Outlook 2007: Longs and Shorts
Note: We’re moving this post up from yesterday to encourage more input.Welcome to the third annual installment of our market prognostications. Last year, we picked Prospect Heights and Carroll Gardens to outperform and Williamsburg to slump, which in retrospect look like pretty good calls. As for next year, our eyes will be on the areas…
Note: We’re moving this post up from yesterday to encourage more input.Welcome to the third annual installment of our market prognostications. Last year, we picked Prospect Heights and Carroll Gardens to outperform and Williamsburg to slump, which in retrospect look like pretty good calls. As for next year, our eyes will be on the areas bordering Prospect Park that have the location and housing stock on their sides but have yet to attract widespread interest from the gentrifying crowd. We’d also be front-running the newly Brooklyn-focused Landmarks Preservation Commission by looking in spots like the soon-to-be-designated Crown Heights North. On the downside, it’s hard to see how increasing supply of run-of-the-mill condos coming on line in Williamsburg won’t continue to put downward pressure on prices. We’re not as wary about the effect of Atlantic Yards on surrounding real estate as some and continue to think that Prospect Heights has a lot to offer. As has been mentioned before, quality brownstones should continue to find buyers while those in more marginal neighborhoods and lacking architectural detail will likely have a tough time. Looking back on last year’s post, we can be thankful that we got our wish of a gourmet market (sorta) in the form of Choice. Now if we could just get a friggin’ cheese shop we’d be really psyched.
Market Predictions for 2006 [Brownstoner]
I was walking down the sidewalk and a PS Mom with a Triple-Wide Bugaboo came up behind me and instead of asking me if she could pass set me on fire and pushed me in the street as her kids lauged and then cut down all of the landmarked 500 year old sycamore trees so that she would have more room.
“…branding a whole group of people because of a couple of isolated incidents is another.”
Either you posted this in the wrong thread or you’re so full of shit it’s not even funny. No one here has “branded a whole group of people” anything. If anyone is stereotyping here, it’s you.
But this is just one story. I have been to a million bars and never seen anything like this occurring. Who knows if the woman you are referring to as PS mom was even really from PS. She could have been a cretin from (gasp!) beloved PLG or beloved FG or even Staten Island or some other island. It’s a big city. There are millions and millions of us. Many people who are on this group live elsewhere and hang out or shop or look at housing, or have friends in PS. So they have no problem getting on this blog and bashing somebody else’s (not as affordable and overly hyped) neighborhood. If it’s a backlash against PS that’s fine. But to blame and stereotype woman in one neighborhood is out of line. Perhaps the real issue is living in a city with so many people that are unlike yourselves. And that could be the problem with some of these PS moms too. Sometimes it is really hard to imagine you are not the center of the universe. Certainly that nut at the bar had a problem imagining so. But to some degree in this city we all kind of imagine that we are at least somewhat important, or else why bother getting up in the morning. But calling one person out for rudeness is one thing, branding a whole group of people because of a couple of isolated incidents is another.
I’ve been following this thread with utter fascination, trying to decide whether I should relate an incident I witnessed this past summer.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained…
I was at a dive bar on 5th Ave called Jackie’s Fifth Amendment talking to a couple of pals of mine. We were sitting at the bar. To our right were a few guys who’d been there for a while. They were a little rowdy and boisterous, using a bit of rough language at times.
At one point a PS mom comes into the bar because her husband is in there with some friends. She has a baby as well as what looked like a 4 year old. She is immediately annoyed with the rowdy guys to our right because of their dirty language. I saw it on her face from the get go, but I didn’t think much about it because Jackie’s is a dive bar and the kind of place where you expect to see a little grit and grime and hear a few dirty words. This all continues and with each passing minute I see the PS mom growing more and more agitated. Eventually she comes over to the rowdies and asks them not to use rough language when her kids are nearby. They were a little stunned by this—as was I—and they didn’t say much in response. I didn’t think there was much chance of their granting PS mom her wish, though, because by this time these guys were deep in their cups. And indeed, the foul language continued until PS mom walked over a second time. This time she’s really hot, and she basically yells at these guys, telling them to watch their language and that she and her kids shouldn’t have to tolerate foul language in a public place.
This is when things got interesting. The rowdies, drunk as they were, realized that PS mom was serious, and they were getting pissed off. PS mom’s husband (aka PS dad) just looked like he wanted to be somewhere else. So anyway, everyone goes about their business and, sure enough, these guys quickly revert to foul language again. This is when PS mom really freaked out. She assailed these guys verbally, screaming at the top of her lungs that she and her family did not have to tolerate their language. One of the rowdies told PS mom to sit down and mind her own business, and that’s when PS mom shocked everyone. She SPAT on one of these guys, in full view of everyone in the bar. I’m not kidding….she SPAT on him!!
At this point PS dad moved quickly. He got his kids and PS mom and got them out of there, and we were all glad he did. I must say though, I couldn’t believe the effrontery of this woman. The rowdies, although they were talking at what I’d regard a loud voice, were not shouting their foul language. They were basically just drunk, trying to talk over a crowd and, yes, probably talking too loudly. However, it’s also important to point out that Jackie’s is a very, very small bar. It is tiny, and it’s so easy to hear what other people are saying.
Anyway, I think the story speaks for itself. You might not like foul language, but everyone knows that they’re apt to encounter foul language in a dive bar and, frankly, I’m glad that is at least one type of public space where such language is lingua franca. PS mom, in my opinion, was wildly over the line, but I’ll let you folks draw your own conclusions.
When you said excuse me to the mom in the store what exactly did she say to you that was rude? And in what store was this? In some stores they don’t allow strollers because they have limited aisle space, which makes sense, even though it’s a nightmare for parents. But in other stores it is really hard for a person to navigate with a stroller at times. It’s not that we are not worried about you feeling hurt by a rude experience though. It’s just that you seem to be stating that your mom was a saint basically and that you think many Park Slope moms are rude. The stroller phenomenon is a relatively new thing. Most parents in other areas and even in our areas in years gone by, didn’t have to rely on them as much. They could all pretty much drive where they wanted to go. Many people look at kids in strollers not as actual other human beings too…just as inanimate objects that are totally in their way. Not saying that you fall in to this category. But remember that sometimes if a mother is picking up something from an aisle of a grocery store and you have to wait a sec until she moves the stroller it doesn’t mean she thinks you are garbage. It could mean she didn’t see you, or she thought you were okay with her finishing up in a second. And in fact there are more Park Slope nannies in our stores on a daily basis than Park Slope parents. So perhaps you were actually interacting with a nanny who came from a different place of cultural understanding?
Now now Anon. 4:08 PM; we’re bashing motherhood on this thread, not Lefferts 🙂
I’ve had these experiences too, and the women were not overwhelmed or distracted, which would be clear to see if that were so. They were rude. In the way they spoke to others. And in doing things like plainly seeing someone standing there struggling to look at products on a shelf behind a stroller, and still not move the stroller. For me it comes down to this. If my mother wasn’t rude to others in public when raising me and my two insane brothers who must have driven her crazy, then there’s no excuse for other mothers to be rude now, in these times. Period. My mother did not have a full-time nanny, had 3 children all close in age, not just one or two, she was not perfect, and yet somehow she managed to always remain gracious, remember her manners, and treat people with civility. Imagine that. It’s so sad our generation has lower standards and expectations for ourselves. You can even see from many of these posts, that most people don’t see one single problem with being rude, as a general concept. They should be mortified if they recognize themselves in these stories, and instead they are defensive. I’ve never felt so foreign, so unable to relate to my gender or fellow citizens. It’s very strange.
I’m the 7:25 post….The point I was trying to make is that it’s always possible that people will assume that just because you are in their way and you didn’t see them coming that they will think you are a self-righteous jerk when you are pushing a stroller that is in their way. I’ve seen it happen time and time again. And mainly when I’m in Park Slope or Manhattan. I think it’s just the nature of a too crowded sidewalk. My husband says he never gets these kinds of attitudes from other pedestrians though. He thinks it is because people give him the, “What a great guy, he’s out with the kiddies vibe.” Which is a nice vibe to be getting, but is sexist isn’t it?
I think the chord that was hit by the whole concept of the ficticious creature, “Park Slope mom,” is worthy of a more substantive discussion. Today I was walking with a friend and we were both pushing strollers. We live in another nabe though. It is almost impossible for 2 strollers to be anywhere near each other on a sidewalk and not to potentially inconvenience everybody on the sidewalk going both ways. We of course went out of our way to let people by but we can’t look behind us at all times, etc. Luckily we live in a nabe that is more accepting of minorities in general be they moms, or whatever, and I think that’s why everybody was totally cool and was not put out by our presence. But perhaps in places like Park Slope and in Manhattan people are feeling so stressed and in such a rush that they don’t understand that strollers are part of urban living and so they feel that it’s okay to take that hostility out on the ficticious creature, Park Slope mom. It’s just like when I’m in a store (bodega, 99 cent, dept. store, whatever) and people are just too on top of one another I go out of my way to remind myself that the problem is not the people in the store, it’s the fact that the store chose to make such narrow aisles, or in some cases have no aisles that are clear. I guess I could just think everybody in the store is a jerk. And if I’m in a bad enough mood sometimes I do. But good architecture, good city planning, good design in general is usually helpful in these kinds of situations. And sidewalks with trees, dogs, strollers, garbage cans, newspaper machines are a pain for all of us. Taking it out on our neighbors is not the way to go here. Figure out what the problem is and try to fix it. Do we need Sharpton to come over and have a town hall meeting on CNN so we can all work it out?