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.
This seems to point out one of the major differences between neighborhoods like Fort Greene and Clinton Hill and neighborhoods like Park Slope and Carroll Gardens. People with young kids buy in the former when they can afford to send their kids to private school, where as many people buy in the latter when they can’t afford to make the mortgage payments and send their kids to private school. Obviously people buy in PS and CG who do send their kids to private school but there are certainly as many, who can not.
I’ve heard much worse from people in Philadelphia (New York’s other other suburb).
A woman was afraid to walk to a restaraunt because a white person shot another white person in the neighborhood.
Meet your new neighbors: The Smuggersons!
Don’t these people get joint pain from patting themselves on the back so vigorously?
10:12 thanks. I should add that Bed Stuy and Crown Heights also happen to be a bitch to get to, but yes, the violence and visible poverty are kind of a downer.
Oh God here come the “we were here first”s.
It’s the New York Times, buddy. They’re always a tad late in the game. It doesn’t mean you discovered the neighborhood — I think the 100+ old buildings attest to that — it just means you survived its warzone days. What do you want, a medal of honor?
Here’s my theory for all Ft Greene pushing. (Did you guys see the PULL OUT SECTION in this weeks Time Out devoted to Ft Greene????) I think that 90% of the publishing world now lives on South Portland and it benefits them to keep the real estate on their block cooking.
I mean, it’s a nice neighborhood, I love it here, but the attention’s getting a little shill-y for my taste.
Ms. Lee is from the Midwest
Attention money lefties: want to live among real black people but don’t want to be mugged. In Ft. Greene they have actual black people who aren’t nannies, but are sanitized so that they won’t mug you. You can feel authentic and cool…and safe, all at the same time. Of course, you can try Bed Stuy or Crown Heights, plenty of what you are looking for their except for the not-getting-mugged part.
Hey Thank you Peter and Ms. Lee I feel validated now for living and owning here for 20 years.
9:59 — I’m assuming you’re black, or just indulging your PC-ness on behalf of us blacks. Yeah, I was struck by her bluntness in that sentence too, but if you read the article, she’s just a minority making fun of the cliche white country club/mall that West Village has become. Though I did wonder if it would’ve bothered her if someone said “At least in Fort Greene there are asian women who aren’t manicurists”. OR maybe she would’ve laughed. I think she would’ve just laughed, judging from her acerbic wit in the article.