Wednesday Links

Here's what's ridiculous about the endless attacks on Park Slope, PS Parents, PS Food Co-op, etc.: Not that long ago, Park Slope was a working class and diverse neighborhood. The kind of place that people chose to live because it WAS diverse. The kind of neighborhood that so many Brownstoner habitués have portrayed as having once been too dangerous. Thanks to the attitudes and policies of many new owners, and echoing off the walls of Brownstoner—particularly the "if you can't afford it, move" attitude—Park Slope has become a far more homogenous community. It is worse for that change. The majority readers of this blog obviously don’t like the result, but you haven’t been here (whether in Brooklyn, or in Park Slope) long enough to have observed the transition. At the same time, the humorous and sneering critiques also show how foreign the "real" Park Slope remains to you, a neighborhood still filled with extended working-class families and oldtimers, for whom many B’stoner posters ALSO have contempt. In this regard, Mr. B was right on the money concerning how quickly this board jumps to a beatdown. Furthermore, here’s a newsflash: the very same change that has overcome Park Slope is coming to your neighborhood 5, 10, 20 years down the road—with you as agents of change for your own new neighborhoods. Second newsflash, you’ll become the eventual targets of contempt for a new generation of “pioneers” with a short view of history.

Wishinone writes: “Of course there are people with extreme points of view on the list serve, people whom I wouldn't want to stand behind in line for coffee, let alone take their parenting advice.” You mean this board is devoid of people like that? You mean the singles and parents on B’stoner are somehow less opinionated, more involved (but in a good kind of way), more charitable and altruistic, less entitled and/or self-absorbed? You mean that before PS Parents came into existence the streets of Brooklyn, especially the working class neighborhoods, weren’t filled with swarms of parents with swarms of children and carriages? (If that’s your position, than you know very little about 1st, 2nd, and 3rd generation families that populated the borough not even 50 years ago, let alone before that.) Did your mothers not breast-feed you or push you in carriages? Who on this board was Athena’s companion when she sprang from the head of Zeus (or arrived via some other immaculate conception)? Really, I advise a step back before taking pride in making declarations so foolish.

Posted by: vinca at April 8, 2009 10:42 AM

You mean the word habitué made you pass out, Rob? What a delicate flower. Would you have have read past if I'd used "usual suspect"? I suspect you're short on a reply, and so pretend to dismiss it as if meaningless.

Posted by: vinca at April 8, 2009 11:03 AM

Absolutely truce, Rob. I enjoy most your input and was, and remain, quite a vocal supporter of keeping the OT. I rarely write a long opinion here because I detest the flame wars, and because I don't have time, energy or addiction to follow a thread daylong or jump from thread to thread to see where else the issue's been raised and reraised. However, on the issue of flame wars: Bxgrl, get a clue—I know you perceive attacks from behind every bush, but there was no attack on wishinone, I doubt s/he needs you as defender, and I repeated the quote to point out the irony.

Posted by: vinca at April 8, 2009 11:23 AM

In fact, Bxgrl, you DIDN'T reply to what I posted. What you did, and what you do with great frequency, is "defend" someone—anyone—as a means of casting aspersions on another poster. Then you ice the cake by describing the alleged "transgressor" as shrill, hypersensitive, touchy, etc., in an attempt to sucker people into a debate about character which has nothing to do with the topic at hand. You amplify your "defense" by bringing your fabrications to other unknown threads. Good luck with that.

Posted by: vinca at April 8, 2009 12:19 PM