I get notices in my mailbox when when there are rentals posted in Sunset Park to keep an eye on the local Real Estate market so I can see what's developing around me. lately I have been seeing an all too familiar pattern that I saw before in the gentrification of our northern neck of the neighborhood when the section towards 17th street from 30th street was slowly transformed into Greenwood Heights. Some realtors in the small print on their pages will note that it's a subdivision or subset of Sunset Park. But unless you ask them they will never volunteer that information, until now.. Well, they can't rename the core of Sunset Park something else. So, the next available option is to give it an adjective like "trendy", "up and coming", "upcoming", "gentrifying", "fashionable", "popular" etc.. So when I got this latest listing in my mailbox as "Live in Trendy Sunset Park Brooklyn" I knew that we have arrived as the next target of the hipsterization wave in Brooklyn. Gone are the days when the neighborhood was know as "Gunset Park", "Needle Park, "grimy", "working class", "ethnic enclave", "industrial", "crime ridden", "blue collar neighborhood", "working class" etc.. No, those days appear to be gone, we are now trendy and fashionable. I wonder how many hipsters are stupid enough to fall for that marketing ploy. Well, judging by the accelerated changes around us and the fact that the realtors are managing to get the rents they are asking for, quite a few. And so goes the process of gentrification. The neighborhood I moved into some 45 years ago has changed and continues to change. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not so.. The only constant in life is change and that is true in Sunset Park as it is anywhere else...
