On Saturday 21 October Fabian and I went to Maria Hernandez Park near our place in Bushwick. We go there on nice days to talk and enjoy the park.
I have always perceived some class conflict there and we a violent manifestation of it act out on that day. Fabian and I were sitting on some benches and a man nearby began to speak loudly to another one. Both men seemed homeless. Both were dirty. Both had large sacks of bottles which they had collected to return in the container deposit recycling program.
I would call them both relatively unfortunate as compared to the other people in the park. One man was yelling at the other that because the day was Saturday that he should take a shower. Perhaps this was nonsense, or perhaps there is some homeless shelter which offers bathing only on Saturdays. The second many only responded to the first to go away and leave him alone. The first man insisted that the second go for bathing. He yelled from some distance away about the shower. After about 30 seconds, he began to walk away. The situation could have passed, but at this point, the second man began to yell aggressively at the first, calling him back into the situation. The first man wanted to escalate the situation so he returned to come closer. Fabian and I were watching this from nearby. Even though I was right there and saw everything I cannot clearly remember what happened next.
Definitely both men started throwing beer bottles at each other. The first man who was provoking the situation at the time when I started watching had a very bloody face very quickly. Perhaps each of them threw 3-5 beer bottles. I am not sure how, but lots of glass broke on the pavement at their feet. They seemed to be aiming for each other’s heads, but regardless, there seemed to be shattered and cracked bottles spilled everywhere and perhaps one of both of their bags burst or was emptied. The bloody man ran some distance away. He found a large stone the size of a tennis ball and I guess he wished to attack the other guy with it. While that was happening, the second guy got on his bicycle leaving his bag of bottles behind and rode away.
I often do not carry my cellphone out with me. Fabian had his and I told him to call the police. He did not have his wits with him and started searching online for the phone number. I was surprised at how easily a person can forget or not be aware that they should call 9-1-1, an emergency number which everyone knows. He called 911 and the police arrived within 2 minutes. They found the bloody man and began talking but the other man was gone. The situation seemed under control. An ambulance arrived. Fabian and I walked home.
Maria Hernandez Park is named after a woman living near the park who organized the local residents to do a neighborhood watch to prevent the sale of drugs at the park and in the neighborhood. She was shot and killed in 1989, presumably by drug dealers who did not want her intervention in their business. Bushwick is an old neighborhood founded in the late 1600s. Residents who have been in the neighborhood for 20 years say that it has a large Latino population, but it used to have more. People who have been in the neighborhood for only 10 years say that the neighborhood used to have starving artist types. Anyone who has just moved to the neighborhood says that it hosts hipsters and that it is too expensive for anyone other than urban professionals. As time passes hipster neighborhoods become more expensive neighborhoods for young families to have children, and Bushwick is definitely becoming that.
I have been coming to Maria Hernandez park since 2014 and even in that time it has changed. There used to be more homeless people using it as a residence. Now instead of homeless people spreading their blankets there, families sit in the grass on blankets for their children or dogs. The dog park there is not for the Hispanic and Latino community, who less frequently have dogs or the enthusiasm about making visits to a dog park a routine in their lives. Hipsters love dogs and dog parks, so obviously, the dog park is there to encourage hipsters to popularize the neighborhood and encourage real estate development. Latino street venders still sell homemade snacks and drinks from their small food carts. Those carts sell sugary drinks and salty fried snacks which I would call junk food, so their traditional business is not hipsters.
Fabian speaks Spanish and we have tried asking all sorts of older street vendors if they have vegan food. They never know what the word vegan means, and meat, lard, and butter seem to be ingredients in all sorts of foods which they prepare even when the food could be vegan.
It seems unfortunate to me that these vendors who are trying to make extra money are surrounded by relatively affluent people with disposable income and who want snacks, but there are always multiple food carts selling identical products in the same park with no one selling things which are particularly attractive to the neighborhood’s incoming residents. In the past year on weekends a farmer’s market has opened at the park. White people from other neighborhoods run the farmer’s market and white people shop there. All sorts of older businesses are closing. I love all the coffeehouses around. People who have managed a business in a certain way for many years are often unprepared to address a market change which could happen in 1-3 years.
Probably with rising rent in Bushwick there is not much future for homeless people in this park. The wealthier more socially able individuals are taking up more space in the park and in the neighborhood. In some places the police will come quickly when called, and in others the police take more time. Recently the parks department replaced the old waste containers in the park with new solar powered automatic trash compactors. Whereas before people could place trash into a container, now people have to face what is obviously a sophisticated machine to dispose of trash. With the explosion of technology and changing labor practices it is hard for me to understand without research whether this sort of automated device can be lower cost in the long run, or cleaner than having a human do regular trash collection, or what the significance is of having a miracle of technology replace the age old concept of a bucket. Whatever practicality these devices have, they communicate something more: “The park is the target of development. A technological maintenance chain services a device when previously only untrained labor managed. The investment in this park is for the benefit of some demographic – is this benefit for you or for someone else? You are now interacting with an expensive new machine, so what else is changing around you? Did someone like you decide to put this robotic trash can here? If not, who did make the decision, and what other decisions about your environment are they making?”
Dorothy had lived in Bushwick while she lived in NYC. She said that she felt uneasy to learn that when she moved into the neighborhood, she became one among many who were newcomers in a neighborhood which previously did not have high tenant turnover. She and others like her collectively were disrupting a community, raising rents, and pushing people out of their homes. I talked this over with Fabian and Richard. Fabian pointed out that Puerto Ricans and Dominicans had been resident in Bushwick longer, but now Bushwick had a lot of Ecuadorians. I know almost nothing about differences between Hispanic groups, but after some research, it seems that many Puerto Ricans and Dominicans came to NYC after World War II and that Ecuadorian Americans came to the United States after 1970. Tradition is a slippery idea in NYC because the most persistent culture in NYC is continually change of everything. I would have trouble blaming Dorothy for the fault of disruption of a community which has a history of only a few decades, and which has mostly been at the fringe of society and not thriving to create or sustain their own culture relative to other demographics in the city.
Richard was the one who immediately went back and said that Bushwick was 1600 years old. It seems that Bushwick used to be Dutch, then used to be German, and was once Italian and Irish, then was Puerto Rican or Dominican. Maybe Ecuadorian people came here because it was Spanish speaking from the 40s-70s, but one Hispanic culture is not the same as the others except I suppose from the perspective of non-Hispanics in NYC.
The area of Bushwick where Fabian, Dorothy, and I have made home is within 2 minutes walk of the M line, 5 minutes from the J, 10 minutes from the L, and 15 minutes from the G. When I have told older New Yorkers how much I enjoy Bushwick, they have replied asking whether the neighborhood was dangerous or dirty. It certainly is still dirty. If there was ever a danger of criminal violence, gentrification changes that danger from poor intimidating rich visitors to poor threatening poor residents. Nothing dangerous can happen here now without police being summoned. From one perspective, having police around makes a community safe for residents. From another perspective, wellness in life comes from living in a neighborhood where police come a bit longer after being called, because a little distance from social services means lower cost of living and more ability to thrive with less income.