The Bushwick mall: because Brooklyn is too urban right now

Our pals at Bushwick Daily found a story about plans for a mall to come to Bogart Street, right across from the Morgan L stop. Yes, if it weren’t already apparent, the Eye of Sauron-like gaze of New York City real estate is now peering intently at Bushwick. If the plan goes through, and as currently constructed it’s apparently going be a “retail and nightlife complex,” we’ll probably be able to pinpoint the exact day some idiot starts pushing the idea that “Morgantown” is a real neighborhood.

Sadly and predictably, phrases like “a gritty version of X” are being thrown around, along with the possible addition of a Guitar Center or Urban Outfitters. There’s also talk of a movie theatre, which yeah, Bushwick can certainly use one of those, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of further suburbanizing Brooklyn.

As alarming as the idea might be, it’s not even technically the first mall in Bushwick. The Loom, if not in name, is in practice a mall. It’s just that the anchor tenant there isn’t going to light up the eyes of any real estate speculator. And that’s what makes it so tolerable. The Loom is a place where Chabad shares space with the Bushwick Co-op and a tattoo parlor, and at summer shows outdoors, you can hear the Shabbat services and have to guiltily wave off guys asking if you’re Jewish. What does a mall with a movie theatre and an Urban Outfitters have to offer Bushwick outside of more of the same crap people presumably moved there to get away from? Of course, since New York real estate forces are more powerful than God, we may as well treat this like an inevitability and at least try to give it a silly name. The Mall of (Transplant) America? Roberta’s II?

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