Spotlight 5th Ave: Eyesore Hanging On By Thread
Driving down Fifth Avenue in Park Slope last week, we were struck at what an eyesore this corner of Fifth Avenue and Ninth Street is and were surprised that some crafty developer hadn’t figured out a way to get his hands on this prime spot. Anyone know what the hold-up is? GMAP
Driving down Fifth Avenue in Park Slope last week, we were struck at what an eyesore this corner of Fifth Avenue and Ninth Street is and were surprised that some crafty developer hadn’t figured out a way to get his hands on this prime spot. Anyone know what the hold-up is? GMAP
i was being serious in wanting yuppification, but speaking specifically of 5th avenue south slope: nobody should shed a tear to see the stores there priced out.
I’ve no doubt I’d love to live in the existing fort greene or clinton hill, mugging risk included. Inter-racial and inter-income mixes are great and much more brooklyn than a bunch of cheap stores on southern 5th avenue.
There is no reason to romanticize bodegas. Corner stores are great and part of what makes NYC NYC, but they don’t have to be filthy and sell crappy merchandise, as the Korean markets have proven. There IS a middle ground between bodegas (one of the negatives of NYC life) and suburban shopping malls.
I was born in Astoria (my father worked at LaGuardia airport on Pan American seaplanes!) and moved to a working class community on Long Island when I was 4. I’ve been living in NYC since 1971, in Brooklyn since 1977–first Bay Ridge, then Park Slope, and Clinton Hill since 1989.
Of course the value of my condo has skyrocketed and I can’t say I’m not pleased, but I do hope that my neighborhood and my city still has the economic diversity that’s gone from Brooklyn Heights and disappearing from Park Slope. Racial and economic diversity make everyone’s lives richer, imho.
I’m still trying to figure out if Anon 4:35 was being serious, sarcastic, or both. While I enjoy exposed brick coffeehouses and antique shops, I also believe there is a place for bodegas on the same block.
I was born here, but we moved when I was 6, and I didn’t come back to live until after college, and I’ve been here ever since. When I moved back here in 1977, the UWS was still a funky home for actors, musicians and senior citizens, if you were west of CPW. My voice teacher had a 7 room apartment on 69th Street and Amsterdam, and was paying around $450 a month, and he’d been there since the 1950’s. Another teacher had bought her brownstone in the 80’s off CPW for $35K. Over in Bklyn, Park Slope was in about the same condition.
I finally ended up renting in Bed Stuy, because we have relatives there, and was saving to buy. At the time I moved there, better houses on better blocks were going for around $85K. No one would think of paying more than $95K for anything in BS. Many of my neighbors owned at least 2 or 3 houses,besides the one they lived in, and my landlady owned over 50, and was one of the largest brownstone owners in Brooklyn (and one of the worst).
All that to say that for me, the last 20 years are “old Bklyn” to me. I used to visit my best friend who was going to Pratt in the late 70’s, and she lived in a succession of really funky apartments all over CH and FG, including a carriage house on Washington, another apartment next door to the Pfizer Manse, as well as apts on Clermont, and DeKalb. Clinton Hill was not the gentrified place it is today, let me tell you. My friend was mugged twice, and friends had their apartments broken into. But the neighborhood always had a coolness to it. I have to say that for me, Clinton Hill/Fort Greene has many of the features that make it an ideal example of a new Brooklyn. It is still,(and I hope it stays that way)a great mixture of people: Homeowners and renters of every income level and racial group and occupation, students, lower income folks and the wealthy, also of every racial mix. It is not uncommon to see interracial couples, gay couples, young, old, American and foreign. You can hear gospel music on Sundays coming from magnificent churches, and the daily call to prayer at the mosque on Fulton St, as well as seeing people hurring home for Shabbat on Friday. That’s what Brooklyn (and America) should be about.
Now please – I don’t think the nabe is perfect, and I do fear that it is pricing out many of the people and businesses that make it a great place. I also wouldn’t want it to be an urban theme park – look, brownstones and happy couples with toddlers and a dog! Gack!!
I like the fact that where I live now – Crown Heights/Bed Stuy border, is still evolving. I welcome anyone who is willing to take the good with the bad, settle down and help improve the hood in their own way, and not try to mold it into something it’s not. Each neighborhood has its own identity, and its own history that needs to be preserved even as we work to make things better for us all. It can’t be all about money, or amenities, or even architecture. It has to be about community.
As my pseudonym says I’m brooklyn born. I also have the family income and many of the sensibilities of the yuppy swine I live among in the north slope. That said, the retail infill in blue chip brooklyn is bothersome. I hate going Tarzian and paying them in flesh for a can of paint. I’m a lover not a fighter so forget about Lowes or Home Depot. When I was a lad there were three hardware stores between Flatbush and 9th on 7th avenue.
The rub of having wealthy neighbors is that they don’t go to hardware stores. They have their handymen and servants go for them. When they need household items, they use their one hour/week of free time take their suburus/audi wagons out to Jersey. That leaves me with a lot of wine, cheese and veternarians, but not a lot else.
I think my bug a boo has over 300 pollution free city miles on her and i expect to get three more years of use before i put her up on blocks or sell her. Anyone who has driven a bug knows how well they can handle the uneven bluestone sidewalks. I know people who have gone through multiple lesser quality strollers in the same amount of time. You can load the sucker with grocery bags as well. Great design. Superb function. Unsurpassed form. By the way, the YMCA pool is a petri dish!
For Yente’s poll…I’ve lived in CG my entire life (50 yrs), went to elementary school there, went to private Catholic high school in downtown Brooklyn, private college in Manhattan (financed by my clerical jobs, so don’t think I’m a rich private school snob). I have great memories of growing up in Brooklyn. CG was a safe, solid community, a working-to middle-class neighborhood, now becoming a bit more “rich,” of course. Everyone knew everyone and their children, and everyone looked out for each other and their children. We had a regular “beat cop” patroling Smith Street, Officer Walsh, who knew all the store owners and residents who shopped there. I am not anti-gentrification, per se, but my main worry is overdevelopment, and the notion that some people seem to possess about saving Brooklyn from itself and, intentionally or not, turning it into a suburb. (Granted, there are areas in Brooklyn that sorely need revitalization, and I hope these areas can be eventually turned around.) I also don’t care for the notion that every inch of FAR must be utilized and developed. I do fear that we won’t be able to save Brooklyn from losing its unique character. Having said that, I do enjoy the new and interesting stores that are setting up shop, and I do patronize them. Starbucks? Sure, I patronize Starbucks as I grew up on caffe latte (in an Italian household), but I also buy plain ol’ regular coffee at Park Bagel on the corner of Smith & President. Barnes & Noble on Court Street, sure, but I also buy books at BookCourt, one of the last of the indies which I sincerely hope can stay in business as it has successfully done for decades now. Some of the new shops fill a need, some of them don’t (do we REALLY need 75 restaurants on Smith Street? No, but that’s what rakes in the money to pay the rising rents and costs of owning real estate here). In any event, I can’t imagine living anywhere else. I just hope that development doesn’t run amok.
Well, we certainly qualify as native New York–though not native Brooklynites. We appreciate seediness as much as the next guy, but for some reason this scene doesn’t strike us as anything worth preserving, whereas similarly unpolished portions of the east village, say, might. We have no nostalgic connection to it, that’s all. We get why others might feel differently though for sure–so there’s really not as much contention here as some might think. Our post was more about being surprised that no one had torn it down than a call to arms to do so.
why pay harbor fitness when ymca is around the corner.
and I laugh at the weak attempts to romanticise or preserve 5th avenue retail above 9th st. Roll on the laptop army and bugamoms, I say. There are no redeeming features to it at all, no history, no community, nothing. I just see trash thrown, plastic products, noise, litter, commercialism, and unhealthy food. If allowed to breathe, it grows up to be a mini version of a strip mall from the burbs, so smother it now: carpet bomb the blocks with yoga salons, exposed brick coffee shops, gourmet sandwich places and antique shops.
Bodegas are everywhere either way, nobody is turning up their nose at a bodega or newsagent!