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  1. quote:
    But people who stretched themselves to buy a family sized place in a new condo on 4th Ave and plan on sending their kids to a local Park Slope public school could get slaughtered.

    or they could put their stupid money where their mouth is and send their kids to the schools and try to make a difference. yeah yeah yeah no one wants their kids to be the social experiment. so then have two and make the first one the experiment and if it doesnt work out then move.

    *rob*

  2. today is so not my day :-/ first the punch incident on the train and just now i was walking to the bank, stopped to get something in my pocket and a group of people back up towards me and one pushed me right into a heavy opening door on broadway, almost crushing me. and of COURSE they were european tourists!!! one apologized, but they all started laughing as if it was funny. this shit better not come in threes. the door crushed hit my shouldar/arm side where i was punched today! now im all achey. on that side. i seriously think the Universe hates me. 🙁

    *rob*

  3. I stepped away and got lots of responses. A few people are commenting on the theme that “It’s always going back and forth” / “It’s cyclical gentrification.” Well OK, but that doesn’t refute my prediction for the next 15 years, and in any event I think it’s different this time. I think we’re at the tail end of a massive cycle of gentrification, and not just rolling from one neighborhood to another. Look at the lower east side and the east village. Look at Fort Greene, Propect Heights, the 75% of Park Slope that was never all that nice, Williamsburg, lower Harlem, etc etc. Where are things going in the opposite direction? This is not social classes trading neighborhoods, this is a huge influx of middle class families that otherwise would have been crowding into Long Island and New Jersey and Westchester and CT. How many of you 30 somethings have educated friends who make good money, have a kid or two and recently moved to Brooklyn? Where do you think those people would be moving 15 years ago? And where do you think people like that will move if the NYC school system and other public services deteriorate due to long-term dislocation in the financial services industry and the economy generally?

    If I’m right, things will roll back pretty sharply along the fringes and stay more or less fine in really prime areas. Brooklyn Heights will be fine. Prime park blocks in Park Slope will be fine. People who send their kids to private schools will be fine. But people who stretched themselves to buy a family sized place in a new condo on 4th Ave and plan on sending their kids to a local Park Slope public school could get slaughtered.

  4. Agree dona, if I lived in the NYC suburbs I’d probably choose LI (or possibly northern Westchester). Prefer those to southern Westchester or what I know of NJ.
    Of course if I was making that decision I’d probably be married and just have to do what I was told anyway.

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