Beating a Busted Bugaboo?
Maybe there’s more to the Park Slope stroller mafia debate than points about how it shows how white people are jealous of other white people or assertions that negative stereotypes come from I-don’t-wanna-grow-up hipsters. Maybe, as Lynn Harris posits in yesterday’s Style section, Slope bashing is an elegy for a former New York: Brooklyn was…
Maybe there’s more to the Park Slope stroller mafia debate than points about how it shows how white people are jealous of other white people or assertions that negative stereotypes come from I-don’t-wanna-grow-up hipsters. Maybe, as Lynn Harris posits in yesterday’s Style section, Slope bashing is an elegy for a former New York:
Brooklyn was supposed to be Manhattan’s little burnout brother. When I arrived in New York, Brooklyn was the place you could reliably feel superior to, if you thought about it at all. New Yorkers don’t hate the Upper East Side in the same way because that’s old money, old news. But Brooklyn? There’s the feeling that yuppies in Park Slope are washing away Brooklyn’s grittiness and making it more like Manhattan, said Jose Sanchez, chairman of urban studies at Long Island University, Brooklyn. Brooklyn was supposed to be different. Park Slope, to some, now represents everything that Brooklyn was not supposed to be. That’s why our feelings about Park Slope are linked to our feelings about our entire city: our overpriced, chain-store city run by bankers, socialites and, it seems, mommies. The artists are fleeing and your friends, it seems, have become Park Slope pod people. (And they’re coming for you, too.) It’s starting to feel as if there’s nowhere left to hide. And that if we lose Brooklyn, we lose everything. Though actually, if you could keep hating Park Slope, that would be great. Maybe if it really falls out of favor, I’ll be able to afford to stay.
But maybe all press is good press.
Park Slope: Where Is the Love? [NY Times]
Photo by redxdress.
“♫ I don’t wanna grow up,
I’m a Toys R’ Us kid.
A million toys to choose from,
that I can play with. ♬
♪ From bikes to trikes and video games,
its the biggest toy stor there is. GEE WIZ!
♫ I don’t wanna grow up, cuz baby if I did….
I wouldn’t be a toys r’ us kid! ♫ ♬♩♪♪….”
– Geoffrey the Giraffe
12.59, the lazy American way of pronouncing T in the middle of a word as a D has doubtless led to your confusion.
“Well when I see my parents fight
I don’t wanna grow up
They all go out and drinkin all night
I don’t wanna grow up
I’d rather stay here in my room
Nothin’ out there but sad and gloom
I don’t wanna live in a big old tomb on Grand Street”
-Ramones, I Don’t Wanna Grow Up
It’s, what, a half-dozen stops on the F Train from East Broadway to 7th Avenue in Park Slope?
12:54 – I am not sorry – just b/c I can’t immediately peg your hypocrisy doesn’t mean that we need you to “wake us up” with your silly little window signs or annoyingly repetitive conversations.
wow 1:23. You sound like a really unhappy person.
truly.
1:05 – no one CARES about liberal activism – what many people find annoying is that the people who seem to be the loudest, most-judgemental against – suburbanization, chain stores consumerism and homogenization, etc….
Are the most guilty – despite the fact that they wont STFU.
Are you anti-consumerism and “different” simply by buying an Apple laptop?
Do you get to be an environmentalist by eating organic foods (that contribute more to global warming?)
Do you get to say you are ‘progressive’ and/or ‘liberal’ and/or ‘active’ simply by wearing the same ugly shoes, glasses socks and ironic t-shirt as every other moron you hang out with???
The answer is NO and THAT is WHAT IS ANNOYING
Wake me up when this thread is finished.
And I never ever said I was trying to pass judgment on anyone nor did I say that my views are any more valid or right than anyone else’s. I simply said I don’t feel comfortable anymore sitting back and watching life pass while not doing anything about it anymore.
So I’ve decided to do things. They might not be the same things you do, but I put my money where my mouth is, so to speak.
If you think that’s me being high school, then I guess I liked high school a lot more than I thought I did.
I am 12:54.
I am pro Atlantic Yards.
I do not own a car.
I find the economy is rough. Not end of the world, though.
War…don’t like this one, but opposed to them in general.
You’re sorry, 1:15.