Slope Stroller Overabundance Making One Guy a Shut-In
Longtime New York Press columnist Jim Knipfel has a new rant about Park Slope stroller culture that sets the bar high for future diatribes on the subject. This is how it begins: This morning as I was leaving the bank, a woman recklessly pushing her armor-plated double stroller down the sidewalk veered sharply and unexpectedly…
Longtime New York Press columnist Jim Knipfel has a new rant about Park Slope stroller culture that sets the bar high for future diatribes on the subject. This is how it begins:
This morning as I was leaving the bank, a woman recklessly pushing her armor-plated double stroller down the sidewalk veered sharply and unexpectedly into an elderly man walking with a cane. He, in turn, fell into me. I was able to catch him and hold him upright and he seemed to be okay. Just a little flustered. The woman, of course, had said nothing, apparently considering an apology or even a simple excuse me unnecessary under the circumstances. She was a mother after all, and therefore privileged, so she simply continued careening on her way.
Knipfel says that the number of strollers in the Slope, as well as the neighborhood’s dog breed preferences (it’s really mostly the strollers, though) mean he can only leave his apartment for more than 10 or 15 minutes at a time, because he finds the situation out on the streets too harrowing and exhausting. The writer says that for the past year he’s been counting the number of strollers he sees in the Slope (“I’m averaging 1.45 strollers per block. Think about it—there has been at least one stroller, and usually more, for every block I’ve walked. It’s insanity.“) Knipfel takes issue with the air of entitlement that he sees a lot of the neighborhood’s parents displaying and notes that he sees a good number of kids being pushed around who look too old for strollers. Also, he says, it’s not a subject that can be broached in polite, public Slope discourse: “The child-free adults in the neighborhood mutter and complain about the problem, but only behind closed doors, and usually in whispers. They don’t dare say a negative word when they’re outside, for the simple reason that they’re terrified, most of them. Indulgent, affluent parents are too powerful a lobby (and what’s more, those strollers can really hurt when you get rammed).”
The Statistics of Contempt [Slackjaw]
Photo from dailyheights.com
12:10 = same lily white sloper that would be crowing about all the diversity in ps if someone mentioned how white the neighborhood is.
People on CELL PHONES Talking and walking are more annoying than the stroller mafia. People on cell phones and drinking Gorilla Coffee and walking are the more annoying. Mommys with strollers and cell phones and coffee and walking are the most annoying people in NYC. I am leaving NYC because of you, mommy.
Dave, please don’t say “Biff” and “come out” in the same sentence. You’ll get The What all excited.
Anyway, where do I stand? I love MILFs, especially those pushing big ass double strollers knocking unsuspecting passersby out of their way. It’s so hot in a BDSM kind of way.
12:29 I dont know – maybe you should ask 12:01 and 12:11
I hope that one of these days the PS stroller mafia will consider that there may in fact be some credibility to all the angry posts about them instead of just going into self defense mode.
you had me at hole, 12:29.
Um, we were thinking London or Paris, 12:18 if we moved anywhere other than the U.S.
Are you one of those racist Carroll Gardens or Bay Ridge Italian Republicans with respect-our-troops bumper stickers who goes crazy anytime somebody criticizes anything about the United States?
Fugeddaboutit!
What does race have to do with strollers?!?!?!
The debate about strollers does not give you trolls the excuse to start race baiting.
Go back to your hole.
Polemicist…a lot of them might be single moms. But I’m not sure if that’s a plus or minus if we’re all just in it for NSA sex.
Biff, where do you come out on the MILF issue???
12:08 ????? I’ve riled you up….my job is done