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]
“In the snack aisle I walked passed a guy intently studying two bags of potato chips. He looked a lot like me, only with a shaggy beard and an untucked flannel work shirt, a popular look here. Next to him, an elderly lady asked for help reaching a box of garbage bags on a high shelf. “Just a second,†said the bearded guy, lost in his potato chip labels.”
That guy was Zach Galifianakis.
Just curious…what would you all consider to be a long time resident? I’ve been in GreenWood Heights for 11 1/2 years and counting…that’s a long time to me! (not in a bad way, just a long time)
He just tweeted that he got picked up by Brownstoner.
And his stats on his blog (some of his past articles are literally pieces of garbage also). Check them out. Especially how he got taken by “shady brokers” to get his place in the first place. Dude sounds like a joke and an attention whore.
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By Expert Textpert on October 12, 2010 4:13 PM
should have put this up in the morning. Would have gotten many many posts.
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Huh…generally I agree with your predictions and pronouncements.
edmiha, I’m glad you like Park Slope with a 2 year old. But, perhaps because you have such a young one, you aren’t fully informed about the school situation. For parents who live in District 15, which is most of Park Slope, the middle school situation is fine. There are quite a few good ones to choose from, and more good ones will be there by the time your kiddies are close to graduating from middle school. You obviously aren’t on speaking terms with most of your neighbors with older kids if you think they all move to the suburbs for middle school or send them to private schools. High Schools kids have a choice of many high schools all over the city and kids in NYC, especially better students, have always travelled to Manhattan and other Brooklyn neighborhoods for good high schools. So your comment about there being a “dearth of good middle and high schools” is simply not relevant.
In my book, 8 years does not qualify the writer as a “long time” resident. What really has changed in Park Slope since 2002? Comments from someone who lived there in 1970 or 1980 would carry a little more weight. I moved to Brooklyn in 1985 and my first apartment in Brooklyn was in in Prospect Heights. You worried about things less tame than bumping into a guy tunnel visioned in on his iphone.
he obvi hasn’t been to Lot2 yet
Well ‘Park Slope’ just improved itself.
There’s so much wrong with this piece–8 whole years living in a suburb of Park Slope makes him the Culture Minister or something?
Is he aware that there’s more to Brooklyn than Park Slope? Has he heard of such distant lands as Greenpoint, Fort Greene, Carroll Gardens, or even Prospect Heights?
I find Park Slope somewhat annoying for all of the typical reasons, but this piece was just trash.
Sorry guys — saw the lede and the brownstone pic, figured the article wasn’t worth reading and concerned the name streets and jumped the gun with my comment. So he’s moving to Manhattan cuz of some idiot at C-Town and one overly-private neighbor? Cause Park Slope near 21st Street (??!!) just doesn’t have the same vibe it used to eight years ago? If he didn’t sound like such a jerk, I would invite him to come by the playground at 19th Street on Saturdays when the CSA farmshares get distributed. He’d meet a whole lot of nice folks living in our little tinderbox district, doing nice community-minded things. I would invite him to our block party. Old timers and newbies on our block mix it up and have a great, relaxed time together. I would invite him to come around our block after a snowstorm and watch all the yuppie dads like me shoveling the snow and clearing the paths for the old-timers, and using dog-friendly salt for the ice. If he couldn’t find community in my neck of the woods, he just wasn’t looking.