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.
Am sure they are nice people. My problem is the NYTimes and their unapologetic upper-middle or rich class perspective on this city – all their Style, Real Estate, Travel,etc articles can make my stomach churn. Same old articles week after week, year after year.
As a Black woman who always gets mistaken for a neighborhood nanny, I was not offended at all by Ms. Lee’s comment. I know exactly what she meant. If you do happen to be a nanny there is no shame in that but when you are not, it can be tiresome when people assume that you are. My husband early on in his career was always assumed to be an orderly instead of a physician. I am happy that they are happy in Brooklyn.
That is a cool owl though
“People in Brooklyn are so friggin uptight about being the very thing they are: small-minded provincials.”
Word!
10:14AM = Baby Blogger (from a we were here firster)
10:40 — good point. Though, to be fair, it’s their choice where they send their kids to school. But it would be WAY cooler if they gave the public school system a shot. Then again, if you had the extra money to burn, would you? IT’s a valid question — do you want to help improve the school system in your community so much that you’re willing to deny your kids a better education, assuming you have that choice?
the surest sign that they are clueless is the fact that they consented to be in the article in the first place. There are many many people in this city with their same attitudes, but a few notches up on the smarts scale, who would be aghast about anything that publicly put the lie to their “we’re just ordinary folk” schtick.
“We were used to living in old neighborhoods where you can sense the ghosts and spirits of whoever lived there before.”
Can you sense the drug-rush of the crackies who used your pad to get high before you moved in?
I’m not sure what 10:23’s point was, but I agree with his/her observation. It’s nice to move into a neighborhood, but if you are shipping your kids off to private school somewhere else (and Bklyn Hts private schools count as somewhere else), you just aren’t part of the neighborhood the way you are when your kids go to the local school. In fact, I think FG houses are as expensive as CG now, despite not having nearly as good public schools and that’s because many people moving in are doing exactly what 10:23 says, and don’t care about the public schools.
Are Fort Greene schools improving now? They should be, to reflect the changing demographics there. When you get more people with money to donate and willingness to be involved, the school’s should improve, unless those family’s are using private. And, this is not a race issue — PS 58 in CG, which always served a largely white neighborhood, was also avoided by newcomers until new families started to make a commitment to send their kids there. (Or at least, could no longer get variances to send their kids somewhere else, and had to send their kids there).