Williamsburg

Within seconds of stepping out of the M train at the Marcy Avenue stop the differences between Williamsburg and downtown Manhattan became apparent. For starters, the subway stop is not only above ground but on a bridge on top of the city street. As we walked down the steps and onto the street I was shocked to find the street nearly empty and that most of the stores on it were closed on a Saturday afternoon. As we walked around I realized that it wasn't just a quiet area. This was the vibe of all of Williamsburg. It's a very quiet part of the city with a lot less activity than Manhattan. You can expect to walk down any random block on a Saturday afternoon and expect to see nobody else walk by you. And, if there is someone else walking down the street, there is a chance that it could be a Hasidic Jewish man going down to the waterfront with his son or a hipster discussing poetry with his girlfriend, both of which we saw walking down the street. The only signs of significant weekend activity were the basketball courts we passed by which were filled with several African American men playing pick up games of basketball. This, along with the friendly nature of all of the people we came in contact with, definitely made Williamsburg feel like a suburb which is not at all what I would have expected of an area so close and connected to downtown Manhattan.

With a few exceptions, the buildings are only a few stories tall and most of which have this shabby run down kind of look that comes complete with some form of graffiti present. And then, as you get closer to the waterfront there are abandoned warehouses side by side with construction sites for new luxury apartment buildings. Which, given the abandoned look of the neighborhood and the nations ailing economy, makes me concerned about whether or not there is or ever will be a market for this extensive development. The walk from the Williamsburg bridge down to the Brooklyn Bridge brought us through a more residential area. Then, after walking past a housing project, the area right by the Brooklyn Bridge looks dramatically different than the area around it. It's not the buildings that make it look different. They are still warehouses next to apartments next to shorter buildings. It is the people, lack of graffiti, and content of the stores in the area that stuck out and made it clear we were entering a more gentrified area. The people are dressed in suits and dresses rushing to eat at the fancy restaurants that greeted every other street corner. Rather than seeing a hardware store or little grocery store the windows greeted us with antiques, art, and books.

Caitlin was absolutely right in saying that it felt like a social experiment. Nothing felt like it fit in Williamsburg. I had to keep checking Caitlin's google map on her phone to make sure we had not wandered into another part of Brooklyn because each area we passed seemed like it could not be in the same part of the city as the area we just left. This made me very curious about both the history of this area and about what surprises the rest of Brooklyn might potentially have in store for us. We should definitely explore more of this borough in this class.