One thing that I was interested in when I was younger was the different cultures on 125th lexington ave. Because back in the day my mom used to braid hair one 125th and while she was inside I was outside walking around exploring and getting trouble.Well I’m still sort of interested in the topic in a sense only because the culture has shifted a ton due to gentrification. Well I was a super curious kid and going up to people wasn’t a dilemma for me. So just going up to a person and asking them what they were wearing especially when I saw people in their traditional clothing. Or just stopping someone and asking a question even if it’s a random question like ‘what’s your favorite food?’. And asking these questions helped me separate the different people and their cultures. My curiosity most definitely changed over the years. By reason of the past, back in the day when you walked down 125th street when I tell you, I saw all types of different people from different cultures just all together. But today, as you walk down 125th street there’s a fine line between rich and poor. 125th lexington avenue is literally zombie land.People all over a ton of them on K2 (synthetic cannibus ) cant stand straight bodies laid out like a murder had just haopen when its just people overdosssed. The role that the educational system played in my curiosity well I could say was both good and bad influence. Good because well I lived in a neighborhood full of minorities and went to a school filled with minorities including the teachers.
The thing that happened to my interest was the change that I was seeing with my own two eyes when it came to the 125th. I lost interest around the time i saw ‘store closing’ signs on almost every building.Yet there’s this one place on 125th just a few years go that place was a piece of land filled with grass and a gate around it with a sign saying poisonous rats to not enter.This place today is a whole foods.Whole food in 125th street blew my mind only because you think about the people that live there, there used to bodegas/ delis and supermarkets and now there’s a whole foods and any right peon know that the whole foods was not placed there for the people of that neighborhood. The thing that I’m interested in today is gentrification because it’s all around me. I now live in the South Bronx. A few decades ago you would mention the south Bronx to someone and they’ll catch a heart attack but to see how this place is changing every single day right before my eyes. I see a new building or an empty lot waiting for construction everytime I go out.
I agree that gentrification is happening throughout the city in neighborhoods that were once known for it’s huge population of minorities/POC. These areas, such as Downtown Brooklyn, Williamsburg, and even Harlem were considered undesirable but in the past decade, there’s been an influx of development, such as condominium complexes and large companies arising, like Whole Foods as you stated. Not only is gentrification destroying small businesses by allowing realtors to increase rent prices staggeringly, it causes minorities to move into neighborhoods with less funding, and you can drastically see the difference between low income neighborhoods versus white neighborhoods. After a few months of gentrification construction, the neighborhood will never look the same.