Our Borough, Ourselves
For the past month the Observer’s been running a weekly column called “Brooklyn, the Borough.” Each installment is a first-person account written by Nicole Brydson, who grew up in Manhattan and did some time in Greenpoint and Hell’s Kitchen before recently settling in Prospect Heights. In grand old Observer fashion, the column sorta reads like…
For the past month the Observer’s been running a weekly column called “Brooklyn, the Borough.” Each installment is a first-person account written by Nicole Brydson, who grew up in Manhattan and did some time in Greenpoint and Hell’s Kitchen before recently settling in Prospect Heights. In grand old Observer fashion, the column sorta reads like “Sex and the City,” but instead of bed-hopping and social climbing the focus is one woman’s quest to identify herself via her new borough. Here’s what Brydson’s learned so far:
Lesson 1: Finding the right neighborhood is tough. Williamsburg=”hupsters.” Park Slope=”pretentious mommy-daddy colony.” Fort Greene=”just about perfect,” but a little too pricey. Prospect Heights=True love, at the right price.
Lesson 2: It’s possible to decorate on the cheap. Getting gear from Lowe’s and IKEA is all well and good, but how ’bout that beige carpet from the sidewalk? “So far, no bed bugs!”
Lesson 3: Gentrification is a bitch. “I feel destined to simultaneously be gentrified and gentrifying, but to most people I just look like the new white girl on the block.”
Lesson 4: Don’t expect sanity from a real estate agent who asks you to sign a lease on the hood of her Jag.
Looking forward to more!
Escaping Hupsters for New Prospects [Observer]
An Electric Boyfriend Works the New Apartment [Observer]
Destined to Be Gentrified and Gentrifying [Observer]
My Angel Gave Me Hell [Observer]
Actually, 10:34, that pretty much sums up the “reporting” and the “reporter”. Is that you?
10:09, 10:15, 10:22, 10:26, 10:29, 10:30: Pretentious, boring douchebags. Get a life. seriously.
Here is an interesting look at this reporter:
http://video.nymag.com/?&fr_story=52d1e34af163f0866c875d9d54808fadf5a5dbc6
What a twit!
I am usually not a hater. But this is boring. Mostly because the writer is “discovering” something that is already found. A white girl looking to be accepted in Brooklyn, especially where she is in Brooklyn, is not new. In fact, it’s a very old school concept and where she’s living is pretty well gentrified at this point. I guess this would read ok if this was just her personal blog, but that it’s actually in a newspaper that is supposed to be delivering, well, news shows that we are really at a loss for content. One night at Soda and she will find that she is hardly exploring a new frontier.
“one woman’s quest to identify herself via her new borough” – Oh c’mon already. Self_identity by boro or neighborhood you live in? How New York mag. and NYTimes real estate section can you get.
Get a life.
She’ll fit in perfectly in the “new” Brooklyn – here 5mins and is already having “concerns” about gentrification – while snacking on sushi and wine, in an apartment decorated from suburban Ikea, Bed, Bath & Beyond, Home Depot, Target and Lowe’s. And loving to tout her liberalism and love of diversity while at the same time revealing her true self by identifying everyone 1st by their race/ethnicity and seeing everything as a racial/class conflict.
Come on in you’ll fit right in…..
BORING.
All newspapers are desperate for content, content, content. So anyone’s droll existence suddenly becomes material to fill up pages.
I’m sorry, but anyone who thinks Fort Greene is “just about perfect” is destined to spend their life writing obnoxious “lifestyle” pieces for publications no one reads, like The Observer.