Fort Greene: City's Best Nabe?
Trying to crown one neighborhood as New York City’s best is kind of a silly exercise, but if you were to concentrate on the criteria of culture, community, diversity and architecture, there certainly is a good case to be made for Fort Greene. “In all my days and nights of walking neighborhoods and asking people…
Trying to crown one neighborhood as New York City’s best is kind of a silly exercise, but if you were to concentrate on the criteria of culture, community, diversity and architecture, there certainly is a good case to be made for Fort Greene. “In all my days and nights of walking neighborhoods and asking people why they live where they live, I have never encountered a place that has this much heart, soul and pride,” write Daily News correspondent Jason Sheftell. “More than ever, I found people who said they could never live anywhere else but right here.” Unfortunately for those just hearing about Fort Greene’s charms, the days of finding a real estate deal are long gone (though they may return soon enough!), but it’s still worth it. (The writer naively claims that the Brooklyn nabe is as expensive as the West Village. Not!) People here do not like any fakeness in their neighborhood and they pay higher rents for that, said Denis DuPreez, co-owner of the Dekalb Avenue restaurant Madiba. We have beauty, and we have the good people. It’s hard to argue with that.
Fort Greene: The best neighborhood in New York? [NYDN]
Photo by atomische.com
Yes, I have done some damage with the checkbook at the fleamarket.
I have had a couple of run-ins a la “Honey, why are you bringing something ELSE into the house?…”
Okay, so there have been a couple of pity purchases and some things I sort of regretted (always giftable though!), but there are were some pretty wonderful finds!
Ft. Greene has the Brooklyn Flea.
For that reason alone, I love it.
Fort Greene is very nice and hopefully it will be getting nicer every year, but it is also the most wildly pverpriced neighborhood in brooklyn.
Agree with iz.
Bad points: Expensive (to buy), overly precious, racial/class tensions, mediocre food, hellish traffic.
Good points: Lovely old buildings, very pretty, reasonable rents, BAM, arty black professional community, Cafe Habana.
Guess it’s typical.
I got mugged in my own house!
Once I was fussing around in a cabinet and an old mug that I hate fell on my head. Very annoying. The mug must have been aware of the esteem I held it in…
But seriously, with the way the economy is going, I hope we do not see a wild increase in mugging. According to the article earlier today, the muggings are mostly teenager-on-teenager for ipods.
Heather, there are streetlights on the streets of Fort Greene…I hope you’re not suggesting we have one per house! Actually, in truth, we really could use the old-fashioned streetlight the City is apparently storing. We (property owners) would have to self-fund their replacement apparently and it would require quite a bit of infrastructure work but would be, in my opinion, well worth it and very Landmarks-oriented.
Pierre, I was not dissing the neighborhood, rather, I was commenting on goldie’s remark, just before that, where he listed the “pj’s” as a reason why the nabe ain’t all that. I totally disagree with that attitude, and the snobbery attached. I agree with brooklyn greene that the neighborhood is among the most diverse amongst the brownstone neighborhoods, and that is one of its charms, along with its large classic brownstones and leafy blocks, the restaurants, the park. Too many people here act as if neighborhoods did not exist, and its people did not have happy, successful lives until they were “discovered” and made better. That just isn’t so, and a neighborhood that mixes it all up, like a good jambalaya, is a very desireable thing indeed.
Congrats on being “the best”, this time around.
I agree, Heather.
In PS when I hear about muggings, it seems like it’s often on very dark and quiet 6th Avenue or on a side street with few lights…
They need to get streetlights in front of all of those brownstones and initiate a neighborhood watch. I bet there used to be one…
I don’t think the crime is a reflection of the inhabitants, it’s geography. Easy to mug someone on a street where all the houses are set back and it’s completely dark at night.
I agree that I don’t feel nearly as comfortable walking around Ft. Greene after dark as I do in some other areas.
I’ve had more than a couple friends robbed in FG in the past year.