After Three Strikes, Is Recent Bed-Stuy Arrival Out?
Writer Douglass Rushkoff made headlines last December when he announced in a blog post that he and his family were leaving Brooklyn after he was mugged on Christmas Eve outside his Park Slope apartment. While many people thought the response was an overreaction, getting mugged is a traumatic experience against which the rationality of statistics…
Writer Douglass Rushkoff made headlines last December when he announced in a blog post that he and his family were leaving Brooklyn after he was mugged on Christmas Eve outside his Park Slope apartment. While many people thought the response was an overreaction, getting mugged is a traumatic experience against which the rationality of statistics are of little comfort. Now another blogger is questioning whether he should stay in his neighborhood after having been mugged on Monday night for the third time in as many years. After five years in London and one on the Upper West Side, blogger Eating for Brooklyn scraped together enough dough for a down payment on browntone fixer-upper in Bed Stuy in 2003 only to get a rather jarring reception:
By the time we unloaded the last box from the rental truck, it was 1am. 1am and raining. The asphalt was shiny and slick and the street lights reflected yellow, red and green. Our block had the feeling of a movie set. It was picture perfect. Just as we closed the door to the truck with a thump, a passerby turned around and held us up. He ripped through my pockets frantically searching for cash. And I stupidly had $500.00 in my front pocket. I slipped a few singles off the wad of dough and gave it to him. He started walking away and came back with a vengeance as if the few singles I had given him were like spitting in his face. He ransacked my pockets again. Nothing. He never found the $500.00. Picture perfect and no one around.
We felt nothing but horror and panic later that night as we searched out the safest corner of the house to sleep — the fourth floor front room overlooking the top of the sycamore tree. With our sleeping bags on pine floors, our hearts pounded and kept us up all night. We had spent our life savings only to be held up at gunpoint. We felt we had been had.
All was quiet until February 2006 when the writer was pummelled in the head by a gang of teenagers; then on this past Monday night he was mugged again a block from his house.
I feel paralyzed. The rational voice says “Leave now.” The voice of fantasy says “Stick it out. It’ll be worth it in the long run.” Maybe I was stupid for not having left three and half years ago. With the neighborhood in transition and deep into renovation and debt, what would you do?
Well, what would you do?
3 Muggings in 3 Years, What Would You Do? [Eating for Brooklyn]
The muggee wrote, “The voice of fantasy says “Stick it out. It’ll be worth it in the long run.” Maybe I was stupid for not having left three and half years ago. With the neighborhood in transition and deep into renovation and debt,””
I don’t understand how people can put a price tag on their personal safety. “It’ll be worth it if i make a couple hundred grand.”
What happens if it doesn’t work out as planned? Did you get robbed for nothing?
actually i don’t live in bed stuy, because even with the 13% drop last year, i still don’t find it to be a neighborhood in which i care to live.
and i live in a studio asswipe.
can you tell me why exactly your opinions mean more than actual facts and statistics????
It seems that teenagers attacking people around the Utica Ave station is a recurrent problem. Those kids hang out in the park in the evening and wait for the right target. Have people approached the precinct about it? How are they responding to those incidents? Could we have more police presence around the subway and Fulton park in the evening? A few cops on foot could make a difference I think.
5:57, keep your head buried in the “statistics” ignoramous. Awww, you afraid I’m going to lower the value of your million dollar brownstone? poor baby.
while i kinda agree with you 5:59 i’m afraid a lot of the people who have moved to bed stuy kinda do it out of desperation because they are frantic that they’ve been priced out of the other more prime brownstone neighborhoods. the ones i know want to get in for a deal, renovate and get out for a huge profit.
they really don’t care about changing the neighborhood and can’t wait to get out and get back to a hood that they feel more comfortable in.
you are absolutely right though that they mostly have very little regard for the history, people, traditions, etc. that live there now, and in many cases have families that have lived there for a 100 years. it’s a very special neighborhood in that regard.
All of you people who moved to Brooklyn with your “i’ll change it attitude” and lack of respect for the people already living here are realizing you must always respect your surroundings and learn how to act.
actually 5:52 if you would read some statistics before opening your trap you would know that crime in bed stuy was down, i believe 13% last year.
i can see how you might interpret that as “going up”
love all the lies.
David, no one was saying that crime didn’t exist in Bed-Stuy before. I think some are saying it’s different. Back then it was the crack epidemic and drug dealers. Crime went down in the nineties when that slowed down, but due different factors it’s going back up again, as much as Bloomberg would like to deny it. Kids are more hardcore. IT’s a different vibe. Class divisions and gentrification do play some role.
For all you people alleging that class divisions and gentrification is leading to more violence – you clearly have not read the statistics – in NYC crime is at a 40 year LOW.
That being said – crime is not evenly distributed and there is more of it in Bed-Stuy then in most other Brooklyn Nabes.