Patti Smith Quotes

In many cities, it's become popular to hate 'gentrifiers,' rich people who move in and drive up housing prices - pushing everyone else out.

In about 2002, I moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn, to Red Hook.

Its all big money, high rent, high prices in New York City now. The poor people completely got rolled over. I've never seen anything like it in my life. It's disgusting.

The housing crisis may not be the worst thing that's happened to New York City because it was becoming impossible for some of the young doctors, for some of the young artists, for some of the people that make the city so special to be able to live here.

I grew up in Manhattan, and now I live in Brooklyn.

New York for a long time was a kind of conductor's graveyard.

As an old-time New Yorker, it's not that I miss the '70s and '80s or whatever. I miss the fact that there was a certain kind of energy that exists when people can live for nothing.

When I was growing up in New York, we were the anomaly. Our family stayed, but back then families didn't stay. Once you had a second kid, you immediately left, so the kids could run around outside.

But I can tell you that the New York that I see now is not the New York that we grew up in. It's not 1973.

All sorts of creative communities are withering in New York because it's too hard to live here. It's ridiculous how expensive it is.

New York is a much more bourgeois city, more of a tourist attraction than a muscular metropolis. It's lost moxie and a rough energy, while gaining grace and friendliness. I love both versions of the city, but I wish the prosperous Manhattan would become a little easier for young people to afford.

I'm from the burbs. I've been in the hood, but I don't live there. I have lived in the hood, but I don't live there anymore. I lived in Harlem, and that was crazy, even though Harlem is a lot nicer than it used to be.

I'm from Harlem, born and raised there.

Don't move to New York. Find your own city and your way.

New York has changed amazingly; it's gentrified everywhere, and it's a much gentler place.

New York has definitely turned into more of, like, a hipster place.

What I'm nostalgic for is the idea of an edge in New York. There used to be these fringes of the city where civilization sort of ended, and therefore young people could live cheaply, or open nightclubs or art galleries, or even squat. That fringe moved out to New Jersey and Brooklyn. The whole idea of the metropolis is the centralization of like-minded souls, and when the central real estate becomes too expensive, the dreamers, the young poets, and the artists will go elsewhere.

When I came to New York, it was cheap!

New York was always more expensive than the other places, even when it was going bankrupt. In other words, in 1971, New York was expensive for someone with no money. For anyone.

I had never heard this term before - gente-fication - which is also happening in Portland, Houston; it's happening in a lot of cities. It's upwardly mobile Latinx who want to come back to their neighborhoods where they grew up - or it's Latinx moving to L.A. and looking for a Latinx neighborhood to live or open a business.

I'm from Harlem.

Man, it's hard living in N.Y.C. - even when you have money in your pockets.

The Millennial Generation - the biggest American generation in history - is reversing the migration into rural areas and moving back to city centers.

I do think about moving out of London a lot, whether that's L.A., whether that's Margate with half of the other Hackneyites.

I have had a place in New York in the musicians' district on the Upper West Side since 1986.