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Alternative consumption practices often lead to the creation of entrepreneurial spaces like restaurants and bars, and to the resurgence of farmers’ markets, offering urban consumers a safe and comfortable place to ‘perform’ difference from mainstream norms. These spaces fabricate an aura of authenticity based on the history of the area or the back story of their products, and capitalize on the tastes of their young, alternative clientele. This vision gradually attracts media attention and a broader consumer base, followed by larger stores and real estate developers, leading to hip neighborhoods with luxury housing, aka gentrification. Whether the specific discourse of consumption is based on distinction or inclusion, alternative consumers are not so innocent agents of change. Their desire for alternative foods, both gourmet and organic, and for ‘middle class’ shopping areas encourages a dynamic of urban redevelopment that displaces working-class and ethnic minority consumers.
Notes
1. On the transformation of the East Village from the 1960s to the 1980s, with the complicity of real estate developers and the city government, see Christopher Mele (2000). Some of this graffiti was stenciled by young artists who moved to the East Village during the 1970s, set up collectives, galleries, and performance spaces, and achieved a remarkable amount of fame in a very short time.
2. Mele finds the Lower East Side/East Village is ‘a preferred site for subcultures and avant-garde movements … primarily because the struggles between insiders (ethnic and racial working class) and outsiders (white, middle and upper classes) become a source of inspiration’ (2000, p. 18).
3. As Lloyd points out, the volume of sales is not enough to keep the newer coffeehouse in business (2006, p. 112). Praised by Rolling Stone in 1994, the café was shut down in 1998.
4. Thanks to my research assistant Peter Frase for visiting Monkeytown.
5. There are not many empirical studies of this, but, according to Australian researchers, food stores and restaurants occupy between 20 and 30 percent of retail space in gentrified neighborhoods of Sydney. ‘Good food,’ in Sydney as in New York, includes exotic foreign, ‘new’ domestic, and ‘fusion’ cuisines, as well as cafes and stores selling specialty products (Bridge & Dowling 2001).
6. Thanks to Peter Marcuse for suggesting this complementary relationship to me.
7. In recent years, demands on farmers’ time, including selling at multiple markets in the region, have caused them to hire day workers from both the city and the countryside to sell at the markets. This has occurred not only in New York but all over the U.S. as the number of farmers’ markets has increased. Less direct contact with farmers reduces the sense of authenticity.
8. White residents of Canarsie rioted against busing of African American schoolchildren into the district in 1971–1974; African Americans in Bushwick looted stores during an all-night electricity blackout in 1977.
9. Thanks to Allison Dean, who carried out an ethnographic study of Fulton Mall in 2005, for sharing these interviews with me.
10. Municipal Art Society public forum on Fulton Mall, February 9, 2006.
11. About half the survey respondents say that they run into friends here (Allison Dean, Fulton Mall Ethnographic Study, 2005).
12. Architect's comments, Municipal Art Society public forum on Fulton Mall, February 9, 2006.
13. For a typical story, see Zukin, ‘Artemio Goes to Tiffany's,’ (2004, pp. 145–167).
14. Brooklyn Heights Association: see http://www.brooklynheightsassociation.org.
15. Lisa Kersavage, ‘MAS Works to Preserve Buildings in Downtown Brooklyn,’ http://www.mas.org/Advocacy/preservation.cfm; upzoning report: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dwnbklyn2/dwnbklynproj1.shtml.