The NYTimes sings a now-familiar tune about finding the next hip urban neighborhood. This time, the article is about Bushwick, Brooklyn (not to be confused with nearby, newly-named Greenwick):
Then he parks, locks, dashes into an old storefront, so that he is suddenly the tiniest bit overdressed, a tinge too businesslike for the all-of-the-sudden hip environs. Brushing off his navy blue blazer and straightening his rain-soaked red tie, he orders a carrot-ginger soup, and a high-energy smile breaks across his face like a banner unfurling. With an accent that is part Californian, part Vietnamese, part top-selling real-estate agent, he asks rhetorically, "Isn't this great?"
By this he means Bushwick, the next new neighborhood or, more precisely, a neighborhood that is now in the sights of New York City real-estate agents and developers as the next new neighborhood. This is Bushwick as seen from the banquette at Life Café Nine 83, a cool place with mostly comfort food (meatloaf, fried chicken) and a few vegan options. There is also a new late-night menu, now that people in the neighborhood have started staying in the neighborhood on Saturday nights.
Viewing the neighborhood goings-on from this banquette-level perspective can be considered a type of "tryvertising"--marketing parlance for a growing trend of experience-based consumption, or a kind of "test-driving" that can be applied to place as well as product. I had heard of this term last year, but didn't have the right occasion to use it, until now:
Mass advertising is dying. Experienced consumers couldn't care less about commercials, ads, banners and other fancy wording and imagery that is forced upon them, so let's move on to more interesting ways of igniting conversations between corporations and consumers....tryvertising, which is all about consumers becoming familiar with new products by actually trying them out.
Think of tryvertising as a new breed of product placement in the real world, integrating your goods and services into daily life in a relevant way, so that consumers can make up their minds based on their experience, not your messages.
Think 'obvious' activities like handing out product samples, and more subtle, integrated product placements that are part of an experience or solution.
Product placements that become part of the landscape, part of the real world where consumers hang out and certainly don't mind trying something as long as it makes sense to them.
When squatters moved into Soho in the 1960s, the NYT wasn't standing by with its Magazine detailing the national obsession with real estate; as cities like New York are continually transformed it's interesting to ponder gentrification's trajectory in relation to how architecture, planning, marketing and real estate are all practiced.
Why? Because what occurs in Brooklyn nowadays greatly influences so much of what happens elsewhere.
i have never heard of "tryvertising" before...very interesting. in urban environments such as NYC, a large percentage of the population never get a chance to settle in to a place for too long...take for instance artists. not only do they create the neighborhoods that the middle class eventually end up populating in droves..they must also carry the burden of 'trying' out the uninhabited and dangerous areas in order to afford rent. sometimes a name change is the most immediate move when trying to adapt to a new place or a place with an age-old name (carrying historical baggage- as in the case with Bushwick).
Greenwick is an area of Brooklyn that has very few residents in proportion to factory and warehouse space. Its an area that (thanks to Robert Moses) basically had no definative name and rests along side the BQE (HW278), is for the most part (allegedly) polluted with acres of oil in the ground and is too damn far from any train to have really ever become desirable enough to have acquired a name for itself. Its the area between Greenpoint and Bushwick, but otherwise has been referred to as (something to the effect of) "that area out past Greenpoint around/ passed Morgan Ave, under the BQE where nobody really lives yet." Say that a few times (as a real estate agent) and see how much fun it is.
The market is moving much faster than consumers can keep track of these days...and if you're an artist (expecting/hoping to find an affordable space because you're being evicted from your joint of 13yrs) fuggetaboutit. Commercial space per square foot annually is at this time, the cheapest out in Greenwick (around $1sf)and since all of the artists who are being evicted have lived illegally in commercial spaces for years, it is the convertable loft spaces that they seek. To be perfectly honest, there really isn't anything left of this type out there either, even in Greenwick and because i (a) never rent anything i wouldnt live in myself and (b)am extremely thorough about avoiding any situation with environment or legal issues, there really isn't anything that i can do for many of the artists that call me about residential lofts. Artists dont want to live in the cookie cutter, hot boxes that developers are erecting these days- they couldnt paint themselves comfortable in those things... i could go on for days.
your blog is looking nice as always...thanks for the opportunity to explain the idea behind Greenwick a bit. A few people have said that Greenwick is just another case of a real estate agent trying to create hype about an area to rake in some dough. Its actually quite the opposite. I work with artists, exclusively. I try to help people and situations move, not just money. Greenwick is no substitute for any previous neighborhood name . It would be harmful to communities to do such a thing..especially in Brooklyn. In fact, the only area that it borders on renaming is an area that the Hasidim started calling "East Williamsburg" in order to candy coat where it was that Williamsburg artists were being forced to move. So i guess greenwick may be said to be a substitute for a substitute. Its hard (and illegal as an agent) to sale a place as "safe" when there are no people of your age group, ethnicity, religious preference or social group anywhere between home and the train. I know. I lived in Bushwick for almost 2 yrs when I first arrived from South Carolina. Many people that ive met have had a horrible time adjusting to situations that they dont entirely understand.
Greenwick. It is merely an idea that can be attached to an area that hitherto had no name to speak of and quite frankly used to make me thristy to explain. It merely points to a larger issue. Where do we put all of these artists that 'tried' out the next hot neighborhood, 10 years ago? Greenwick = no trains, very few legal residential dwellings, abandoned factories and warehouses. many would say that its the bottom of the barrel. But then again, so was Williamsburg just a few years ago.
Posted by: justiNYC | 05/09/2006 at 01:07