Gentrification

I went to see Bryan Scary and The Shredding Tears last night at the Rock and Roll Hotel in Northeast. As usual, Bryan Scary was amazing – loud, exaggerated and unrelenting. Easily one of the best shows I’ve ever seen.

After the concert, having fully digested my surroundings, I contemplated something new and, I think, worthwhile: I need to follow the hipsters. Not physically, of course – they are a touch too edgy for me. Instead, I need to look to them as an oracle, of sorts. You see, they are on the front lines of the ever-progressing war of gentrification. The hipsters were the first to “discover” Harlem and Brooklyn (again). They were the first set of brave souls to (re)venture into the “U Street corridor.” And now, as I saw last night, they are first to pioneer their way into the – I’ll say it – “up and coming” neighborhood of H Street NE.

And so, as I begin my search for real estate in a tight DC market, I should follow the hipsters to the promise land. They will get me in on the ground floor. I will be the guy that, as so many people say after the fact, “bought five years before everyone else.” I will be him. I will have the urban-chic flat in the new “it” neighborhood. Sure, I’ll have five years of barred windows and sleepless nights, but I can eventually sell my pad at fourteen times what I paid for it. People will say, “You see him? He did it right.”

Follow the hipsters, friends, follow the hipsters.