{"id":144605,"date":"2014-02-28T14:00:52","date_gmt":"2014-02-28T19:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/?p=144605"},"modified":"2014-09-01T22:50:13","modified_gmt":"2014-09-02T02:50:13","slug":"spike-lee-gentrification-hipsters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/video-of-the-day\/02\/28\/spike-lee-gentrification-hipsters\/","title":{"rendered":"Spike Lee Explodes About Gentrification, Hipsters And More"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/59lhJm7xbV0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Never one to shy away from his opinions, acclaimed and contentious filmmaker Spike Lee ripped into gentrification during a lecture at the Pratt Institute last Tuesday night. It doesn&#8217;t go unnoticed that Lee, having made millions on the stories and injustices suffered by many African Americans, doesn&#8217;t really have to worry about skyrocketing rents that have given cause to people&#8217;s decisions to move outward in the first place. Or that, if people make this decision to move, that it&#8217;s not unfair for them to want to see better schools, sanitation, security and infrastructure.<\/p>\n<p>In any event, Lee&#8217;s thoughts are worthy of consideration. The full text can be read below:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Here\u2019s the thing: I grew up here in Fort Greene. I grew up here in New York. It\u2019s changed. And why does it take an influx of white New Yorkers in the south Bronx, in Harlem, in Bed Stuy, in Crown Heights for the facilities to get better? The garbage wasn\u2019t picked up every motherfuckin\u2019 day when I was living in 165 Washington Park. P.S. 20 was not good. P.S. 11. Rothschild 294. The police weren\u2019t around. When you see white mothers pushing their babies in strollers, three o\u2019clock in the morning on 125th Street, that must tell you something.<\/p>\n<p>[Audience member: And I don\u2019t dispute that \u2026 ]<\/p>\n<p>Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And even more. Let me kill you some more.<\/p>\n<p>[Audience member: Can I talk about something?]<\/p>\n<p>Not yet.<\/p>\n<p>Then comes the motherfuckin\u2019 Christopher Columbus Syndrome. You can\u2019t discover this! We been here. You just can\u2019t come and bogart. There were brothers playing motherfuckin\u2019 African drums in Mount Morris Park for 40 years and now they can\u2019t do it anymore because the new inhabitants said the drums are loud. My father\u2019s a great jazz musician. He bought a house in nineteen-motherfuckin\u2019-sixty-eight, and the motherfuckin\u2019 people moved in last year and called the cops on my father. He\u2019s not \u2014 he doesn\u2019t even play electric bass! It\u2019s acoustic! We bought the motherfuckin\u2019 house in nineteen-sixty-motherfuckin\u2019-eight and now you call the cops? In 2013? Get the fuck outta here!<\/p>\n<p>Nah. You can\u2019t do that. You can\u2019t just come in the neighborhood and start bogarting and say, like you\u2019re motherfuckin\u2019 Columbus and kill off the Native Americans. Or what they do in Brazil, what they did to the indigenous people. You have to come with respect. There\u2019s a code. There\u2019s people.<\/p>\n<p>You can\u2019t just \u2014 here\u2019s another thing: When Michael Jackson died they wanted to have a party for him in motherfuckin\u2019 Fort Greene Park and all of a sudden the white people in Fort Greene said, \u201cWait a minute! We can\u2019t have black people having a party for Michael Jackson to celebrate his life. Who\u2019s coming to the neighborhood? They\u2019re gonna leave lots of garbage.\u201d Garbage? Have you seen Fort Greene Park in the morning? It\u2019s like the motherfuckin\u2019 Westminster Dog Show. There\u2019s 20,000 dogs running around. Whoa. So we had to move it to Prospect Park!<\/p>\n<p>I mean, they just move in the neighborhood. You just can\u2019t come in the neighborhood. I\u2019m for democracy and letting everybody live but you gotta have some respect. You can\u2019t just come in when people have a culture that\u2019s been laid down for generations and you come in and now shit gotta change because you\u2019re here? Get the fuck outta here. Can\u2019t do that!<br \/>\nAnd then! [to audience member] Whoa whoa whoa. And then! So you\u2019re talking about the people\u2019s property change? But what about the people who are renting? They can\u2019t afford it anymore! You can\u2019t afford it. People want live in Fort Greene. People wanna live in Clinton Hill. The Lower East Side, they move to Williamsburg, they can\u2019t even afford fuckin\u2019, motherfuckin\u2019 Williamsburg now because of motherfuckin\u2019 hipsters. What do they call Bushwick now? What\u2019s the word? <\/p>\n<p>[Audience: East Williamsburg]<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s another thing: Motherfuckin\u2019\u2026 These real estate motherfuckers are changing names! Stuyvestant Heights? 110th to 125th, there\u2019s another name for Harlem. What is it? What? What is it? No, no, not Morningside Heights. There\u2019s a new one. [Audience: SpaHa] What the fuck is that? How you changin\u2019 names?<\/p>\n<p>And we had the crystal ball, motherfuckin\u2019 Do the Right Thing with John Savage\u2019s character, when he rolled his bike over Buggin\u2019 Out\u2019s sneaker. I wrote that script in 1988. He was the first one. How you walking around Brooklyn with a Larry Bird jersey on? You can\u2019t do that. Not in Bed Stuy.<\/p>\n<p>So, look, you might say, \u201cWell, there\u2019s more police protection. The public schools are better.\u201d Why are the public schools better? First of all, everybody can\u2019t afford \u2014 even if you have money it\u2019s still hard to get your kids into private school. Everybody wants to go to Saint Ann\u2019s \u2014 you can\u2019t get into Saint Ann\u2019s. You can\u2019t get into Friends. What\u2019s the other one? In Brooklyn Heights. Packer. If you can\u2019t get your child into there \u2026 It\u2019s crazy. There\u2019s a business now where people \u2014 you pay \u2014 people don\u2019t even have kids yet and they\u2019re taking this course about how to get your kid into private school. I\u2019m not lying! If you can\u2019t get your kid into private school and you\u2019re white here, what\u2019s the next best thing? All right, now we\u2019re gonna go to public schools.<\/p>\n<p>So, why did it take this great influx of white people to get the schools better? Why\u2019s there more police protection in Bed Stuy and Harlem now? Why\u2019s the garbage getting picked up more regularly? We been here!<\/p>\n<p>All right, go ahead. Let\u2019s see you come back to that.&#8221;  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Never one to shy away from his opinions, acclaimed and contentious filmmaker Spike Lee ripped into gentrification during a lecture at the Pratt Institute last Tuesday night. It doesn&#8217;t go unnoticed that Lee, having made millions on the stories and injustices suffered by many African Americans, doesn&#8217;t really have to worry about skyrocketing rents that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":144608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[261],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Spike Lee Explodes About Gentrification, Hipsters And More<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The acclaimed filmmaker lets loose on the dreaded g-word and its cultural implications.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/video-of-the-day\/02\/28\/spike-lee-gentrification-hipsters\/\" 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