From the West Village to Fort Greene, With Few Regrets
This weekend’s real estate section in the Times has a story that’s likely to resonate with many ex-Manhattanites who’ve moved to Brooklyn and find the living across the East River a whole lot easier. The article is about Hali Lee and Peter von Ziegesar, a couple with three kids who uprooted from the West Village,…
This weekend’s real estate section in the Times has a story that’s likely to resonate with many ex-Manhattanites who’ve moved to Brooklyn and find the living across the East River a whole lot easier. The article is about Hali Lee and Peter von Ziegesar, a couple with three kids who uprooted from the West Village, where they’d lived for 15 years, to Fort Greene. The pair bought a house (a former crack den, actually) on South Portland Avenue in late ’05 and say that while they miss a few things about the city (chief among them their old proximity to the Village Community School on West 10th Street, which their kids still attend), Brooklyn has presented a number of quality-of-life advantages. The perks, according to Ms. Lee, include an environment that doesn’t feel like a high-end mall, as the Village did; a space where their brood’s noise doesn’t disturb the neighbors; their new borough’s down-to-earth population (There are mixed-race couples, and black people here who aren’t nannies); and the fact that their kids can now go play on the sidewalk and in the backyard.
In a House, You Can Make All the Noise You Want [NY Times]
Photo by lunalaguna.
11:20, visit the shoumburg museum in harlem or research the african burial ground. You will find all the stats you need that will show blacks dominating the entire area of downtown manhattan and the village.
as a white freelance writer married to an asian women who’s in development with one kid, this article was like a kick to the gut.
I’d like nothing more than more for our half asian artsy family to settle down in a nice brownstone somewhere, but it’s becoming more clear every day that it’s just not happening. 1.8 million? Where the fuck am I supposed to get that sort of money? I know , they sold their apartment on bank street, but where did they get the $ for an apartment on bank street in the first place?
I’m not mad at them, but it’s pretty clear I’m never going to be able to live like them. nor is anyone who doesn’t have a trust fund or a big bonus backing their next purchase. brooklyn is over…..
11:00, get your facts straight. I use to live in the village, and there are more prominant blacks living in the village than you will ever know. As a matter of speaking, how would you know? You probably never lived there. You sound like one of those schizo old men who talk to themselves on the subway. Get a life. The new generation is gonna wipe people like you off this planet.
VOTE OBAMA FOR CHANGE!!!!!!!!
11:10am, come on, if you can’t see some irony in parents who love the diversity of the Fort Greene neighborhood, but are aspiring to send their kids to Saint Ann’s, where, let’s face it, the kids are going to be exposed to a less than diverse experience, then you are missing something. Do you actually think school age kids are more likely to hang out with their friends from school, or some neighbor kids?
Every public school is different and I have no doubt that some kids do better in private than in public. But if you have decided your children are those kids, without giving a good public school a shot, you are making a decision that’s about what’s best for you, not your kid. And I guarantee you, people buying Fort Greene brownstones aren’t buying in a more “affordable” area to have money for private schools. That used to be the case in Park Slope, Cobble Hill, and Carroll Gardens back when an actual middle class family could afford to buy a whole brownstone there, and that’s exactly why the public schools improved. But in so-called “affordable” neighborhoods like where you live now, prices are already so high that true middle class families can’t afford it. Believe me, no one with a middle class income is easily paying $60,000 year tuition for 13 yrs for 2 kids to attend private, no matter how “affordable” the neighborhood is (and anything above $1 million is really NOT affordable for most people, believe it or not).
“But like someone else pointed out, I think they made their money because they were “newbies” in the west village at some point and waited it out until the the real estate market added a zero to the value of their property.”
That might explain where they came up with $1.8 mil for the brownstone, but doesn’t explain the $80k and year in private school tuition.
I vote just “STUPID” for 11:00.
Ah, leave ’em alone. They seem like perfectly nice people, and I’d rather live next door to them, than some of the people who have posted on this blog who don’t want black people from the projects to walk down their Fort Greene streets, thereby creating instant “sketchyness”.
As a black woman, I didn’t find Ms Lee’s nanny remark insulting, rather the opposite, she recognized the racial and social situations of the West Village that make for an apartheid era Johannesburg-like exodus of black women each evening.
I do agree that the Times needs to expand their focus in these soft puff pieces. They are fast becoming the large fold out edition of New York Magazine. The people in their pieces are either not-so-rich-oh-wow-how-adventurous “pioneers”, or gosh-golly rich people who dare to move outside of Manhattan. Please, we are so much more than that.
11:00, how did you manage to take her rather innocent, and unintentional remark about race and turn it into your very own form of blatant racism. You are either a sheer genius with words or just plainly stupid.
11:20, they’re not sheltered for “speaking the truth”, they are sheltered for being surprised at seeing black people that aren’t nannies.