The Gentrification of The Sandwich, Brooklyn/NY

The basic breakfast roll pictured above was four bucks, already twice as much as it once shortly ago. I got it somewhere near Sullivan Street, starved out after some bad, expensive coffee that cost just as much. I don't see many bodegas in Manhattan proper anymore, so when I do, I pay my respects.

Staying in Brooklyn, the corner bodegas still offer this type of sandwich, but more and more, they are being pushed out by the cafe bistros that already dominate Manhattan by offering upscale versions of the classic, like the greasy mess of a Reuben pictured here, which was no Reuben in my books. Putting together more expensive ingredients does not a good sandwich make, especially if the maker is unskilled in sandwich preparation. While your storefront may showcase the finest baked sweets, if you don't know how to make a sandwich or pull a long shot, then you are charging twenty bucks for me to look at your haircut. Gentrification has ruined entire neighborhoods, if not entire cities, and certainly, gentrification has not been kind to those who want and who need the cheap eats.

Take the famous Katz deli for instance, which is being run by a third generation owner in his late twenties. After 125 years in the business, inflation can't possibly justify half a sandwich a matzo ball soup for close to twenty dollars. People go, I go, for the history, for the pastrami (though pictured below is actually the corned beef), and while there was a line to the door, and the smoked meat was pretty good, this restaurant is actually having a rough go of things as the entire back section was closed off.

I don't know when change needs to happen, or if change only happens when pushed, but from the looks and tastes of it, things are only changing for the worse around here.

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