Name: Spike Lee.
Age: 56.
Appearance: Bespectacled, furious, on stage in the lecture theatre at the Pratt Institute, Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.
What has he done now? During a lecture Lee was giving as part of African American History Month at the institute, an audience member asked him about gentrification. He delivered a heartfelt seven-minute reply.
Why was he cross? Can he not afford to move? Or stay? He's been a successful film-maker for more than 30 years. He can live wherever he wants, which is currently in a place on the Upper East Side.
So, what's the big deal? The big deal is that the gentrification of Brooklyn, Bed Stuy, the south Bronx and so on means white people coming in, black people being forced out and the exiled watching helplessly as all the services and facilities they previously wanted, needed and periodically agitated for come flooding in as a matter of course.
I see. Did that take up the whole seven minutes? No. He also dissected what he called "Christopher Columbus syndrome" – the propensity for newcomers to act as if they not only discovered a new neighbourhood but settled it too.
What are the symptoms of this syndrome? Mainly the destruction of anything indigenous that gets in their way.
Such as? The new people getting the African drumming that has taken place in Mount Morris Park for 40 years stopped because it was too loud. The new neighbours calling the police about Lee's jazz musician father for playing his acoustic guitar in the house he has owned since 1968. Getting a party in memory of Michael Jackson cancelled because they thought the (largely black) crowd would make too much mess.
But isn't gentrification just … I dunno, a natural kind of process … As Lee put it on the night, according to the transcript from New York Magazine: "I'm for democracy and letting everybody live but you gotta have some respect. You can't just come in when people have a culture that's been laid down for generations and you come in and now shit gotta change because you're here? Get the fuck outta here."
Do say: "Incomers, do the right thing."
Don't say: "A bistro in every brownstone!"
