By Tony Dokoupil

orget what Pablo Neruda says about the eyes—residents of the contested area of Brooklyn located between the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges have learned to trust the name as a window to the soul. Dumbo, Slumbo, or New Tribeca? Depending on the moniker a person uses, a different ideology is betrayed, and a competing vision for the neighborhood is announced. So choose wisely, dear reader. You might be choosing enemies. 

In general, the working artists and patriotic members of the Dumbo community that originally christened it as such prefer Dumbo. These are the people who moved in prior to 1998, before the buildings were rezoned for commercial and residential use, and it was still possible to redeem workspace in an absurdly low price range. In other words, these are David Wallentas’ people. 

Wallentas, who in past interviews has referred to himself as “mayor” and “benevolent king” of Dumbo, is the town’s notorious patriarch. His Two Trees Management Company began buying derelict factory space in the early 1980s, very quickly becoming the area’s largest land owner. Then, in the ’90s, he cherry-picked artists groups with the right cachet, offered them free or reduced-rate rents, and waited for the inevitable leavening: culture, vibrancy, community and, finally, property values. He gave a name to what had been a sterile squall of factories; his invited guests gave him Dumbo. Now, he’s cashing in on that gift. 

Last year, that meant 70 Washington St.’s artists-lofts-turned-condos went on the market for between $600,000 and a $1,500,000. This year, whispers at the Jay Bar are that 68 Jay St. building is next. All the while, the smell of gentrification is thick in the air like bubble gum shampoo.

“They’re slicing artists out of this building now a layer at a time,” says Carla Walker (not her real name), a painter working with large-scale assemblages. She requested anonymity for fear that her sublease would be compromised. But in her opinion it’s only a matter of time before Dumbo is recast like Soho, with prohibitively high rents for anyone not in the professional class, or “made” as an artist. “That glorified grocery store downstairs was wasn’t open six months ago,” she added, with a see-what-I’m-talking-about arch to her eyebrows.

What she’s talking about is obvious. Within the last three years, ABC Carpet, Starbucks and several high-end furniture stores have opened, presumably in anticipation of a very specific earning class coming to Dumbo. And judging by the view from Walker’s studio this past Saturday, that class has already made inroads.

Three floors below, several mid-sized silver SUVs were parked at loading angles along Jay St. Each had their trunks open and a well-built male of the Good Father model performing complicated seat-folding operations to make room for Swiss furniture and Indian rugs. In another episode, a man carrying dining room chairs in each arm paused at the curb to allow a much older man, his fingers on the elbow of a old woman with apricot hair, to pass into a showroom. Just ahead of Mr. and Mrs. Benevolent Elder, what looked to be the grandkids teased the motor on an automatic sliding door. These are the kind of images that frighten Walker. In her mind, they mean higher rent and a creative community choked-out.

Tanya Rynd, the owner of Superfine, a popular restaurant and bar, is similarly frightened by such images, but remains hopeful. “Friends and I started Superfine as a place where new and old members of the community would be able to come together, take a few breaths, have a drink and share something,” she said. “And I’m optimistic that will still be able to happen. People will come here and ‘get it.’” 

But both Rynd and Walker still worry that Two Trees and other developers are hemorrhaging the future. From 1998 to 2005, Two Trees alone installed 200 new condominiums and created 125 rental apartments, with several hundred more in the works, according to their website. Not coincidentally, the average rent in Dumbo over that time period jumped from less than a thousand dollars for a one bedroom to $2,700. The result: the core of Dumbo has been cut away without harming the surface. It’s like somehow removing the core of an apple without ruining the skin, said Rynd. “The apple still looks fine, but it’ll be the last. All the seeds are gone. The artists have left.” 

In a third vein, quite apart from the artists who came here in the 1990s or those profiting from their aura, there is Norm Deplume (a “stage name”). The manager of a set construction company, Deplume bristles at the word Dumbo. “More like Slumbo,” he says, on lunch break outside with his crew. Across the cobblestone street a man in a suit stoops to talk with a motorist. “Do you have any Grey Poupon,” Deplume says, and peels of laughter come from the crew. He continues:  

“You understand, I’ve been here since the early ’80s, when there weren’t parking signs on these streets, when the cops called this ‘the pit’ and didn’t bother, and you literally had to shove the prostitutes and the dealers away yourself.” 

That Mr. Deplume owns what is now a multimillion-dollar home offers him no solace. “I came to get a way from these people,” he says, and the crew goes grave. “I shed blood for it—for Slumbo.” 

If what Mr. Deplume says is true, then Jan Larsen is his diametrical opposite. A slick and earnest man, Larsen is trying to attract “these people”—affluent people—and he is shedding dollars and brain cells to do so. In addition to opening TheXpo, an undeniably gorgeous gallery space, he is marketing the name “New Tribeca” to anyone who will listen. Why New Tribeca? 

“Dumbo sounds a bit fluffy for a serious business,” says Larsen, and he means business in the fullest sense. “I think what you’ll see in this neighborhood as it develops are hard working artists who rise with the tide. Artists-in-Enterprise, I call them.”

Deplume is incredulous at this suggestion. “Yeah, well, he’s about two percent right.” Out of 100 artists, maybe two will enter a new tax bracket, “but the other 98 will move to outer Philadelphia like I plan to do.” 

As for Larsen’s stab at neighborhood naming, the verdict is out. “But why is Tribeca the point of reference?” says Tanya Rynd, from inside Superfine. “That would be like the New York Press calling themselves the New Village Voice…In here, it will always be Dumbo.”