Thursday Links

Gunplay in Crown Heights? Better tell NY Daily News and NYPD that they are mistaken. Montrose Morris has assured us that crime doesn't happen in Crown Heights.

Posted by: guest at December 27, 2007 9:42 AM

BEAUTIFUL BLOCK!

Posted by: guest at December 27, 2007 9:44 AM

Crime is down overall and the new recruits will be patrolling trouble spots.

As the city gets more expensive, crime will decrease (except white-collar crime, of course)

Posted by: guest at December 27, 2007 12:03 PM

That's such bad, irresonsible reporting. Read the NY Times article on this year's crime report and the surge in recruits, instead of the NY Daily News retarded article. It's not the 71st Precinct that had the increase in crime, it's the 73rd precinct. Jeez, you think these "reporters" could do a little research once in a while. But that's typical of the dailies in this town.

Posted by: guest at December 27, 2007 2:03 PM

Hey 12:03-how much more expensive can this city get?

Posted by: guest at December 27, 2007 2:26 PM

Brownstoner:

I remember early-1960's NYC, whose murder stats are so much touted today (as in "only" 500 per year). At the time, everyone thought we were going through an awful crime wave. It's all relative, I guess.

And want to know when times were really tough? Try 1900, when there were more than 700 homicides per year in a city about one-third the size New York is today. Back then, the old police headquarters on Centre Street had deliberately magnificent architecture to impress BOTH criminals and the police with the majesty of the law (according to newspaper accounts during a period of rampant official corruption).

Erroll Louis in the Daily News writes most effectively about Crown Heights' struggle with crime. No doubt his columns would resonate with New Yorkers living in the "good old days." (After all, one of the reasons people moved into apartment houses with doormen was to avoid brownstones' vulnerability to burglars -- and worse.)

Nostalgic on Park Avenue

Posted by: guest at December 27, 2007 2:36 PM

Ah, Montrose Morris, your denial and minimization know no bounds. In a related NYT article, the 77th precinct is specifically mentioned as one of only 6 citywide (out of 76) that saw an increase in crime. It, along with other troubled areas, will be targeted by the Operation Impact in hopes of making it a safer community (see link below, page 2, paragraphs 5 and 8).

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/27/nyregion/27crime.html?pagewanted=2&ref=nyregion

But, alas, if you disagree, then I guess I should listen. After all, what value have facts when compared to your opinions?

Posted by: guest at December 27, 2007 2:49 PM

Who cares about crime that will be up in down... Its all about the architecture Bedford Stuyvesant looks great to me ....

Posted by: guest at December 27, 2007 3:39 PM

You're right, Montrose, Crown Heights is (and was) a great place to live. And one of the reasons is its proximity to Prospect Park, which for the benefit of CH naysayers is one of the safest public parks in the city, according to the link above.

Around this time of year in the 1950's, my boyhood pals and I would haul our sleds along New York Avenue to Eastern Parkway and then to the park, joining friends along the way for an afternoon of full-throated joy on the slopes, not returning home until twilight.

Indeed, the park sounds safer today than it was back then. (I had a bicycle snatched from me there once.) But we were city kids -- and fearless -- never letting tougher kids get in our way of having a great time.

To this day, I thank Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of park and parkway, for the pleasures of a Crown Heights boyhood. (As did my father. Emptying his library after he died, I came across a letter he'd written to the great man, thanking him for the hours of quality time he'd given him and his sons. Olmsted was long gone, of course, but for my father very much alive, because of the streams, lake, and hills where we spent so much time.)

Nostalgic on Park Avenue

Posted by: guest at December 27, 2007 3:39 PM

Crown Heights has some beautiful town houses that rival the UES and UWS. But it's overpriced based on the crime statistics.

Posted by: guest at December 27, 2007 6:59 PM

"But it's overpriced based on the crime statistics."

And amenitites.

Posted by: guest at December 27, 2007 7:48 PM

We're at the beginning of a recession. Crime will only get worse as many ex-con construction workers are laid off due to this collapsing building boom and will switch their careers to hustling/robbing. Caveat Emptor when buying or signing leases anywhere near Bed Stuy or Crown Heights (that includes Clinton Hill and Prospect Heights). Someone was killed in BROAD DAYLIGHT on Clifton Street this summer with many witnesses and didn't get caught (update me if I'm wrong). I could have gotten hit while walking to Choices. Now, Lefferts Place. I used to drive down there all the time during that time of night. Then there were the seperate murders at Gates/Grand and Putnam/Grand over the last couple of years. A friend of mine just moved his family of four out of Crown Heights and into Long Island because of regular gunshots outside their bedroom window like every weekend (so called nice part, Prospect Place between Nostrand/New York). Another friend in Crown Heights is desperately trying to sell and move.

Something has GOT to give. Either prices or violent crime. And like I said before, as recession gets worse, crime is will only get worse. Even at lower prices, you're still taking a huge risk.

Posted by: guest at December 27, 2007 8:41 PM

Is the crime really that bad?

We were looking to buy a house in the area, but got discouraged because we didnt' think they were worth the asking prices.

Sure I can have a nice house dripping with details, but if I don't make it home from the train station, what's the point?

Posted by: guest at December 27, 2007 9:36 PM

NY Daily News coverage of Brooklyn sucks. Truly pathetic. It's been seen before in articles about particular neighborhoods, not just this time. It's always so obvious they send some dude who lives in Manhattan out to Brooklyn for an hour to walk around doing man-on-the-street interviews with whatever morons without jobs the guy happens to come across on the sidewalk, and then call it journalism.

Posted by: guest at December 27, 2007 11:17 PM

Love the story about the house in the Bronx, If only I can get my hands on something like that. How do people find these things.

Posted by: guest at December 28, 2007 12:50 AM

That daily news story about gunplay in CH and Bed-stuy was laughable honestly.... I am a former reporter and I would have been fired for writing that crap...

Posted by: guest at December 28, 2007 7:22 AM

rehab - regardless of whether the story is well written, these are dangerous neighborhoods.

i have listened to first hand blow by blow accounts of burglaries and violence from friends in bed stuy.

my black nanny said that during her year stay in a rental in bed stuy that she was very afraid the whole time.

i lived in prospect heights a few years back, and even there there was violence and crime. there was a murder (not my imagination) a couple of blocks away.

crowds of male teens stood on street corners forcing anyone to cross the street as they made threatening remarks.

i went nowhere without my dogs.

there are scary insecure violent people and these neighborhoods do have gangs and a culture of violence.

there is a reason that the highest psf in brooklyn are from gentrified white (especially italian) neighborhoods like carroll gardens, cobble hill, ps, williamsburg, etc... because even 10+ years ago, the italian neighborhoods were relatively safe making it easy for the yuppies to come in and gentrify.

any yuppies heading in to scary black neighborhoods -you are in for a battle, and you may never feel safe or comfortable.

Posted by: guest at December 28, 2007 3:51 PM

WTF are you talking about 3:51, the neighborhood that is most gentrified and most valuable now is Park Slope. Which was NOT an Italian neighborhood! Hilarious. It was one of the "scary black neighborhoods" you speak of. And before that it was never identified as an "Italian neighborhood". As for Williamsburg it was Polish. The Italian neighborhoods of Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst and Carroll Gardens are known for their no-taste, tacky, bad renovations and alterations to historic buildings and facades. They are gentrifying but it is a slow creep that could turn around if other neighborhoods with better housing stock and better transportation start to gentrify more quickly. (Thus the reason for the panicky haters of certain neighborhoods here) The houses and buildings are mother fugly in the Italian neighborhoods.

Posted by: guest at December 29, 2007 3:50 PM

Actually, 3.51, depending on where you were in Park Slope before it "gentrified" it could be African-American, Italian-American, Irish-American and (even!) WASP-y. (Twenty-five years ago a lady proudly told me her building on Prospect Park West was "restricted," meaning it didn't rent to Jewish tenants!) Members of my family have lived in the Slope for four generations, so all the mythologizing about it is pretty amusing. Some ironies: As my mother grew up in the family brownstone on Carroll Street, Crown Heights was considered more prestigious. And a contemporary of my parents preferred living on the Washington Avenue side of the park, which was considered safer than Prospect Park West!

Nostalgic on Park Avenue

Posted by: guest at December 29, 2007 5:31 PM