Closing Bell: On Leaving Park Slope
“I am leaving Park Slope because I am increasingly impatient with people too socially deficient to act like good neighbors. People who won’t spare five seconds to help an old lady. People who can’t figure out their way around without checking their iPhones. People who don’t say hi to the neighbors with whom they share…
“I am leaving Park Slope because I am increasingly impatient with people too socially deficient to act like good neighbors. People who won’t spare five seconds to help an old lady. People who can’t figure out their way around without checking their iPhones. People who don’t say hi to the neighbors with whom they share a stoop. These things are getting noticeably worse.” This is the nut of a post by longtime Park Sloper Daryl Lang who’s leaving the borough and moving to Manhattan. The essay covers everything from the Park Slope Food Co-Op to pretentious parenting and “fidgety and skittish” fathers. His final diagnosis? “Park Slope’s reputation as a welcoming place went viral, and brought in new residents who made it a warped exaggeration of itself.” Agree?
On Leaving Brooklyn [History Eraser Button]
It’s all about the parents and the children-they exist and this guy resents it. He imagines the slouchy shifty dudes like himself are actually dads and that especially worries him. He’ll probably be much happier in a neighborhood without the visible kid “problem” he encounters in Park Slope.
That is horrible that he snuck around to different dry cleaners with his clothes after finding out he had bedbugs (“two different cleaners, on four different trips, so as not to arouse suspicion”). That is soooo selfish – you are supposed to tell the cleaners so that they can handle the clothing properly. This guy risked spreading bed bugs to the cleaners and everyone who uses them just so he wouldn’t have to look bad. What a jerk.
im with u Miss Breukelen… These Yuckies, i mean yuppies have ruined the family, neigboring nature of the neighborhood… Plus they brought bed bugs with them!
Obviously both the bearded potato chip dude and author Mr.Lang don’t know a pick-up line when they hear one. Everyone knows the snack isle in Steve’s Key Food is a notorious cougar cruising spot. Can’t even tell you how many grannies Ive scored just because I’m tall enough to reach the bulk incontinence products on the top shelf.
A missed opportunity my friends…
I dont know why I continue to respond to this stupid thread but Ive seen all of the three things Miss Bruekelen describes in multiple neighborhoods throughout Brooklyn. Many of which contain zero yuppies.
also for the record I dont think many Yuppies get in fist fights and argue with deli clerks. They might do something passive aggressive instead.
You tell them….before all the yuppies moved to PS, I wanted to live there. I am talking about a time when Sarah J. Hale was open; bums were rampant; the business owners knew their customers by first name & their families. Now PS is full of people who can’t even discipline their own kids so they leave it to their nannies. And, I hated PS even more when I started working there. While working in PS, I have seen fist fights break-out over parking spaces; a yuppie not hold the door for an elderly lady who was right behind him; and, a yuppie argue with a deli clerk over coffee. The list can go on. I hate PS for what is has become. Yes, PS the neighborhood is beautiful; but, the residents are plain crazy.
I’ve lived or attended school in nearly every region of the USA. Overall genuinely nice (not passively aggressive faux nice like people in the South and Midwest can be) place of all is the Pacific Northwest. Great great people. It’s worth checking out. Don’t dismiss the Pacific NW because of the weather – statistically it rains more in NYC than it does there. I also find I don’t get depressed in rainy places where it’s pretty when it rains and it’s gorgeous when it rains there. But Seattle is not cheaper than Brooklyn if somebody is looking for bargains.
I agree completely with this blogger that Park Slope people aren’t nice. Or not warm rather. I didn’t find them to be when we lived there. Very self-absorbed. But the rant against kids in bars is ridiculous. If you don’t expect to encounter children everywhere in what is the top family neighborhood in the city you’re just plain dense.
Maly- The reason you don’t know where the good people are is they don’t want you to join them and mess it all up.
Totally agree – Brooklynites are very friendly.