A review by misterintensity
St. Marks Is Dead: The Many Lives of America's Hippest Street by Ada Calhoun

4.0

If there is one thing that is constant in New York City it's change. Right now "gentrification" is the story of NYC. St. Marks Is Dead looks at the many lives of St. Marks Street. Every generation or so a new group of residents and/or visitors arrive leaving the previous group of residents/visitors lamenting about the "St. Marks of old." This tale is especially relevant today in this time of gentrification. Ada Calhoun does a good job of illustrating the tensions between the entrenched immigrant populations of previous eras with the various newcomers that inevitably arrive to supplant them. Whether it is other immigrants (in earlier eras) or hippies/punks (of more recent years), that tension continually plays out in different yet similar ways. Particularly interesting is how Calhoun points out how the city government resisted some of the community's efforts to take control of the street's destiny. That could have been something that could have been explored more. However, that may have been beyond the scope of the book. This book does a good job showing the effects of gentrification, but it does not go much into the process. Gentrification is a process we all recognize but most of us do not understand it as much as we think.