Off-Key

It’s not hard to find gaudy architecture in Bushwick. On Stockholm Street, there’s an apartment building that wears its inexplicable love of the MTA on its sleeve in the form of a woefully inaccurate map of Brooklyn’s train lines on its side wall. On Madison Street, there’s a triple-decker whose exterior is adorned with huge Tetris blocks. And at 334 Evergreen, an aluminum piano keyboard graces the front of a four-story rental. To those for whom the Note incites a sense of youthful wonder—a feeling that if you pressed the keys, it would let out a perfectly tuned arpeggio—I ask, What’s wrong with you?

Inside, any sense of whimsy rapidly dissipates. The keyboard motif has migrated onto the hallway sidewalls to drab effect, and the kitchen in every unit features an absolutely despicable strip of wallpaper, with childish icons of musical instruments called out in primary colors. The building’s kitschy design almost seems like an attempt to camouflage the process of gentrification it is accelerating; despite its hideousness, a two-bedroom still rents for $3,300.