When Ernesto saw the high-end optical store open at the corner of 5th and St. John's, he knew it was the beginning of the end of the neighborhood.

It always starts with a store that doesn't quite belong. Childhood friends on the other side of town told stories of a similar pattern. First, came the coffee shops, with their artisanal beans roasted in a converted downtown warehouse; then the art galleries, with their overpriced watercolors and open houses filled to the brim with wannabee art critics getting drunk on complicated cocktails; and lastly, some kind of practical luxury — like a glasses store — for the intellectuals who needed to look chic more than they needed to see.

One by one, these tiny retail occupations of former bodegas and family-owned restaurants formed the welcoming party of the urban elite, cultivating and curating the land to their specific tastes.

Not that Ernesto was against having nice things. He was never one to turn down a good cup of coffee, and artists have to eat, too. But it was the way these stores seemed to shove and elbow neighborhood institutions, and the people who frequented them, out of the way, that set him on edge. It was isolating.

And so, partly out of a protest for the way things were headed, and after watching the rent on his modest one-bedroom rise like a thermometer in a heat wave, he decided to not renew his lease. Not that his landlord cared; better to clean out the place, slap on some vinyl decals and call it a renovation.

Today was move-out day, which made Ernesto particularly wistful. He remembered the joy he felt moving into this apartment after college. Sure, the moldings were cracked, and after a good rainstorm there'd be some bugs in the bathtub, but it was his apartment, in his family's neighborhood. It was his act of planting a flag and declaring he was here to stay. Now the bugs would outlast him as tenants.

After eyeing and counting the stacks of boxes in his bare living room, he threw on his shoes to meet his mother for coffee. The small shop, “The Spot," was slow, typical for a Sunday morning. Nearby, a youngish man in a tiny beanie and square glasses nursed a coffee in one hand a copy of "Das Kapital" in another. Ernesto rolled his eyes before waving down his mother at the end of the shop.

"Are you all packed? I thought we could grab the Uhaul after I finish this cup," she said.

"Sure, lemme grab something real quick. I need a pick me up."

Ernesto's mother held up her to-go cup, stained at the edge with a mix of lipstick and caramel.

"Oh, you should try the Dulce de Leche latte. It's a little sweet, but it grows on you," she offered, sipping loudly from the lid.

"I'm fine with a black drip," Ernesto retorted.

"OK, whatever."

Ernesto turned back toward the cashier, placing his order, before sitting down next to his mother. He watched her, eye slightly twitching as she took another long sip of her latte. She looked at him, studying her son.

"All packed?"

"Yep, ready to get out of here."

"How are you feeling?"

"Fine."

His mother takes another sip.

"Fine? I remember you were so excited to move here, I can't imagine that feeling goes away."

"The neighborhood is dead, so it doesn't really matter."

She looks at him, eyes locking onto his. She lets out a small chuckle.

"Ernesto, this neighborhood "died" years ago. Doesn't make it any less special to have lived in it when you did."

"Yeah but it's not like the good old days, so —"

"You were two years old during those good old days. My good old days. They never existed for you."

Ernesto stares at his mother, his ears turning red as he rotates his coffee between his fingers. He takes a sip of it, wincing from the bitterness.

"I just wish I got to experience it the way you did," he said quielty.

"What matters, is that you got to experience it, at all."

His mother smiles at him, then lifts back her coffee cup, draining the last of its contents. She looks at her watch.

"Wow, now I'm wide awake. Time to go get that UHaul."