the cottage next door

 

I heard a disturbing moniker for the old Italian residents of Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn: Leftovers.
    Clearly this term is used by the trendy, young, rich folk who have moved into the area. (I won't go into what we call them. Let's just say that their strollers are a danger to society.) Yes, we, because I seem to be a Leftover everywhere I live. Well, not quite everywhere—in the Ozarks I'm a rich, young interloper myself.
    But my building in New York is being populated by by people who throw out Noguchi coffee tables and have help and cars with drivers. (Yes, I was once one of these people.) The real estate agents showing the pricey redone apartments ($5000/month for mine) frown on the wheelchair users and camo shorts wearers carrying laundry in the elevator. It doesn't look good. They are hoping we  die soon (and some of us have).
     And then there's Block Island, where, again, we were once the "new" summer people and now we are the Leftovers who show up scavenging the year end free buffets and fussing about prices on island, whereas the new people are building mansions and putting in pools and AC. The classic funky island cottage has now been supplanted. I saw that writing on the wall when I built Hannah's, which is a notch less rustic than Claudia's. If you can't beat 'em, raise your prices.