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]
on the stones and bottle thing. it sounds probably worse than it is. stones were thrown from the rooftop and a glass bottle by a bunch of teenagers on the street both at two different times. at the time i brushed it off as “kids whadya gunna do?” with the snowballs i didn’t brush it off and probably should’ve.
Stop snitching…your an idiot. I for one think EFB may be a easy target and has bad luck with thugs, but its no excuse for him to be attacked just for living his life. I know plenty of “white boys, Asians, gays, blah-blah” that know how to prevent a confrontation (dark blocks!!) and would smack someone for throwing a bottle or stone at them. Just as I know plenty of “brothers” who would be easily robbed for their toys. As I said before the city is not a safe place, but we can have a decent and generally safe life here.
The problem of gentrification is the notion by some of the new entrants that everything existing is all useless and ghetto. Therefore it must be rid of. The soul of a neighborhood is not just the housing, but the decent people and culture that also make up the nabe. Don’t generalize the rest of the population with the criminal element when you say the place is a dump and it should be cleaned up.
When I visit my white friends who live in black neighborhoods, Harlem now or Fort Greene back in the day, I am always suprised by the level of hostility on the street to whites from black teens. Whenever I mention this to white people who live in the neighborhoods, they are in complete denial as are my black freinds.
Obviously its not the majority that is the problem, but there is no denying that there is a criminal element that targets white and asian people.
I don’t know how many times I have seen white people attacked in a black neighborhoods, its more common in Philly and DC, sometimes its not even a mugging, but just a hard smack for laughs.
What’s crazier is that white people don’t fight back, but just take it. I don’t know if its white middle class guilt or what, but unless you stand up for yourself low lifes will take advantage of you. I think alot of it is how you carry yourself. Keep your wits and act like you belong and don’t back down.
Now if there were a series of attacks by whites in Brooklyn or Harlem targeting blacks, do you think the NY Times would cover it? Of course they would, but you never hear about this phenomenon in the press. Pathetic.
I would just like to state for the record that I didn’t uproot anyone. I bought from a couple who had only been there for less than 10 years and retired down south. They chose to sell. They made a nice profit and could retire.
I started loving bed stuy again, but then… well you know the story (now).
Stop snitching,
Why not give classes on how to deal with low-lifes, thugs, and criminals since you sound so good at it? Maybe you could teach at a community college “Dealing with Deviants 101”.
Stop blaming the victim, and being so cold and so superior.
i volunteer quite a bit already here at home in new york, where believe it or not, is it quite needed.
if perhaps some of you did the same (since you all seem to be so priviledged and think a million bucks is nothing for a home) it would only make sense that you do your part to improve a neighborhood that has not been your home for generations as is the case in bed stuy.
there is a ton of history in that neighborhood and those of you tearing in and uprooting many of the people that have been there for generations should do something to contribute to the neighborhood instead of trying to rape as much money from it as you can.
if you love your neighborhood…that’s one thing. i doubt many of the white people who move into bed stuy LOVE it. they want to make a buck. fine, that’s what capitalism is…go with that. but if you are going to do it, give something back.
that’s all i’m sayin.
hey 3.09, go volunteer in Calcutta mr-holier-than-thou.
i love you people that talk about the gradual process of gentrification.
you do realize that when you gentrify bed stuy, the people are just moving one or two neighborhoods farther east. then in a few more years, we’ll hear the same effing things about brownsville till those people are left to go to the rockaways and so forth.
if you want to do some actual good for the world, how about trying to figure out a way to help those less fortunate than you instead of how to turn your 1 million dollar home into a 3 million dollar one.
you all are SO transparent.
it makes me sick.
first of all…stop snitchin…the mugger never even knew the guy had 500 bucks in his pocket as he apparently only got a few singles, so your arguement is invalid.
secondly…what’s the point of having toys if you’re too afraid to use them in your own neighborhood.
i know i’ll get bashed for that one, and i realize that’s just me, but personally i don’t work hard, pay my bills, save money etc to be holed up in my apartment playing with my toys in the dark.
to each his own obviously, but i’ve always been of the mind that i’d rather have a smaller place in a nice hood than a larger one in a ghetto.
i love being able to walk home from the train while listening to a couple tunes or talkin on the phone.
if not, what’s the point of living???