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.
Yeah but see, young single people who attend Community Board meetings and garden are JUST what Brooklyn wasn’t! It wasn’t Amherst, MA where we were all open-minded and forward-thinking (and 100% white, liberal and upper middle class and don’t you dare be something else). It was DA BOMB BABY! The guy down the street from me near 4th Ave used to go out everynight in a top hat and a cape! A CAPE! He was going to some club in Manhattan somewhere .. down some steps in Chinatown probably. But he came home to us.
And now we have young people who sweep their sidewalks? WTF? It makes me want to cry!
“They were not rich, they had a heightened sense of community, as well as a sense of local activism. We MADE this community…It’s difficult to find volunteers to continue the traditions that attracted the wealthier set to the area.”
The arrogance of you “I moved here when it was crap and made it good” people is unbelievable. Your ‘community’ is not what attracted the wealthier set. If it was, they’d join in, but they don’t because they don’t care about it. They came for their own reasons. Besides, if your community was so great, your neighbors wouldn’t sell their houses to new people and leave.
When was the last time anyone cared about what the New York Times had to say?
I don’t get this article and it’s commentary on condos in Park Slope. You could say the same thing about Williamsburg, Fort Greene, even Crown Heights. Ridiculous condos are everywhere….it’s a citywide phenomenon, not just on 4th Avenue.
I moved to Park Slope in the last two years, I’m young, I’m single, I don’t intend to have kids soon, I garden, I go to Community Board meetings, I’m actively involved with my co-op and sometimes I even sweep the sidewalk.
This reporter simply didn’t find those out there who do still care about neighborhood and who are involved with trying to make it a better place.
She found people who wanted to be quoted in the NYTimes.
ZZZZZZZZZZ
“I don’t live in Park Slope, but I do live in Carroll Gardens for nearly 20 years. If the PS story is anything like the CG story here’s how it goes: When I moved here back in the day, in addition to the long-term residents, the “new” people were of a pioneering, creative spirit. They were not rich, they had a heightened sense of community, as well as a sense of local activism. We MADE this community…”
Here’s the thing–you can say that about many neighborhoods across NYC. It’s not unique to Brooklyn. I feel that way about the UWS, but I realize it’s just change, and life changes, neighborhoods change, and you can either embrace it or move. When I moved to the UWS in 1979, no one wanted to live here. There were prostitutes, drug dealers, and gangs, etc., etc. And I’m talking 79th & Broadway. Such is life. Deal with it and stop complaining.
The only artists I know who live in Park Slope are the successful ones.
Is that now all of the sudden considered a bad thing?
Hi Nokilissa. I’ve got a bit of work to do (just a bit) and I haven’t seen Dave around yet, so your estimate might be a tad high. By the way, I think our party is looking better and better now that we have the added excitement of watching Big Brown go for the triple crown at the Preakness. Mint juleps, beads, ice skates and crawfish all around!
“The artists are fleeing”
I have many artist friends living in Park Slope–all are working and making a good living from their art, and some even have children (gasp!!!) Just another example of how inaccurate many of these generalizations are.