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]
Go to a gym and work out you p#$$y
My sympathies go to the mugging victim. However, I am not posting to argue the reasons for such crimes, which are complicated and on which I will not speculate.
Rather I would address the things that trouble me about the nature of this conversation. First off is the downright rudeness in what seems to be the majority of the posts. More troubling still is the unabashed racism coming from some of the white commenters. In this supposedly liberal, tolerant and progressive city, it’s shocking how deep white racism still runs.
When my wife and I moved to Crown Heights five years ago, we understood that it would be we who would need to make adjustments to our cultural attitudes. We came with no expectations that the neighborhood would change in any way by virtue of our presence. Nor did we come to speculate or otherwise invest in real estate. We came to have space to live in, improve the quality of our lives, and create a nest for ourselves.
It’s disappointing to discover that so many white folks who would outwardly embody liberal, progressive attitudes, find their prejudices emerging when faced with the realities in neighborhoods with many oppressed, marginalized people who struggle for everything they have including their identity. Please note that I distinguish between racism and prejudice. I am aware of my prejudices and make a conscious effort to be aware of them.
Now, having said all that, and given the history of racism in America, I would rather be a white man in a black neighborhood than be a black man in a white neighborhood.
The “Stop Snitching” comment is a huge insult to all New Yorkers — whatever their color, creed, or gender. And actually I think it’s an especially big insult to the long-standing, up-standing residents of Bed Stuy who have struggled for years to maintain stability and security for ordinary families in the hood. Those who would violently assault others should expect to be punished.
Don’t think white people will ever understand us, I swear!
It all boils down to race, let’s all just say it and breathe!
Here’s a thought:
The experience for black america is far different from most. It is institutional it is documented.
From seperate but equal, segregation, share cropping, jim crow laws, systematic, trials, judicial systems rigged, coin-tel pro, goverments instigating divisions in our commuinity, etc…etc…
These are just some of the things that poverty help contain. Bed-stuy 80’s.. drugs introduced to my community by our own goverment, which caused the black crack epi, more black men going to jail, leaving more black children with out black parents. uniform disrespect for the police naturally for doing these things…. It’s all systematic, these are the things that the youth of bed-stuy have to deal with daily.
This gentrification thing is pretty new-ish to the youth in the stuy. Most of the dudes I know on the street have never been to manhattan, yet seen more than a few white faces in the hood. They are aware you aren’t there by choice and you make an easy target! There area a lot of Kool-Aid drinkers on this board who haven’t been around early enough to see what can happen when shit really hits the fan in the hood. Unemployment, Forclosures, Subprime, Falling Dollar, will all have a effect on the stuy, more than any other hood in bk. just look at the ny times map from a month ago.
Summer will tell a tale, the bubbling in these streets are something not seen and felt since B.I.G. died. I know you feel it.
….and brownsville is nothing but projects, so there stops the gentrification train.
First of all let me say I’m sorry for what you’ve been through. There seems to be an edge of blame the victim both with the OP and with subsequent postings about the nabe and the time of the move and the fact he had cash in his pocket. This is BS. You are not to blame for your bad misfortunes. Obviously things could have gone worse. Thankfully they didn’t. I think it comes down to can you feel like you are truly at home in this neighborhood after what you’ve been through? I don’t think any of us can answer that for you. This kind of thing could happen anywhere. But for you it didn’t. It happened there. So if you are ready for a change that would be completely understandable. And if you want to stick it out that would be too. Good luck.
What I am missing from reading this debate is any advocate for the working, middle and even wealthy classes of Bed Stuy that have long lived and continue to live in this neighborhood. There are plenty of people here that raise families, go to work, run businesses and contribute to the betterment of the community. Bed Stuy is much more than dead end kids vs privileged gentrified.
Mr. “Stop Snitching”, You are a clown- boy. If you are really “Hood-Hefner” You could walk around FREE. The people that run the strips do. Big Knot$$$, Jewels, Toys etc. They dare some one to step out of line.
I feel bad for EFB. I suspect it might be the way he carries himself. Criminals, Bored teenagers, oppurtunist will look to test those they feel are weaker than them.
If they even suspected that They could mess around and find themselves on the wrong side of a beat down. They would just leave you alone.
Park Slope vic was a big baby, but EFB at least has had some staying power.
Still, people seem to like to overpay to be around danger. EFB surely didn’t HAVE to buy over in Bed-Stuy. He could’ve paid about the same to live on a quaint limestone block in Bay Ridge or Sunset Park, but I guess there’s not enuf street crime down that way to draw “hipsters.” Is it the thrill of being prey? Being the er, brave, wildebeest that’s been seperated from the herd?
Luck to you, EFB, but I’ve got to wonder if it’s worth all this crazy vigilance, negotiating such an obstacle course on your way home every night.
I lived in Bay Ridge and found it kind of dull and inconvenient, then moved to CG, where you’d have to be hanging around the projects steadily to get yourself mugged. It’s kinda nice to stumble home drunk at 4 a.m. now and then without sweating bullets. Isn’t that one reason people live in NYC instead of in SUV-land?
Finally at 5:59, I agree. However if crime is a problem in a neighborhood, this is something that everyone should want to change, new and old residents. No one should accept crime and antisocial behaviors such as kids atttacking people on the streets.
Now the person who was complaining on the forum yesterday about people hanging out on “his” sidewalk… That would be a good example of someone who moves to the neighborhoood and complains about the wrong things…