Click here for the New York Magazine Article

Something that has played out endless times here on jclist has its counterpart in Brooklyn on the Brownstoner and New York Magazine covers it this month in an article entitled the Brooklyn Wars -- here is an excerpt:

(The Brownstoners comment section)... has become a rolling transcript of the borough?s new anxieties, shameful prejudices, and secret fears. For a long time, those anxieties centered on being left out or pushed out?hopeful buyers or displaced renters thwarted by prices rising out of control. Butler was pleased to find that the site drew not only people who could afford to buy $3 million mansions but also the people who could no longer afford to stay in the neighborhoods where those $3 million mansions were being bought up. His commenters argued and griped about issues that no one was addressing anywhere else, at least not directly, at least not honestly, at least not with each other. Issues like, How much higher can these prices go? Or, is that neighborhood really safe? Or, where did all these strollers come from? Or, get out, we were here first.

And lately these anxieties have been shifting course. If the fears once centered on the Brooklyn renaissance?s going too far, too fast, now the worry is that the renaissance won?t go far enough; that it will suddenly recede like a fickle tide that strands a fleet of errant ships. And the people who bought in to the fringes of the New Brooklyn will wind up trapped?in a bad neighborhood, a stifling mortgage, a failing block.

But one commenter has been gleefully forecasting just such a collapse. In July 2007, in a comment thread under an item about a painted doorway on a landmarked block in Clinton Hill (this is a fairly typical Brownstoner story: Homeowner on landmarked block paints his doorway in violation of local regulations; outrage ensues), a commenter calling himself The What left a simple message. Referring to Butler, who goes by Mr. Brownstoner on the site, The What wrote: ?Mr. B, go kill yourself.?

Click here for the New York Magazine Article