Image via BikeSnobNYC.

This past weekend, millions of the lazier breed of New Yorker smugly enjoyed the yearly sight of their sweat-drenched peers traversing the city, in that annual phenomenon known as the New York Marathon. The Marathon, which is a sight to behold if you haven’t had the chance, actually has a pretty interesting legacy, paralleling the transformation of the neighborhoods it’s cut through over the last forty years. The New York Times has a great little animation and data visualization of how the route of the 26.2-mile run has changed since 1976 (the first year the Marathon reached all the buroughs), and how the demographics of each neighborhood has changed with the route – for better or worse.

Rather than synthesizing the accompanying trend piece for you, we think it’s funnier to just list a few of the descriptors used to paint a picture of gentrification in New York, circa 2011:

• Buddy Holly glasses
• Experimental rock band
• $18 a six-pack
• 19th-century cast-iron pot holders
• black-white flip-flop
• An acting teacher at Yale’s drama school
• Chardonnay from stemless glasses
• alcohol-free perfume

You can go take a look at the great infographics here.

Image via.

by Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan

posted in Events

tagged gentrification, marathon, neighborhoods, nyc marathon

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