The Times of London Singing Bed Stuy's Praises
It sounds like London Times writer James Doran got quite a deal on his Bedford Stuyvesant brownstone. Given how well-preserved all the details were, $600,000 sounds undermarket to us. And what a great provenance! The story he tells of the former owner, a brewery heiress, is great stuff. The Heath Ledger angle might be a…
It sounds like London Times writer James Doran got quite a deal on his Bedford Stuyvesant brownstone. Given how well-preserved all the details were, $600,000 sounds undermarket to us. And what a great provenance! The story he tells of the former owner, a brewery heiress, is great stuff. The Heath Ledger angle might be a bit of a stretch but, hey, Doran’s at least setting the newspaper-reading public straight about the neighborhood which has caught more than its share of bad press over the years:
Bed-Stuy is more than just an incredible investment opportunity for an adventurous property speculator: it is one of the most fascinating neighbourhoods of New York, steeped in history and close to Manhattan’s sleepless streets, yet no tourist ever sets foot here.
Local blog Bed Stuy Gateway had this to say about the article: Is The Times doing a Lenten penance for the smackdown of an article it published on June 25, 2005 in which reporter Dominic Rushe called Bed-Stuy “a horrible and inconvenient area of Brooklyn with some lovely buildings and a nasty crack habit”?
Big Apple’s Core Appeal [London Times]
The Brits Are Coming [Bed Stuy Gateway]
I meant loss. My neighbors are great as well..the friendliest place I’ve ever lived…really!! BUT, they never brought us wine and cookies!
Good on you James. I didn’t get the impression you were saying your part of BS was perfect, but that you liked it. People looking to move to the area can make an assessment themselves if it is within their own personal “comfort zone”.
James, fantastic story. Thanks so much for your point of view. I live in Bed-Stuy and have experienced the same as you – genuinely kind, neighborly people who care a great deal for where they live, and indeed seem to know that Bed-Stuy is a special place. That may sound funny to people who don’t live there, but it is in many ways a step back in time to when people wanted to know their neighbors’ names and look out for each other. It’s very refreshing and I’m glad your story will be read by many people!
First, thank you for your article, James. I moved to Bed Stuy earlier this year. I have heard gun shots. But I’ve also heard shots in nearly every neighborhood I’ve lived in, including Park Slope, Boerum Hill and Ft Greene. It’s a fact of life in the city. I grew up in Brooklyn and I feel that Bed Stuy is a fine place to live and raise a familiy.Those of you who don’t agree, you’re entitled to your opinion, but your lose is our gain.
Oh No what have I done
sorry Linus and anyone else to whom I have misdirected a response.
You really are a tough bunch of critics. But Im glad to have fired such debate. Its awesome. Usually i file a story into the giant story rendering machine, drink myself into a stupor, get up and do it all over again ad infinitum. This is much more lively. And to answer one more critic — four square blocks is quite a big area, and a large piece of the 81s precinct (which is on the corner of our street).
This was a feature piece for the property section about what it is like for me living here and what it has been like buying a house here.
And it is a genuine impression. It is a puff piece if you like — I love it here. If someone who hates it wants to write a piece (as I believe my collegue Dominic Rushe chose to do in the Sunday Times last year) Then feel free.
I wanted to correct the impression that you will be killed, robbed or raped just by visiting bed stuy.
Ive lived in much worse much less diverse areas than this in France, America and all over England.
What I intended to convey in the article is that there is no need to be afraid of run down areas where black people live.
They are full of people, some of whom are really good and some of whom are asholes. Just like Park Slope, Manhattan, North London or Paris.
I lived in a picturesque medieval village in the Provencal region of France as a kid. Aged 11 I was maced and beaten up on a July 14th parade and had racial slurs chanted at my family when we would go out. We were English, and therefore foreigners. The Front National does not discriminate by colour alone.
And this village was a paradise to look at. You would assume total safety if you took your wife and kids to visit — as my father did before we moved there. After those few incidents we lived in Bagnols en Foret in peace for many years — made lots of friends and became part of the community.
In Reims, Northern France aged 20, I was beaten up and had a gun held to my head whilst traversing a housing project with a friends at 8pm on a Thursday.
South London, aged 26 I was punched in the face and mugged on my way home from the subway in broad daylight in a summer’s evening infront of about 500 commuters.
In Manhattan my neighbours in the Village were the snootiest people I have ever met (AND IM ENGLISH!!) the only guy I spoke to regularly I discovered after three months was a dog walker not a resident in our building at all.
We moved to Chelsea where our live-in Landlords were the biggest, freakiest, angriest control freaks I have ever met in my entire lfe (incluing playing poker with a mafia bos in Kazakhstan)
Here on Quincy Street, our neighbours brought us wine and cookies when we moved in. Total strangers say hello in the post office and come to the door in a panic at 11 am on Tuesdays screaming, “The traffic cops are coming move your car”
We have a little community park on the corner thats running a gardening competition with prizes.
You see what Im trying to say?
Don’t let appearances fool you. London, Paris, Provence and Manhattan already have their reputation to trade on. Let me work on Bed stuy’s for a while to at least try to redress the balance a little.
The piece was biased, it was supposed to be, but it was also accurate.
And 20 years ago Ft. Greene, Clinton Hill, and Prospect Heights were even “scarier” than Bed-Stuy is today (or indeed more than anyplace in our safer and safer NYC). And 30 years ago people were called “crazy” or “stupid” to buy in much of the Slope.
Hey, I’ve been called nuts to buy in Woodside, and it’s safer, cheaper, and more diverse than any of those places.
That’s just how things change in NYC.
To follow on what Linus said – coincidentally I live in PS between 4th and 5th and when I read these puff pieces about my hood I also laugh and critic –
b/c while yes I have amazing restaurants steps from my house and JJ Byrne is alot alot better than it was and crime is way down.
I also know (and do not pretend it isnt here) that in the last 2 years we had 4 gunpoint robberies in a 2 block vicinity and a murder on 5th Ave and they sell weed a few doors away and we had a big rat problem; and garbage rolls up 5th Ave like the tumbleweeds in an Arizona desert.
Do I like my neighborhood – yes but I wish some of these problems didnt exist – and they do appear to be getting better. But the problems do exist and it makes me ill when RE agents and others (media, etc..) tries to spin the truth away…it is false and should be called out. Bed-Stuy (or PS btwn 4th and 5th) has more crime( and garbage and open drug selling, etc…) than Brooklyn Heights or Cobble Hill and no amount of spin changes that (currently).
But the best (most pathetic) spin of all is when people actually dont try to spin these facts away but rather embrace these social/quality-of-life problems not as negatives but as positives, that give a neighborhood ‘character’.
No one is knocking your nabe (or my own) just asking for reality to seep its way into the hype.
James,
Thanks.. And my brownstone is 5 storey by your standards. 😉
James,
No, I don’t live in Bed Stuy — I don’t make any secret of that and certainly didn’t mean to suggest that I did. (I live in Park Slope, between 4th and 5th Avenues, an area that is far from crime-free.) The fact that you do live there gives you way more authority about the neighborhood than I have, or claim.
But, whenever I hear someone in a huge neighborhood that has more crime than many others in Brooklyn — statistically, undeniably — imply that is is just like “any other neighborhood,” sorry, I’m skeptical. To your credit, you allude to crime, etc. in your article; but, as I said, in a pretty euphemistic way.
That said, no way do I agree with Ron that you’re “stupid” to live where you do. (And nowhere did I say that your neighbors weren’t nice.) You made a great decision for yourself. Bed Stuy’s clearly a big neighborhood, with a wide range of quality-of-life and safety. But I also think you have a responsibility to your readers — say, the person, who on your recommendation, goes looking for that $600K 4-story — not to soft-pedal the negatives of that big, widely varied neighborhood beyond your own four blocks.
Anyway, congrats on your purchase. Your house looks a hell of a lot nicer than mine.