I was born and raised in Park Slope. For several years after I got out of the military though, I lived in a tiny one-room apartment in a then-ghetto building on Carlton and Flatbush Avenues, just across Flatbush Avenue from Park Slope, in what's called Prospect Heights. I rented that place for $600 a month from a Hasidic Jew landlord.
I was the only Caucasian in the building at that time. The rest of the building was black. A drug-dealing bum lived in the hallway. I used to watch him smoke crack and freak hookers through my peephole at 3am.
When I went overseas for the second time, I subletted the tiny apartment to my friend. Unfortunately, during that time, the building was sold. The new landlord kicked everyone out, including my sublet (I wasn't able to come back to try to resist). He renovated the entire building, and then re-rented it out. Now the entire thing is full of white yuppies paying almost $4,000 a month rent. My old tiny room on the first floor is now an 'office,' being used by two tussled-hair, black-frame-eyeglass hipster/yups with laptops (I walked by and looked).
After Google-ing my old address, something came up - apparently the original drummer for the 'Mighty Mighty Bosstones' now lives in my old building as well. He appears to be some yup photographer who takes 'creative photos' for car ads. You can see his website here: http://www.dalsimerphoto.com/
You know, it's funny... I mean I never really considered myself a fan of the 'Mighty Mighty Bosstones.' However, in the past, I would think that meeting their original drummer would be pretty cool and interesting.
Now that I've heard that this guy is living in my old building with a dozen other yup tenants, he seems like the most uninteresting individual on the planet to me, along with all of the rest of them. Two-dimensional.
I need to know, are these people really what the rest of white America has always been like? Did I grow up in some sort of inner-city, white working-class bubble, that misled me into believing that most white people have character and heart? That most white people are real and genuine? That all those 'white stereotypes' you hear black people making about us weren't really true? You know, the nasally voice, the goofy walk, the lack of anything interesting about them.
The longer I withstand this yup/hipster invasion, the more I realize that I didn't grow up 'white' after all. I couldn't have. At least not in the sense that the rest of the country grew up white. Us and them, we are nothing alike.
