This month, Bushwick topped StreetEasy’s list of best NYC neighborhoods for homebuyers. Kenny Lee, a senior economist there, describes Bushwick as having “vibrant street art and industrial-chic vibes” that contribute to “improving affordability,” with median asking prices at fire sale lows of $999,000. I’m sure we’re all grateful that our future neighbors get to tell their friends that they got a hot six-figure steal. We’re excited to meet them; they’re famous for building community in all their “awkward smiles and occasional small talk.”

Success is lovely, especially when seen from a distance. Really, it’s great news for new and long-time residents alike: we yearn to see more couples in their late 30s wearing matching Arcteryx on their morning runs. I personally lust after girldads who wear leggings under their shorts in solidarity with their dogmommy spouses. Just as the young among us are fitted in camo and workwear, dressed to tame the hinterlands, our latest newcomers’ clothes embody insulation and adventure. Their arrival here will be like climbing great mountains, and you and I and all of us will be their sherpas.

You’ll wake up one day to the beginning of this, just as I did last month, when I went to the Saratoga library branch in Ocean Hill and spotted lily white kids in the children’s corner under the supervision of their West Indian nannies. Next time, I’ll make sure to ask those kids about the shapes their parents sculpt in Excel, or how to change the library printer’s settings (I was left bereft, paperless).

In New York, everything has to be just a bit different because we’re just so darn special: here, pioneers don’t go west, but eastward, toward the “best buyer markets” just over the horizon, along heretofore uncharted pathways leading to the promised land: a 400 square block coworking space with cold brew on tap and toilets that speak Japanese.

But their promised land isn’t yet built. The ones who see this StreetEasy blog and decide to close next week will be early settlers, and a rerun of late 2000s Williamsburg is still far away. So they’ll lie awake at night, searching “stationery store bushwick,” “biodynamic wine near me” and “pilates pilates pilates right here yes right here pls.” If you’re feeling jealous—because you’d prefer to be in their shoes over yet again getting the short end of the stick in a three-bed flex—don’t worry: Bushwick’s newest homeowners will also be jealous, as they’ve always been, of those closest to them: their friends now so far away off Bedford and First Ave. The newest among them will feel as if they were left to dig wells in the desert.

Note the language in Lee’s listicle. We already know who’s “ready to make a move” in the new Homestead Act fever: crypto-scammers and the children of wholesale asbestos resellers who still talk about tapas in 2026, all of them in desperate need of pied-à-terres.

Mentions of “rising inventory and falling prices” and tipping balances are signals to developers to hold off on breaking new ground just yet so prices can further restrict to make their next developments more profitable. There are so many blocks to fill in, so many gaps between Jefferson and Bushwick-Aberdeen, between Flushing and Chauncey. Until the People’s Mayor decides on social housing as the course of action (don’t hold your breath), developers and landlords have all the time in the world, and their top hobby is waiting and ignoring phone calls. Until that changes, our rented bug hives will take newer, denser shapes. 

Speaking of which, the word “rent” isn’t mentioned once either. StreetEasy’s own data (accessible here) shows median rents in Bushwick spiking at $3,500/month last September. Lower inventory increases prices, which sideline buyers who just barely can’t afford to buy, but can pay luxury rates and wait until asking prices drop again (another cause of present vacancy rates).

Most people in Bushwick—transplanted or local—aren’t Streeteasy’s target audience. Bushwick is nothing but a market, its people a feature or complication of said market, which is only accessible to a select few who are functionally alien to us.

Consider resistance, or consider escape: whatever prewar dream you had for this place is being rehabbed in LVP and smeared caulk. After moving here, I first heard and then kept hearing about Sunset Park, but that must be a bygone option too if Sheepshead Bay and Bay Ridge are also in Lee’s list (#4 and #8, respectively). Down south, it’s probably even more grotesque: a live experimentation on the logistical limits of gentrification (i.e. how far a Floridian is willing to commute on a Midtown-bound train).

Don’t bother offering up Philadelphia; I won’t believe your heart’s in it (it’s not for beginners). So dream bigger: go to Brownsville and create the very first squat that’s also a live events venue and artists studio. Or stay and suffocate: sublet the undercarriage of a car off Troutman. Your tatami futon will fit underneath it just right. Any which way, however despondent you feel, you don’t hate your landlord enough.

Still, Bushick will need us, all of us, to give it the character that attracts these mid elites. So stick around, enjoy our great monument while you still can, because one day all the walls between the Dunkin-Checkers-Popeyes will be knocked down (we can only hope they’ll maintain the facades just the way we love them), until it’s completely hollow and interconnected inside as it is outside, to make room for a Fried Food Museum or whatever entertains Gaulish tourist hordes in need of afternoon coffee (chop, chop!).

So when you see those new neighbors, make sure to say hi. Stop and get to know them, because when you next look in the mirror, the only reflection you’ll see is theirs.

Aaron Tomey is from Georgia, lived in St. Louis, and now lives in Brooklyn. His essays have previously appeared in Hobart, Bushwick Burner Phone, and Apocalypse Confidential. He can also be found on Twitter: @ecstatic_donut.

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Photos taken by Andrew Karpan.