Author: Natalie Lisiewicz

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Renaming Harlem

I saw this NY1 article shared by many of my Facebook friends and all of them were outspoken with rage, as they should be. As if taking over most of New York City wasn’t enough, modern developers and real estate agents came up with a plan to rename the area from 110th to 125th Streets as “SoHa”, or South Harlem to make it sound as trendy as SoHo. This, in my opinion, is absolutely ridiculous. Even if gentrification were to spread into Harlem, Harlem should keep its name. We should have learned back in 1492 when Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue that changing the identity of a place is just wrong. Moving people out of their homes and destroying the culture of a neighborhood just to increase the capital of a land is wrong. Sprinkling a coffee shop or two in an area and then immediately claiming it is a pretty offensive slap in the face. The strong historic African-American culture is still there, so what is the point of ignoring it and saying “sorry this is SoHa now, screw your feelings”. Harlem has so much history behind it, and to just strip the neighborhood of that to make it sound trendy in order to attract more gentrifiers is really disgusting and selfish.

http://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2017/05/24/harlem-soha-residents-unhappy-name-change-push.html

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Petition to prevent a bar cafe from being created inside WNYC Transmitter Park

I was scrolling through Reddit when I came across this post and I immediately related it to our class. This post is a petition to prevent a cafe from being built in WNYC Transmitter Park, which is the same location where Smorgasburg pops up once a week. Smorgasburg is obviously a very creative class targeted market, selling burgers with buns made out of ramen noodles, overpriced mangoes in the shape of flowers, and whole coconuts to drink out of. A cafe in this location is perfectly suited for this population, as well as the population of the rest of the neighborhood around it (that being Williamsburg). It is so interesting to me that the community is in fact, AGAINST building this kind of establishment. The end of the petition reads, “A COMMERCIAL BUSINESS AT THE HEART OF THIS PARK WOULD RUIN THE TRANQUILITY OF THIS SMALL, SPECIAL SPACE.” Just like that, bolded and in all caps. This petition shows that although developers might think it’s a great idea to further provide for the targeted population, sometimes enough is enough. Hipsters like to have a place of peace and quiet too, just like the rest of us.

https://www.change.org/p/friends-of-wnyc-transmitter-park-prevent-a-bar-cafe-from-being-created-inside-transmitter-park?recruiter=9094127&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink