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
Has anyone ever scored with these mothers?
Some of them are pretty hot, I have to say.
Not that many of you transplants would know, Jim has been living in PS longer than most, has been a career writer in and about NY (staff writer for NYpress for many years) ,and has a disease where he is slowly going completely blind (I have read an article where he walks with a cane and has even taken a course where the MTA teaches blind people how to rescue themselves if they fall in the tracks). So again, most of you non periodical-readers or new guys wouldnt know he’s blind, neither would a self absorbed stroller mom running to meet her girlfriends at Union Hall to get drunk, despite his cane, and slow gait. Not all strollerpushers are jerks, but its obviously a problem thats well enough documented that Brownstoner can bait us all by starting another thread about it and watch the magic ensue.
10:44 is right – New Yorkers walk faster then people in other citites, it is true. I spent some time away from New York, and was slower, like a tourist, when I came back.
New Yorkers are also rather intolerant of those who walk slower. I learned this when I broke my foot when I worked in midtown – hobbling around a bit slower than normal, but still at a very good pace, people just wanted to run me down. Made me appreciate what it must be like to be slower for the sick, elderly, and disabled among us.
Being a place where people walk faster is no excuse for intolerance of those who are slower. All these fast walking New Yorkers were slower toddlers themselves once.
And it isn’t like Park Slope is midtown, with those sorts of rushing crowds. It IS a bit slower on the streets here than in lots of Manhattan – that’s one thing I’ve always liked about living in Brooklyn rather than Manhattan – returning to a neighborhood where the pace is a bit slower at the end of the day and on weekends.
And 10:44, surely even you, an idiot who thinks people with children should be shot, must realize that cars starting up before the light turns green is just stupid and dangerous. It puts even people like you at risk.
Next time this happens to one of you, SAY SOMETHING!!!!
Stop being pussies and effing say something.
Some people have no manners. WE GET THAT.
But they aren’t going to learn them until they are TOLD! It certainly isn’t going to happen by osmosis.
SPEAK UP FOR YOURSELF IF YOU FEEL VIOLATED.
Otherwise, you are just a cowardly psychopath who talks about 1.4 strollers per block.
What’s the problem? The parents sound like NYers to me. I think Knipfel is the insane one. Get a life or find something real to write about. How about the resurgence of world hunger? I would much prefer to have my foot run over by a stroller than breath 2nd hand smoke as I walk down the sidewalk.
Stoner:
You are a jackass for continuing to publish stories about the so-called “stroller mafia.” It seems like you can’t let two weeks go by without some rant or another about people with kids.
This is not at all constructive and just really sloppy tabloid crap.
What does this have to do with real estate anyway? What’s next, are you gonna ban kids & strollers from the Flea and push to ship parents off to a camp in the Rockaways? It seems like that is what your readers want?
Full disclosure, I don’t live in Park Slope, but I do have a kid and I try my best to be very, very careful when I’m using the stroller.
I have this theory that the whole stroller thing is a problem because too few people in New York are drivers. Think about it. New Yorkers do the same thing they do with strollers with their shopping carts at stores. By combining the inability to drive with narrow sidewalks or aisles and add some self-centeredness, and there’s your problem.
I feel for mothers who carry strollers up and down subway stairs and know that managing little children can be harrowing but basic courtesy for others needn’t fall totally by the wayside.
I also think that in the next 20 years there is going to be an overload of those motorized wheelchairs. Luckily there are too few curb cuts in Park Slope to make the neghborhood handicapped friendly but there are quite a few scooter folks in Brooklyn Heights and I’ve seen a few seniors by City Hall buzz on by without a care for fellow pedestrians.
I was aghast to see about 8 of those scooters by the door at the WalMart in the place I grew up. They’re good for the frail or handicapped elderly but think of the merely lazy and overweight tooling around with their battery packed chairs.
ok, it’s 10:10 again…
so to be clear, i do love the slope. i love the trees, i love the brownstones, i love the shops, and gasp! i do live kids. have a young niece and nephew of my own. i am npot anti-kids or anti-strollers. what i am against, is rude parents. yes, perhaps they didn’t get a full 8-hours sleep the night before and are harried, but that’s the choice they made when they had kids and need to adjust and realize that people walking down the street shoudl not be the victims. and yes, we are the victims. can’t tell you the number of times strollers wheels have run over my toes, or strollers have rammed into me on the sidewalk and i’ve heard the parents tsk tsk under their breath, for THEM running into me, just walking. and i’m a native brooklyn-er used to the pace of the city. all these people have to do is learn some manners. i’m not saying don’t use strollers…just say excuse me and sorry. that’s all.
Just do what I do…walk down 7th Avenue smoking a cigarette.
You ain’t seen so many mommas shooing their kids away from me!!! It’s like a clearing path 20 feet ahead of me as I take my stroll.
And just another reason why smoking is so damn sexy.