When I tell people I live in Red Hook, they invariably mention Sunny’s, Pioneer Works, the Lobster Pound. Yet for all these manifestations of piecemeal gentrification, it took a pandemic to precipitate the neighborhood’s most dramatic metamorphosis, from an odd corner of Brooklyn into a last-mile distribution hub, consisting of three Amazon megawarehouses. As of October—Superstorm Sandy’s tenth anniversary—only one of these was fully operational, teeming with Black and brown gig-economy workers loading their SUVs with groceries and provisions earmarked for the doorsteps of better-off Brooklynites. It’s an insidious epilogue—not just to Sandy, but also to Amazon’s headline-making HQ2 saga, in which political backlash drove the corporation to cancel plans for a massive office campus in Long Island City. Looking back on the scandal with post-Covid hindsight, things appear to have worked out to Amazon’s benefit: Like other tech giants, it’s scaling back its offices, and like other retailers, it’s beefing up its infrastructure. Indeed, the other two “fulfillment centers” look like they’ll be up and running in time to unleash a flood of deliveries for the holidays, not to mention a plume of carbon emissions that will ineluctably contribute to extreme weather events down the line.