Across the newly-built counter of a recently-opened cafe in Ridgewood, Sanam wonders out loud about gentrification. It was clear that the neighborhood was changing.  A decade ago you wouldn’t have found coffee shops decorated with individually-painted countertops selling books from well-reviewed indie publishers. Like many of the neighborhood’s newcomers, Sanam arrived by way of an adjacent neighborhood in Brooklyn. 

“It’s like, Bushwick is still over there,” she said. 

If gentrification was happening, Sanam told me, it was busy happening there, where enormous condominiums have been unceremoniously plopping down for much of the past decade. For many, the difference between the neighborhoods can feel like the result of a general exodus, the continuing movement of a college-educated class, driven largely by the lure of lower rents, though its a promise that has become less true with each passing year. Where a decade ago, rents in the neighborhood corresponded roughly to the city’s overall average, by 2019 they would surpass the average in Queens, according to data from the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy.