Metro

Spike Lee rants on hipsters, gentrification

Spike Lee went on a seven-minute, profanity-laced tirade against the influx of white “hipsters” into the city’s formerly poor neighborhoods during a Black History Month event on Tuesday.

When an audience member at the Pratt Institute event asked the “Do the Right Thing” director about the benefits of gentrification, Lee joked, “Let me just kill you right now.”

“Here’s the thing. I grew up in Fort Greene. I grew up here in New York. It’s changed. And why does it take an influx of white New Yorkers in the south Bronx, in Harlem, in Bed-Stuy, in Crown Heights for the facilities to get better?”

“The garbage wasn’t picked up every mother—kin’ day when I was living in 165 Washington Park. PS 20 was not good. PS II. Rothschild 294. The police weren’t around,” he added.

Lee, wearing a “Defend Brooklyn” hoodie, went on to denounce what he called “the mother—kin’ Christopher Columbus Syndrome.”

“You can’t just come in the neighborhood and start bogarting and say, like you’re mother—kin’ Columbus and kill off the Native Americans,” he said.

“There were brothers playing mother—kin’ African drums in Mount Morris Park for 40 years and now they can’t do it anymore because the new inhabitants said the drums are loud.”

He said Brooklyn hipsters objected when Michael Jackson died and fans wanted to have a party in his honor in the Fort Greene section.

“And all of a sudden the white people in Fort Greene said, ‘Wait a minute! We can’t have black people having a party for Michael Jackson to celebrate his life. Who’s coming to the neighborhood? They’re gonna leave lots of garbage.’ ”

“Garbage?” Lee added. “Have you seen Fort Greene Park in the morning? It’s like the mother—kin’ Westminster Dog Show. There’s 20,000 dogs running around. Whoa. So we had to move it to Prospect Park.”

He said the change in property values wasn’t helping everyone.

“What about the people who are renting? They can’t afford it anymore! You can’t afford it”

“People want to live in Fort Greene. People want to live in Clinton Hill. The Lower East Side. They move to Williamsburg. They can’t even afford f–kin’, mother—kin’ Williamsburg now because of the mother—kin’ hipsters.”

Lee, who now lives on the Upper East Side, summed up.

“So why does it take this great influx of white people to get the schools better? Why’s there more police protection in Bed-Stuy and Harlem now? Why’s the garbage getting picked up more regularly? We been here!”