September 09, 2010
Several of my friends have scoffed at this trend and traded their own yuppie hipster Williamsburg for Bushwick, an area of Brooklyn struggling to remain 100% black. Guess what. It doesn”t go well. When phenomenally naïve Canadian immigrant and long time drinking buddy Dan Morrison picked up the paper and saw $650 a month for rent, he jumped on the subway and headed over. He got off the train, paper in hand, and almost immediately, a woman in a phone booth interrupted her conversation, poked her head out, and yelled, “Oh I KNOW you ain”t moving to THIS neighborhood.” His two-block walk was littered with dubious glares and when he eventually got to the “For Rent” sign, a loiterer on the stoop cut all the pretense and bluntly stated, “Don”t move here.” Dan did an about-face and got back on the train.
I make him tell this story regularly and every time he does, someone pipes in with another Bushwick tale of segregation. My favorite being the young white woman who stood in line at the Bodega as locals screamed, “What are you doing here? You don”t belong here” in her face. Nobody stopped this public yelling match because they all agreed. After a brave front, she burst into tears and ran home. This happened regularly, whether she was walking down the street or waiting for a bus. Needless to say, she doesn”t live in Bushwick anymore.
When the upper crust tells us we need to fraternize with the people who create all the amazing meals they eat, they neglect to consider the possibility these colorful people don”t want us there. They”ve also never considered the possibility many tried it and it didn”t work.
The white equivalent to Bushwick’s dogmatic monoculture is Breezy Point. This small peninsula in Queens was a blue-collar version of the Hamptons in the 50s. Cops and firemen would summer on the huge beach that overlooks Sheepshead Bay and drink at the one bar the area provided. When Brooklyn ceased to be predominantly white, everyone held it up as a perfect example of New York’s diverse culture. What they didn”t know was thousands of blue collars were quietly saying, “screw your melting pot” and turning their summer homes into permanent residences. Today the area’s 5,000 inhabitants are all white and they”ve even installed a guard booth checking everyone who comes into the community’s one entrance. Nobody gets in without a pass. When former Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik was staying there a few years ago some black detectives in suits who were there to pick him up were stopped at the entrance. They were furious about being prevented from entering a public place and even threatened to arrest the guard. He refused to budge and eventually Kerik was forced to have someone fill out the pass paperwork to let the detectives through.
If you”d like to move there, you better have three residents as sponsors and be prepared to go through several other bizarre hoops like 50% cash down through their choice of bank. In other words, if you ain”t a cop or a good friend of a cop, you ain”t gettin” in. Nicknamed Boozy Point or The Irish Riviera, this strange Copland is unknown to most New Yorkers and experiences zero crime for the privilege. There have recently been some Russians sneaking over to the beach by walking along the shoreline but this community is just as much about culture as it is about race and the local police (whose only uniform is a polo shirt) quickly root out the Ruskies after spotting those ridiculous Speedos.
Rumor has it, Breezy Point did have one black resident. He was a doctor who had been adopted by white parents as a child. He was well liked at Breezy but he “don”t come around no more” as the locals say. When asked why I was told, “dunno, he probably felt weird.”
I can just feel the New York Times liberals recoil in horror at the thought of this all-white community with a gate even though many of these same liberals live in gated communities that just so happen to be all white (or all-white apartment complexes with a doorman behind a gate). Why are they chastising the poor for living exactly the same way the rich live? In short, because they love to chastise. This is more than a curious paradox. It’s the key to the whole Big Lie. Diversity mongering isn”t about race or culture. It’s about class. Like all things politically correct, it’s just another example of the upper middle class telling the working class how barbaric they are. The problem with this patronizing attitude is, the working class did it. They”ve tried multiculturalism out in all its forms. The liberal idea of diversity on the other hand, is restricted to variety in restaurants and the odd Bob Marley record. This is ironic because they”re the only areas you don”t need tax dollars to promote. A diversity of restaurants sells itself and no bureaucrat needs to bus anyone to a reggae concert. The multiculturalists want Archie Bunker to live in Harlem not because they want to see more people of different backgrounds living in harmony. They just like calling Arch a brute and making him squirm. Not to get all Freudian on your ass but I think it’s because the working class reminds Boomer Democrats of the grumpy father who never took their accomplishments seriously. Shit, now I”m starting to sound like one of them.
Bill Hicks once said we shouldn”t feel bad if someone on LSD dies after thinking they could fly and jumping off a building. “Big deal” he tells us, “We just lost another moron.” Bill’s rational is simple, “Why didn”t he try it out on the ground first?” I would like to say the same to the Lefties and their government lackeys who insist the rest of us buy Dolly Parton’s “Coat of Many Colors” and wear it everywhere we go. If you like it so much, why don”t you try it?
