Seven months ago I commented on an area of Brooklyn where a friend of mine then-lived (he since moved on, for obvious reasons and all-for-the-better!) and where development was booming.

Well a few days ago New York Magazine commented on that same building/area, which has set a new record for condos in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, at $3.8mil.

Williamsburg is regarded as one of the first havens of artist-refugees escaping the real-estate hype of Manhattan. When you talk to anybody who has been around for as long as I am old, they tell you, like a bit of local lore learned through oral history, that there was a time when taxis wouldn’t even drive fares into Williamsburg – too dangerous and not worth the money. Sometimes the person telling you this is telling you because they find it unfortunate how things have developed, they wish it could be a little like the way it was; sometimes the person telling you this is telling you because they’re boasting or think it ‘cool’ that their hood used to have a bit of notoriety, which I’m sure it did.

Either way, things have changed, that much is obvious.

The question remains, how are artists to survive, to not only afford living expenses but the expenses of developing work, in an age when the NYTimes is reporting on ‘how to find a sub-$1mil home’?