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.
eh, The Grimaldi’s line is full of Europeans and has been for years. And with the euro, we have more tourists than ever. Is this really a Park Slope exclusive issue?
I love living in Park Slope. Its safe, clean, fun, and has plenty of ammenities. I have lived here for 5 years after moving from queens. I find there is enough to do that many weekends I dont even bother going into Manhattan as I used to when I lived in Queens.
Haters are either jealous, or prefer a gritty downtrodden neighborhood to perpetuate their edgy hip image.
Either way, I dont care, I love it here and plan to stay.
This is SO Park Slope: The Europeans are moving here.
The Europeans are moving EVERYWHERE. Pick up a paper, Park Slope! Cobble Hill, Upper East Side, FiDi, EVERYWHERE. See, the dollar is low and the Euro is strong and… oh, forget it. You can only see the world through your keyhole!
i was travelling in europe last summer and you should have seen the eyes of some of people i talked to when i said i lived in park slope.
i said..” you KNOW it???” i couldn’t understand.
apparently, many of them read lonely planet which had brooklyn as a top destination last year and they know about park slope, believe it or not. they have an incredibly wonderful impression of it because of their high regard for urban, green, and architecturally significant neighborhoods.
in many ways, park slope is the perfect model of a northern european village.
It wasn’t hippies, it was mostly teachers.
we can all afford it
10:56….
I live in the North Slope and in the last 2 years, three families (one from Berlin, one from London and one from Paris) have all moved onto our block.
To see their delight at this neighborhood has reinvigorated my love for it.
Truly. They are, for lack of a better word, smitten…
Brooklyn isn’t dead – It just smells funny.
10:25 – carroll gardens inhabitant, I think you are out of touch because you no longer have small children. I am one of the new wave of CG residents (have lived there since 2000) and do have small children and people I know are VERY involved in the community and PS 58 in particular. Most people I know are either stay at home mothers or work part time (myself) and there is a great sense of community in terms of helping each other out, watching each other’s children in carroll park and volunteering for the schools – for example, it’s a group of parents who got the dual language program started at 58, they’ve raised more money than they ever have before, etc. So please, I think you should get to know the people in the community of the younger generation before you go about throwing accusations like that.