Bronx Is The New Williamsburg?!

Maybe it's the beginning of the real estate apocalypse. After living in the other borough beginning with "Bro," I'm a tough one to convince when it comes to selling me on the appeal of buying real estate in the Bronx. Yes, I know it's (quasi) affordable and it's got more of those green leafy things I used to know as trees. But it's also got some of the worst violent crime in the city, a crumbling infrastructure, and the name itself sounds like a bad case of black lung. Like the Bends, but worse.

Apparently, I'm in the minority.

This trend is surprising because most of us in the city believed that Brooklyn, with its newly-found but often-scoffed-at cache and hipster stroller dads, was the bastion of priced-out Manhattanites. You can typically find them mourning over their lattes on Smith Street. But now, it seems that the Bronx is giving Brooklyn a run for its real estate cred as it welcomes an exponentially higher influx of former dwellers from "The City" than any other borough. Our wildly reckless speculation as to why this might be:

1. The Bronx has some of the best Dominican and Italian joints anywhere around. Arthur Avenue is where the real Little Italy migrated when Mulberry Street began veering into theme park territory. The cannolis alone are enough to sign your life away on a mortgage.

2. Brooklyn is slowly becoming a characature of itself as its denizens and developers try their hardest of squeeze the last drops of working class culture from its neighborhoods. Pretty soon, one of my favorite bars, the Bushwick Country Club, will no longer be an ironic commentary on the area's laid back blue collar roots. It'll be a painfully accurate assessment complete with Peach Schnapps martinis and the starry-eyed Long Islanders that follow them.

3. Because the chicks from the Bronx Gridlock roller derby look way more intimidating than the Brooklyn version. Maybe it's the sailor outfits.

Let the debate continue!