Clinton Hills, Brooklyn Ny

Nondi Young-DeSantis

Professor. N. DiCostanzo

March 7, 2017 (revision)

“Essay #2”

“Clinton Hills, Brooklyn NY”. It’s like every time I say those words to people unfamiliar of where we stay, say they've “Never heard of that part of Brooklyn before”. For those who know The Hills, theres way more to this quiet neighborhood; In the daytime the sunlight fills the streets and the breeze seems to almost make the trees dance, shaking their leaves to the ground. The people in this neighborhood make it what it is, Biggie Smalls grew up right around the corner form me on St James. This neighborhood is HipHop history and most wouldn't know that just from walking through it not taking the time to realize whats right there. I’ve lived in this neighborhood all my life and I've seen so much change. My friends apartment complexes being ripped down for newer, taller, more expensive housing… and I'm sure we all know they couldn't afford to live at brand new one, so where did they go ? This neighborhood is changing so quickly its like a movie, and I'm living in it. So many good diverse people live in Clinton Hill but higher powers see this neighborhood as money that can quickly get into their accounts if they just ‘build a couple buildings’. This is clearly the issue because they want Bed Stuy’, Clinton Hill, Fort Greene, and other neighborhoods in this area to stay the same while they kick the culture out.

Brooklyn’s culture is one of the richest, and not because of the new pretty buildings that we just seem to have thrown up in each neighborhood. Brooklyn is rich because of the buildings and people that were here before the new came about; These buildings spewed history. New York is a place that is constantly changing, I've watched my friends families get kicked out of their homes for not making enough money to pay rent, but yet minimum wage jobs don't pay enough to support one person let alone a family of 4-5. It’s hard to see people who make more money yearly and have an overall better lifestyle than yourself, just come in and offer up ten times your current rent just to live in your apartment that you worked so hard for. New York is one of those places where you could have a job and home one month and be out on the streets the next. Big contractors promise “New” and “affordable” housing complexes that will accommodate the needs of locals and tourists; that’s before they tell you that their going to tear down the local project buildings and leave multiple families stranded. If we worked on smaller issues like these we could be a greater New York.

Immigrants that come to New York for a better life often end up struggling with the things locals find easy, but they make their way. The people coming over from other countries are what makes up the majority of our communities and higher powers do nothing to help them at least a little bit. They get here and have to learn just enough english to get around, asking people on the subway and trying to get directions from other people who speak their language. If their undocumented its hard to get a decent paying job to support a family, jobs that pay less than the  jobs that lower/middle class (american citizen) families have; immigrants made a living off hard work and having nothing to start with and made a good enough living for themselves to push harder. Most immigrant communities may look small but they makeup more of the population that you think. We come into contact with immigrants everyday living in New York, whether we know it  or not.

One day my friend Brianna and I were on our way to a party taking the C train from her stop, Utica Ave. to my stop, Clinton and Washington. This is only about 4 stops on the C train. We head down into the station and I walk up to the booth to refill my MetroCard because I find that whenever I go to the little machine/ kiosk, extra money goes missing off my MetroCard. So I ask the lady at the window “Can you put 7 dollars on my card ?” and she coughs all on the little microphone they have in the booth, “Ew”, she continues and yells “HOW MUCH !?” and I again reply and say my amount. At this point its been about 10 minutes and I’m thinking that I could've just dealt with the machine. She finally finished putting the seven dollars on my card, I'm walking towards Brianna to go through the turnstile; Brianna and I run into this man who speaks only Spanish, I knew then I knew then i couldn't help him. Luckily, Brianna was there she's PuertoRican, Dominican, and Black, so she knew better than I did; They go on for about five minutes and so far I'm lost and this man is clearly getting frustrated with Brianna’s broken Spanish. He's tapping his foot, huffing and puffing, rubbing his head out of confusing I could just feel his frustration; Ten minutes in, I get an idea and I interrupt their conversation saying, “Bri ! just use Google Translate”, she then pulled her phone out of her pink Uniqlo jacket pocket and went through her apps. She typed in “Take the C train to Broadway Junction and Transfer to the J.” Brianna played this back a couple of times for the man in Spanish and soon enough his mood changed… he thanked us for helping us and hugged Brianna. This man went on the opposite side of the platform and soon boarded the train we had told him to earlier. Bri and I then boarded our train on the opposite side of the Utica Ave. station and we were on out way. I sat on the old kind of C train and placed myself far enough from the end of the bench because I know Brianna likes to sit there. The train wasn't really crowded so I was talking at a normal tone telling Brianna that it was great that she could help that guy, I followed that with “The MTA should have direction signs for everybody… it’s really sad that he really didn't know where to go and the attendant at the booth was clearly no help”. The MTA is also an company that focuses on the wrong neighborhoods, trains in the city get fixed first and the stations are maintained more frequently. The Downtown and Brooklyn stations are the last to get the newly updated technology and for neighborhoods that are rapidly expanding it is an issue. People from everywhere live throughout New York and should be able to ride around just like people who speak fluent English. Its pretty hard, even someone who has experience can get caught up in New York’s Train trap.