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 agree Mork,
Brooklyn is a place you move to for low rent or to get a bedroom for your kid.
If you want excitment, you live in below the 30’s in Manhattan.
So another pampered couple from the suburbs moves back to the suburbs. Big deal.
I live in Soho and happened to be in Park Slope last night around 8:30pm.
It was dead as a doornail. Very few people were on the streets. It felt like a suburb of Boston.
I feel much safer living in Soho. I’ve lived here for 10 years and have never been bothered by anyone.
There are always people on the streets, even late at night, which is comforting, especially when my wife comes home late.
There’s no difference between living in the burbs and living in Brooklyn.
Brooklyn is a stroller suburb folks, whether you care to admit it or not.
brownstone brooklyn is about race. it is about white flight, race riots & its psychological and physical traces, jewish, italian & irish (once denied “whiteness” by the ruling WASPs) immigration, gentrification, the great migration north, nineteenth century free black communities (and their descendants). why pretend? this is why it always comes back to race on this forum–because in so many ways it is. it is about race and a limited commodity in brooklyn, housing in general and brownstones in particular. the tension that Rushkoff feels is real. he shouldn’t be attacked because he is sensitive enough to actually notice it. the tension is what also makes brooklyn so damn electric.
First it was a gun, then it was a knife, then it was a gun. What’s the real story? I’m beginning to believe it’s all a publicity stunt. I think he and his wife are incredibly bitter, and that’s sad, for both them and their daughter.
3 years ago I was walking in Bed Stuy on a Friday night and got punched in the head by a group of drunk kids outside a bodega.
That same night, a work colleague was jumped on PS, on Park Place by…. a group of kids. I got a headache he got a broken nose.
12:58, it’s hard to comprehend because Rushkoff has been so poor in articulating it. Even when he had a chance to vocalize his thoughts on Brian Lehrer, he came off like a whinging bourgie who “can’t afford 3 million like those wall street bankers” moving to the Slope. It wasn’t about crime in the Slope, it wasn’t about the sense of community or the evoluation of the neighborhood in the real estate run-up – it was “wahh, wahhh, I’m working three gigs to live near my wealthier writer-friends and why do I have to be the one mugged??? wahhhh.”
honestly, get out more. If you can’t – then google the phrase “criminal element” using quote marks, seriously, please do it. Really.
being white doesn’t somehow exclude you from being a race-monomaniac. Although the city doesn’t seem to be full of the one-track minds, the internet boards certainly are.