NOTES

CHAPTER ONE. INTRODUCTION

1. Some examples are Gregory 1998; Rieder 1985; Mele 2000; J. L. Jackson 2001; Poll 1962; and Sanjek 1998.

2. There were times when I told people up front that I was writing a book, but even then I often said it in a low-key way, not specifying that I was a professor. I did so when I determined that my questions would be taken more seriously because these people were in positions of authority and wanted to feel that they were not just wasting their time in idle chitchat.

3. Still, the amount that has been written on New York City is vast, and I made a conscious effort not to read much more until I had completed walking the city. I wanted my own ideas to be as fresh and uninfluenced by existing research as possible. I also followed the classic approach of Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss (1967) to inductively proceed from my observations to general theoretical propositions and conclusions. See also Katz 2010. Most ethnographers do use theory, more likely inductively, but deductively as well (Anderson 1999; Duneier 1999; K. Newman 1999). In their important article on this subject, Wilson and Chaddha (2009) elaborate on these two approaches.

4. Under Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, the status of bike riding was greatly elevated as bicycle lanes proliferated throughout the city. But as sociologist Jen Petersen (2011) has pointed out, it’s still a car-oriented town, and pedestrians and cyclists often compete with each other for available space.

5. Sam Roberts (2012b) has an insightful article about the benefits of walking in terms of appreciating the city.

6. Sometimes patterns of dress can even become part of the delusional systems of the mentally ill, as in the case of Matthew Colletta, a man who in 2006 went on a shooting spree that killed one person and left five others injured. The reason? The victims were all wearing red or traveling in a red car. Colletta believed the Bloods gang was after him and must have felt he was acting in self-defense (Kilgannon 2009d).

7. That said, unacquainted black people are more likely to engage one another in eye contact than with whites, because they may have a mutual friend in common or might be able to have a future relationship (Anderson 2011, 113). For an important discussion of adolescents’ avoidance of violence in their neighborhoods, see Sharkey 2006.

8. The idea of New York as a welcoming city can be gleaned from statistical information too. In May 2010 Mayor Michael Bloomberg celebrated the 311 help line’s one hundred millionth call since it began operations in 2003. The program has 306 full-time operators, and the annual tab to run it comes to $46 million. Elissa Gootman (2010), a New York Times reporter who spent a week fielding calls, gives some examples of the questions asked: Why is the water in someone’s sink brown? How do you file a complaint against a home aide who steals your aunt’s money? How do you find a dermatologist in the Bronx who accepts Medicaid? Why was a certain letter not delivered? How can I stop smoking? Other questions have been about barking dogs, finding out which jail a relative has been taken to, noxious odors wafting through the air somewhere, and so on. Clearly, with so many calls this is a much-needed service. Having people available to help, or at least soothe frayed nerves, improves the city’s ability to function. Who knows how many people ended up not doing something reckless or harmful to others because someone listened to and tried to help them? We don’t often think about it, at least not until we’re in a similar situation, but without these safety nets a city can quickly descend into chaos.

9. Chicago, New Orleans, and working-class parts of Boston are probably exceptions to the rule.

CHAPTER TWO. SELLING HOT DOGS, PLANTING FLOWERS, AND LIVING THE DREAM: THE NEWCOMERS

1. B. Howe 2010, 58.

2. Among the most important works on immigration to New York City are those of Nancy Foner, 2000, 2001 and 2005a; Kasinitz et al. 2008. The combined work of these researchers greatly enhances our understanding of the second generation of immigrants. Besides my own work and specifically cited works, some of the information in this chapter relies on the American Community Survey figures released between 2006 and 2009, the New York City Department of Planning figures, Foner 2005a, Kasinitz et al. 2008, and Fessenden and Roberts 2011. The details are often quite interesting. Dominicans are predominantly poor, have the largest families, and lack formal education; yet 20 percent of them regularly send back money to their homeland. There are more foreign-born Chinese living in Flushing, Queens, than native-born, while American-born exceed the foreign-born in Manhattan’s Chinatown. As a whole, the community is heavily working class. In 2006–2007 the Koreans ranked behind only the Indians and Chinese among students coming here from abroad for higher-education studies. Many of the West Indians have come here because they have both high unemployment and high education in their homelands and most of the women work (Foner 2005a). Included in this group are about eight hundred thousand Haitians and their offspring. Ecuadorian arrivals have increased significantly in recent years, passing Colombians.

3. Davletmendova 2011; Turhan 2012. For information on another small community of people, the Nepalese, see Pokharel 2012.

4. Fessenden and Roberts 2011. Some of the discussion on residential changes is from this article and from interactive mapping studies and reports generated from the CUNY Center for Urban Research. I am indebted to Richard Alba for pointing me to this resource. The rest of the information on this issue stems from my own observations walking through these areas.

5. Semple 2011a; Beveridge 2006b.

6. Khandelwal 2002, 6–9, 17.

7. Glazer and Moynihan 1970; Alba, Portes, et al. 2000.

8. Nathan Glazer also admitted that he overestimated the abilities of the African Americans and Puerto Ricans to move up (Alba, Portes, et al. 2000). He seemed to accept the arguments by Robert Blauner and John Ogbu that these groups are so persecuted, victimized, and embittered that it’s hard for them to really advance. Although this point may be true in general, many African Americans and Puerto Ricans have succeeded over time. It’s also significant that researchers have found that immigration lowers crime rates (Ousey and Kubrin 2009), as well as poverty levels (Moore 1997). For an excellent overview of the problems that have faced Latinos through the years in New York, see Haslip-Viera and Baver 1996. For more on the Puerto Ricans, see Haslip-Viera, Falcon, and Matos Rodríguez 2005.

9. Some of the discussion in this section relies on Beveridge 2006a; Coplon 2008; Semple 2010d; R. Smith 2006; Stoller 2002; Foner 2005a, 110–20; Kinetz 2002; Kim 2009; D. González 2009a; and the Fiscal Policy Institute. Jeffrey Passel (2007) of the Pew Hispanic Center, estimates that the undocumented come in roughly equal numbers from South and East Asia (23 percent); the Caribbean (22 percent); and Mexico and Central America (27 percent). The rest are from South America, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East.

10. Even in the old days, when immigrants came mostly from Southern and Eastern Europe, this was a primary first-generation path for upward mobility. For more, see Alba, Portes, et al. 2000; Min 2001, 2008; Sassen 1988; Waldinger 1996a; Zukin 2010a; Gold 2010.

11. Kang 2003. For more on how and why these niches develop and their consequences, see Foner 2001.

12. Most groups are seen as favoring their own, but some are viewed as more inclined in this direction than others. In a paper on Astoria, Queens, and its Greek population, Lauren Paradis (2011) cites numerous examples of clannishness and rudeness to outsiders.

13. Berger 2010b.

14. B. Howe 2010, 169–70.

15. Ibid., 6.

16. Min 2008, 52.

17. Sharman and Sharman 2008, 97–110.

18. Cordero-Guzman, Smith, and Grosfoguel 2001; Semple 2012.

19. Foner 2005a; Grasmuck and Grosfoguel 1997.

20. Poros 2011. See also Massey, Alarcón, Durand, and González 1987; Portes 1998; Sanjek 1998; Stoller 2002; R. Smith 2006.

21. Brown 2009; Orleck 2001; Foner 2001.

22. Lehrer and Sloan 2003, 324–25.

23. Santos 2010a.

24. These feelings about politics can last far longer than the immigrant phase. Egyptian Americans have been living in Astoria since the 1960s, but they still reacted very strongly to the recent upheavals in Egypt (Bilefsky 2011a). For a concise and good summation of the role of music, see Foner 2001, 18.

25. Montas owns several such themed establishments. One of them, the Montas Restaurant in Ridgewood, Brooklyn, is a favorite hangout of famous sports stars, including Pedro Martinez, Alex Rodríguez, Carlos Delgado, and Sammy Sosa.

26. Beveridge 2008a. Foner and Alba (2008) highlight this when they contrast the roles played by religion in Europe and in the United States in helping immigrants to adapt. The authors argue persuasively that its role is greater in the United States, in part because Americans are much more receptive to religion than are Europeans and because of the government’s general approach to religion.

27. Lehrer and Sloan 2003, 24–25.

28. Berger 1986. See also Min 2010, 24–26, on the Koreans. In New York City about 59 percent of Koreans are Protestant, 14 percent Catholic, 8 percent Buddhists, with about 19 percent professing no religion. Many Korean immigrants shifted over to Protestantism upon coming here, because the religion gave them social services, organizations, and networking possibilities that helped them acclimate to life in America. The immigrants sometimes have unique practices and emphases. For an interesting discussion of the many roles played by water in the diverse faiths that exist in the city, see Kornblum and Van Hooreweghe 2010. Botanicas, shops selling herbal remedies and charms, also have an important presence in the city. Although their focus is more in the area of magic than religion, the lines are not always clearly drawn. Browsing through a botanica off Myrtle Avenue in Bushwick, I read an ad for a devil’s candle to be used in a cemetery, an idea that is possibly influenced by Catholicism.

29. Slotnik 2010. See also Stoller 2002, vii, xi.

30. Kasinitz et al. 2008; Rumbaut and Portes 2001.

31. Remeseira 2010, 4; Zentella 2010, 323. For an interesting discussion of how West Indian teenagers in Brooklyn negotiate their identities, see LaBennett 2011.

32. Semple 2011b.

33. Kwong and Miscevic 2005, 253; Herbst 1988.

34. Coles 2011, 40.

35. There is a small chain of pizza parlors in Queens known as Singa’s that caters to the Indian palate. As one such connoisseur observed, “Where else would you get such wonderful hot chili topping, and mango drink, to go with a pizza?” (Khandelwal 2002, 43).

36. Robbins 2011b.

37. Kershaw 2002.

38. There is a long history of conflict between blacks and Puerto Ricans over jobs in the public sector and political influence. Overall, Latinos are often cited by Hispanic scholars as doing worse than blacks, but recent census data might lead one to think otherwise, at least nationally. According to the March 2004 Current Population Survey, national annual household income rates were $51,235 for whites; $30,187 for Hispanics; and $26,269 for blacks (with $25,878 for black Hispanics). But New York City is different; there, in the 2000 census, it was $27,757 for Hispanics and $31,058 for blacks (U.S. Census Bureau). Regardless, it’s clear that both groups are at the bottom of the income scale and have a long way to go.

39. On the possibilities for ethnic coalitions, see Mollenkopf 1999; W. Helmreich 1973; Novak 1971.

CHAPTER THREE. DINERS, LOVE, EXORCISMS, AND THE YANKEES: LIVING TOGETHER

1. D. Goodman 2009.

2. See Ruderman 2012 and Mahler 2005. Mahler also observes that it wasn’t always the landlords who burned down the buildings. Fires were also started accidentally by residents, and in places like Bushwick arson was committed by criminals who found it easier to remove valuable copper tubing from houses after the building had burned down. And in some instances, families themselves set fires, knowing that Social Services would have to resettle them in quarters that were better than where they were living at the time. Oddly enough, the fact that a neighborhood has a bad reputation reduces the likelihood of certain kinds of violence. Because of that reality, people are far more careful about what they do. They will not jump out of their cars to complain if someone has double-parked and blocked them. They will not easily argue with people. Why? Those people could kill them. In this way an area’s bad reputation becomes a form of social control, a kind of law among the lawless. “It keeps irritation in check” (Anderson 1999, 27). Interestingly, the South Bronx today has far more new housing than the West Bronx. This is in large part because so many more sections of the South Bronx went up in flames during the ’70s and ’80s, thereby allowing developers to start from scratch. Indeed, the West Bronx, which can look deceptively peaceful, has some of the highest crime precincts in the city—for example, the 46th Precinct.

3. Mooney 2011b. For more on safety issues in Bushwick in recent decades, see Ehrenhalt 2012, 80–82.

4. Flegenheimer 2011. It’s worth mentioning that one of the most godforsaken and dangerous areas in the city is Mariners Harbor. It is located in Staten Island on the northern side, not far from the Goethals Bridge. Tough youths hang out in front of grim-looking projects, shouting expletives at passersby and occasionally threatening them. For more on gangs, see Venkatesh 2008.

5. At the start of 2011 the official count by the city of homeless persons living in the streets and subways was 2,648, though to those who feel uncomfortable about their presence the number is probably perceived as much higher. Recently, BronxWorks, an organization that works with the poor and homeless, had a party for the hundreds of people it has helped. A formerly homeless man, who had lived on the streets for ten years before accepting an apartment, had this to say about his experiences: “Not every day is my greatest day. But my worst day here is better than my best day on the street” (Secret 2011). For more on the loopholes that allow mentally ill homeless people to avoid necessary treatment, see Hollander and De Avila 2013.

6. Duneier 1999. See also Edwards 2012.

7. For more on panhandlers, subway musicians, and the politics of this sensitive issue, see Tanenbaum 1995, especially p. 165. In the end this situation is no different from owners of nearby bars giving their patrons another community in which to drink and socialize, in addition to the one where they live. Of course, in a sense such establishments are also formed and shaped by their location. A bartender at Fresh Salt, a bar near the now-departed Fulton Fish Market, told me, “When the Fish Market was here, we used to have happy hour at 7:30 AM, because that’s when the workers got off their jobs.” Today the area is well on the way to gentrification, with average sales prices closer to one million dollars (Satow 2011). For a gripping photographic account of the Fulton Fish Market, see Mensch 2007.

8. Roberts 2011a.

9. Moody 2007, 134–38. See also Karmen 2000; Powell 2012.

10. Dewan 2009. See also Katz 1988 for an interesting discussion of the psychological factors, such as thrills, for committing crime.

11. Sharman and Sharman 2008, 173.

12. Madden 2010. See also Michel Foucault (1975), in which he takes the “Panopticon” approach regarding surveillance in hospitals, schools, and work settings, and how it creates a docile and controlled society.

13. Katyal 2002. While not saying that better parenting, jobs, education, social programs, and law enforcement can’t work, Neal Katyal says that better physical design of urban spaces can significantly limit crime and that insufficient attention has been paid to this idea. Typical social solutions focusing on the environment of offenders and their age, race, joblessness, and family situations are expensive and don’t always work. Besides, according to statistical research cited by Katyal, almost two-thirds of crimes aren’t even reported and only one-fifth of all reported crimes are ever solved. Moreover, as is well known, incarceration and rehabilitation programs are largely ineffective in achieving their goals. In addition to better physical design, Katyal argues that government regulation can also help. Included in his suggestions for such regulations are making funding for projects dependent on crime impact statements and disclosing crime rates in the area to investors and prospective residents; creating zoning requirements and building codes that inhibit crime; and bringing tort suits against landlords who fail to make necessary changes in design and who fail to disclose limitations of design in their buildings.

14. Kate Cordes (2009) asks in her study of the community why Greenpoint, which first welcomed Polish immigrants in the 1880s, has remained so strongly Polish for 130 years. That’s a really long time compared to, say, Jews in Brownsville, Italians in Bensonhurst, the Irish in Inwood, and almost every other ethnic group. Among the reasons given are that the lack of easy transportation to Manhattan creates insularity. Additionally, the G train that runs through the area has spotty service, so much so that it is also referred to as the “Ghost Train.” Moreover, successive waves of immigration from Poland, especially after World War II and in recent years, have replenished the population. Then there are spatial factors. As Cordes notes, “The residential neighborhood is swaddled in rings of industrial zones and cut off from burgeoning Williamsburg by the slash of the BQE [Brooklyn Queens Expressway].” She also cites the fact that until very recently the area had never been attractive to gentrifiers and also had a low crime rate. Finally, there is the fact that Greenpoint is a full-service community—with ethnic stores of every kind, churches, and cultural organizations—that, given the inherent conservatism of the working-class and strongly identified Poles, makes them content to stay put. In fact, the percentage of Greenpoint residents who can walk to work is 13 percent, more than twice the New York City average of 6 percent. Based on her own observations, Cordes concludes that Greenpoint “feels like a self-contained neighborhood and there is a palpable village feel on the streets,” and that it’s “a place where people know each other well.”

Actually, New York is full of enclaves. An enclave can be made up of distinct ethnic, religious, or racial groups. It can be made up of union workers, gays, the homeless, people of wealth, and so forth. For a complete discussion of this concept, see Abrahamson 2005. For a highly informative discussion of Ditmas Park, see Berger 2007. For an overview of the components that make a community click, see Zhang 2012. Incidentally, the smallest-in-size ethnic community in New York City resides predominantly in one Bronx apartment building on University Avenue. The group, with eight families, comes to forty people, all Bhutanese refugees from Nepal. About 60,000 Bhutanese have been accepted by the United States since 2007, and New York City has about 170 of them. Most of them have never had electricity or indoor plumbing in their homes. It’s quite an adjustment, and they rely on each other a lot for help and advice on how to build new lives in America (Semple 2009e). For more on the Bhutanese immigrants, see Lehrer and Sloan 2003.

15. Other examples are Seagate, Brooklyn; Breezy Point, Broad Channel, and Hamilton Beach, Queens; and Silver Beach, Bronx. Research has shown that gated communities lead to greater segregation by reinforcing existing patterns of segregation in the general area where they are situated (Vesselinov, Cassesus, and Falk 2007). See also Low 2000 and Berger 2012f.

16. Writing in the New York Times, reporter Lizette Alvarez describes the movement into Harding Park by Hispanics who were intent on improving their lives as “a matter of pride for a group of people tired of being blamed, historically, for degrading entire neighborhoods.” The area became Hispanic in the 1980s and ’90s. One of the early homesteaders, who steadily improved his bungalow, was Pepe Mena, who recalled shouts of “Spic, get out” when he first came to Harding Park in 1964. Eventually, the city sold the area to a homeowners association for $3,200 a plot (Alvarez 1996).

17. Two other examples of such bonhomie are Edgewater Park and Silver Beach, both in the Bronx. There’s a group called the Edgewater Redcoats, which organizes an annual Memorial Day parade, and there are bingo games, Easter egg hunts, and a community newspaper, the Edgewater Park Gazette. Both communities have lifeguards and beaches, as well as private security arrangements (Toy 2009b).

18. Berger 2011a. It’s clear that different communities have different perceptions of themselves and varying levels of satisfaction with life in them (Santos 2009). This is reported in the Citywide Customer Survey of 2008 (City of New York 2008).

19. Ruderman and Schweber 2012.

20. Collins 1999. See also Whyte 1988, 43–47; Mensch 2007; Barry 2010; and M. Fernandez 2011, for more on these types of people.

21. Feuer 2002.

22. Perhaps this isn’t as strange as it sounds. Exorcisms are rare within the Catholic church and are widely frowned upon, to say the least. However, the New York Times reported on a two-day conference held in Baltimore on how to deal with it. The reason? There are many people out there who believe they have been possessed by the devil (Goodstein 2010).

23. As Marwell (2004, 231, 352) has noted, more than one-third of the laws passed by the New York City Council, 36 percent, between 1990 and 2000, concerned naming parks, plazas, streets, malls, ball fields, triangles, and the like, after various people—war heroes as well as ethnic, community, financial, and political leaders.

24. P. Goodman 2004. It makes no difference that the barber shop is in Long Island. The point is the same.

25. Kornblum and Van Hooreweghe 2010. What is interesting is that this activity automatically expands the horizons (no pun intended) of its residents. It’s different from using a subway or bus, because the boats aren’t simply, or even, modes of transportation. Moreover, they’re not conveyances shared with strangers. They’re part of a lifestyle, one that’s mobile, one that gives its users the opportunity to get away from it all by going out to sea, where they can relax on their decks and commune with nature. Yet, at the same time, they can easily return to where they live. This shared sense of freedom binds those who avail themselves of it in a way that transcends ordinary activities, for it means they have a pleasurable secret that can be shared and appreciated only with those who have themselves experienced it.

26. Sanjek 1998, 223. One Orthodox woman moved from Borough Park to the Dahill Road section in Flatbush and now misses the old neighborhood. “I moved here for a bigger apartment,” she explains. “But I miss Borough Park because it was the center of the Orthodox community. That’s where Eichler’s book store is, where they have the Purim parade, and where most of the religious people live.” Jane Jacobs (1961) was critical of the Decentrists, people like Lewis Mumford and Ebenezer Howard (whose thinking Jackson Heights developers used as a model), saying the idea of separating commercial, civic, and residential areas, and housing them in low-lying structures isolated the city from its own parts, so to speak, and eroded its vitality. Good examples are St. Louis and Philadelphia, with Atlanta a mixed result. New York works, but partly because of its density of population and a scarcity of housing. See also David Halle (2003), whose book contrasts spread-out Los Angeles with centralized New York City. He identifies a New York School of Thought, which, in his view, includes Jane Jacobs, the architect Robert Stern, Sharon Zukin, Kenneth Jackson, and Richard Sennett.

Communities sometimes create a venue, a “happening place,” for art, thinking that such places can be good for business generally. One such case in point is the art galleries on the Lower East Side. Robert James, owner of a vintage boutique menswear establishment on Orchard Street, puts it this way: “I like to keep things in the neighborhood. I shop local for the raw materials for my designs, shops like Zarin’s or Belraf’s. I get my thread from a girl on Eldridge. I do things very local.” And he’s friends with locals. “We all know each other. Last night I went to a party with the girl from the Dressing Room [a nearby boutique and bar].” And, in a case of economic cooperation, he sends customers to a local hat store, which, in turn, reciprocates. “I wear his hats, he wears my clothes” (Xu 2010). This may be a good selling point in the neighborhood. Conversely, people may wonder, assuming they know this, if James is really getting the best quality by almost dogmatically buying local. Irrespective of such considerations, what matters most, perhaps, is that such practices greatly heighten the sense of community that makes the neighborhood viable, vital, and prosperous.

27. This is similar to a description of the Hispanic food vendors in Red Hook, who “cook with the soul and with the heart, just as if they were cooking at home. This is how you get what you get over here: fresh authenticity” (Zukin 2010a). Another good case in point is Coqui Mexicano, a cramped little eatery in the South Bronx, by Brook and Third Avenues. Cops, businessmen, and locals regularly go there to eat and gossip. What determines a restaurant’s support level in the community? Often it’s the quality of the food and the owner’s personality. Alfredo Diego has what you’d call style. “The place even has a lending library run by Alfredo’s wife, Danisha Nazario. It consists of a small bookshelf.” But as blogger Ed Garcia Conde says, “This shelf might not look like much, but we have no bookstores around here. That in itself would be a huge loss” (Dolnick 2010a).

28. Berger 2010d.

29. Under Giuliani many of the lots were auctioned off and protests escalated, including the release of ten thousand crickets at an auction. Bloomberg was more tolerant, agreeing to carry out environmental reviews before turning over the use of the gardens. The gardens aren’t always used for gardening. Puerto Ricans, for example, on the Lower East Side, often used them as hangouts. They built casitas, little shacks, and inside the men played dominoes or cards and listened to music (Martinez 2010; Smith and Kurtz, 2003; Zukin 2010a, 193–208; Makris 2008). Perhaps the gardens are a way of using food to reconnect with nature in general, with one’s heritage, or even a personal past (Kornblum and Van Hooreweghe 2010, 51). Another interesting aspect of the city is that so many of the gardens are founded by people whose good works often remain known only in the communities they served. The movement dates back to 1973, when Liz Christy of the Council on the Environment in New York City created the first community garden at Bowery and Houston Streets. Every time a Clyde Haberman, or Susan Dominus, or Jim Dwyer writes about one of these gardens, we learn more about them, but they are merely a drop in the bucket, one filled to overflowing with so many others that may have lessons to teach us. Consider the case of Padre Plaza in Mott Haven, erected to honor Father Roger Giglio (1943–1990), founder of St. Benedict the Moor Community Center. He came from Woburn, Massachusetts, and was a chaplain at Lincoln Hospital. He left there in 1985 to focus on the problems of addiction and alcoholism, establishing the St. Benedict Center for homeless people. He died young, at age forty-seven, of cancer, but the center continues. The park is beautiful and has a gazebo, as well as several small gardens and London plane trees that provide ample shade on hot summer days.

30. The whole experience of seeing the memorial feels eerie to me because I was waiting for the number 3 bus on February 21, 1965, on a Sunday afternoon, along 165th Street, just east of Broadway, when I saw two men racing by me with a crowd of perhaps forty or fifty people in hot pursuit. I instinctively stepped back as far as I could inside a doorway as they went by. Malcolm X was eulogized on February 27, and Ossie Davis spoke at his funeral before a crowd of about twenty thousand people. He is buried in Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. Years later I met one of Malcolm X’s daughters on a TV show, and when I told her what I had seen on that fateful day, she questioned me very closely about it. “What did the men look like?” she asked. I answered as best I could. Today it is widely agreed that the perpetrators were supporters of Elijah Muhammad who were angry with Malcolm X for having broken with their leader. For an excellent account of what happened inside the ballroom, see Marable 2011.

31. Barron and Baker 2012.

32. Sorkin 2009, 172–77.

33. Neighborhoods in densely populated urban areas often subdivide into what some have called “microneighborhoods.” For example, in Greenwich Village there’s an area along Bleecker Street between Tenth and Eleventh Streets that is filled with chic boutiques whose prices rival those found in Paris. Nearby Christopher Street features sex shops, while theaters and artists predominate on West and Bethune Streets. In the old days the Lower East Side had Orchard Street for inexpensive clothing, while East Broadway featured electrical appliance stores (Thompson 2005). There are also informal neighborhood markers that separate one area from another—a park, creek, grocery store, school—all of which are known to residents. Shoes, mostly sneakers, hanging from telephone wires can serve as boundaries, but not necessarily. They are mostly found in poor areas and sometimes they are thrown there by gang members to delineate their territory; but they can also simply be baby shoes or old sneakers that were once worn by neighborhood kids. Occasionally the shoes on the wires memorialize someone who died young, a reminder that tragedy is never very far away in the ghetto.

34. Barnard 2009c. See also Bearman’s (2005) interesting book, Doormen.

35. At 940 Garrison Avenue in the Bronx, I enter the Point Community Development Corporation, a nonprofit group dedicated to bringing programming, arts, and culture to the residents of Hunts Point and offering classes in music, photography, visual arts, academic tutoring and the like. The group even has a class called “No Beef Thursdays,” using a free vegetarian meal as a hook to draw the youth, mostly teenagers. Participants have worked on projects like restoring a natural habitat on North Brother Island and learning how to grow their own food in the local community gardens. Students also take classes in technology, writing resumes, public speaking, computer programming, applying to college, and so on. At 6 Hancock Place in West Harlem is a firehouse built in 1909 in the smooth limestone, terra cotta, Renaissance Revival style typical of that era. It has now been converted into the Faison Firehouse Theater, founded by Tony Award–winner George Faison, near Amsterdam Avenue. Faison has a Harlem vision, and one of the theater’s major undertakings is “The Respect Project,” a production company that performs at schools, juvenile detention centers, and homeless shelters throughout the city. Its themes revolve around date rape, gang warfare, teenage pregnancy, and illiteracy, and are intended, as one worker there put it, “to heal the victims of violence.” One analysis of 2000 census data based on hundreds of zip codes found that organizational resources decreased as the proportion of blacks living in a neighborhood increased. On the other hand, the resources increased as the proportion of foreign-born in a neighborhood grew larger (Small and McDermott 2006).

36. The 1950s version of this program was the public library’s Bookmobile (Schonfeld 2012).

37. Leland 2011c.

38. Berger 2012d; Ukeles and Grossman, 2004; Englander 2004. The black community has a different structure when it comes to satisfying the social and economic needs of the elderly. Lodges and fraternal orders have long been integral to the black community, serving primarily older folks. They are still there, albeit in diminishing numbers, and those who frequent them are almost all elderly. As you walk thru Bed-Stuy and Harlem you still see banners and signs denoting the continued existence of these lodges, even 120 years after they were founded. Like the B’nai Brith for the Jews, they were started in part because the mainstream orders—the Masons, the Odd Fellows, and the Rotary often barred blacks from membership. They also provided assistance in times of sickness and death. On 123rd Street between Malcolm X and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevards, you have the Supreme Grand Lodge District Number 1 Independent Order of Mechanics, Preston Unity Friendly Society Inc. It represents the West Indies, United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. It was started in November 1906 and covers North and South America. I also see nearby a Masonic Temple on 122nd Street. On 121st Street at number 160, there’s a really overstated organization: “The Consolidated Masonic Jurisdiction National Supreme Headquarters.” Many of the lodges here and throughout the city date back to the heady 1920s when these clubs thought they could make a mint from the boom in building construction. But it didn’t last and many ended up selling their properties at a loss. Today few remain (C. Gray 2003).

39. For excellent analyses of how community, ethnicity, and politics intersect in New York, see Marwell 2004 and 2007 and Mollenkopf and Emerson 2001. Successfully combining these three elements is a real challenge because, as Mollenkopf (1999) implicitly acknowledges, politicians understand each group’s cultural values, economic experiences, and how they interact with and are influenced by the other groups.

40. For more on this issue, see Zukin 2010a.

41. J. Hernandez 2009b. As of 2000, about 1 million children ages 6–18 attended public schools in the city. There were 1,350 schools and 90,000 teachers. Another 245,000 youngsters were in parochial or private schools. In the second generation about one in ten graduated from a parochial high school and 27 percent had attended one for at least a year. An additional 3 percent graduated from a nonsectarian private high school. Kasinitz et al. (2008) point out that most of the students at CUNY are the first in their families to have gone to college.

All second-generation groups performed better than the native minorities in terms of high school and college graduation rates: Dominicans did better than Puerto Ricans (by 10 percent); West Indians did better than African Americans; Chinese and Russians did better than native whites (which may show the drive of immigrants’ children) (Kasinitz et al. 2008, 137–38). Dominicans have the hardest time in the second generation of the immigrant groups. More blacks graduated high school than did Puerto Ricans, but more Puerto Ricans graduated college than did blacks. This may be due to family issues (238). Except for native whites, women in all groups are more likely to have graduated college than men.

Kasinitz et al. (142–43) first give the usual reasons for immigrant/secondgeneration success cited in the research: parental expectations and involvement, maintaining ethnic ties, and so on. Then, using multivariate analysis for their own data, the researchers come up with additional reasons for success. The strongest factor was the educational level of the parents. There was also residential (read school) stability, number of siblings, both parents being in the home, being female, good schools (145–67). They conclude that the second generation has not been significantly affected by the lower performance levels of African Americans and Puerto Ricans.

42. Gabriel and Medina 2010; Herbert 2010a; Lewis-McCoy 2012.

43. A. Newman 2009, 2011; Ronalds-Hannon 2011.

44. For more on crime and the feeling of apartness inside the projects, see Kilgannon 2011; Jacobson 2012.

45. Bloom 2008. For a critique of city housing, see Zipp 2010. A study of four Harlem public housing projects by Terry Williams and William Kornblum, based on 1980 census data, concluded that the projects were relatively safe when compared to the neighborhoods in which they were found. The study examined gainful employment, drug addiction, crime, and children’s school performance. While there were problems in the projects, they tended to be more stable and secure than the surrounding neighborhoods. Today, things are different because the areas around many of the projects have improved due to gentrification. For excellent accounts about life in the projects in earlier times, see Ragen 2003 and Schonfeld 2012. The most recent attempt to build low-rise housing is taking place on Staten Island’s North Shore, where a private developer is building nine hundred units of low-rent housing, with additional financial investment by the city (Bellafante 2011c).

46. B. Howe 2010, 12–13. See also Viteritti 1992 on the possible secession of Staten Island from the city.

47. Staten Island homes display more flags than anywhere else in the city, and I have a theory about that. It may be because residents of the island don’t really feel they are part of the Big Apple. They dislike what they see as the snobby, smug, big-city mentality. By identifying so strongly with the United States, they may feel they have transcended that view. They now belong to something national and much more important—the U.S. of A. Of course, they have all the reasons that others elsewhere have for showing or raising the flag—patriotism, conservative values, and so on. It’s just that this animosity toward the rest of the city is an additional factor.

48. Foner 2005b. For an especially moving account by a 9/11 widow about her husband, a firefighter, see A Widow’s Walk by Marian Fontana (2005).

49. For more on the importance of this issue, see Ehrenhalt 2012, 234–36.

CHAPTER FOUR. DANCING THE BACHATA, PLAYING BOCCI, AND THE CHINESE SCHOLARS’ GARDEN: ENJOYING THE CITY

1. Whyte (1988, 140) has an interesting discussion of waterfalls that helps us understand the allure of the one in the Rockefeller park. Though louder than street noises, it is constant, rather than the staccato sounds of blaring horns and jackhammers. It’s also visually soothing. A beautiful and little-known waterfall on the Bronx River can be found off Boston Road and East 180th Street.

2. Iverac 2010. Renewed interest in Harlem by tourists was sparked by curiosity in the early 1990s—before the major drop in crime—in jazz, soul, and funk music, as well as images of Harlem in various films (Hoffman 2003).

3. Tanenbaum 1995; Allan 2010.

4. Curcuru 2010. Some people have questioned the degree to which city residents and the city as a whole benefit economically from such seemingly touristoriented festivals (Quinn 2005). But in cases like Staten Island, those who attend these events are mostly local. In Manhattan, such programs attract many tourists, but Manhattanites and others in the city usually take full advantage of them as well. An open question is what I would call the “guilt factor.” When New Yorkers see that people come from all over to enjoy an event, they become inclined to attend as well.

5. D. González 2010. Also, Berger 2012c. For an example of how two groups resolved their differences in the context of a parade, see Haberman 1997.

6. Zukin 2010a.

7. Like so much else in New York, the bowling alley is changing. Today there are high-tech ways of keeping score, flashy bars and bands, and, in a nod to the Jewish Orthodox crowd in parts of Brooklyn, vending machines with kosher snacks (Robbins 2011a).

8. Filkins 2001.

9. “Playing Chess in the ’Hood’ ” 2007.

10. W. Helmreich 1982. It’s a popular game in general throughout the city, with over 2,000 public chess and checker tables scattered among 536 parks.

11. Newman and Schweber 2010.

12. Kleinfeld 2010.

13. Carse 2010. This social function was fulfilled by other clubs for other groups in earlier eras. At the end of Soundview Avenue is a gated waterfront community of 256 high-quality condos. That seems ordinary enough, but to those in the know the name, Shorehaven Condominiums, gives away the fact that this was formerly the site of the Shorehaven Beach Club. Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, a former Bronx resident who went there as a child described the Shorehaven Club in Soundview as a mostly Jewish club in the 1940s and ’50s for working-class people who couldn’t afford to go to the Catskills. But Bronx historian Lloyd Ultan says it was for middle-class people. Regardless, the owner, a Dr. Goodstein, arranged for buses to take people to the club from all over the Bronx. Everything has to have a hook to sell, and the Shorehaven Club’s hook was “The largest saltwater pool in the East.” People were told that the surrounding waters were those of Long Island Sound, when, in fact, it was the much-less-attractive-sounding East River. And while it may not have been as classy as the Catskills, it had the same amenities—Ping-Pong, shuffleboard, volleyball, tennis, and square dancing, as well as appropriate entertainment, including people like Buddy Hackett, Myron Cohen, and other Jewish comedians. Those who frequented the club still speak fondly of the end-of-summer highlight—the Miss Shorehaven contest. Those who were there then are obviously no longer there today. But for those who are still alive to reminisce, the Shorehaven lives on in their minds as a place that was fun. In this sense today’s population carries on the tradition, even if many of the new places have different names and are visited by different ethnic groups.

14. Roberts 2010g.

15. Jerolmack 2009.

16. Stelloh 2011.

17. Sullivan 2010.

18. Stoddard 2007; Feuer 2011c; Kornblum and Van Hooreweghe 2010; Sharman and Sharman 2008.

19. Less pleasant sometimes is the trip home. Trains and subways carry people back to places like Marine Park, Pelham Bay, and Auburndale in various states of consciousness and disarray. Conductors on the Long Island Railroad love to tell stories of how they were forced to remove rowdy people from the train. As one tells it: “He didn’t have a ticket and he didn’t want to pay for it. That’s what happens when you have a little beer in you. We don’t like to throw them off but he wanted to get thrown off” (Sharman and Sharman 2008, 123). Most likely, many of these people also work in the city and therefore know more about its nightlife. See Reitzes 1986. A new phenomenon in this milieu has been the beer garden. By May 2011 there were fifty-four of them in areas like Astoria, Williamsburg, and in Lower Manhattan. Of course, the most famous one of all, Bohemian Hall and Beer Garden in Astoria, has been here for one hundred years (Feuer 2011b).

20. Kimmelman 2011.

21. Appelbaum 2011.

22. Smiley 2012.

CHAPTER FIVE. TAR BEACHES, SIDEWALK CARVINGS, IRISH FREEDOM FIGHTERS, AND SUPERMAN: SPACES

1. New Yorkers’ sense of distance is also bounded by their urban environment. They’ll say you can take a bus to get to the train, but you can’t walk it. And how far is it? Twelve or thirteen blocks, just a little over half a mile—fifteen minutes. In a more rural area that wouldn’t be much at all.

2. Eligon 2010.

3. Perceptions of neighborhoods can affect reality in more serious ways, too.

Kasinitz (2000), in his article on Red Hook, argues that the reputation of an area has effects on the fortunes of residents that go beyond their own attributes as people. They are viewed in certain ways by others, especially potential employers, who often reject them because of the area’s generally bad name.

4. E. Miller 2009.

5. Actually, the pooper-scooper law is a classic case where, with the consent of the public, the needs of the community as a whole triumphed over those of people who were concerned with the rights of individual pet owners. Before the law was enacted in 1978, the Big Apple was drowning in dog feces to the tune of half a million pounds daily! (Brandow 2008). Former mayor Ed Koch richly deserves credit for pushing this issue.

6. Sorkin 2009, 100–101.

7. Zukin 2010a. Much of this is a continuation of the battle between Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs, between the image of the corporate city and that of the friendly urban village. Zukin argues that authenticity can be a useful tool for improving life in our urban spaces, regardless of whether they are “historically old or creatively new.” In her conclusion she clearly defines one of authenticity’s key attributes: “Though we think authenticity refers to a neighborhood’s innate qualities, it really expresses our own anxieties about how places change. The idea of authenticity is important because it connects our individual yearning to root ourselves in a singular time and place to a cosmic grasp of larger social forces that remake our world from many small and often invisible actions” (220). But if that is the case, then whose “singular time and place” should prevail? The young? The old? The middle aged? The rich? The poor? Those in between? Lefebvre (1991) has written about how government and business interests appropriate and use what he calls “abstract space” to fulfill their profit-oriented vision of how space should be used, as well as for the purposes of social control.

Zukin (1995) builds on this in her insightful analysis of Lefebvre’s work. She describes the revitalized Bryant Park, Times Square, and Sony Plaza as “embodying a new kind of space: a template of privatization for the whole society, an attempt at combining democratic access with social controls” (293). Anyone who’s been to these places knows exactly what she means. You can go there and have a good time, but the spatial limits are definitely enforced by those in charge of the space. Zukin makes the following, almost prophetic, observation: “All public spaces, however, are influenced by the dominant symbolic economy. And just now, the dominant symbolic economy owes more to Disney World than to the African market of 125th Street” (294). Indeed it does. When Zukin’s book The Cultures of Cities appeared in 1995, that market had not yet moved or, if you will, been removed. It now sits forlornly on 116th Street, far from the madding crowd, between Fifth and Malcolm X Avenues, a victim of more powerful commercial interests on 125th Street. In its new location, with few customers, largely Africans, for its dashikis; long, flowing robes; and beaded jewelry of many hues, it looks more like a colorful ghost town than the bustling shopping center it was once part of. For an introduction to how scholars view space, see Orum and Neal 2010; Low and Smith 2006; Harvey 1985; Foucault 1975; and the exchange in City & Community between Herbert Gans (2002) and Sharon Zukin (2002). Gans focuses on a use-centered approach, while Zukin emphasizes the need to concentrate more on the role of power in such evaluations.

8. Conversely, previously industrial areas have been put to other uses. The city recognized that warehousing and shipping had declined in importance and that new ways had to be found to maximize the potential of New York’s 538 miles of shoreline. The South Street Seaport, Battery Park City, various parks and esplanades, and preserved wetlands were the wave of the future, a new direction in city planning for these areas. These plans were for all the boroughs, not just Manhattan. By 1998 we had Battery Park City, the Chelsea Piers recreational centers, the state park between 135th and 145th Streets, restaurants, tennis courts, water taxis, and lots more. In sum, this meant a greater sensitivity to taking advantage of the waterfront for the benefit of both public and private interests. An important factor in people’s greater desire to be near the water was that the water gradually became cleaner, largely in order to comply with the requirements of federal laws. Cleaner water also had the effect of increased interest in recreational fishing in the outer boroughs. Fishing was still banned in Manhattan, along the rivers, although boating, rowing, and kayaking enjoyed a resurgence (Stern, Fishman and Tilove 2006, 95).

9. Kornblum 1983.

10. J. Hernandez 2010. See Brawarsky and Hartman on Central Park.

11. Stern, Fishman and Tilove 2006, 427–31; Kilgannon 2010b; Caro 1974.

12. Whyte 1988, 200.

13. There’s also a space that’s under, instead of above, the ground. Two young men are proposing to build another park on a three-block-long transit site to be called the Delancey Underground, but wags have already dubbed it the “Lowline.” It certainly won’t be an affront to the New York skyline, given its location beneath Delancey Street, but it will draw from the great outdoors. Using fiber-optic technology that will direct in natural light, developers hope to naturally grow plants, grass, and trees. Will the MTA approve their plans? Will it attract large numbers? It’s difficult to say at this juncture, but since it won’t have the High Line’s great views and mile-plus length, the new subterranean park will have to find creative ways for people to enjoy themselves—perhaps concerts, rides, or interactive exhibits. It’s certainly a unique opportunity to walk through a park that’s rain and snow free. So far, the planned park hasn’t aroused any controversy (Foderaro 2011b; J. Davidson 2011; Morgan 2012).

14. Robert Caro’s (1974) magisterial 1,246 page work was the major critique of Moses, especially his chapter on the Cross Bronx Expressway, titled “One Mile.” Moses cared more about building parks, giant swimming pools, promenades, cultural venues like Lincoln Center, and highways. Much to the dismay of community activists, the needs of people in the affected neighborhoods were secondary. When Caro’s book appeared in 1974, New York was at its nadir and such a gloomy assessment fit in with the temper of the times. In recent years, led by people like Columbia University architecture historian Hilary Ballon, Moses is being appreciated for the major projects that he undertook and successfully rammed through to completion. A 2006 exhibition sponsored by the New York Historical Society and the Queens Museum was called “Robert Moses and the Modern City.” The curators were Ballon and the preeminent historian Kenneth Jackson. In a PBS series on New York City, the prominent architect Robert A. M. Stern has this to say about Moses’s brainchild, the incredibly complex Triborough Bridge: “It’s highway building lifted to the art of sculpture in motion. It’s fantastic. Under his direction we got some of the greatest public works projects the world has ever seen.” In his zeal to remake New York and turn it into automobile heaven, Moses often ignored the protests of residents who viewed his efforts as attempts to destroy their neighborhoods in order to achieve his own goals. In the same PBS series, Caro argued that Moses built bridges to relieve highway congestion, but that the bridges attracted more traffic, thus necessitating the building of still more bridges, each of which lessened congestion only temporarily. This approach was favored, according to historian Craig Steven Wilder, who appeared in the PBS series, because Moses gave precedence to physical space over people (Burns, Sanders, and Ades 2008).

15. Kaminer 2010.

16. In his 1988 work, City, William H. Whyte points out how public spaces can be made undesirable. Among the ways are spikes and other metal objects mounted on sitting ledges, steep steps, and, tellingly, surveillance cameras. Today, when terrorism is a real fear and there is continuing concern about crime, most people don’t think twice about surveillance and tend to see it as a distinct benefit.

17. Chen 2009.

18. Grynbaum 2009a. Forty years ago, in 1972, the city experimented with a mall, closing off fifteen blocks of Madison Avenue for two hours of the lunch period. It was a success, with foot traffic more than doubling. But the mall was soon closed, with the taxi industry leading the opposition. Today their voices are largely ignored. New York has become a far more pedestrian-friendly city, and the city’s allure is partly derived from it being seen as a place where people are out in the streets, enjoying the sights, shopping, and just plain relaxing.

19. Ibid.

20. Dominus 2009.

21. Incidentally, Conduit Avenue in Queens is also connected to the reservoir. That name refers to the original water conduits that were part of the reservoir system. But the word “conduit” is far better known to English speakers than “force tube.”

22. Actually, I’m told by someone entering the building that some tourists have indeed seen it. Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts (2011) also writes about a person who uses the sidewalk, albeit to share thoughts through colored, chalk-written aphorisms and exhortations. Another, quite different case of sidewalk use is on Madison Avenue between Fifty-fifth and Fifty-sixth Streets. There the SONY Corporation had placed gaily colored decals outside its headquarters declaring this to be “The Era of You.” Such advertising efforts have happened before, and each time, as now, the Transportation Department has ordered them removed, because they violate the city code forbidding advertising on sidewalks (Foderaro 2011a).

23. Whyte 1988, 9.

24. B. Howe 2010, 71–73.

25. Ibid., 191.

26. Zukin 2010a.

27. Sanjek 1998. For a discussion of how space is constructed and used in Jackson Heights, see Ortiz 2012.

28. Wines 2011.

29. Burros 2009.

30. R. Goodman 2010, 107.

31. Sorkin’s (2009) description offers one explanation for the stoop’s ambiguous status as “a fine, filtering, intermediate space, modulating the transition from the public life of the street to the private life of the building” (67). He goes on to say it’s both a meeting place and one where you can see what’s going on in the street, who’s passing by, who’s not cleaning up after their dog, who looks suspicious.

32. The best books on New York City buildings, from both a design and historical perspective, are the AIA Guide to New York City by Norval White and Elliot Willensky (2000) and the five volumes about New York by Robert A. M. Stern and his associates (1983, 1987, 1997, 1999, 2006). For more on the Turano house, see G. Gray 2012.

33. Intrigued by the story, I looked up the deeds and various sales of property at this location during the 1880s and early 1890s. It appears possible that parts of this parcel may have been owned by Jews and there could have been such an arrangement. But given the fact that all parties are long deceased, there’s no way to know for certain. See New York City Department of Finance, Land Records/City Register, Block 1754, at the aforementioned address.

34. Modern graffiti made its first appearance in Philadelphia in the early sixties, but soon spread to Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Washington Heights (Ehrlich and Ehrlich 2006). To learn more about the 5 Pointz area, see www.5ptz.com.

35. Crow 2001; Mele 2000, 256.

36. Grynbaum 2009b.

37. The Irish hunger strikers mural was on 124th Street. Battery Park City has a park memorial dedicated to the Irish potato famine of the 1840s, which sent millions of Irish to the United States. It’s at the Western terminus of Vesey Street. It’s Irish but addresses a different part of their history.

38. LeDuff 1997.

39. Kasinitz (2000) cites a case in Red Hook where a shrine was erected on the site where a murdered school principal had fallen. This transformed the place into one where residents of the community could unite in shared grief. Kasinitz argues that the specificity of places is as important in understanding communal problems as are the larger structural forces around them.

40. Bader 2010.

CHAPTER SIX. FROM WASHINGTON HEIGHTS TO HUDSON HEIGHTS, FROM SOHO TO SOHA: GENTRIFICATION

1. Bindley 2010.

2. Jacobs died in April 2006. See Zukin 2010a, 11; and Wichmann 2012.

3. Rosenblum 2010d. While some have argued that the actual numbers of gentrifiers moving into America’s inner cities is not that significant (see Kotkin 2010; Massey and Rivlin 2002) this is not the case in New York City, based on my own research. See also Ehrenhalt (2012, 65–88) for a discussion of movement into the Wall Street area and Bushwick.

4. Rosenblum 2010d.

5. For more on gentrification as a whole in these communities, see Hymowitz 2011; Gross 2012. Gentrifying neighborhoods have also generated resentment among perfectly safe, middle-class communities that see them as grabbing all of the attention, which generates into better services and more investment by developers. The president of the Marine Park Civic Association noted that local residents “are constantly reminding elected officials we’re here, we’re a voting area, we take care of our homes and of each other, and we want to make sure you don’t forget us” (Berger 2012e). The problem for gentrifiers is that Marine Park, Manhattan Beach, Bay Ridge, Fresh Meadows, Whitestone, and many other nice communities are simply too far away from Manhattan to be considered.

6. For a great description of Ditmas Park, see Berger 2007, 19–31.

7. See Zukin’s insightful discussion of Red Hook (2010a, 159–92). For an early article advocating the building of mega-stores in the city, see R. Kramer 1996.

8. The “rent gap” view, as exemplified by Neil Smith (1996), is part of the newer “political economy” approach to urban life, which looks at the classical writings of Marx, Engels, and Weber on capitalism and how it applies to the city. The best example of such work appears in the writings of the French philosopher Henri Lefebvre. See Lefebvre 1991. For more on the demand side of the argument, see Ley 1986; Florida 2003.

9. L. Freeman 2006, 64.

10. Rhodes-Pitts 2011, 31; emphasis in original.

11. Xu 2010.

12. Ibid. Chinatown itself has moved up commercially, well beyond Canal Street, north of Grand Street, and is closing in on Delancey Street, encroaching on formerly Jewish and Italian strongholds. This geographic movement probably increases the likelihood of the syncretism discussed here.

13. McGeehan 2011.

14. Cimino 2011.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid.

17. Lipman 2012.

18. Kasinitz 1988.

19. Many cite price, convenience, diversity, and a feeling of “dynamism” as reasons for moving there (Harris 2009). For a better understanding of the significance of names given to gentrifying neighborhoods, see Baudrillard 1994; Lefeb vre 1991; Gottdiener 1995. Of course, there are always purists who don’t like such things. “It’s a phony name,” says Andrew Dolkart, who directs Columbia University’s historic preservation program. “It was Fort Washington—that’s the historic name of the neighborhood” (Harris 2009). Perhaps so, but it matters little to the average resident.

20. On the displacement of factories in Brooklyn neighborhoods, see Curran 2007. Although the discussion is about North Williamsburg, it’s even more relevant to Dumbo.

21. Zukin 2010a, 36–37; Mahler 2005, 167–72; Mele 2000, 234; M. J. Taylor 2005.

22. Zukin 2010a, 42–43.

23. Ibid., 47–52. Even during the recent recession, North Williamsburg continued to grow. Two condo buildings, combined with a sixty-four-room hotel (Hotel Williamsburg, North Eleventh to North Twelfth Streets, adjacent to McCarren Park), give residents access to hotel facilities. One resident expressed surprise that people would shell out more than three hundred dollars a night to stay in a hotel where they can see “middle-aged softball players like me run around cement courts” (Cardwell 2010b). That’s always the case. Those there in the less expensive days can’t see why people would pay more now, because it’s still the same place. But with the amenities, restaurants, and safer streets, it’s really not the same at all.

24. For more on the Catholic Worker, see Yukich 2010.

25. The East Village has a long history of motorcycle gangs (Connell-Mettauer 2002, 101–3).

26. Vandam 2010.

27. Barry 2011.

28. Cardwell 2011. For a fascinating and realistic portrayal of poverty and gentrification in Boerum Hill from the 1980s to the early 2000s, see Lethem 2003.

29. Ellen, Schwartz, Voicu, and Schill 2007.

30. Cardwell 2011.

31. Yardley 1999.

32. Tzou 2011.

33. Mele 2000. See also N. Smith 1996 and Moody 2007.

34. L. Freeman 2006.

35. Ellen and O’Regan 2010. The analysis looked at the internal census version of the American Housing Survey. Another study by researchers at Duke University and the Universities of Pittsburgh and Colorado came to similar conclusions (Kiviat 2008). See also Massey and Rivlin 2002; Vigdor 2002; Ehrenhalt 2012, 234.

36. Newman and Wyly 2006. While they don’t address how much of the migration was due to displacement because of gentrification, the most recent statistics have reported a growing trend on the part of New York City blacks to leave the city for the South. About 17 percent of those moving there in the last ten years are from New York, the largest representation of any state. Of course, New York has a large black population, but given New York’s attractions, it’s still a surprising figure. According to a study done by the Queens College Department of Sociology, slightly more than half of the 44,474 blacks who left New York State, 22,508, ended up in the South. Among the reasons are the economy; a more liberal attitude today toward blacks in the South, coupled with disillusionment about race relations in the city (perhaps because of having had higher expectations); and a feeling that the South embodies their “spiritual and emotional roots” (Bilefsky 2011b).

37. A major area of scholarly debate is about who benefits or doesn’t benefit from gentrification. Scholars like Lance Freeman (2006) and Richard Florida (2002) argue that benefits like new resources and better services outweigh the loss of housing for the poor (which Freeman believes has been overstated); the disruption of stable social and familial networks; and a loss of churches, schools, and other institutions that have been bulwarks of the neighborhood for decades, as noted by Perez (2004) and Zukin (1987). There’s also a question as to the degree to which past allegiances and participation can be transferred to the new and upgraded institutions that often accompany the newcomers (Zukin 1987). And the businesses that close are not uniformly a loss for the poor. For example, a Pathmark grocery replacing a bodega may be a boon, as would be a Costco, but a boutique or Starbucks versus a cheap coffee joint would not.

38. For more on Bloomberg, see Barbaro 2013; Brash 2011. Regarding the city’s moral responsibilities and how its policies affect the poor, see Neil Smith’s (1996) influential work. While there is insufficient evidence to make a direct connection between specific departures from gentrified areas by the poor and where they have relocated, the larger pattern based on October 2011 U.S. Census figures shows that since 2000 the number of poor people living in the suburbs increased by 53 percent, whereas the increase in the cities was only 26 percent (Ehrenhalt 2012, 12). Whether they came from gentrifying or poor inner-city areas or from other countries is not known.

39. Vergara 2009.

40. For insightful analyses of how government, banking, real estate interests, politics, and changing tastes all interact in the process of change, see Mollenkopf (1983) and Sanjek (1998). The gradual process of gentrification is well described in Anderson (1990, 26–30, 149–52).

41. Cordes 2009.

42. Ocejo 2011; Anderson 1990, 20. See also Davis 1979; Turner 1987; Kasinitz and Hillyard 1995.

43. For information on the progress of gentrification in Bushwick, see Fruhauf 2012. For more on the role of dogs in gentrification, see Tissot 2011.

44. Berger 2012a; Roberts 2012a.

45. Lichtenstein 2010.

46. The city has been very supportive of the new buildings, with zoning abatements, financing, tax breaks, and the like, because they are an important source of taxes in a place where nothing existed once industry departed. Before these projects were developed, the same types of people who have moved here were going to Hoboken and their taxes were lost to the city. The area is perhaps a harder sell than, say, North Williamsburg or Greenpoint, because unlike those communities, Hunters Point isn’t embedded inside an established community with a built-up area of restaurants, dry cleaners, clothing stores, and doctors’ offices. It’s mostly industrial, with a small residential section.

47. Haughney 2010.

48. Bellafante 2012. See also Berger 2012e and A. Davidson 2012. It appears as if the Bronx may be poised for gentrification. Recent data indicate that more people moved there in the period ending July 1, 2012, than left. The actual numbers were small. According to Joseph Salvo, director of the population division of the city’s Planning Department, “You’ve got to go back to the postwar period in the 1940s when we [last] had a surge of people moving into the Bronx” (Roberts 2013).

49. In the 1970s East New York and Brownsville were considered two of New York City’s most blighted and dangerous neighborhoods. Even by the early ’90s, East New York was still popularly referred to as the “murder capital of New York.” But the first major step in the area’s rehabilitation came with the creation of the Nehemiah Plan in 1982, which helped in the building of fifteen hundred two- and three-bedroom attached, redbrick, private homes that looked like some neighborhoods in Queens where this type of housing prevailed (Flushing, Woodside, Maspeth, etc.). The Nehemiah houses and other nonprofit groups that rehab or build in partnership with the city have been a great success story. Of more than sixty thousand, less than 1 percent of them have foreclosed, even during the latest recession. Why? Because they screened very carefully and took little risk. As one owner recalled, “If you didn’t have good credit, you were out—it was old-fashioned.” Not everyone was happy, not least a woman who penned one thousand letters to the mayor complaining. Her problem? She refused to show proof of income (Powell 2010).

Those who see this approach as excessively harsh need to consider what happens when there is a foreclosure. Everyone loses—the owner, the bank, and the community—especially when the house sits abandoned, easy prey for vagrants and drug dealers. For a good description of how people struggle not to fall victim to foreclosure, see Gonnerman 2009. Some criticized the Nehemiah houses as wasteful because of the low population density, and one group in Brooklyn actually tried something else in 1989. It’s known as Spring Creek Gardens, located in Brooklyn’s East New York section. These were essentially low-rise, five-story (585 units were built) apartment buildings. Combined with small streets and town squares, the buildings gave the project a small village feel (Stern 2006, 1191–1201). With other, similar projects going forward, East New York as a whole has revived, and some homes there can sell for several hundred thousand dollars. Most of the worst-looking buildings are gone, so with that it is becoming harder and harder to find slums worthy of the name in appearance. And there’s clearly no nostalgia for them. It’s important to note that for-profit groups do projects of this type.

50. Current programs that encourage gentrification are 421a and J-51 initiatives. The 421a program supports multifamily residential construction. It provides a declining property tax exemption depending on the new value created and is sponsored by the NYC Department of Housing, Preservation, and Development and the Department of Finance. To encourage people to build in neglected areas, builders were granted a tax abatement that allowed them to pay a tax rate for ten to twenty-five years that was based on what the property was worth before construction. The J-51 program supports the renovation of residential apartment buildings by giving property tax exemptions and abatement benefits. It’s also supported by the above-named agencies. There’s also the 80–20 program administered by the New York State Housing Finance Agency, the Housing Development Corporation, and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. It uses tax-exempt bonds for affordable housing, usually in desirable locations, to benefit those with low incomes. The landlord sets aside 20 percent of the building’s apartments for applicants who earn no more than 50 percent of the area’s median income. For an interesting analysis of community planning and real estate programs in New York City, see Angotti 2008.

51. The Bloomberg administration has created an initiative known as the New Housing Marketplace Plan to produce or preserve 165,000 units of affordable housing in the city.

52. Berger 2012b. For more on how the government interfaces with and supports private investment to move things along, see Harvey 1985. Perhaps the best-known developer in the city is Donald Trump, who in 1976 became the first developer to receive tax abatements. Over the years he has built luxury apartments on the Upper West Side and in other locations on the East Side. While he has not really concentrated his efforts on gentrifying neighborhoods, his flamboyant personality has made him synonymous with the revitalization of the city.

53. In the Longwood Historic District one sees amazing examples of preservation. I walk on Dawson Avenue between Longwood and 156th Street. The block is idyllic, a quiet street, no garbage, no graffiti, just beautiful century-old brownstones, a pleasure to behold in a most unlikely part of the city. Here one can see slate roofs, brick and stone houses, wood frame glass doors, polished to a high gloss, with gold brass door knobs that glint in the sunlight, all topped by spires and gables that would be at home in a Victorian novel. Farther north, on Jackson Avenue, right off of Boston Post Road between Home Street and 166th Street, are some beautifully preserved, landmarked, old semi-attached homes, brick throughout, even along the sides, with bow windows and beautiful terra-cotta. One or two of them are for sale. The area seems quiet, but it’s deceptive. Actually, there are gangs in the projects a few blocks away, but you wouldn’t know it from standing here. And around the corner is Morris High School, a rough, high-security place with metal detectors and cameras, patrolled by large, beefy security guards. This is one of the enduring paradoxes of the city. One block can look peaceful, bucolic, and the next will be a hive of busy activity, with bodegas on the corners, people hanging out and talking, along with litter and graffiti. The behavior of the people on each block and their propensity to gather on it, or not, are generally determined and maintained by the common consent and habits of the people who reside there.

54. This is a nationwide problem in inner cities, be it at the University of Chicago (see Venkatesh 2008) or at the University of Southern California. On a recent self-guided tour in June 2012 through South Central Los Angeles, I was struck by the number of private security officers on the blocks near the university. Speaking with some of them, I learned that two Asian students had been killed there two weeks earlier. They added that while killings are rare, break-ins and muggings are not.

55. L. Freeman 2006, 82–86, 206.

56. Sohn 2009, 13–14.

57. Ibid., 2.

58. Robbins 2012. See also Ehrenhalt 2012, 82. For discussions of attempts to resist gentrification in today’s East Harlem, see Maeckelbergh 2012; Wichmann 2012.

59. Special thanks to Philip Kasinitz for highlighting this point.

60. E. Abramson 2009.

61. Kilgannon 2010a.

62. Bleyer 2007.

63. For more on the lack of real relationships between gentrifiers and the indigenous poor, see Anderson 1990, 159; Ehrenhalt 2012, 75.

64. I found the fence company in Flushing, west of Main Street, by Fortyfirst Avenue and Fuller Place. The fences are built with materials imported from China, which is, in fact, a leading manufacturer and exporter of these products.

65. Berger 2011f; Hydra 2006. See also Wichmann 2012. For an interesting discussion of how different perspectives of gentrifiers and locals play out in community gardens, see Martinez 2010.

CHAPTER SEVEN. ASSIMILATION, IDENTITY, OR SOMETHING ELSE? THE FUTURE OF ETHNIC NEW YORK

1. Saulny 2012.

2. In 2011 the population of New York City was 8,244,910 (Roberts 2012a). The ethnic group figures are rounded off.

3. Jang 2010. There’s also a Ukrainian museum across the street from the school. There has been conflict of late, between the newer immigrants, who wax nostalgic about the old Communist regime, and the earlier arrivals, who fled Communism (Lehmekh 2010). For more on how nonprofits affect the life of residents and their neighborhoods, see Small and McDermott 2006; Small 2009; and Sampson 2012.

4. Jang 2010.

5. Xu 2010.

6. Medina 2010.

7. Rieder 1985; Mc Lean 2001; Pritchett 2002. Occasionally, stories will surface about how blacks tried to buy in a white neighborhood and were rebuffed. In February 2010 the New York Times carried a story about how blacks who attempted to purchase a home in Edgewater Park, a Bronx community near the Throgs Neck Bridge, were discouraged from doing so. They applied with the help of the Fair Housing Justice Center (Buckley 2010a). It’s unclear whether they really wanted to live there or were just using it as a test case. It matters because one could legitimately ask whether a black couple would really want to live in an area with almost no black residents. For more on the history of urban succession, see Sugrue 1996; Massey and Denton 1993.

8. Sleeper 1991; Krysan and Farley 2002; Anderson 2011, 15–16, 178.

9. Kasinitz, Bazzi, and Doane 1998.

10. Navarro 2012. See also Hitlin, Brown, and Elder 2007 for a critique of current classifications based on a national study. The authors recommend using Hispanic as a choice. A study of Dominicans confirms the rejection of race as a defining category, arguing that they employ language to negotiate identity and to resist racial categorizations (Bailey 2000). A study of dating habits found that Latinos are much more apt to prefer dating whites than blacks. However, they are also much more likely to prefer blacks than whites are (Feliciano, Lee, and Robnett 2011).

11. Khandelwal 2002. See also Saran 1985 for a general overview of the Indian community.

12. For more on these groups, see Novak 1971; Gans 1982; Zeitz 2007.

13. For more on responses to 9/11 and changing patterns in religious observance among Muslims, see Bakalian and Bozorgmehr 2009 and Mahon 2013.

14. See Alejandro Portes’s comments in Alba, Portes, et al. 2000, 244. Kasinitz, Bazzi, and Doane (1998) have also commented on the parallel lifestyles of different groups sharing spaces in Jackson Heights, Queens. For more on a rightward religious shift within Orthodox Judaism, see Heilman 2006.

15. Tony Carnes, a Texas native, is heading an effort to identify every single house of worship in the city (Oppenheimer 2011).

16. Dominus 2010. In 2009 the New York City Council passed a resolution to add two Muslim holidays to the school calendar as days off. There are at least six hundred thousand Muslims residing in the city, and this was seen as a nod to them, until then only Christian and Jewish holidays being on the calendar (Semple 2009c). Do holidays like Id al-Fitr, which commemorates the end of Ramadan, and Id al-Adha, which signifies the end of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, rise to the level of Christmas? It doesn’t matter. What’s being said is that Muslims are becoming more numerous and deserve recognition for their culture too. Muslims pray in the morning and have a feast and exchanges of gifts with family on these days.

17. Frase 2005.

18. Poll 1962; W. Helmreich 1992. For an account of Hasidim who leave the community, see Winston 2006.

19. Magnus 2009.

20. A good deal of research on religious groups indicates that, generally, the smaller the group, the more committed its members. See Olson 2008.

21. S. Abramson 2010.

22. Leland 2011a.

23. Ibid.

24. See Kasinitz et al. 2008.

25. Dolnick 2011a. In the past, success among minorities was often measured by the degree to which they were accepted. Thus, in the Jewish community of an earlier time, the Jewish mother says to her successful son, “Yes, you’re a captain by the Jews, but are you also a captain by the Goyim?” And while today this view has much receded, it still exists. In Gish Jen’s (1996) perceptive novel about Chinese Americans, a young Chinese woman talks about her immigrant parents: “They comb over the fine example of Auntie Theresa, who is such a good doctor many round eyes go to see her, not just Chinese” (233).

26. I’m not referring to foreigners whose English may be poor for that reason, but to native-born whites who lack that excuse for using poor English syntax.

27. Berger 2011b.

28. Barnard 2009b.

29. Ibid.

30. These black/Jewish congregations are mostly found in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens. One such synagogue can be found at 297 Saratoga Avenue, in Ocean Hill–Brownsville. Called the Sh’ma Yisrael Hebrew Israelite Congregation, it is led by Chief Prince Tzippor Ben Zuvulun. Sometimes Christianity and Judaism are combined. A storefront at 1941 Madison Avenue is home to the Israelite Church of God and Jesus Christ and displays a big Star of David in the window. A chart of the twelve tribes of Israel identifies congregants with various current peoples, including the Haitians, Negroes, West Indians, Mexicans, Seminole Indians, Guatemalans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans. For more on this subject, see A. Helmreich and Marcus 1998; Weisbord and Stein 1972. I asked a Seventh-Day Adventist elder with a church on Louisiana Avenue in East New York that was once a synagogue why he kept the Star of David on his church. He answered, “Because we all believe in the same God. And there are many Jews who accept Jesus too.” I inquired as to why the neighborhood improved over the past twenty years. “Because of Jesus” was his succinct reply. “If you are a believer, then everything comes from God, not the police department or Giuliani’s policies.” Reverend Waterman, with whom I also spoke, added, “The star makes it kosher, and kosher laws are part of our Bible and what we believe in as Seventh-Day Adventists.”

31. Marable 2011, especially pp. 301 and 369. Another way groups preserve their identity is by writing down their history. This is especially so when the groups have come from faraway lands. Several Liberian women on Staten Island have embarked on an oral history project in which women write down stories about their homeland and try to have them published so that the second generation will not forget where they came from (Ludwig 2009). A similar project was undertaken by Iranian Jews from Mashad who came to New York after the Iranian Revolution and who settled initially in Kew Gardens, Queens. Forced to convert en masse to Islam in Iran about 180 years ago, they had maintained their faith in secret. Now that they could practice it openly, they decided to record their struggles to remain Jews for the sake of future generations (H. Helmreich 2008).

32. Confessore and Barbaro 2011.

33. Mahler 2005, 126–29.

34. Confessore and Barbaro 2011. See also Armstrong and Crage 2006; Duberman 1993; Gan 2007.

35. Bruni 2011.

36. For an interesting and passionate discussion of how AIDS devastated the gay community, see Schulman 2012.

37. Barbaro 2011; Confessore and Barbaro 2011. Of course, thousands of Catholics do not share this view.

38. Hakim 2011.

39. Peyser 2011.

40. Alba 2009. Alba’s earlier book in 2003, Remaking the American Mainstream, coauthored with Victor Nee, focused on the same topic, but the 2009 volume greatly expands it.

41. Kasinitz et al. 2008, 229–35.

42. Roberts 2010e.

43. Alba and Nee 2003, 91–94.

44. Fahim and Zraick 2010.

45. As sociologist Peter Kwong has noted, the shift from reliance on organizations like the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association and the tongs to government agencies actually began twenty-five years ago (Kwong 1996, 81–123).

46. Dolnick 2012.

47. Luo 2012; Min 2010.