Police Up The Ante At The Lefferts Hotel

The hotel is next door to a children’s playground!

http://www.leffertsplace.org/puppetshow02/puppetshow02.html

archiefina – try to look beyond just the literal.

anon 12:59, its not anti-white sentiment you detect, rather its anti-suburban sentiment. and its interesting (to me at least) that you make two not so subtle assumptions in your brief post: i)that i’m black and ii) that i’m a junkie. i can see that those two characteristics must go hand-in-hand in your mind.

in any event, let me just say that i briefly worked at the brooklyn academy of music while in college about 5 or 6 years ago. even that recently, a brownstone in fort greene could be had for significantly less than a million dollars and clinton hill was considered “edgy” and “dangerous”. i personally loved the fort greene area and its flavorful mix of people who said good moring to each other when they passed in the street. 2 years ago my girlfriend (i’m a dude, btw) moved into an apartment in a lovely brownstone on south portland avenue. when she moved in, you could still greet your neighbors and the atmosphere was great, despite a noticeable influx of 30-40 year old yuppies who were conspicuoulsy less interested in greeting and getting to know their neighbors than they were in immediately joining the opposition to the development of the atlantic yards. one of the first things these brand new neighbors did was post little fliers in their newly renovated windows declaring their determination to “protect brownstone brooklyn” from ratner. don’t even know the people who live and have always lived on their street, but now they’re activists. that’s what i hate.

but even that was tolerable. i love beautiful rowhouses as much as anyone, no doubt. however, lately, the changes have just become unbearable. moe’s, the neighborhood institution of a bar, is looking more and more like dorian’s on the upper eastside and south portland as a whole just smacks of kip’s bay. and some of you people in clinton hill want to do the same thing there.

now, i understand neighborhoods are alive and not static and i’m definitely in favor of neighborhoods improving. its just that there are different ways for this to come about and the non-yuppie flavor of an area does not necessarily have to be lost for this to happen.

have any of you been to choice market in clinton hill? its great, definitely an improvement for that section of lafayette. however, the projects across the street do not have to razed in order for this pattiserie/epicerie to flourish.

new york city, refreshingly is and has always been gritty. if you don’t like the grit of city life, why on earth do you live in brooklyn of all places?

I cannot believe that there is a debate on this topic.

An establishment catering to drug dealers, prostitutes and their assorted clientele and hangers-on has been closed down.

That is a very good thing.

Those of you who are complaining, or saying this is distateful are, with all due respect, missing the point. What is distateful is this type of establishment in *any* community. Full stop.

Instead of whining about displacement, applaud the police and Tish James. Better yet, get off your holier than thou keyboard and go lend some support to community groups looking to assist those junkies and prostitutes.