Let's Talk About the Rushkoffs, Dammit
Since we’re about the only publication in town who hasn’t written about writer Douglas Rushkoff’s Christmas eve mugging outside his Park Slope apartment and subsequent decision to leave (and, along with his wife, to write about leaving) Brooklyn, we might as well throw it out there. His wife now famously wrote that she felt safer…
Since we’re about the only publication in town who hasn’t written about writer Douglas Rushkoff’s Christmas eve mugging outside his Park Slope apartment and subsequent decision to leave (and, along with his wife, to write about leaving) Brooklyn, we might as well throw it out there. His wife now famously wrote that she felt safer in the East Village in the 1980s that she does in Park Slope today, which sounded kind of silly until her hubby clarified that this was only because they knew the drug dealers in the East Village. We got a call from a reporter a couple of days ago asking whether we thought the incident would have a negative effect on real estate prices. In short? No. In long? No, no, no. The Rushkoffs decision to leave was an emotional, albeit understandable, one. Unless the entire city enters a 1970s-like downward spiral, we’re pretty sure Park Slope will be just fine.
Do You Care If the Rushkoffs Leave Brooklyn? [New York Magazine]
On Leaving Brooklyn [Steven Berlin Johnson]
The Rushkoffs’ original blog posts are no longer available online.
where’s this sort of “element” coming from anyway in Park Slope?…there aren’t any projects in prime slope as far as I know…
Unpredictable reality intrudes on one man’s routine …
An enclave of caring people cries …
How many ways to express
“I DON’T CARE”?
Call me heartless, but I don’t see why I should have sympathy for these people. So he got mugged outside his apartment. He wasn’t shot, or stabbed, or banged over the head with a blunt instrument. He lost his wallet and maybe a little of his dignity, just like I did when I got mugged in front of my building in Manhattan. He and his wife should be glad they weren’t hurt and that they have the money to leave, if that’s what they want to do.
But they should beware the ‘burbs, if that’s where they’re headed. Out here, they don’t mug you on the street, they break into your house–while you’re inside it–which happened to me on 12/22.
Brooklyn to Rushkoff: don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
With every word the Rushkoffs write and say about this incident, the deeper the hole. I love this from the NY Mag article:
Luckily, Rushkoff himself puts the matter to rest yesterday in his lengthy interview with Brian Lehrer. “Park Slope is dark; it has residential streets that nobody walks on,” he explained. “[In the East Village] I knew which drug dealers are on which corner, and I actually had a relationship with them. In Park Slope, there’s a tension in our relationship … I don’t think they consider me part of the same neighborhood.” And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen: The Rushkoffs are leaving Park Slope because they don’t feel accepted by their local drug dealers. And how does Doug respond to his friend Steven Berlin Johnson’s entreaties? “Steven Berlin? He lives in a gorgeous townhouse by the park. He’s not living in the same Park Slope that I can afford.”
Boo hoo. Douglas Rushkoff can’t afford a townhouse between 8th and the Park. He lives — where? — between 6th & 7th? — and its soooo much more dangerous there!
buh-bye.
I think what is unnerving is that you are never totally safe. And that feeling of being invincible was erased from this dude (after all he lived in East Village and nothing ever happened there so to him nothing bad could happen).
So now that the myth is shattered he will blame it on ‘Brooklyn’ and hope to recapture the feeling of safety by moving elsewhere. Understandable yes.
Logical no.
Another liberal has just been mugged by reality.
i thought this was a reprint from 1986. give me a break.