This morning I decided to check out the NY Times Travel Show. I decided to take the subway, by far the cheapest and fastest way for me to get to the Jacob Javits Center in midtown Manhattan. I have a long and documented love affair with the NYC subway system.
I’ve lived in my Brooklyn neighborhood for almost 13 years. I’ve seen the signs of gentrification. New coffee shops, wine bars, escalating real estate prices, babies and dogs everywhere. Some folks check windows and stoops for flower pots and window boxes – signs of life alongside tenements and row houses. I ride the subway to gauge demographic shifts and to stake out new neighborhoods to invest in.
This was the scene at my local subway station this morning. Whoa! I was the only brown person in the station. (For the record, I wasn’t “smiling” or “frowning” about it, just making an observation.)
They were all just here to look at the house next door to me that I can’t afford.
Ha! A few weeks after we closed a guy pulled up in front of the house, newspaper in hand and says to me “I see your house is for sale.” I told him, “No, it says my house sold.” I was in a huff. Then I turned around and said, “I’ll sell it to you for a cool million. You can get everything in it, including my boyfriend (Big P).” He drove off so fast!