Has your cool neighborhood stopped being cool? Or have you?

Ada Calhoun, author of St. Marks Is Dead: The Many Lives of America’s Hippest Street, writes about the ever-changing neighborhoods in NYC.

I think there’s more to these “the city is dead now” complaints than money. People have pronounced St. Marks Place dead many times over the past centuries — when it became poor, and then again when it became rich, and then again when it returned to being poor, and so on. My theory is that the neighborhood hasn’t stopped being cool because it’s too expensive now; it stops being cool for each generation the second we stop feeling cool there. Any claim to objectivity is clouded by one’s former glory.

• Ada Calhoun
• books
• NYC
• St. Marks Is Dead