The neighborhood surrounding Astoria Blvd is one of great familiarity to me, and to the small business owner, however, much has changed in this neighborhood over the past few years. An area that was once sully residential, is now growing and expanding to include a very large and profitable commercial area. This change, first began with the moving of immigrants to the neighborhood, who slowly opened up their own mom and pop ran businesses. While for a while this was a staple to the community, having small locally run businesses that held significant meanings in the daily lives of most, much has changed in recent times. No longer are business owners taking an active role in their establishments. No longer is that personal touch being added that made these mom and pop business feel as though they were a home away from home to some, and an ethnic reminder to others. In fact, most of these business proprietors that use to provide others with these notions, only bother to show up at their storefronts around the end of the day, to close up shop and collect a day’s profits. This cold aspect that is held by business proprietors in Astoria is not the traditional characteristics that this neighborhood once held in terms of business and how they were ran. Another troubling fact is that most stores that started out as being independently owned, have been bought out by numerous associations, or shares of a specific business have been sold off to people who are estranged to the neighborhood. This not only means that mom and pop run stores are coming to an end in this high knit neighborhood, but also that those few that remain are eventually proceeding forward and franchising their businesses. In a close knit neighborhood, such as Astoria, most businesses that have not been bought by large business owners, are being forced out of the neighborhood due to a recent influx in rent in this area. This can be directly related to the fact that commercial, and residential rent prices in manhattan have reached a point at which people are being forced to relocate themselves to other boroughs. Astoria being one of the neighborhoods that borders manhattan, and offers public transportation such as the N, Q, and R trains that run directly to manhattan, has become one of the places that manhattanites have decided to relocate too. As building owners have surely taken note of this, they have decided to take advantage of this opportunity by raising their rents on not just apartments and homes, but for store fronts as well. Most mom and pop businesses have thus been run out in order to make room for new trendy businesses to open up shop. Such businesses are sixteen candles, and Bareburger, who have been opening up an increasing amount locations in Astoria as of recent times.

                 These facts about the close knit neighborhood of Astoria, can all be explained by the acts of urbanization that are taking place.This of course has called for drastic changes in yes local businesses of the area, but also in the culture, architecture, and occupants that reside in the neighborhood. Traditionally speaking Astoria is a close knit neighborhood, regardless of whether one is looking towards the past or the present, however, what was once a neighborhood mainly based on the presence of Greek and Italian immigrants has opened its doors to others in recent years. Looking back at maps that consist of the racial demographics of the area surrounding a particular business known as Imagination Unisex Hair Designs, it can be seen that an area that once consisted of 58.492% white identifying occupants back in 1990, according to census records, has began to change its ways as the number has now dropped down to 66.146%. In correlation the total hispanic or latino population of Astoria went from being 38.585% to roughly 44.046%. While these changes may not seem significant enough to some people, the difference in white identifying occupants in Astoria in neighboring areas to Imagination Unisex Hair Designs has drastically gone from an average of 99% to a range of 40-60%. These numbers display not only a growth in population, but the acceptance of other cultures, and ethnicities into this once heavily Italian/Greek neighborhood. With so many people moving to Astoria overcrowding is beginning to occur in some select residential areas. In order to combat this many high rises have been built in place of small single family homes that once dominated this neighborhood. If increases in population continue, it is questionable how many single family homes will truly survive the change, and how many families will have to relocate to other neighborhoods due to it. The amount of people occupying these new high rises has been duly noted though. Through the increase in traffic on the local streets the increase in population has become disturbingly noticeable to the old locals of this neighborhood. Many local business owners who no longer reside in the area, have begun to find it a hassle for them to tend to their storefronts every day.

                 While Imagination Unisex Hair Designs is currently surrounded by a church, local housing, a beauty salon, and a small store, its surroundings weren’t quite the same back in the 1980s. In fact the building itself was quite different. The drastic change can be seen when you compare the storefront exterior that can be seen nowadays to the dated exterior it once had back in the early to mid 1900’s. What is now a semi dated building, with a flattened roof, use to be adorned by a decorative overlay on top and lacking any sign of any awning. This establishment just goes to show how much a neighborhood can change in a short period of time. Since the early 2000’s the face of the store has modeled its new look, and it is around the same time that Astoria really began to display the signs of urbanization.

              Going back to the aspect of increased rents, and the change in real estate value in Astoria,the only hope for the small businessman is that Astoria was once based on being a semi-close knit community, where some have been able to form close relations with their landlords. One such example is the owner of Imagination Unisex Salon, Michael Chin. Mr. Chin has been in business for thirty five years, and while doing so has not only formed tight bonds with the community as he built a clientele list mainly on word of mouth, and minimalistic advertisement in the beginning.

                  When Mr. Chin first opened up shop he noted that the neighborhood’s ethnic makeup mainly consisted of “originally… Italians and greeks, but now a whole variety of people” occupy the neighborhood. Due to this shift in occupancy Mr. Chin has seen his clientele grow and change in the type of people that he sees. What was once such a limited neighborhood in diversity, has grown to include a large crowd of hispanics, middle eastern, and asian identifying people. A ground for all nationalities, is what Astoria has become, and it is how many hope that it will remain. It is also what people fear will be taken from Astoria if rent keeps increasing at the rate it has. People can only try to stick around for so long, till their love of the neighborhood no longer justifies the capital struggle that is being implemented on the old occupants of the neighborhood, the ones who cannot afford to pay two thousand, five hundred dollars a month for a small two bedroom apartment. Like Mr. Chin who said he wishes “to be where ‘his’ family and friends are at,” the residents of Astoria hope to remain where they call home, and where they’ve formed lifelong bonds.

                  While searching for owners to interview, my partner and I came across the people of this neighborhood in a new light. While both of us have been raised in the neighborhood, we never were put in a situation where we our childhood neighborhood looked towards us as outsiders. In a way though this allowed for us to take two view points of this neighborhood and merge them together, by taking what we once thought and applying it with what we’ve learned. This new state of mind that urbanization, the process by which towns and cities are formed and become larger, has formed for us, shows that traditions and cultures may be around for a while, they do not, however, always remain or are accepted in one particular neighborhood.