440K Sweater with a View

It's happening in every city, in every state. Even the bigger, swankier parts of bustling suburbs have caught it too. And, it's nothing new, it's been going on for decades.

The Condo Crisis. Unless your entire town shares one zip code, do they even build houses anymore? Everything's slated for condos. Everything. Every empty lot, every falling building, even defunct churches. Condos, condos, condos. Luxury condos. Anyone can live la vita high-rise now, complete with costumed doorman and lease-included gym membership. Sip your Perrier® and enjoy the view of...the BQE? The Flatbush-Manhattan Bridge Extension?

WTF? That's like, the ugliest part of inhabitable Brooklyn. But billionaire developers with Condo Fever will stack wealthy New Yorkers anywhere. And with the crunch Brooklyn seems to be attracting the snooty fuckers like VDs do sailors on shore-leave. Lining Williamsburg's strip of Kent Ave are now several dull, indescript, modern blocks of sky-reflecting glass windows. One's even enticingly called The Edge, as in come live on The Edge. Uh, the edge of the East River? That's shit's poisonous, yo. Does my 400k studio come with a direct pipeline to a rural aquifer?

One of my new favorite* new monstrocities to go up is called Toro, or The Toro, or some ridiculous shit. It's a Flatbush and Myrtle. What an awful, ugly block. The traffic there is horrendous, no doubt made worse by said condo cunstruction, and isn't even very close to a train. The area's a dead zone. Ugly, tree-less, and now capped by a 50something story building that looks like a goddamn Cosby sweater.

Seriously, from Ft Greene, I look up and see the Cos. And his rooms are starting at 440k. Is that it? 440 grand for the Rudy, and maybe the low 500's for a Theo suite? I wonder how this eye sore will effect my neighborhood's sales of Jello Pudding and Pudding Pops. If my home is going to relate to anything on that show, I hope it's because I live in a brownstone on a nice wide street with a canopy of oak trees....or because I live with my newly adopted mom Patricia Rashad.