So You Wanna Know What Goes On Here, in Bushwick, do Ya?

Then I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you even though you already know. Or, you already have a good idea – which is to say, a very, very bad idea. Because what goes on here in Bushwick is very bad. Very, very bad. It’s so very, very bad, it’s downright good.

But you expected that. That’s why you’re reading. You’re reading because you’re expecting the very, very bad. And even though the very, very bad has been told many, many times before – you’re still waiting to see how the very, very bad lives and thrives in today’s society. In today’s society outside Manhattan. In today’s society outside Manhattan, in Bushwick. Because in order to outlive life in today’s New York, one must venture beyond today’s Manhattan. One must venture all the way to Northeast Brooklyn – to Bushwick. One must venture to where everything that’s been done before dares to be done again. (And again, and again…)

“Is there anything special about Buswick?,” you might ask. No, there’s nothing particularly special about this neighborhood where all of America’s beer once flowed, and all of America’s beer-es-tocracy once dwelled. Yeah, that’s a made-up term. We’re gonna encounter a lot of made-up terms along this path. If you can’t handle made-up terms, then switch to another blog – one that has nothing to do with reality-based fantasy… Then we’ll all be all set.

All of which is to say, “Of course, idiot – there’s plenty that’s special about Bushwick.” Do your own fucking Wikipedia. You’ll see. (If, that is, Wikipedia has the balls to call it like it was.) Bushwick is not only the place that kept America drunk throughout the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s – it’s the place that held onto keeping the country as drunk as it could while White Flight affected it, and its ability to do so.

Imagine. The fleeing of a neighborhood that affected its ability to maintain a virtually narcotic hold upon those who wished to flee it. And upon those who’d grown accustomed to fleeing the day-to-day hum-drum of their lives through the consumption of what that neighborhood had, up until then, produced – regularly.

In other words, “What happens when the source of the drug stops producing the drug – all in the name of no longer being worthy of producing that drug?”

That’s what happened in Bushwick. That’s what happened in Bushwick, about forty years ago. And 40 years ago is long ago enough as not to warrant further description as to exactly what happened then. At this point, and at this time, all that matters is that – long ago – Bushwick was transformed. It was transformed because it stopped producing its drug. It stopped producing its drug of alcohol. It stopped producing the drug that was so common at the time that it pretty near devastated most of our grandparents. Most, that is, of our readers’ grandparents. That’s right. You. Our readers. It – alcohol – probably almost wound up destroying your grandparents. If it didn’t, then consider yourselves lucky. If it didn’t, then your grandparents were probably Jewish or Morman of Seventh-Day Adventist. If that was the case, then good for you. (And, simultaneously, I’m sorry for you…)

But we were talking about Bushwick. We were talking about Bushwick, in Brooklyn. Bushwick – that peculiar neighborhood where blue-collar immigrants and Blue-Bloods co-existed, for the sake of producing that which would intoxicate them all. You see, Bushwick was – at the turn of the 20th Century – the hub of America’s beer production. That’s why we still have Knickerbocker Avenue. That’s why the area is sprinkled with factories (which have recently been turned into lofts), interspersed with ornate Victorian homes. That, and the blackout of 1977, are the reasons why Bushwick has an aesthetic unlike so much of the rest of Brooklyn. Bushwick isn’t picturesque like Park Slope. It isn’t anywhere near as adorable as the cobble-stoned Brooklyn Heights. And it has nowhere near the self-imposed kitschy charm of the far-away Coney Island. No, Bushwick’s aesthtic – of it can even be called that – is much more like that of Los Angeles. It’s scattered, and full of flotsam and jetsom. To understand Bushwick is to drive or ride through it – if only by imagination. In order to appreciate Bushwick, one must look not at it, but along it. For it is only through glancing at Bushwick’s appearance – as it appears as we coast alongside it – that we are able to understand it.

Why, do you ask, do I go into so much extraneous description about the place where I ask you that you ask about? My apologies if you think my premise is too verbose. But I need you to understand: What goes on here – even though it might seem identical to what goes on in so many other places – is special. It’s unique. It’s unique in the sense that it’s happening here and now, in one of the only parts of New York that will allow it to happen. One of the only parts of today’s New York that will allow this kind of scenario to go on in – to use poor grammar, as eventually I must – is here, in the scattered neighborhood known as Bushwick.

Ready to hear?

I’ll bet you are.