After many weeks of transience, I have a home again. What a relief, I tell ya. Having an address makes life much easier. I am now living in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, a Polish neighborhood that lives awkwardly with its gentrifiers, broadly known as hipsters. I'll let others describe them, as the exact definition is problematic. Excessive tattoos happens to be one of the best identifiers. Of course, tattoo-free me would like to think that I am niether hipster nor gentrifier, but the fact of the matter is that, to my Polish neighbors, I sure as hell am.

I have come back to a Brooklyn that is exploding upward, the manifestation of all those people coming to live in one of the faster growing cities in America. People have to have a place to live, and it has reached the price point in Brooklyn where it is worth the price to build big, Manhattan-size buildings. I hate to see this to happen in my Willamsburg. Who would? NIMBY works here, just like everywhere.

The city grows as it does, and there is not much to stop that, so I am reserved to hang out in my new Greenpoint flat, happy to have a good deal on rent, and grumble as the latest gentrifiers, Manhattanites, take over the neighborhood next door. Fortunately, I have too many boxes to unpack to really bother worrying about the new neighbors.