Flamá Park: The Completed Process of Gentrification

Kaya Fridman 9/28/17 New Black Ethnographies Professor Shaka McGlotten

Proposal The year is 2057. Everything I once knew about my childhood neighborhood in New York City has been stripped away. The rampant gentrification of the city has pushed out inhabitants and reconstructed entire communities. Throughout the historic process of gentrification; anthropologists have focused on the politics behind it, activists have worked to protect vulnerable communities, and artists have created entire shows surrounding their neighborhood’s destruction. For this project, I am proposing an ethnographic study of one specific neighborhood: Flamá Park (once known as the intersections between Flatbush and Boro Park.) The gentrification of these once adjacent, now combined, neighborhoods has pushed all of its original inhabitants out, leaving the new, gentrified version of the neighborhood visually and culturally sparse.

The voices of the marginalized should be heard and I will always fight to uplift those stories and experiences. It seems for once in my career I am more curious about the people who have bestowed marginalization onto the marginalized. I am curious to understand relationships between the gentrifier and the gentrified. Is gentrification a cycle instead of a linear process? Who are the people who have moved into this new neighborhood? Do they care about what the neighborhood once used to be? Why did these people move to the neighborhood? How has the history and culture of the neighborhood changed? What is the neighborhood’s new culture? What is the neighborhood visually constructed of?

In order to fully understand my subjects and surroundings, I am planning to sublet an apartment in the center of Flamá Park and work at a local businesses. There will be a true sense of integration throughout the entire study. The residents of Flamá Park will become friends as well as informants. I will take trips to the Service Cities with colleagues of mine to deliver food and try to gather more information.

For the next few years, I will act as a bridge between the oppressed and the oppressor; collecting information and continuing to dissipate resources along the way. Although the proposal may sound biassed, it’s important to remember that while working with marginalized communities, they must be helped and aided. Gathering information from suffering people without aiding their suffering is unethical, voyeuristic, and goes against the newly documented American Anthropologist Association guidelines.

The ethnography itself will follow me throughout my time within Flamá Park. Chronological storytelling will allow readers to follow the relationship building, analysis, and lesson learning I will embark upon. I will explore themes of: power, culture, history, visibility, displacement, gentrification, and dynamics between communities. Sound and visual theory will be usd to explain the many changing ways of Flamá Park and the dichotomy between the Service Cities.

My Apartment I wake up at 6:00AM, the cold wood floors feel soothing against my bare feet. The air in my apartment is purified and recycled thanks to vents throughout the building. It’s strange to me how everyone within the buildings of Flamá Park is sharing the same air. We used to have this expression when I was a child, before the process of gentrification ended and the construction of service towns

started. We used to say “we all breathe the same air” to signify the equality between humans no matter their individual circumstances. The digital kiosk greets me with a warm “good morning Ms. Alberto.” I didn’t know these types of technologies could speak so gently, it felt as if a secondary aura was in the room with me. Although I was part of the generation who grew up during the “rise of robots” all of this still feels new to me. The AI informs me that “the day is July, 17th, 2057.” I thank her and close her with one of the many tablets installed in my apartment.

The apartment I have subleased is nestled in the middle of Church and Flatbush avenues. The building is identical to the ones surrounding it, each of the structures standing, tall, glass, and white; rooted into the street with an essence of pride, as if each structure has an individualized sense of entitlement. Each of the buildings have large gold plated numbers hanging just above the sliding glass doors and Kiosk security system. Flamá 101 hangs outside of my building, taking up space. I look outside of the window and see tall buildings like my own, the only difference lies within their numbers outside.

Turning away from my window, I face my bed, a modest full sized bed with fitted white sheets, two pillows, and a fluffy white throw blanket that says “Flamá Park” in big bold grey letters. This place feels less like home and more like a hotel. The tablet hanging over my bed always stays on, creating a soft white light to bounce throughout the room. At night, the “Smart Apartment” picks up on your energy waves and measures emotional stimulation which then adjusts the tablet’s light to change the color of the room to ensure better sleep. There are many of these tablets throughout the apartment’s walls and floors.

The tablets are interactive, they can change the temperature of the floor, change the air purification scents, offer a variety of meals ready for preparation, start resident’s showers, contact resident's workplace, contact friends and family. There’s even a new feature where the tablets can carry a conversations posing to be a resident; depending on how much interaction the resident has had with the tablet. It’s interesting, how personalized and intrusive these technologies are. People say Flamá Park is the best way to get

privacy; “to get away.” I chuckled upon moving in because it actually feels that there’s no privacy.All of these tablets; tablets that have personalities, that have eyes watching your every move. As I begin to leave the apartment, my AI gently urges me not to step outside before Flamá Park’s Air Filtration system turns on. I close the AI and leave the building.

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View of Block

Corner Park As soon as I step outside, I sling my air mask on. Residents of Flamá Park are given emergency air masks in case one of their window breaks or the Air Filtration System shuts off. People pay a lot to live here but malfunctions still occur. The pollution is so thick in the air I can see garbage particles floating around me. A shadow of green and yellow drapes over Flamá Park. None of the residents are outside. I drag my feet to a “Corner Park” right across Church Avenue. Flamá Park is filled with these tiny corner parks. They all consist of large West Elm benches scattered amongst the few trees left on

earth. These trees stay encased in small oxygen bubbles; the air inside the bubbles are always clean. In the middle of the encased trees and oak benches, is a large fountain. This fountain turns on when Flamá Park’s air filtration system turns on, creating a speculation of clean water. It seems frivolous and wasteful to have this display of clean water when so many of the service cities surrounding Flamá Park are struggling to find clean water. I sit amongst the empty fountain and closed off trees, the air is stiff, too tight to even open my eyes all the way. I close my eyes and focus on breathing through my air mask.

Resting amongst the last few trees in what was once Flatbush-Ditmas park takes me back to a melancholy and lonely place.

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Corner Park

Service Cities

Flamá Park never used to be like this. The evolution of this neighborhood commenced out of the completed process of gentrification, a process that was visible in our society no longer than 50 years ago.

With the intensification of gentrification, neighborhood revolutions began to break out. Although these revolutions were small; they were violent, killing many important figures in society. Time went on and the original inhabitants suffering from the hands of gentrification began to band together; growing bigger and bigger. During President Trump's second term, his Administration pushed to create “Service Cities” as an alternative for “total displacement.” This effort was supposed to quell the revolutions and keep the people in their place, it was a twisted form of oppression, a disguised degradation. Within the neighborhood revolutions there was outrage, confusion, and division. Radical leftists started clashing with liberal reformists and entire communities fell into the trap of Service Cities. It was heartbreaking and eerily historical. The Service Cities are scattered all around the world, they are buried deep in the dirt and debri on the outskirts of neighborhoods just like Flamá Park. Most of them exist under highways of the gentrified areas, that way the smells and sounds of decayed existence never have to be faced- they can just be passed over.

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Service Cities

Evolution of Flamá Park Just like any anthropologist, I still think about how history repeats itself. Through word to mouth, old friends, estranged family members, and colleagues, there’s word that the Service Cities today are building quiet revolutions. Residents are keeping everything low and hushed; keeping it out of the eyes of the officials. I admire and understand their need to organize. From afar, I offer all support to these revolutionaries yet I fear the officials are too busy trying to create technology to restore the climate and weather. Of course, this technology would only be used for places like Flamá Park. The Service Cities get less credit than deserved, just like any marginalized community; past, present, or future. I plan on documenting my time in the Service Cities; compiling interviews and trying to gather any information I can about the state of life there. History is constantly repeating itself. Being here brings history alive with a sensory overdrive. The textures, sounds, smells, and visuals of Flamá Park hold all sorts of power dynamics and erasure. The neighborhood is a 3D landscape of what once was.

Before all the fighting and the build up, before the revolution, the downfall of the revolution, the rebuilding of revolution; before the gentrification, Flamá Park was a completely different world. Flamá Park used to be called “Flatbush.” It used to have intersecting neighborhoods, it used to encapsulate the true meaning of intersectionality. Flamá Park used to be filled to the brim with trees, Prospect Park bordered parts of the neighborhood and families would soak up the sun to BBQ and dance, or ice skate and sled in the winter. Now, the climate has been nearly destroyed, the sun is so hot, and the ozone layer has been shattered. Prospect Park turned into Prospect Luxury Complex- a gated community, which if even believable, outdoes the excess comfort of Flamá Park. The air is so tight, it’s so hard to breathe. If it’s this bad without the Air Filtration system here in Flamá Park, I can’t help but wonder what it must be

like down in the Service Cities. I force myself deeper into thought about Flatbush and the past, almost as a way to escape the discomfort I face now.

The avenues were once busy and loud, people would blast music until the late hours of the night.

Life was a percussion. Elders would sit on the block and watch life pass by, playing card games or dominos. Billowing smells and sounds of migration, survival, resilience, struggle, culture, and community blew around in the air. Bustling sounds of life floated from building to building. Beauty supply stores filled up the corners, bodegas and block parties worked hand in hand. Fire hydrants would be cracked open in the summertime. People would fall in love and greet the summer air with respect and gratitude.

People struggled, but people had a community to struggle with. There was a communal understanding, an unspoken agreement of everyone’s situation. Church was ritual for most, and there were community colleges which the younger people took advantage of.

I remember being in college myself, visiting home on breaks and noticing each new change in the neighborhood. It started with the new connecticut muffins; branded coffee shops that set the blueprint for the types of “minimal small businesses” which line the streets of Flamá Park. The changes were subtle but grounded in gentrification and displacement. Each new gaggle of white people equated to a black or brown family being pushed out of Flatbush-Boro Park. Things changed rapidly, the resistance grew stronger and my immediate family ended up moving upstate to avoid getting pushed out, New York City [or once was] has some of the heaviest concentrations of poverty and wealth living side by side. Many of my adolescent friends and some family members stayed behind to fight, stayed behind because they didn’t have the option to leave. Reports of blood stained streets were constant, the fighting was persistently increasing, the death counts rising. I stayed in contact with many friends up until the process of gentrification was completed and the Service Cities were built. After that, all communication fell off.

As technology advanced in all upper class areas of the world, the marginalized groups in Service Cities

were completely cut off. The internet was no longer free; black, brown, indigenous, queer, trans, and poor voices were shut down and dismissed. Their suffering and lifestyle often forgotten about.

I originally intended this ethnography to focus on the lives within Service Cities. A deeper look into the lives of the displaced. Big parts of me still cared about the friends and family I had within the Service Cities. I believed my study would help uplift their voices, and the university could use their position to advocate for the atrocities happening within the cities. After many internal and external debates with peers, mentors, and supervisors; it came to my personal attention that I’m in a unique position as an Anthropologist. With the privileges of racial ambiguity and class comfort, I could infiltrate and study gentrified areas. I began to recognize the importance in studying the Gentrifier and the culture of exclusion, narcissism, and consumerism surrounding these neighborhoods. With my background knowledge, experience, and resources, Flamá Park became the perfect place of field study.

Yolanda The tightened air in my chest begins to pulsate. I quickly grab my inhaler and am transported out of my deep thoughts and back into the morning. It’s 7:00am now and I hear Quality Control Specialists shuffling around cleaning any trash that’s found it’s way onto the streets of Flamá Park. Quality Control Specialists are new terms implemented during the process of final gentrification. Once original residents of gentrified neighborhoods were displaced, they still needed to find work. These sanitation workers live within the Service Cities surrounding Flamá Park, and are only allowed in during their morning shifts. As I take my field notes down via bluetooth recorder, one Quality Control Specialist approaches me. With a sense of concern they ask “why the fuck are YOU out here?” I explain my position and kindly ask for their name. Yolanda introduces herself, she lives in Service city 11218, and explains she’s had this job for 6

years now. We fall into an impromptu interview. Although Yolanda asked me not to share her voice, she allowed me to transcribe the recordings.

Interview with Yolanda.

I met Yolanda on one of my first days at Flamá Park. She was working her morning shift while she spotted me outside before the air filtration system had been turned off. While coming to clean the Corner Park on Church avenue she stopped and initiated conversation with me first. Immediately pointed out I looked like I could belong in the Service City with her, and asked what the hell I was doing out before the clean air was turned on. We began to talk from there and asked if she would like to be interviewed for the ethnography.

Me: What’s your name? You don’t have disclosed your full name if you don’t feel comfortable.

Yolanda: We don’t share our last names anymore. That’s only something you could share if you have the privilege of the government on your side. My name is Yolanda, just Yolanda. None of this “Quality Control Specialist” bullshit.

Me: Sorry, what’s a Quality Control Specialist? Are you a doctor?

Yolanda: No, hell no, my mother used to be though. She used to have her own practice on this very avenue. Just down the block, around the corner on Flatbush and Tilden. Quality Control Specialist is just a fancy way to let people know I clean up these people’s trash. I’m just a garbage Woman. Yolanda the Garbage Woman. I prefer it like that, reminds me of old times. I used to love the garbage men that cleaned

my block up. I used to live right round the corner from this “park.” Yeah, yup, I remember all of it so vividly. Me and my friends would sit in the park and read books, we’d play music and feel the sunshine sit on us. Can’t do that anymore, nooo no. The sun burns now, burns so bad. Have you seen the trash we pick up? It’s all sunblock cream and sun suits these people use. They burn so bad they can barely step outside. They’re lucky the Air Filtration Systems protects them, if they didn’t have that, they’d be toast. I live in Service City 11218 now. The sun is just as bad but you know what? You know what’s really crazy?

The more the sun gets hot, the more our skin gets stronger. My wife says it’s cause we’re superhuman and when the sun gives out and the earth cracks, we’ll still be here--- the world just for ourselves.

Me: Wow, I’m so sorry all of this happened so fast. I can’t even imagine what would the world be like if the revolutions won… I have old family in Service City 11372, they used to mention that thing about the sun. I wonder what that means. How is it in the Service Cities? Are you okay?

Yolanda: Have you been? Down to the Service Cities?

Me: No I haven’t. What’s it like?

Yolanda: Unspeakable. I can’t even speak on my own neighborhood with pride, they treat me like an animal, I’m ashamed of the place I live in. I used to be so proud of the place I lived in and they traumatized me, they traumatized all of us. You know not all of us were into the whole revolution shit?

Yeah, a majority, but some of us weren’t.They tried to make the Service City like home, tried to make it look like Flamá Park before Flamá Park actually happened. Tried to make it look like flatbush. They gave us these brick buildings, with fire hydrants and “trees.” The bricks were painted on, they’re all peeled off by now. The fire hydrants always leak sewage water, the trees are just 3D printed shapes. People cut the trees down quick, cut them down to use them as furniture in their homes. Everyone is sick, no one can breathe. There are no air filtration systems like in Flamá Par. It’s unspeakable! I come to work every morning from 5:30-8:00 IN THE MORNING, just to clean these peoples extra trash up. They throw out

food because they “don’t like the taste” meanwhile we’re out here starving and sick. I take home any good food and water I could find. My kids need it.

Me: Jesus. They don’t get any news coverage on you out here too, everything is looked over. The residents don’t even know what’s going on. I don’t think they care, my interest is to see how much they know about the history of the neighborhood; to see if they care about all the violence they built their homes on. How do these people treat you?

Yolanda: Yeah. You get my words out there, let them know what it’s really like. My wife says they’re playing the same images on the news from when they first created the cities. They don’t show the garbage or heat or fires. The sick kids and dying people. They just stuck us under the highways behind our old neighborhoods, they pushed us out of our homes and gave it away to these white folks. Actually some of our own live here, in Flamá Park and other neighborhoods like it. They married into white families, or they look like you; a mix of a lot of things, blended so these people here don’t really mind your presence.

Me: Who lives in the service cities?

Yolanda: Folk like me, from Flatbush. Black people, Brown people, Asians, Arabs. All colors, all cultures.

Stuck all the folk of color in one shitty situation. Worse than it was before. Some folks from the Service Cities wanna get into Flamá Park so bad they spend their whole lives dying to get on the inside. I keep telling them, it’s all happened to us before. They’re never gonna actually let us in. We’re all in one shitty situation, a systematic oppression type of thing, but you know people like me got it the worse? Yeah, black people got it the worst. Colorism happens in those Service Cities too. The very little resources we have go to the lighter ones, the ones who look more mixed or less readable. It’s terrible. I’m speaking about it so openly and casually cause it’s my life but it’s awful. I wake up everyday hardened from the inside out. You know… I never used to believe in bloodshed and revolution and all that intense shit but now I do… Now I really do…

Yolanda: Got lost in my thoughts woah. So what, are you one of the “empathetic residents?”

Me: “Empathetic Residents?

Yolanda: Yeah. You know, people who felt guilty. Who remembered how it used to be. Who used to believe in “social justice” but would never show up to Flatbush when we the heat of the revolution was rising. They call themselves the Empathetic Residents, they feel all guilty and terrible for us but never come out to our cities to help. Don’t even know what the Services Cities look like, where they are under the highways. The empathetic residents make themselves feel better by bringing our people into Flamá Park with them. The ones who leave…We never seen them again. It breaks my heart, cause they’re not really free, neither are we. The empathetic residents even have little babies with our people. Any mixed child running round came from us, that baby was born strong.

Me: Sorry shit my recorder glitched for a minute. No, I’m not an empathetic resident. I’m an Anthropologist, I work with a University upstate… I’ll be here for a few years, walking around and working, talking to people, trying to understand why everyone in Flamá Park is okay with all the suffering happening below them. I want to understand how to get them to organize. A team of people like me from the University are figuring out how to use our resources to help with the… revolutions…Some of us went to go study with other Service Cities, some of us came to neighborhoods like Flamá Park.

Yolanda: hmmmm. I’m afraid I don’t feel too good talking to you about anything else going on beyond my life, my wife, and my job. Good luck thought uhhh Ms. Alberto right? Good luck, you’re sweet for sure. Remember not to use my voice okay? See you.

A Breath of Fresh Air As Yolanda’s Quality Control truck exits Flamá Park park, the air filtration systems wakes up.

Everything around me stops. I can hear every sound from the outskirts of the neighborhood moving in.

There is a low hum that grows in intensity per second, and within a minute the generator turns on; clean air sweeps the neighborhood. Barrier technology keeps the air within the neighborhood. Clean air sweeps the streets, smells of lavender and oxygen fill up my respiratory so quickly I get knocked off my feet. I look along the avenue as my body adjusts to the clean air. Interactive kiosks fill each street corner, lamp posts with USB chargers and benches that residents can pay for to use are scattered throughout the avenues. Everything in Flamรก Park costs money. Slowly, residents begin to leave their apartment buildings. The avenues are lines with numerous coffee shops, pottery making studios, vape stores, water osmosis stations, food delivery kiosks, and other miscellaneous stuff centered on creating and leisure time. Everyone here works, but came into the neighborhood with money. There are doctors and lawyers and gallerists within each building. Everyone here has had the opportunity of education, travel, and freedom of choice. I sit back and watch for a few hours as the day goes by. People converse, talking loudly and laughing. The air smells of sunblock and all of a sudden every molecule of energy in my body dispeates. Exhausted, I drag myself away from Corner Park and walk back to my apartment building.

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FlamĂĄ Park Businesses

The walk back is surprisingly pleasant, if I dissociated enough, I could’ve been walking back through my adolescence before the process of gentrification was completed. The concrete, now cleaner and brighter, against my sneakers makes me nostalgic. The sounds and surroundings have completely changed. What was once rowdy and real, brown and brick, natural and cultural is now white and bright, regurgitated and rebuilt, appropriated and exclusive. I understand my own bias, and the controversy within the University on my affirmed stance on this process, but it’s no surprise that the visualizations of gentrification have deeper implications. The displacement and reconstruction of gentrified communities are more than just redecoration. There is a true sense of white washing that happens when gentrification takes place. gentrification has physically taken something once brown, black, brick, and rooted and transformed it to something white, glass, tall, and sleek. Gentrification has taken the noises of survival,

migration, displacement, and celebration; all vibrant multifaceted soundscapes, and changed it to mechanical, dull, dependent noises. [Dependent in the sense that the noise is produced after consumption of material is completed.] I contemplate all of this as I arrive back to Flamá 101.

As I walk into the big sliding doors, that allow me in due to facial recognition technology on the outside of the building, I am face to face with my neighbor, Shelton. He greets me warmly and asks about the tentative dinner plans we had for tonight. “See you tonight? I’m cooking steak tartare and lightly toasted brussel sprouts!” I thank him kindly and agree to head over at 8.

Shelton I head to my neighbor’s apartment at 8PM, the tablets within my apartment gently woke me up from my nap, I was surprised again the sweetness in their voice and the excess comfort within Flamá Park. Shelton has lived in Flamá Park for 7 years and works at the water osmosis factory. Upon arrival to Flamá Park he helped move one of my few suitcases with me, we barely had to carry anything because elevation technology helped us with the weight. Shelton introduced himself happily, stated he was “excited to see a new face, and immediately asked about my ethnicity.”

My intentions with this dinner were pure; to meet the people around me. But, I was also curios in digesting his opinions on The Service Cities and culture of Flamá Park. Unlike Yolanda, Shelton allowed me to use his recording. The dinner was friendly and informal; so much of this work requires connectivity in exchange for information. Reciprocity goes a long way in this field. Shelton and I talked about many things including his childhood, his move to Flamá Park and his relationships with residents here. He asked many questions about my position at the University and my acclimation to Flamá Park. I sampled some of the dinner recording, and decide to ask Shelton direct questions about his insight on the Service

Cities. After dinner, I headed back home and turned on the tablet to watch TV before sleep. I did a voice search; “play coverage of The Service Cities.� It was true what Yolanda said, nobody has covered them since they were first created. People were dying by the masses in silence and nobody knew. I settled to take some handwritten notes before bed instead. Nobody does this anymore but I find writing to be relaxing and cathartic. Tomorrow would be a new day. I would go to Corner Park again in hopes of seeing Yolanda. I would also bring her cases of water and food for her wife and kids. Then I would be off to the artisanal yarn store where I have a job interview. I want to properly integrate with this community, and part of that is working amongst these people. I shut my notebook, change the room to a soft yellow, and head to bed.