Choice Market on a Saturday
The Choice Market in Bed-Stuy buzzes on a Saturday morning. Staff brew up coffees and hand them over a glass case stocked with baked goods — danishes, tarts and croissants. Samples sit on a small paper plate by the register. It’s small, as is every cafe in New York, a city where high rents force everyone to make the most of a square foot.
It’s also pride weekend, and the sun is shining after an early morning downpour.
The humidity is rising but inside Choice Market the atmosphere feels cozy, festive. Etta James and Otis Redding play in the background. An elegant woman in office attire asks the man at the register why the pride flag is missing. She laughs and makes small talk before leaving with a tray of drinks. A man in the back, smiling to no one as he adds sugar and milk to his coffee, later asks the barista what the woman — Ms. Jones — ordered.
“A lot of chai lattes,” he says with a smile, shocks of pink hair sticking out beneath his ball cap. “You thinking of buying her a coffee?”
Flustered, the man bats away the question, changing the subject to point out how much Ms. Jones does for the community. “She’s a real nice woman,” the barista agrees.
To an outsider, the market exudes a community feel. One images the same customers coming daily, placing their regular orders and grabbing a seat at the large, communal table.
It’s a community that like much of Brooklyn has changed a lot in recent decades. Once home to upper and middle class families of German and Irish descent, Bed Stuy later grew to house working-class Jews and Italian immigrants at the turn of the 20th century. Around the time of World War II, the neighborhood began attracting African-Americans in search of jobs and new industry. By the 1960s it was predominantly black.
The area has had its share of racial tension. And while recent gentrification has diversified the neighborhood's racial, ethnic and economic make up, it has also displaced poorer residents and deepened divisions.
A black man I meet many weeks later in Arizona who grew up in Brooklyn says the neighborhood he came from was like the United Nations. He recalled Thanksgivings spent with Jews and Italians, coming home so full after trying all the different dishes he wished he was dead. Now he laments the gentrification, the $10 beers and fancy bakeries.
And it continues, brought on stronger perhaps by a voracious search among young working professionals for affordable housing.
Back at Choice Market a young girl who stops in with her dad orders a Pellegrino, a copy of the New York Times gets shuffled among customers and kale salads, portobello paninis and fresh pressed juices occupy the deli case.
The ways cities transform as rising rents displace the lower classes is something I’ve seen up and down the east coast on this visit. It’s something I know is happening across the U.S.
The melding of cultures and the diversity that comes at the beginning of that shift isn't always to be disparaged. Often it transforms neighborhoods for the better. And the diversity that has long defined New York City could make it a model for America. But what I sensed was that life here is a struggle. Like many metropolises today, people work endless hours, often with little job security, just to pay for life in a closet. And they’re angry.
And so this moment in Bed-Stuy feels manufactured, like a show put on for visitors, or a pretense needed to keep the peace. And I wonder how many people here believe it and how long it will continue.
