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.
I don’t particularly need super friendly neighbors, in fact I find them rather aggrivating, but then that’s me. Not at all a suburban type.
Incidentally, if this is all about a crime cost/benefit analysis then the statistics bear me out on what I said above about Queens. He really should move there. Crime in Park Slope was at 10 serious felonies per 1,000 population in 2006. In Sunnyside/Woodside Queens it was 11 per 1,000.
Both rates are exceptionally low for American urban areas, but those Queens neighborhoods have cheaper housing, better transit options, are much closer to midtown Manhattan, and are much more ethnically/racially diverse than Park Slope (they also have better food… but, shhhh, that’s a secret). What they don’t have is a lot of beautiful houses, PS 321, or the gentrified coolness recognition factor of Park Slope. Still, if $$ vs. crime is your criteria…
Also, folks in Brooklyn “retreat” to their brownstones when they get home from work and the streets in the evening, except for an occasional speeding stroller, seem an awfull lot like a ghost-town.
mort,
LA beckons…
It’s tough, but I gotta agree in large part with anon 7:33pm, Brooklynites don’t seem all that friendly to newcomers or outsiders.
I like to run the loop at Prospect Park and folks don’t usually say anything to each other when they run by. In California, runners always say hello.
I crashed a New Years Eve party in Brooklyn this year as well, and, though I have to admit folks who live in Brooklyn can certainly drink a lot of booze, the “communal feeling” mentioned by an earlier poster doesn’t extend much to outsiders.
Same goes for my experiences at Propect Park barbecues during the summer. Brooklynites like to cluster in small groups, like back in high school, and though they might offer up a chicken wing or a slice of watermelon to a parched stranger, they never welcome you back for a second helping.
There’s no way to measure friendliness statistically, but I’d guess Brooklyn is in the bottom quartile.
Southern Cal, (including silver lake, hollywood, los feliz, glendale, miracle mile, santa monica, fairfax, west LA, venice, west hollywood, downtown, and all the little shitholes in the san fernando valley like north hollywood, tarzana and studio city) is the creepiest, scariest place on planet Earth. trust me.
comparitively, brooklyn is nirvana…
stupid premise, 6:47.
but you’re trying hard, i know. we all know.
let’s see, he lives in new york city and thinks that he is immune from crime? is he a fiction writer, because if so, he is living in one of his own utopian stories. no place in america is completely safe, if someone can tell him where then you really need to because he’s livin’ in a dream world.
ps. we don’t need mediocre ones.
who cares, get out. move to iowa. there are enough GOOD authors in brooklyn.