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]
i’m totally appalled by everyone playing the race card, especially since EFB never once mentioned the race of his attackers (or his own race, for that matter).
it’s about poverty, people, and lack of education and opportunity, not race or gentrification.
Hey, 4:46, it’s 4:28 here. Seriously. Try “Google” or one of those other new-fangled “search engines” i’ve heard about. It will tell you that Brooklyn Heights was the original high-end neighborhood in New York City. Poor people lived and worked in the city, while rich people took these things called “ferries” to Brooklyn. That’s why there are so many nice “houses” there – because that’s where rich people lived.
Alternately skip it and just go back to Curbed.
“As someone who has worked next door to several notorious Housing projects in Bklyn, I happen to know that they ARE a big deal. Especially to the people who live there. And sometimes seeing the nearby area prospering while you’re stuck in the projects can make people angrier and more scared than before.’
Anon 4:05PM,
Well if that’s the case should all white people leave the following nabes that have a large public housing population: Boerum Hill/Carroll Gardens (Wycoff, Gowanus), Dumbo/Vinegar Hill (Farragut), Fort Greene (Ingersoll, Whitman), and Clinton Hill (Lafayette). You make it sound like residents of housing projects are straight out of “Dawn of the Dead” and that it’s only a matter of time before they revolt in mass and annihilate every white person in sight. Are you serious?
Anon 4:05PM, is this what you advocate? White flight? Do you seriously think that whites and blacks, poor and rich, can not live with one another peacefully?
if 4:22 is 16, 4:46 is twelve.
brooklyn heights has always been a nice neighborhood. even during the “bad” years it was still quite nice. i lived there in the 70’s and it’s not that much different than today.
the point was not which neighborhood was nice from the start. it was about which neighborhood started the trend of gentrification in brownstone brooklyn. it was NOT brooklyn heights. the heights has always been rather nice.
park slope started the trend idiots.
totally not on topic. sorry.
There was a time when Brooklyn, including Brooklyn Heights, was not considered a prime NYC residential location – Manhattan was.
Do some more research, 4:28. I’m thoroughly convinced, given the limitations of your vocabulary, that you can’t be any older than 16, and am now annoyed that I bothered responding to you.
thank you 4:28.
and 3:51 is also so ignorant to think that williamsburg was gentrified AFTER park slope.
he must have moved here 5 minutes ago.
i hate to break it to you, but park slope started to gentrify in the 1970’s….oh about 20 YEARS BEFORE WILLIAMSBURG MORON!!!
4:28, So was most of brownstone brooklyn. You’re a dumbass.
3:51 you are kidding, right? No, you’re probably not.
Ok. Here’s the thing. There are these things called “books” and also something called the “Internet” (it’s the same thing you are using to make words with right now!) You can use them both to research this thing called “history”, where you can learn about what happend a long, long time ago in New York. Like 20 years ago, or even longer!
P.S. – If you look really, really far back? Like hundreds of years ago, way before Instant Messaging or even TV? You’ll find that Brooklyn Heights was a high-end place from a long time ago! Crazy!