Gothamist was struck by the themes and photographs (left and below) of two stories about new development and construction in the city in the NY Times. First, there's a story in the Metro section about tons of gravestones being dumped aside in College Point, Queens, as a development of 86 homes will go up there. Then, in the Arts section, there's an article about Williamsburg artists having to move out of their lofts to make way for luxury condos. One artist, Jack Warren, who has been moving into smaller and smaller spaces, says:
It's the classic scenario of getting dummied into pioneering an area, building a community and having that community usurped into another sort of community that you can't be a part of. It's just going to be a another sterile rich person's neighborhood.
The image we were struck by is Ting-Li Wang's picture of Karlis Revics (left) destroying his sculpture to get it out, which made us think of a quote in the gravestones-in-the-field story - "It feels eerie. Like desecrating something." These are two very different areas of NYC, one will be a haven for sophisticated and urbanites while the College Point development is slated for three-family homes, but it's still development and trying to find room for people to live.
