Closing Bell: Are You Happy to Call Brooklyn Home?
As first reported by Brooklyn Hall of Fame, an article from YourNabe.com reports that most Brooklynites are happy. In fact, 81% of those surveyed said they were either very satisfied (27%) or somewhat satisfied (54%) with the quality of life in their neighborhood. Only 19 percent of those surveyed reported being not at all satisfied….
As first reported by Brooklyn Hall of Fame, an article from YourNabe.com reports that most Brooklynites are happy. In fact, 81% of those surveyed said they were either very satisfied (27%) or somewhat satisfied (54%) with the quality of life in their neighborhood. Only 19 percent of those surveyed reported being not at all satisfied. However, 53% of Brooklynites felt their neighborhoods would become too expensive for them in the future.
So are you happy to call Brooklyn home?
My grandfather – a WW2 Navy ship captain stationed first in Manhattan and then in Long Beach, LI – famously said “People from Brooklyn love it because they have to.”
There’s a lot of griping about “newcomers” and “outsiders”. I guess I’m a “newcomer”, even though parts of my family lived in Brooklyn at various times for a hundred and fifty years or more. I grew up in Central NY hearing stories about Brooklyn from my great grandmother who would have liked nothing more than a bus to Coney Island, right from her doorstep.
The interesting thing about NYC, including Brooklyn, is that its own residents spew forth thru the entire northeast – very few New England or New York State towns are composed solely of “natives”. Former New Yorkers move into small towns and immediately try to tell everyone there “how it’s REALLY done”.
Upstate, us townies used to laugh at fools who came north without drivers licenses, planning to buy a cow and make a living growing organic arugula. Suprise – sometimes it worked!
What I once liked best about Brooklyn was – unlike the small town I grew up in – nobody knew your business. But since the blogosphere, that’s no longer true.
The knife cuts both ways.
I’ve lived here since ’71 and lots has changed. I like my borough but that doesn’t mean there remains no room for improvement.
Hey Rob,
Thanks for the Bourdieu reference. Totally nails it.
I’ve come to prefer Brooklyn over Manhattan for both the quiet and outdoor space. I totally love having a backyard. I lived in the Village for years, and as I walked around there last weekend, I was envious of the better shopping but not of the packed sidewalks and heavy traffic.
ive thought about moving to woodside because theres no drama and newspaper articles about it.
quote:
And I don’t love having a river between me and my son while he is at daycare.
:-/
I moved here after getting priced out of Manhattan with the intention to rent for a while and eventually buy a place once I knew the areas better (of all the stupidities of the real estate bubble, buying property in Brooklyn or Queens neighborhoods that you didn’t know very well seems to me the most stupid).
I’ve liked Brooklyn, but I can’t really say I’ve fallen in love with it.
Perhaps there is too much tension between the long term residents and newer residents in my little area of the north slope, because I have never felt a particularly friendly neighborly vibe here. Too many people think like Prodigal Son, I suppose.
And my street is one of the ones that people use when zooming from 3rd/4th ave to flatbush, so rush hour has noisy and moderately dangerous street traffic.
The commute is wearing. An extra 15-20 minutes 10 times a week for both my wife and for me adds up to a lot of our time in the course of the year, which might not be so bad if you could routinely get a seat on the 2, 3, 4, or 5 during rush hour, but the trains are pretty packed by the time they get to Atlantic. And I don’t love having a river between me and my son while he is at daycare.
And I miss the Union Square farmers market.
On the plus side, the neighborhood is very family friendly (despite the anti-stroller screeching you can read on message boards) and generally more convenient for someone without a car than I would have expected outside Manhattan. The daycare is expensive but good. The restaurants are nice and welcome kids more than Manhattan restaurants do.
I guess what it really comes down to is I want more for my money if I’m going to stay in Brooklyn. But so many people seem to have a true preference for Brooklyn over Manhattan that perhaps I cannot get more for my money here — especially now that the bubble has popped and Manhattan looks like it is deflating much faster than Brooklyn.
We shall see. I could live here. I could raise my son here. In time, no doubt, I would become part of whatever neighborhood I settled into.
But I don’t know. At some point in the next few years I will have to do some calculations involving costs, commuting times, school districts, quality of life, and whether or not I have laundry in my apartment (it’s amazing how much this starts to matter when someone is puking or pooping on garments on a daily basis…).
All in all, I kinda wish I just could have renewed my Manhattan lease in 2007, but a 40% rent increase is a little tough to take. I’m sure that apartment can be had now for no more than 10% over my old lease, but, what can you do? Real estate is a very inefficient market.
I like brooklyn, but if I struck it rich? I can’t say I wouldn’t move to the Amalfi Coast or Florence or Santa Barbara or London or Hong Kong or Rome or .. one of each?
i think i figured out what “new brooklyn” really is!!! from reading some random book i found on a stoop of all places… it’s based on a French sociologist named Pierre Bourdieu and his concept of “culture capital”. – how cultural experiences acted as a boundary between the elites and the lower classes. The high prices of brooklyn real estate now are a prime example of culture capital. “The purpose of…” a house in brooklyn is not so much as it is housing and basic needs as it is a way of signifying one’s membership in a certain class, an elite liberal with the indoctrination of high expectations, not hard actualities, “a smug belief in one’s own entitlement.”
i totally hate that but it rings true, no?
*rob*
most of the “newcomers” i know that have moved to brooklyn live in bed-stuy, crown heights and bushwick. They’re the same people that would have moved to the East Village and the LES 20 or 30 years ago. Its still to not understand that people from NJ and everywhere else in the United States have been flooding to new york for the last 200 years. I mean every interesting person who lived in the lower east side was from some shit town in the midwest, the south or jersey.
every new community that moves here has problems with the old guard. Wtf do you think West Side Story was about?