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]
Black and Gay: you have no idea what it is like for “little Miss Ann white girl” to live in a rough area. You’re right that the black guys do not taunt/mug/assault me or my partner. It’s the Latin/African-American girls that make my life…interesting. I agree with most of your post so I’m not looking to argue with you. Just letting you know that it is not easy for Miss Ann white girl when there are angry, bored and poor teenage girls around to throw fast food bags at you, surround you and taunt you and so on.
Anyway, that’s not the point of the post. At this point EFB you have lived through it three times so why move now. Either you (we) suck it up or we pull a Bernhard Goetz. And trust me, it crossed my mind more than once when the leader of the herd shook up a soda and sprayed it all over my Bullmastiff/pit mix. The way I see it is we are very unlikely to be killed or maimed (or we would have been already) so it is a matter of making it a game. Figure out what empowers you. Get a gun if you need to and do what the kids on the street do: don’t pull it out, just move it so they know you have it. That’s what the (white) super of my building does and he said it works every time. Learn the language of the street and use it – no matter how extreme or off the wall it seems.
Either way, good luck. One day you’ll laugh all the way to the bank and these little ass*oles will be taking to their mothers through a glass divider.
This argument is not about poverty, gentrification etc. It’s about parents. These kids are all punks because they were not raised properly. Someone didn’t have a chance or didn’y want to be involved in showing them what life really is all about. And yes they might even be a little bit evil. I grew up 1st generation american with an uneducated mother. We lived under sparse conditions. I never got angry because wealthier people were moving in, I got MOTIVATED to do better. I LIKED these people because most of them were contributing to the neighborhood. Supporting businesses, bringing in more options to eat ,shop. etc. I had common sense not to throw rocks, mug etc at anyone. Most people living here had common sense. All these people saying “C’est La Vie” because some assholes live in or HANG OUT in Bed Stuy (who should be shot or incarcerated) are the ones I hope move on because they don’t like the changes for the better. They think crime is acceptable Suck it up you non progressives that think everyone black wants to live on welfare forever and rely on the Government for everything but progress. We like living the good life too, and we WONT tolerate crime and make an excuse for it. Those of you that will, please leave my Bed Stuy ASAP, we don’t want you here. We never did.
“Bed-Stuy residents are more likely to be victimized by crime then many other neighborhoods in Brooklyn.”
David, I got a chuckle out of that one! Surely you mean “brownstone Brooklyn”, right? Because Brownsville and East New York are on an entirely DIFFERENT LEVEL!!! Makes Bed-Stuy look like Pleasantville, USA. 🙂
On another note, not to water down your statistics, which are spot on, most of the crime in Bed-Stuy happens in and around the the projects which are located primarily out on the outter edge of the neighborhood near Willaimsburg, Bushwick and perhaps Ocean Hill/Brownsville. The crime rate is no way near that high in brownstone Bed-Stuy and Stuy Heights. But let’s not split hairs, any amount of crime is too much crime in my book.
However, I think if you take a closer look at the crime stats in downtown Brooklyn neighborhoods that you will find that most of the crime is concentrated in pockets of poverty near or in public housing. Check out the stats in Boerum Hill/Carroll Gardens (Wycoff, Gowanus), Dumbo/Vinegar Hill (Farragut), Fort Greene (Ingersoll, Whitman), Red Hook, (Red Hook), and Clinton Hill (Lafayette). Where’s all the crime committed? Bingo! Among the hoodrats!
IMHO, downtown is relatively safe. The people who live in the pockets of poverty tend to cannibalize each other more than anything else so the rests of us really have nothing to fear. 6 homicides in Bed-Stuy in ’07? I wouldn’t worry about it unless you’re a gang banger or drug dealer. I’m sure all of these victims knew their assailant and had major beef with one another before things went seriously wrong. But like the saying goes.,you lie down with dogs, you’re apt to get fleas.
You’ve hit the nail on the head.
When people gentrified Carroll Gardens, Park Slope, Cobble Hill etc 20 years ago, they paid low prices to get in on a neighborhood on the rise. Prices there rose gradually compared to what is happening now in Bed Stuy. Now all of the sudden, those already gentrified neighborhoods command such high prices, that Bed Stuy’s prices skyrocketed without much change to the neighborhood.
So those that think they are getting a bargain now, don’t realize that the people who bought into those other neighborhoods paid a fraction of what you are paying and you assume Bed Stuy is, in 10 years going to have homes that cost 2-3 millions dollars and I just don’t see it.
You are buying into a REALLLLLLY transitional neighborhood. Any dip in the economy is felt harder in Bed Stuy than in probably most other NYC neighborhoods and it’s a big risk.
Paying such a high premium (even though it may be low compared to Park Slope, et al, etc) would be pretty scary to me. Bed Stuy and Harlem have a lot in common. Harlem has been on the rise for years and years now. And it’s in Manhattan, which will always command more of a premium. Bed Stuy is YEARS behind the revilization of Harlem so if you really want to stick it out in Bed Stuy, I think you’re looking at 20 years down the road. Not 5.
i think the main point here for me is that if you want to live in bed stuy….fine…you accept the risks involved, but the prices…do you all realize that similar neighborhoods on par with bed stuy in the country would have homes that cost about 1/5th less than what you pay for them???? and i’m being SUPER generous with that figure.
to pay more than 300K or so for a townhouse in a neighborhood as dangerous as bed stuy is a COMPLETE ABSURDITY! if you’ve paid more, you are a total sucker.
too much money to burn, if you ask me.
the reason there is so much tension in the hood is because the people who have lived there and know what a ghetto it is think you all are INSANE for paying a million dollars for a house and take you for fools, thus mug you because they know another 500 bucks ain’t gonna make a difference if you’re willing to fork over that much cash for what is essentially one of the most depressed neighborhoods in the country.
“And by the way- a cab to Park Slope is $25 and it is only $15 to my house so … la-de-da.”
you were doin fine till you broke down and acted like a 5 year old with this comment.
and for the record, i’ve never paid more than 18 bucks in a cab to park slope so if you have, you’ve been RIPPED OFF.
just like you were when you paid more than 200K for your house in the ghetto.
anon 10:00,
your writing is utterly incomprehensible. please stop. you arre hurting my logic.
I didn’t follow this thread yesterday so maybe somebody said this already.
“Gentrification” is not just white people moving into a neighborhood. It’s the offspring of the longtime residents who DO make enough money to buy a house or apartment in that neighborhood now, choosing NOT to do that. They choose the suburbs. They choose Manhattan. Leaving behind the n’er do well descendents who can neither buy a property in that neighborhood, nor afford to move elsewhere. So they sit around angry and whining they’ve been priced out of the neighborhood. And it’s just all the white man’s fault. These kids aren’t all from bad families either. Please. We live in a black neighborhood, we see it every day. Many of these kids have hardworking parents who are doing the best they can.
Additionally, even without the boom in Brooklyn that has driven up prices, do you all really truly think these dudes would be able to buy a house in Bed-Stuy? Give me a break. Even if the houses were $100 per square foot, absurdly cheap, they couldn’t afford that. The low-income people would never be able to buy these houses. Never. Not in any scenario. It’s such an absurd proposition. It’s called inflation. It’s normal. Sometimes it’s higher than other times, but it keeps on happening.
Anna – your statistical analysis is incorrect – if you compare Bed-Stuy (which is the 79 and 81 precincts) you are talking about a population of approx 142,000 and YTD they had 6 homicides and 234 Robberies. Compare that to Brooklyn Heights, Red Hook, Park Slope, Boreum Hill, Sunset Park, Dumbo, Downtown, Cobble Hill and Carrol Gardens (which is made up of the 84, 76, 78 and 72 precincts) which combined has a population of approx 266,000 and has YTD – ZERO homicides and 228 robberies. Clearly any way you look at the statistical evidence, you are more likely to be robbed or killed in Bed-Stuy then the other nabes mentioned. Again it doesn’t make Bed-Stuy=”unsafe” (which is a subjective term) just means that statistically (probably the best – albeit somewhat flawed method to analysis) Bed-Stuy residents are more likely to be victimized by crime then many other neighborhoods in Brooklyn.