it's like this

yesterday when ralph came over, he remarked that in the vacant newly renovated apartment up the street, there's a microwave attached to stainless steel kitchen fixtures and such. like i said before, my landlord owns all the buildings on my side of the street. they've got on a construction rampage for the past two years or so, evicting long-time non-english speaking tenants and hooking up the empty apartments until they looked like something out of a pottery barn catalog.

yeah, i heard myself say, they're fixing them for all the downtown white people that are moving into the neighborhood -- because the black folk who live in the ghetto already can't afford them. and then my friend laughed and said, you know they have a laundromat in the basement. but you have to have a special key to use it -- and all the new tenants get one.

as ralph balked, my mind bounced back to little debbie's place in the ATL -- dunwoody, to be exact. when it was time for her to relocate to the south a few years ago because of work, she drove in from teaneck, new jersey with her two kids and rented her apartment sight unseen. it's a gated community that has 24 hour security, with a swimming pool, gym facilities, and whatnot. the apartment is spacious with a terrace and a washer/dryer and central air, and the kitchen is extra-special fancy, with brushed steel wonderment, a built-in microwave and all that jazz. her master bedroom has its own large well-appointed bathroom. all of this stuff isn't extra, by the way. it's standard issue. it comes with every apartment in her little community -- but i don't know of anyone in ATL who isn't living like this. it's the kind of stuff that almost everyone i know sort of takes for granted when they move into a new place.

and that's apartment living down there. that's rental. if you own your own house -- and if you're young, black, professional, female and in ATL, it's a good chance that you probably do -- you get that and way, way more. i grew up in a house in ATL that sits on 3 or 4 acres, with fruit trees in the backyard and a swimming pool and a sandbox. and woods to get lost in, woods that are filled with critters and berries and spiders and adventure.

i just read this article that said the $60K you make annually in new york city is worth $26K in the ATL. anyone that's been here for more than a week knows that you can't live on $60K. not if you don't want to live hand to mouth, with roommates no less, with zip amenities in a crummy neighborhood. no. if you want to live well in this town, you'll need to make at least 100K a year -- and if/when you do, you won't come anywhere near what little debbie and her kids have. not by a long shot.

no wonder new york yankees go down south, see how beautiful everything is and lose their damn minds. people who are from up here can't seem to fathom how good everyone has it elsewhere. and those of us who are not from up here have constant amnesia about what a decent quality of life is really supposed to be.

i can't forget because i have family down south who constantly remind me that in spite of the fact that i have a nice two bedroom apartment in west harlem and my name is on the lease, it's a stinkhole and something of a joke, compared to what i could have in the ATL for the same price. sometimes i wonder how much of a millionaire i'm going to have to be to have a middle class existence in the city, or if its something i'll even want if i ever get that far.

my new york city doesn't exist anymore. it's not just gentrification, per se. and yes, sex and the city ruined this city. but it's bigger than that. the city is in transition. it's dying. what we are hearing and seeing, from dire predictions about the economy and auctioning condos to the newly minted rentals up the block, is one long slow death rattle. soon enough, new york city will be very much like paris, france -- a place where only the very rich could possibly afford to live. people who service the city will come in from the outer boroughs. and after rush hour, the heart of the city will emptier than downtown houston at twilight.

heavy construction

my former landlord sold all of the buildings on my side of the street to a particular company that's hell-bent on evicting tenants and renovating their cavernous apartments and filling them with pricey touches until they look like something out of home and garden magazine. and yes, that's exactly what they look like. i know because i've wandered through them while they were being deconstructed, and i've passed by the first floor windows and peered in like every other pedestrian on the sidewalk to see exactly what progress looks like. all year long, the workers kept at it like well organized trained ants -- dumping refuse, using massive cranes to swing in lumber and dry wall and whatever else they couldn't drag up the stairs or fit into the elevator, replacing all the windows in all the buildings, and on and on it went. it was crazy.

it's still crazy, actually. the evictions are still happening and they're still renovating vacant apartments -- like my little old lady mercedes place on the first floor. they worked all the way through the christmas holidays with no overtime or bonuses or anything. then again, i suppose that's typical. the question lingers: when are they going to be finished? or are they playing "flip this building" and making everything pretty enough for someone else to make that point of purchase? or are we going condo eventually?

it's not just the apartments that are getting a massive overhaul. they've fixed the elevator and put in a deluxe model, put up well-lit awnings at each entryway, scrubbed out the building's marble floors, slapped up plaster on the walls and painted the hallways and lobbies in soothing neutral colors.

this is the kind of change that frightens me.

the construction workers -- all of them, africans from all over the entire diaspora, from mali to brooklyn -- would gather up the block and sip coffee and congregate. when i would tromp off to start my day in the wee hours of the morning, they'd be there, like some outdoor secretarial pool, chatting and whatnot. they would always stop talking when i would walk by and resume when i was out of earshot. one day, i said good morning, black men. i said it brightly, like i'd known all of them all my life. and each of them waved at me and said, good morning black woman in the exact same way. after that, whenever i hit my block, i got a million greetings and compliments and salutations. the west indians. the west africans. the southerners up north, like me. the yankees. solidarity is a beautiful thing.

i don't know any of their names. we call each other brother and sister and that's more than enough.

the next thing you know, they were in my apartment -- plastering these cracks that are forever running through my walls, fixing and replacing plumbing pipes and all kinds of stuff. anytime any of them came over, i let them eat cake. when they were down the hall, they let me wander through an apartment they were fixing that had the exact same layout as mine and they told me how much the landlord was going to charge. naturally, i balked. basically, it was a four-figure downtown price for an uptown set-up. no one in the ghetto would pay it. no one in the ghetto could afford it. so who is all of this for, anyway?

with the economy in peril, i'm starting to wonder.

the noisiest building on the block

at about 8 am, the front door of my apartment building is propped open and the workers begin jackhammering everything. at least, that's the way it sounds. right now, the jackhammering is on the 2nd floor but for awhile, it was in the apartment above mine. when they were upstairs, every so often, it sounded like someone bodyslammed a baby elephant onto every flat surface up there. it shook loose the heavy glass fixture over the lights on the ceiling, shattering all over the living room. when i came home, it looked like the rug was caked in glass.

basically, as tenants vacate the apartments, the building owners renovate them and turn them into luxury digs. the other day, i stepped outside and realized that although they're doing construction on all of the empty apartments on my side of the street, my building seems to be taking it the hardest.

how nice were these newly renovated apartments? i was very curious.

the same hardworking guys have been coming in and out of the building for months. the africans and the west indians and the black folk always speak to me. the russians and the polish guys, not so much. when i new that they were working on an apartment down the hall, i whipped out a few glasses and some paul newman lemonade (my favorite!) and paid them a visit. of course, they let me roam around -- it's the best lemonade in the world. the apartment mirrored mine, but it seemed bigger -- probably because it was empty. they gave me all sorts of inside scoopage, though. in the end, they could flip the building if they get enough vacancies. new york city real estate is ruthless.

i'm not sure what my game plan should be, but one thing is for sure -- i'd better get one.