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]
Hey! You guys want to know why there’s so much perceived apathy with respect to Atlantic Yards? Well, most whites who live east of Flatbush Avenue, including myself, fully support the Ratner project because we understand clearly that it will further promote gentrification in our section of brownstone Brooklyn. We definitely need it to continue the great strides that we’ve made over the past seven years. AY = instant gentrification and without it Prospect Heights, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights run a serious risk of reverting back to the ghetto days of the 1980s. Most people don’t want to admit this fact but I will say it here – gentrification yes; slumification no! The reason for the massive indifference and lack of support for opponents of AY is that the majority of transplant understand the AY provides us with more good than bad. For those living east of Flatbush Avenue, AY is indeed the silver bullet that we need to take our nabes to the next level. Bring it on!
“Don’t confuse being rightly wary of a subculture which idealizes violence, guns and overt misanthropism with being racist.“
sounds like you’re talking about mainstream culture ..
9:19, good to hear some sense instead of cheap posturing. If you give the creeps a chance to get near you, they’ll eventually bite. You can only bluff so many times in a card game.
Truth is, in tough nabes, you must walk with confidence, but always be ready to make detours around corners where bad guys may be hanging, have a hyperawareness of who might be trailing you, and cross the street long before a potential threat walking toward you gets close. And if they cross, be ready to sprint. Only times I got mugged in the 80s & 90s (none since) was when I slacked on those basic rules. Is all that worth it to save a few bucks on rent or mortgage?
Wake up and do what exactly, 9:19? Live in a bubble?
I notice quite a few people have posted that being safe in a neighborhood depends on ‘how you carry yourself’. It is a myth I hear all the time, even petite white girls in their twenties think they can ‘look tough’ and that will be enough to deter a mugger. I used to think this myself, and walked thru my own high crime neighborhood,all the time, for years, without incident. Then my luck changed, and I was mugged. Then I was stabbed. Luckily I survived. I finally realized that a drug addict with a gun or a knife,or a group of young muggers with a gun or knife isnt going to be intimidated by ANYONE. Some of you people need to WAKE UP.
Responding to Anonymous at 8:00 PM who said:
“Hal – Don’t confuse being rightly wary of a subculture which idealizes violence, guns and overt misanthropism with being racist.“
I assure you I am not confused about that, nor in my opinion does my post express any ambiguity in that matter.
“Perhaps you don’t examine your own prejudices as much as you think. I’m sure people here wouldn’t be any happier living among the notorious white projects of South Boston.â€
My self examination is limited by my experience, exposure, and the extent to which I am informed of others’. You offer something for me to consider.
I, a white female in her early thirties, moved to Bed-Stuy earlier this year. My boyfriend, also painfully white, joined me. It’s been wholly positive so far. Our landlords (a black couple) seem happy to have our rent check, local business owners have been gracious and welcoming, and even most of our brief encounters with folks on the street have been friendly, even at night. I’ve been “blessed” more times by toothless old men hanging out on the corner than I can count. A lot of the teenagers look real pissed off, but I smile at them anyway and say “hey, how’s it going” if they so much as glance in my general direction. They don’t respond, and continue to look real pissed off, but I wouldn’t have responded to some smiling freak on the street, black or white, when I was 16 either so it doesn’t bother me. I never expected a welcome wagon.
But I suggest everybody feeling the need to make a point here about Bed-Stuy, crime, humanity, racism, or frickin’ real estate values, go over to the little stationary store on Tompkins Ave. betw. Hancock and Jefferson, and talk to the owner. He’s 70 years old, and sounds 70 but looks a lot younger, and has been running that store for the past 37 years. Raised five kids there, he told me. They used to stand on milk crates behind the counter. The three that are still alive have scattered to the winds, it sounds like: places like Virginia Beach, and Connecticut. He says he might close up shop in another year or so because, more and more, people are buying their candy and notebooks elsewhere, and maybe he’ll find something else he likes to do.
I don’t for a second think that our conversation did him any good. (Or that my $1 for two blue Papermate pens did either.) That’s not why I mention him. Life is infuriating, is all, and people are damaged in all kinds of ways. A little curiosity about what’s troubling them can be powerful.
Hal – Don’t confuse being rightly wary of a subculture which idealizes violence, guns and overt misanthropism with being racist.
Perhaps you don’t examine your own prejudices as much as you think. I’m sure people here wouldn’t be any happier living among the notorious white projects of South Boston.
My own crime statistics….I grew up in Brooklyn. I’ve been flashed and followed in Midwood, Ft Greene and Coney Island. In Park Slope, I’ve fought with and reported drug dealers, a knife wielding maniac and a wife beater. I witnessed a shooting, a hostage situation and a few burglaries, also in the Slope. Friends of mine have been attacked in Ft Greene and Boerum Hill. I’ve seen lots of crime over the years, but fortunately, I’ve never been mugged (knock wood!). I sold my house in Park Slope and moved to Bed Stuy because I do LOVE it and feel comfortable here (yeah, I’m white). I’m not rich by a long shot, but I had $ to upgrade my house from the sale of the Slope home, which I bought for buppkas in the 90’s. I’ve been in the Stuy about 2 years and never had a problem apart from breaking up a family fight and hearing gunshots 2 blocks away. I know most of my neighbors (old timers) and we look out for one another. I think I like it because it reminds me of the city I grew up in. Oh yeah, I know plenty of gay people who live here. Anyway, here’s why I think I’ve never had problems on the streets….I have a self assured “tough” walk and I always make eye contact and say hello if the street isn’t crazy crowded. If I’m harassed, I go ballistic on their ass. I’m a little chick. Maybe I’m street smart or maybe I’ve just been lucky.