Jonathan Van Meter Hates Brooklyn
As the epitome of Jonathan Van Meter’s problem with Brooklyn, maybe we aren’t in the most unbiased position to comment on his overly-long and only moderately entertaining swipe at the borough. Sure, the piece made us a little nostalgic for the days of affordable downtown loft space (we still miss our 1,800-square-foot former candy factory…
As the epitome of Jonathan Van Meter’s problem with Brooklyn, maybe we aren’t in the most unbiased position to comment on his overly-long and only moderately entertaining swipe at the borough. Sure, the piece made us a little nostalgic for the days of affordable downtown loft space (we still miss our 1,800-square-foot former candy factory in Little Italy, to be sure), but after a couple years in Brooklyn, we’re total converts. While it was partly financial necessity that drove us to leave Manhattan, we don’t think we’d want to move back even if we struck it rich. Why? Van Meter sums it up pretty well:
Who will be left once the exodus to Brooklyn is complete? Old money, Eurotrash, and stubborn, delusional, middle-class strivers like me.
What’s to come back to?
I Hate Brooklyn [NY Magazine]
brownstoner, you display your own bklyn insecurities by declaring yourself a 4th generation manhattanite…don’t worry no one questions your pedigree
Did you read the article??? Did it sound like a joke to you? Maybe I missed something. He would never make it in Brooklyn; it would chew him up and burp him out. I’m not saying Brooklyn is a mean, tuff place to live. But it doesn’t take kindly to FAKE JERSEY BITCHES.
Puhleeeeze… people! Chill out! Can’t anyone take a joke?
AHHHH. It feels good to read Jonathan Van Meter’s account of his obvious shallow existence, and how he longs for a life, which has moved on, without him and his ilk. Reading his petty article, reminds me of the lost Chelsea queens which never know when it’s time to leave a great party. Alone in his corner, strung out; with the small few that cling to a moment in time, the progress of life which has moved on without him. Jonathan darling, clean the powder from under your nose and tuck in your shirt, its morning, and it’s time to leave. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.
I find the question “Is this going to stop the gentrification of Brooklyn?” more than a bit disturbing–as this article (though there is no doubt that it is accompanied by a more-than-healthy side of misplaced nostalgia) highlights some very important issues that self-declared “brownstoners” could be more sensitive to. Gentrification is a process that does in fact evict poor and working class people from their neighborhoods. Something certainly *should* stop it (though of course that would require a change of the city policies that encourage it, rather than an overwrought article in a crappy rag). This is not to say that people should not live where they choose. But it is a sign of our dangerously self-satisfied times that the status-anxious readers of this blog find this article to be an occassion for justifying their own guilt-free colonization of working class New York, rather than an opportunity to discuss the destructive aspects of gentrification, development, and urban “progress.”
I was born and bred in bklyn. I spent 10 years
in nyc then bought a brownstone in bklyn six years ago. I came back. How dare Van Meter generalize bklyn life and its residents [probably the most diverse city in the world] while he clearly displayed a complete misconception of it. Brooklynites welcome its new residents who are helping ressurect its legacy as the greatest city in the world. Manhattan is a great place to visit, but just like when I was a kid, it wasn’t a place one chose to live. And Van Meter’s from jersey anyway…aren’t we taking their team.
Fu*k him. Deluded with his own self-importance. He deserves exactly what Manhattan has become: a giant strip mall with loads of tourists buying the same crap they could get anywhere. I experience this hell everytime I have to drive across Canal St. Same tourists. Same cheap crap from overseas. Every other storefront is either knockoffs, really ugly yellow gold trinkets, car ephemera, nails, or fast food. All with the olphactorious patina of “gutter stink.” Walk around Chinatown and you know what i mean (You only pray for rain to wash that sstink away).
Van Meter’s blinders have shrunk to a pinhole. And as a former Manahattanite who used abhore the idea of going to another Borough, I have throughly enjoyed my life in the Slope for the past decade. He wouldn’t fit in anyway.
Again, fu*k him.
I live in Manhattan, but am thinking about moving to Brooklyn. Perhaps because of this potential move, I’ve been especially sensitive to the recent spate of “Brooklyn backlash” articles (I think there was one in the NYT a week ago).
Maybe these have been the result of Foer and other celebrities buying in Brooklyn, but I am wondering if it is nothing more than Manhattanites letting their insecurities run wild, since they (we?) must suspect to no small degree that the party has moved across the East River.
The most odious thing about the piece is how he tries to claim class underdog status vs. non-native Brooklynites. He says (based on a pittance of anecdotal evidence) that the people who have moved to Brooklyn must all be either rich yuppie new parents or rich kids who aren’t disturbed by gentrifying working-class neighborhoods, as his sensitive soul is. So basically we Brooklynites are the overclass and he and his Manhattan friends are the proletarian little guys. I moved to Brooklyn nine years before I had kids and neither of my parents went to college. He can kiss my formerly blue-collar ass.