Will Brooklyn Ruin Everything?

  |  November 14, 2013
artisanal-mayo

Oh, sorry. We don’t mean to fall into the trap where we put up incendiary blog post titles (as we did last week in this post about crime in Newburgh and Beacon — which, naturally, had Beaconites upset and rightly pointing out that Trulia is not the best source for crime info). It’s just, well, we got word that several more hipster institutions from Brooklyn are planning to head north, to spread the gospel of artisanal condiments and experimental theater and hand-hewn knife sharpening…and we couldn’t help it: our eyes clouded over a little bit with Brooklyn-fatigue.

This is unfair. The locavore and artisanal movements are doing great things for New York, both upstate and in the city. Small manufacturing is taking root in long-abandoned industrial spaces, and farmers are expanding their operations. Thank god the arts are alive and well, and that the creative energy from down south can feed so many other places. We get that. It is, as they say, all good.

Or, well, almost all good. Downstate, the Bloomberg era, the media blitz around hipster Brooklyn and our slanted tax code has made the real estate market, in a word, insane. It’s a million bucks for a fixer-upper in a marginal neighborhood, folks. Upstate, some of the most rebounded spots are filled with overflow folks from the city, many of them suffering from Brooklyn fatigue, too. This makes them extra happy to embrace the Hudson Valley — we’ve hardly met anyone who moved upstate who regrets it (remember: upstate, not the ‘burbs — that’s a different story). But sometimes longtime residents don’t want their towns to become the next Brooklyn. They want their towns to flourish in their own right.

One thing we know: once ex-New Yorkers dedicates themselves to an upstate town or city, they quickly feel like locals. But forgive us — it’s really hard not to make fun of artisanal mayonnaise!

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