Did any of you just listen to Rosie Perez and Nelson George discussing the impact of gentrification on the neighborhoods of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill? We find Nelson’s nostalgic but realistic take on things quite interesting to hear; he’s clearly thought through a lot of these issues. Rosie’s relatively un-nuanced views, however, rubbed us the wrong way. Her main point seems to be that she doesn’t know as many people when she walks down the street but (1) she’s a movie star now, which impacts how people view and interact with you and (2) we don’t get the sense she’s even around very much. In the four years we’ve been taking our kids to school just a few houses away from hers, we’ve never laid eyes on her; in fact, we’re not sure we’ve ever seen the shutters on her house open! (Her house also has the obligatory-for-a-Brooklyn-celeb attached garage.) She was complaining about how people fight over tennis courts in Fort Greene Park now–and then a caller reminded her that she used to have bricks thrown at her by local kids when she was playing tennis. We get how people can miss (and idealize) things from the past, but Fort Greene and Clinton Hill have to be some of the friendliest, most neighborly, streets to walk down in the entire city. How about a little love!