all this talk of dire real estate trends reminded me to document the thing someone did to a perfectly innocent rowhouse in our neighborhood

behold, the architect's rarebit fiend

the entire block is still mostly owned by families & is thus remarkably intact, but the old couple who lived here sold out & moved to long island when the husband went into the hospital. the place was price at over a million, so the only ones who could afford it were developers

they gutted the entire thing down to the studs, slapped an extra two stories on it, and reconfig'd the interior to be an eight-unit so they can, according to a neighbor, rent single rooms it in out for 1000 a month? so, a boarding house?

but, just, the LOOK at it

like, you live in brooklyn and you see a lot of DIRE hack jobs, but this one is special

they have also driven the next-door neighbors so insane during the construction and been so overall shitty THEY'RE selling now as well, between the noise and the dropping shit on their property and taking up parking space and damaging their car and etc etc etc

anyway that building is what it looks like when gentrification pops a boner

oh also it juts WAY out in the back and throws a giant shadow over the surrounding back yards, as a final fuck you to everybody living nearby

the elderly couple that used to live there were nice. the old guy gave me a giant novelty martini glass once. they are missed for multiple reasons

found the instagram of the 'designer' for this thing and the comments are pretty much as one would expect

https://www.instagram.com/p/B-JEQNPgZQH/ 

they were getting so many negative comments they took the post down, amazing

i keep coming back and finding now awful things about it, like why the FUCK with the black stucco running down the entire length of the right side? why??????

note: the 'rooms for 1000 bucks a month' thing is entirely a third-hand rumor gotten from a neighbor, like i said. THAT part would be awesome if it were true; the thing would still be ugly as shit but at least serve a purpose

problem is, i've heard nothing else since to back that up and looking at the way it's structured i don't know if i believe it. guess we'll see when it comes on the market!