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.
“it is annoying (b/c it seems to many of us that you are actually promoting your vision of yourself more than doing anything for your ’cause'”
know almost no one in new york anymore who seems to have any cause at all anymore. so while you might find it annoying, perhaps people in park slope are trying to advertise ANY CAUSE to get people to wake up….ABOUT SOMETHING.
I know that’s why I post things and talk incessantly about certain things and sometimes advertise my “PARK SLOPENESS” It’s really because all my friends are living inside a bubble and I find it a deep seated passion in myself to try to get people interested in something…in what this country is doing to itself right now, with the war, with global warming, with the green revolution, with really anything.
It would be nice if more people were interested in that than they are about Lindsay Lohan, American dildo, oh sorry, Idol, the LATEST episode of Who wants to be a millionaire or how to make 6 gagillion dollars working at a bank or flipping brownstones.
For god’s sake…maybe you don’t like the poster in my brownstone, but maybe…just maybe it will make you wonder what it is you are excited in life about enough to want to announce it to the world and do something good for it every once in a while.
I’m sorry if you think I’m “wearing my convictions on my sleeve” but I’d rather wear it there than on the sole of my feet.
That’s just me.
I think Park Slope is great.
Please…PS still has tons of Lesbians – and sorry but they are THAT BAD (looking)
“What exactly is wrong with wanting to be active , liberal and have some convictions???”
Nothing – but when you advertise it on the back of your Suburu or in the window of your Brownstone – it is annoying (b/c it seems to many of us that you are actually promoting your vision of yourself more than doing anything for your ’cause’)
BTW – I think the same thing of ‘right wing’ bumper stickers like “you can have my gun when you pry it…”
The same goes for ‘wearing’ your convictions – if you are liberal and have some convictions is it necessary to wear ugly glasses, heavy shoes and thick socks? etc….
The point is – it all seems very HS – I am an adult now – can’t I be a ‘burnout’ without playing handball and wearing concert shirts?, Cant I be liberal and wear a suit?, Can’t I support the ASPCA without eating tofu at S’Nice?
Lesbians… built this city.
76% of people in Park Slope are not married and do not have children.
Just a little fact for you.
I’m a gay male and Park Slope is the best place in the world for me. And I’ve travelled quite extensively.
I will never leave it, nor do I seem to fit into the niche market which you allude to, 12:26.
You folks need to make your own niche markets and stop thinking you need to do what everyone else does.
Judging from this post, you’d think most New Yorkers were followers, not leaders. I’m suprised, quite frankly.
11:59 – i never said it was a correct perception of reality, or that i shared it, or that the haters aren’t intellectually lazy and lacking in creativity. it isn’t, i don’t, and they are.
moving to NYC to be “fabulous” is killing the city way more than some babys.
park slope may have a few frumpy moms, but the dads and the gays are hotter than h*ll.
the lezzies aren’t bad either.