Filmmaker Spike Lee may live in an amazing Upper East Side mansion, but he still knows what's going on in Brooklyn and he doesn't like it. At a lecture last night at Pratt Institute, Lee launched into an epic rant condemning the maybe-gentrification-is-good-for-everyone theory that has recently been touted in the Times and New York Magazine. Some choice sections:
Then comes the motherfuckin' Christopher Columbus Syndrome. You can't discover this! We been here. You just can't come and bogart. There were brothers playing motherfuckin' African drums in Mount Morris Park for 40 years and now they can't do it anymore because the new inhabitants said the drums are loud. My father's a great jazz musician. He bought a house in nineteen-motherfuckin'-sixty-eight, and the motherfuckin' people moved in last year and called the cops on my father. He's not — he doesn't even play electric bass! It's acoustic! We bought the motherfuckin' house in nineteen-sixty-motherfuckin'-eight and now you call the cops? In 2013? Get the fuck outta here! Also:
These real estate motherfuckers are changing names! Stuyvestant Heights? 110th to 125th, there's another name for Harlem. What is it? What? What is it? No, no, not Morningside Heights. There's a new one. [Audience: SpaHa] What the fuck is that? How you changin' names? You can read and/or listen to the whole thing over at Daily Intel.
· Spike Lee's Amazing Rant Against Gentrification: 'We Been Here!' [Daily Intel]
· Spike Lee coverage [Curbed]
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