, the gym or a halfway decent bar has worn off completely. So I’m comfortable with the forward motion of gentrification. I just never thought Lloyd Kaufman would be one of the gentrifiers.
Yeah, THAT Lloyd Kaufman.
