Greenwood Heights or South Slope

I live in Sunset Park. Guess I’ll have to go slit my wrists now…

There’s a good elementary school on 6th and 18th, I hear. We’re planning on using that.

You should take a walk around, for sure- on 6th avenue, there’s Kitchen Bar, Bar BQ, Toby’s Public House, a nice little park that has swings for toddlers and older kids, and a new coffee bar called ‘Southside Coffee.’ On 5th, there’s a few good mexican restuarants, Eagle Provisions, a nice cocktail bar called ‘quarter’, some awesome 99 cent stores, a newish place that serves liters of beer and czech foor called ‘Eurotrip’

The area in Park Slope in the high teens on 7th avenue has some good restaurants and stores.

It’s a really great area. It’s bound to change names a lot in the next few years, and as people mention above, there are some great things opening up (and some really rowdy high school age kids) You really should check it out.

There are nice big skies, cool views of the statue of liberty and the harbor, and it’s a little bit quiet, but still a good commuter neighborhood if you are near the M/R stop. The rest of the stuff below are some random thoughts, but hopefully the rest of you might like to consider some of them- and then we don’t have to just call each other dicks for chosing one name over the other.

1. Neighborhood names and boundaries reflect the people currently living there, and also what the realtors are calling it. New York City doesn’t get down to smaller units that boroughs (brooklyn) and community boards, so there are no official neighborhoods to begin with. It’s all what people are calling them at any given time.

2. People call it south slope, greenwood, greenwood heights, sunset park– and as a result, right now, it’s all of those. There’s no one who can claim any authority to push one name over the other. The battle over the names is just reflective of what residents view the name says about their own identity. That’s part of what makes it an exciting neighborhood- it’s got change going on in it, and it’s not like, for instance, one developer has come in with a master plan and said- “this will be called dumbo, and all the buildings and services will cater to these kinds of people within x number of years…” It’s more about different families living in little houses, and some developers building weird condos and rentals. To be honest, and in a good way, it feels more like queens that brooklyn.

3. Here’s a new one- the neighborhood is on the gowanus bay. Call it Slope-Anus. Then you can associate it with the slope, and also make it still seem tough and unatractive. You can also start referring to the gentrification as ‘bleaching the slope-anus’

4. None of the people who are old on my block call it sunset park. In fact, they don’t call it anything. The reason is that this neighborhood has had a block by block cultural and ethnic identity for quite a while. There are mostly polish blocks, mostly italian blocks, mostly latin american blocks, mostly black blocks, etc…The older folks will tell you that the block themselves would often have fights with each other. The neighborhood takes place on the block or two block level, and most people call the neighborhood ‘this block’.

5.Before they put the highway in, people who lived here associated themselves with Park Slope (whatever it was called then). I know a family who was pushed out when Mosese parted the slope and knocked their house down. They thought that until that point, they lived in same neighborhood as the people on 15ht street did. After the highway – not so much.

6. The name of this area has a strong history of change unlike some other places (like brooklyn heights)
I have seen trolley maps from the mid 1800s that call the area greenwood and greenwood heights. It was also called the heights of Gowan at one point in the war of indepenence. Sunset Part, the neighborhood and the boundaries was something that the city helped create when it did zoning- I don’t know which decade –

Recently the city did a zoning study all around 4th avenue in the high teens up to the 30s, and guess what- the city called it ‘south slope rezoning’

7. People who are new to the area spend a lot of time walking to get stuff in Park Slope- so they associate with Park Slope. Park Slope has high property values, so they aspire to Park Slope. Realtors are selling the area as a Park Slope alternative. And you know what, they’re right- A lot of the new buyers are people who would have bought in Park Slope but can afford more in ‘greenwood/south slope.’

8. Most people aren’t down on the Sunset Park name- it just doesn’t seem to apply. That park is 20 or more blocks away, and not an easy walk. It seems like it’s in a different neighborhood because when I go to eat in the Chinatown there, or when I go to a restaurant up in the 50s or 60s, it’s farther away from where I live then when I walk to Gowanus or Park Slope or Windsor Terrace

9. The neighborhood architecture, seems varied because of all the changes those littel wood frame houses have endured over the last 100 year, but it has the potential to be a really amazing place (architecturally) if enough people either restore thier little wooden houses, or build nice new things.

8:11 – Not being a D*ck, “Greenwood Heights is just an invention of Brokers trying to make an area sound cache. This area is historically Sunset Park.

Why would you think I am being a D*ck? You have something against Sunset Park? Maybe you are the D*ck!

http://bestviewinbrooklyn.blogspot.com/2008/06/post-gives-sunset-18th-street-when-its.html