THREE WORLDS
Latinos, Hasidic Jews and whites Three worlds meet in Williamsburg, but do they mix?
By Eileen Markey
Three worlds intersect on Broadway and Marcy Avenue, in the shadow of the elevated J, M and, Z subway lines in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Descriptions of the neighborhood, even its name, vary depending on who is talking.
People who have lived in the neighborhood next to the Brooklyn Navy Yard for decades say will tell you it is a poor and working- class community of Puerto Ricans that is lately folding in Dominican and Mexican immigrants.
A younger person, white, who recently moved from Manhattan will calls the area North sSide and describes it as a place for artists and trend- setters, a neighborhood of young professionals, fashion boutiques and juice bars.
To someone else, Williamsburg is one of the largest and fastest-growing communities of Hasidic Jews in the United States, where 200two hundred marriages are performed each year. It’sIt is a neighborhood a of synagogues, kosher bakeries and stores specializing in traditional garb: heavy black coats and felt hats.
On Broadway, where the bank, grocery store and subway are located, all three places come together --. Nnot always amicably. Some Hasidic Jews, who practice an ultra-oOrthodox form of the religion worry that the gentrification of north Williamsburg will impinge on their way of life, making the area too secular for them to feel welcome. Latinos are even more threatened by the arrival of the young people from Manhattan. Many fear the newcomers will make the neighborhood too expensive to live in.
To hear John Mulhern talk, it seems as if the year is 1950 and Puerto Ricans were moving to Williamsburg..
"They started moving in just by the river, they moved into abandoned warehouses," Mulhern, the retired president of Nuestros Ninos, a Williamsburg social service agency, said during a walk through his neighborhood in February. "But now they’re all over the North sSide and even down Metropolitan Avenue."
Standing underneath the elevated J, M and, Z lines on Broadway, Mulhern pointed west, towards the East River. "See down there? It’s a totally different place now," he said. "Each year they take another block. You can see it creeping into the center of Williamsburg."
The "they" whom Mulhern and almost everyone on the south side of Williamsburg describes in terms usually reserved for an invading army or an infectious disease,Mulhern referred to are artists, trend- setters, white people and , yuppies.
Once a working- class stronghold of Brooklyn Navy Yard workers, and later a graffiti-painted neighborhood of dilapidated brownstones and also a Hasidic enclave, Williamsburg is changing again.
With a Wall Street-fueled boom in New York City, high rents and the fashionable amenities that foster them are finding their way from Manhattan to unlikely places in the boroughs. In Williamsburg, Latinos who were there for the bad times confront new, wealthier neighbors, and are not aren’t sure what they think of them.
Williamsburg is divided into three parts. It straddles Metropolitan Avenue, for about 10 blocks north and south, and reaches from the East River on the west to Bushwick Avenue on the east. There is a Puerto Rican section, a Hasidic Jewish section and a white professionals and artists section.
Puerto Ricans, and others who identify with their community, fear the migration of people from Manhattan will force them out of the neighborhood as rents skyrocket.
"We have landlords who are buying out people’s leases for $3,000," Mulhern said. "To a poor family, that seems like a lot of money, but they find that once they move they can’t find another affordable apartment in the neighborhood. That $3,000 becomes only a few months’ rent."
Williamsburg has long been home to Puerto Ricans. They began moving there in the late 1940s, working at the Navy Yard, said Victor Ascencio, associate dean at traditionally Puerto Rican Boricua College. They settled first in the northwestern corner, then, as Italian and Jewish residents left the neighborhood in the 1950s and 1960s, Puerto Ricans filled most of the area.
Throughout the 1980s, Hasidic Jews, many from Poland, settled in the southwestern part of the neighborhood, on both sides of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, which slices through the area. Shop signs in Hebrew and English advertise "felty hats.", oOne of four traditional Matzo bakeries in the United States is in Williamsburg. Men in sidelocks side locks and long dark coats walk along the streets, accompanied by with women who cover their heads and wear long dresses.
"We shouldn’t get too close to American culture," said Shaye F., 21, a Hasidic man who declined did not want to give his last name. Walking on Marcy Avenue last Saturday with his wife, the animated, red- bearded man explained that his community considered it essential to keep a distance from mainstream American culture in order to preserve a Jewish identity.
"The artist neighborhood? I’ve never been there," Shaye said, as he stood with his wife , Hendy, 19. The pair smiled sweetly when they said they were married a few months ago. Hendy wore a wool coat that fell mid-calf. Her head was covered with a kerchief and under it, an inch of reddish brown wig peeked out. Hasidic women shave their heads, according to religious stricture.
"If that artist neighborhood grows, it will lead to us breaking the codes," Shaye said, referring to the strict religious regulations from the Torah that which Hasidim follow. "If you don’t keep yourself isolated, you get assimilated."
But Shaye and other Hasidim are beginning to wonder how long they will retain their isolation.
In the early 1980s, a few pioneers from Soho SoHo crossed the East River to occupy lofts on the north side of Williamsburg. They moved into shells of factories, places that once bustled with dock workers and laborers. In the 1990s, more artists, then professionals, followed by young people right out of college followed them. High rents followed, too.
"We’re very worried, our people simply can’t afford $1,000, $1,500 rents," said David Pagan, chairman of Los Sures, a housing advocacy group. "If families need to move to a bigger place or get kicked out of their apartment, there is nowhere for them to go."
Pagan and the leaders of a few other groups -- Brooklyn Legal Services, St. Nicholas Community Development and South sSide Mission, a job- training and community- organizing agency -- are making plans for a drive to educate the Latino community on their rental rights, maintain subsidized housing and convincepersuade Latinos to stay in the neighborhood.
That is ’s a vital necessary effort, according to Eileen Naughton, an assistant program director at Nuestros Ninos Community Center. "In 20twenty years, I don’t think there will be any Latinos here," she said.
Naughton, who runs day-care and early childhood education programs at the center said parents regularly tell her about landlords trying to get them out of apartments, so they can rent to the newcomers.
Lourdes Lebron, 52, has lived in Williamsburg since the 1970s. She raised her children in the neighborhood, and in a two- bedroom apartment that costs $450 a month. One of her daughters and a grandson now live with her.
"South sSide is my home, I’ve been here since I came from the Island," she said.
But she is’s afraid it won’t be home much longer.
"My landlord, I’ve been with him so long, but now he wants me gone," she said as she sat in the fenced in courtyard of Nuestros Ninos. "In March he said he would give me $2,000 to leave, but how can I go? The new rents, they are so much."
The Lebrons are like many Latino families in Williamsburg. They have’ve been in the neighborhood for years, have survived the crack wars and violence of the 1980s, and are now enjoying the safer streets of low crime New York. But wWhile the good economic times of the past few years make life a little more comfortable, they are still working class and have few options when it comes to housing.
Fear of newcomers in the Hasidic section takes on a different tone. Families and groups of men walked quietly through the streets last Saturday, as the Sabbath came to an end. The blocks south of the appropriately named Division Street were filled with men in dark overcoats and large fur rimmed hats and women in impeccably tailored suits, reminiscent of 1940s styles.
"It’s becoming a more sophisticated neighborhood," said one woman walking on Driggs Avenue with three little girls. She asked that her name not be used. "It’s going to bother and interrupt our religious beliefs," she said, referring to the artist and trendy area of nNorth sSide. "That neighborhood is not going to be passable by us. All the bars and the clubs, all these people hanging out immodestly, it will be very difficult, especially with young boys."
Raising rents are less of an immediate concern in the Hasidic community, Shaye said, explaining that while he and most other people in the community rent rather than own their apartments, they rent from Hasidic landlords, and are not worried about being squeezed out of the neighborhood.
"I remember the gangs," said Lebron, gesturing beyond the metal gate of the courtyard. "Right over there a boy was killed. Drugs." The neighborhood used to be frightening, Lebron said. Nuestros Ninos and other community centers in the area were like refuges, old-fashioned missions, when times were terrible. "Now things are not so bad. ," she said. "But why do they want me to leave?"
On the nNorth sSide, the new neighbors barely notice that don’t want people like Lebron to leave as much they don’t notice they exist.
Jennifer Pendergast, 24, who works at an agency that assists women entrepreneurs, has noticed a change in Williamsburg in the past few years.
"It used to be way more funky, all artists and bohemians" she said. "Now, it’s like just yuppies, people with money." Pendergast, who moved to a loft on the nNorth sSide last year, fears that rising rents will drive out artists. "This used to be a cool outpost, like a frontier," she said as she sipped a carrot smoothie at a vegan juice bar on Bedford Avenue. "But I’m afraid it’ll become just like SohoSoHo or something, a Starbucks and Gap on every corner."
That perspective was common on the nNorth sSide. All the young people interviewed said they had moved to Williamsburg for it’s Bbohemian attitude and low rents, but that they were worried it was losing it’s edge. Few mentioned the Puerto Ricans.
Down the street, pastsed a candle-lit cafe called L and a few upscale boutiques, a happy-hour crowd was gathered at Vera Cruz.
"The original people hate us," said Lupe Benitez, 29, who has ’s lived in the neighborhood for five years. She was referring to the first wave of artists who came to Williamsburg in the 1980s and set up a few galleries. "It’s gotten really expensive. It’s almost like a new East Village," she said as she had an after-work cocktail at the bar on Bedford Avenue. "It’s very trendy."
Jaime Palazios, 26, a Chilean-born painter is one of those original people. Now the owner of Vera Cruz restaurant and bar, he moved to Williamsburg in 1987.
"I think it’s fine, " he said of the shift in the neighborhood. "When I moved here there were two buildings of artists. It’s changed a lot."
Palazios remembers when cabbies refused to wouldn’t take fares to Williamsburg and when people frequently got mugged crossing Metropolitan Avenue. In his book, the new Williamsburg is a good thing.
"Those people had the neighborhood for a long time and they didn’t give attention to the neighborhood," he said. "The new people give more attention than the old- timers."
Later he said it was a shame that the area started getting more city services only when wealthier people moved in. "It is really nasty," Palazios said. "How come they fix from here to McKinley Park and not sSouth sSide?"
Palazios has been in Williamsburg long enough, he said, that he remembers the bad old days. "It stinks, the yuppies are gonna come so the city is going to take care of them," he said.
"The yuppies come to the neighborhood and they think they are the neighborhood," he said as he directed a busboy and picked at a plate of rice. "They don’t realize, it’s immigrants, it’s pPolish."
But as to the concerns of the Latinos on the other side of Metropolitan Avenue, Palazios did not have much sympathy.
"Some people oppose all these things, but it’s basically the rents, he said. "If they owned a building, they’d be happy."
Christian Alamy, 31, a comic book artist who was waiting for a friend at Vera Cruz agreed. "I like the new people coming in," he said. "When I moved here five years ago there were some artists, but too few to notice. Now all these restaurants are opening up. It’s great."
The rising rents and Latinos’ fears of being pushed out don’t bother Alamy. "No offense, but that’s how things go," he said. But the new and old Williamsburg residents do interact, he said. "I know the guys in the kitchen, so yeah."
On the other side of the elevated J, M and, Z lines, John Mulhern still has hope that Williamsburg can be a neighborhood for everyone. "We have to be careful not to demonized these kids," he said. "They are good people, too. They are very concerned about some of the environmental things."
Mulhern and Pagan think the two groups can work together opposing a waste transfer station planned for the Williamsburg riverside. "There’s a lot of outrage there," Mulhern said. "It’s just a matter of getting the various organizations of the two communities together.," Mulhern said. "It’s all just about education."