Maclaren, the stroller of choice for parents who insist upon spending too much money on a stroller, has just issued a recall notice for all of its "umbrella strollers." The easiest way to determine whether your Maclaren is one of the affected models is to count your child's remaining fingers.

All Maclaren strollers sold since 1999 are included in the recall, according to a source briefed on the recall.

The step comes after 12 kids allegedly had their fingertips amputated by Maclaren strollers.

Loss of fingertips could impact your child's ability to fill out the little bubbles on the SAT, and should therefore be taken seriously. Please send us pics of the panicked mobs of sexually marginalized Mr. Moms in the streets of Cobble Hill.

[Pic: Pardon Me For Asking]

For those who don't know what the Park Slope Co-op is: basically, you work three hours a week month to shop at an organic, Whole Foods-lite grocery story at cheaper prices. A perfect example of the culture there is front and center on their website right now:

They are not boycotting Israeli products, you guys. The Haifa Hummus will live to be kissed by another piece of soft, silky Palestinian Pita for one more day. The Park Slope Co-op: doing what they can to tolerate all cultures, especially, well, Brooklyn's (read: assholes). Without further ado, we present the best of "Flunking Out at the Food Co-op."

• The first sentence: "I bounded off the Q train in Brooklyn one night last winter and headed to Union Street, past the yogurt shop and the firehouse, to do some grocery shopping." Only people who live in Park Slope "bound" off their trains. Most people "trudge" or "shuffle" or maybe even "shove their way out" from the imprisonment of a Q-train. You bound? Also, yogurt shops.
  
  
• The writer gets suspended from her Food Co-op. Obvious enough, but yes: complete and utter white whine, of the worst kind.
  
  
• The guy who castigates her does it loudly and without remorse, so others can hear. "Some entrance workers speak softly, but not this one. Worse, there were a dozen other shoppers within earshot." Only a pious nu-Brooklyn asshole would care enough to embarrass someone for getting suspended from a food Co-op. And only a Brooklynite would be embarrassed at this kind of thing, or worry about word getting out.
  
  
• But of course, it's in the Times.
  
  
• The alternative meal of the dejected? It should be vegetarian-friendly and ethnic. "A takeout burrito. But no amount of mushrooms and spinach could diminish my shame and guilt."
  
  
• Mention of the Craigslist "Missed Connections" that take place within the Co-Op's confines.

  "I'm seeking the olive packaging boy that was laughing at my jokes and wearing plaid pants," said a Craigslist "Missed Connections" item last winter. "I was wearing the leopard print glasses and my responsibilities included: Mozzarella whole milk, part skim and plain goat cheese."

  
  

• The "organic" food culture that's such a revenue generator for smart people like the CEO of Whole Foods that's more than just a capitalistic endeavor for others, who make it a religion. Observe: "Like every other aspect of the much-loved and much-hated co-op, the topic of members in trouble draws a bushel of opinions. An organic bushel, of course."
  
  
• Obnoxious political correctness in the face of common sense: "At one point, the job was amended to prohibit bag checks for fear of racial profiling - a change that worked out well for me since I would never dream of asking members to open their backpacks."
  
  
• She's got an MFA in poetry. No bold tags needed.
  
  
• "In June 2008, I married a trim man with dark curls, a rabbi for a progressive congregation in the West Village, and embarked on a chapter of togetherness and bliss." Skinny, Jewish, a Rabbi, a Rabbi for a "Progressive" Congregation, a Rabbi for a "Progressive" Congregation in the West Village: a blessed union of BoBo perfection.
  
  
• You're still living next to the people you once slept with, forever, and ever, and ever: "and besides, the aisles were filled with too many ex-boyfriends browsing the organic okra..."
  
  
• More pompous, pious self-righteousness about community idealism:

  "My friend Sarah Stein Greenberg, a member until she moved to California in 2005, is the only person I know with a flawless co-op work record. In her view, people like us lack commitment. They join the co-op because it's "healthy or trendy," she said, but they are not fully committed to its greater values. "The bigger community element," she declared, "is really fundamental."

  
  

• Sigh. Nonchalant ignorance and insensitivity of anybody suffering legitimately difficult economic hardships: "I watched a woman hold her forehead, her children clinging to her skirt, while a worker at the register called out over the intercom, "Does anyone know how to process food stamps?"
  
  
• "Alana Joblin Ain is a writer and an adjunct instructor at Hunter College, where she received an M.F.A. in poetry. "

If you're in Central Park right now, those things you felt land on you were bits of my head exploding across the East River. There's so much more here. Do enjoy. Please: any more cliches you find, throw in the comments. They will be savored, and cooked over an organic, fair-trade Nepalese leek reduction and some sulfate-free prunes, and served on fourteen-grain beer bread grown on the side of the Gowanus Canal.

On Wednesday the New York Times ran a piece in their Dining section about the growing resentment some insufferable parents of bratty kids have for the ice cream man. One of the parents quoted extensively in the piece was a woman from Park Slope, Brooklyn (Of course!) named Vicki Sell, and she is pissed that the damn ice cream man once made her daughter have an "inconsolable meltdown" after she was denied a tasty frozen treat, so she's now doing everything she can to shit all over everyone else's fun by having them all shut down just so she doesn't have to listen to her kid whine anymore.

"I fall into the camp of parents who are irate," Ms. Sell said. She has equal disdain for Mister Softee and the ice cream pop vendor outside the park, but since they are licensed, there is not much she can do about them.

"I feel kind of bad about having developed this attitude," she said. "I want Katherine to have the full childhood experience and all. But it's really predatory for them - two of them - to be right inside the playground like this."

Ms. Sell says she is not obsessed with health and nutrition. She - and others - feel they have been pushed to the brink by that little bell. Across message boards and playgrounds, soccer fields and day camp exits, parents have been raging. In a greener, more health-conscious, unsafe world, the ice cream man has lost some of his mojo.

Toward the end of the piece, Sell is quoted again and this time her occupation is noted:

And Ms. Sell owns and runs a restaurant in Brooklyn with her husband, a chef. "I'm not a health freak by any means," Ms. Sell said. "But I notice what happens to my daughter when she eats these sugar-filled things with all these additives."

Now, tonight a reader wrote in to point out the restaurant owned by Vicki Sell and her husband is The Chip Shop, a fish and chip joint on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope. What sorts of foods does The Chip Shop serve? Fried foods, and lots of them! In fact, they'll fry just about anything that can be battered and placed on a wooden stick! They even have something on their menu called the "Twice Fried Cherry Pie," but the brownshirts at the NYC Health Department banned it! But hey, don't fret, as there's all sorts of other "sugar-filled things with all these additives" that Vicki Sell is more than happy to batter and deep-fry for only $3.50! Here's the menu:





Now, in case you're unfamiliar with Park Slope and its geography, The Chip Shop is located in a densely populated area filled with families. There are at least a million and one jokes about Park Slope parents and their strollers in circulation right now! So isn't it sort of "predatory" to open a restaurant that sells crap like fried Twinkies, Snickers bars, Mars bars, Reeses Peanut Butter Cups and Twix in the middle of the New York City's neighborhood most synonymous with urban family life? Well, yes, perhaps it is, so leave the freakin' ice cream man alone lady!

Some people just have their heads stuffed so far up their own asses it's ridiculous.

Update: Vickie Sell wrote into comments and claims that she was misquoted by the Times and doesn't have anything against Mister Softee peddlers. Since this is sort of buried in all of your commenty rage, we're moving it up to the post:

I am the person quoted in the Times story and I my point of view was not accurately reflected by a long shot. I'm very upset to have been quoted as hating Mister Softee and all these vendors and I have absolutely not started a campaign against them. My complaint was about the ice vendors within the playground and that they are unlicensed and illegally sell to children in a place they are not allowed. I called 311 once (not multiple times by any stretch of the imagination) to inquire about their legal standing. They do not have sanction from any health authority to handle food and there's no telling where their product comes from. I had hoped that would be played up in the article. And yes, I do feel that bringing these carts into the playground is predatory. I was perhaps "irate" about this but not about ice cream vendors in general. They are run out over and over by the police or parks people but come back time and time again. I don't have any problem with legal vendors outside the playground in areas they are licensed for — despite what the article says. I'm all for people making a living and for people to choose the time and the place to buy treats for their children. I did discuss these points for the article but I don't see them there and I believe other people's points of view were attributed to me. In fact while I was being interviewed we bought ice pops for our children from a licensed vendor outside the park.

Pic by Chef Cajun Ryan.

Well, it's just like Sex and the City if all the girls pulled a Miranda and moved to Park Slope. In the novel, Sohn—a former sex columnist for the New York Press and New York— follows around four different women in the neighborhood as they negotiate husbands, kids, real estate, play dates, and shifts at the co-op. It's all very Brooklyn.

Naturally one is a freelance writer (hi, Amy!) and one is an insecure actress (hi, Sarah!), and there's a bitchy supermom and a former lesbian too! It will be great once this thing really takes off and the "Prospect Park West" tours begin in Brooklyn. Between the tourists and the strollers, there won't be an inch of free sidewalk space anywhere.

Read below where Rebecca, the freelance journalist character (who hasn't had sex in 18 months!), takes on some evil mommies at the playground.

A Time writer—and fellow organic, local grocery lover—is working a shift with the Entourage star right now. He's breaking down boxes, like a good little supermarket socialist.

I'll miss your silly ways, Park Slope! But not your F train!

Okay, so maybe not Bazillionaires, but they were definitely around before the Google IPO. Reports the Times on who actually ended up on what was rumored to be the pad SJP and Matthew Broderick were migrating to from the West Village: Google employees who declined to be named. And why all the anonymity?

The buyers asked that their names not be published - not to keep autograph seekers at bay, but because of the office culture at Google. It seems that the first generation of employees, who earned millions from stock options awarded when the company went public, sit side by side with colleagues who were hired later.

Ouch. Somewhere in the Google offices, someone who lives in a mansion is sitting side-by-side with someone stuck in a one-bedroom in the land of the hoi polloi. Meanwhile, the Times took this time to stick their tounge out at, uh, lesser outlets who rested their reporting on purely speculative efforts:

Ina Treciokas, a spokesman for Ms. Parker, said that as of last week she had received only two calls about the town house, and had unequivocally denied that Ms. Parker had any connection to it. She also said that none of the scores of entertainment and real estate Web sites that picked up the story bothered to call to ask about Ms. Parker's real estate plans.

In your face, entertainment sites! But it gets better: the Times also took a moment to swipe at what's - truth be told - another borough that isn't Manhattan. Clearly fit for a Google employee, not movie stars. Duh.

In the last few days, real estate and entertainment bloggers and columnists have been twittering en masse over rumors and reports that the ultimate Manhattan girl, Sarah Jessica Parker, and her husband, Matthew Broderick, had decided to abandon Manhattan, and their 20-foot-wide West Village town house, for a larger place in what, truth be told, is still an outer borough.

We may be a speculative entertainment blogger, but the reporters at the Times are still, truth be told, kinda assholes. No matter where they live.

Further reading: Brooklyn Loses Sarah Jessica Parker, Gains a Super Rich Googler [All Things Digital]

Now that they're the proud parents of three chillens, it might be time for the actor couple to bust out of their simply tiny West Village townhouse and into more respectable mansiony digs. Perfect then that artsy power couple Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany sold their Prospect Park West manse last year. A company called Harken Pretty purchased the home for $8.45 million last December, and the Post thinks that simply must have something to do with SJP's production company Pretty Matches. It just must! Whoever bought the palace is gutting it completely. After all the work you put into, Jennifer...

Parker has shown an interest in Park Slope creatively recently, snapping up the rights to Amy Sohn's decadent take on the Park Slope mommy-cult Prospect Park West. It could become a TV series! Because everyone loved Lipstick Jungle so much they'll like it even better when it's about moms! In Brooklyn!

Oh man, get us outta here.

Pic via Curbed

This email went out to the Park Slope Parents Messageboard, the place where the community is kept safe:

Dogs IN Tot Lot??!!!
Posted by: "bklynfam" jewelsluv@gmail.com bklynfam
Sat Apr 18, 2009 5:13 pm (PDT)

Dear Parents,

I am very upset that so many parents violate park rules and bring their dogs INTO the Tot Lot. For example today I was there for just 2 hours and three people brought their dogs. One of those parents even let their dog OFF LEASH. I am livid.

I don't care how cute, or small your dog is, or if you are holding it on a tight leash. Keep your dog out of the playground away and from MY child and all the children!! And when I say something to you about your dog, don't give me an attitude. You are breaking the rules and being totally arrogant and irresponsible. Leave your dog at home like I do.

Rules are rules for a reason. The fact is that dogs are animals and can turn mean for any reason; another kid or parent gets too close it it's owner or child, a child pets it too hard, or pulls a tail or ear, OR as toddlers do, FALL, may fall on a dog or near it and scare it. BITE.

Call To Action: Write a complaint e-mail to the Prospect Parks department asking for clearer, more prominent sign that clearly state NO PETS. Send you e-mail to info@propectpark.org . And say something to people who bring dogs. Tell them it is not allowed. If they don't leave or give you s++t, then call the Parks Enforcement Patrol at 718-437-1350 (put this number in your cell phone).

Thanks,
Juliette- dog owner to a dog that stays home, and mom to a toddler that betta' not get bit by someone's dog...

...OR ELSE, bitches. Or else.

The "Park Slope Parents" fight is ostensibly about a plan by the listserv moderators to charge the parents $25 to remain on the list. In reality, it's just like all of Park Slope's other epic battles: a contest to see who can be the most shrill and sanctimonious.

Somehow, the moderators continue to "win" this entitled bitchfest. They could have, for example, just let list participant "Joanna's" epic weekend diatribe speak for itself.

Declaring she was done "self-censor[ing],", the mother denounced "self-righteous... earth-destroying" Easter-egg hunt rules, the coverup of a video camera theft (we think?), the environmental slander of kitchen scraps (the methane can be contained!) and, best of all, some jerk-ass French brat who ruined rock climbing in the park for EVERYONE.

Instead of just letting this very entertaining message go out to the list, the moderators decided to block it, on the grounds that Joanna's "heart of hearts" would have blocked it, too. (That's totally our new moderating standard on Gawker, by the way.)

If any other Park Slopers have an urgent rant they need to get past the jackbooted censors at PSP, just send it our way. We'll publish it, provided it is at least this awesome.

Joanna's message is below, followed by her back-and-forth with the moderator.

(Top image via)

Some lady's plan to charge people $25 for access to their precious precious listserv of yuppie commiseration may have a fatal flaw: some dude could just start another listserv. It's crazy enough to work!

One enterprising Brooklyn dad — miffed at plans to charge members of the popular Web site "Park Slope Parents" an annual fee — created a competing online group and quickly signed up 15 members.

Craig Bromberg, a father of twin boys, said it took him only 10 minutes to get the user group "Park Slope Kids and Parents" online.

By god we look forward to a long and acrimonious relationship between these two competing messageboards of doom. "'I, for one, expected better of Park Slope Parents,' fumed one poster, who signed herself as 'Anna, mama to Alice, 15 months.'" Fucking forget it, Anna mama to Alice. This shit will get ugly.

Meanwhile, the hot topic of conversation on Williamsboard: "so i just found out a friend of mine took this girl's virginity using one of them NYC condoms last week."
[Pic via]

A few years ago, a huge internet war broke out on that very same forum when someone had the audacity to write that they'd found a "boy's hat," clearly a vicious assault on the gender-neutral safe space that was Park Slope. You can read all the emails from that epic philosophical battle here, if you're unclear on why Park Slope Parents are one of the worst cultural subgroups this side of the Minutemen.

Caught up? Okay. On to the new issue which threatens to tear the very fabric of the Park Slope Parents online community into two gender-unequal parts: it seems that the "moderators" of the group want to charge its 13,000(!) members a $25 fee to continue posting. They work hard and they want what's coming to them, okay? They've posted an incredibly lengthy FAQ to the outraged members describing why, exactly, they deserve the cash. (Idea: write shorter FAQs, feel less overworked!). Some highlights of this battle for the soul of the proletariat:

We'd like to thank the members of Park Slope Parents for their support, patience, and tough questions during this time of transition. One of the things that Park Slope Parents has been known for is our ability to disagree without name-calling and personal attacks. Many of you have been taken aback by the news of the membership fee. Many of you are angry and would imagine from the posts that some of you feel hurt as well. For that we are sorry, since as fellow parents (and in many cases friends) our desire is to be ever-supportive of each other.

Heh!

—-How is the money going to be spent?—-

The primary use of the money we raise through membership fees will be used to pay salaries for the current Park Slope Parents staff (Susan Fox and Rachel Maurer as well as other staff whom we hope will be hired), and to pay for the website fees and for costs associated with in-person events. Here's just a sampling of what these staff do:

* Research and post information and events useful to our members
* Find, train and manage moderators on membership approvals, message
approvals, questionable posts, nanny posts, advertisements and the like.
* Research and write surveys, program the survey, send requests and
follow ups to members, clean data, crunch data (solicit and manage
volunteers to help) create toplines and presentations of surveys (e.g.,
Nanny Survey, PSP feedback surveys)
* Write, collect, and convert online survey reviews to the website
(e.g., daycare reviews, camp reviews)
* Read and field ideas about possible PSP events (e.g., seminars,
book signings, Mommy and me exercise classes, etc)
* Address concerns from members about questionable ethics related to
PSP (e.g., bartering for PSP reviews, trolling for business, bad nanny
posts, prosletizing in the park)
* Answer questions from members about potential spammers/trollers,
research the company, follow up with the business, email Constant
Contact and other direct marketing corporations about abuse and follow
up until we reach a resolution
* Field the accuracy of messages posted to the list which may be
inaccurate
* Find, hire and manage computer consultants who update PSP website
software. Research changes to software and decide if upgrades are
needed.
* Review online community software and vet emails from Yahoo! groups
competitors
* Receive and answer emails from local organizations and businesses
about posts on Park Slope Parents (e.g, Methodist Hospital, CB6,
Brooklyn Children's Museum, businesses which receive negative reviews,
etc.)
* Manage non-moderator volunteers (Who offer to compile information
for the PSP Website, offer to help organize events, etc.)
* Create new content from Yahoo groups' summaries and create
links on the website and inform group of addition
* Organize, find volunteers, set up, attend, and follow-up after PSP
events (Park Slope Parents Concerts, Harvest Festival, Spring Fling,
Celebrate Brooklyn concerts)
* Create new categories of content for recommendations section when
needed

Sounds fucking horrible. I should warn you that that's just a portion of Question #1 from this 16-question FAQ, which features its own table of contents. Let's just do one more, shall we?

—-Online communities should be free. It's the members that make it what it
is. Why are you charging for something that someone else will provide
for free?—-

Yes, the Internet is "free" in the sense that it's an open worldwide network of networks. Yahoo! groups does not charge for groups and people can start another Yahoo! Group easily. There are many other groups (Urban Baby, Moms Connect, etc.) which you can join. The underlying goal of many of these other groups, however, is to sell your eyeballs, find ways to market to you, get you to click on their ads or buy their products so they can repeat this cycle. Website stickiness and use is the goal, not community building.

We have never tried to keep people from starting another list and we encourage people through "other online groups" reminders and website page that there are many other groups in other communities to join. People who oppose the new fee are welcome to start a new group and run that list in any way that they see fit.

Park Slope Parents is full of amazingly talented, educated, wonderful people who have, over these past 6 1/2 years, contributed a wealth of experience and support to the group. We thank each and every Park Slope Parents member, past and present, for their contributions and hope that this new development will not in any way decrease the support or feelings of camaraderie you feel to other parents.

However, the work that goes into maintaining is not 'free' if the group wants to maintain an online community of this size with a high level of civility and integrity, free of spam and too much commercialization. Clearly the organizers have made the list look like it runs itself, which is both a compliment and a barrier the acceptance of this new fee. Park Slope Parents has the character it does specifically because it is both carefully maintained and informed by a sense of responsibility to the community and the other members of the list. As Park Slope Parents grew, so did the behind the-scenes work created by that growth, including (for example): anonymous post protocols, moderation of
conversations to avoid "flame wars"; mindfulness of the impact discussions can have on local businesses and individuals; soliciting and maintaining commercial posts; posting events for schools and non-profits, planning community events, and oversight of caregiver listings.

Someone likened Park Slope Parents to a town square where people can freely converge and discuss issues. But even town squares need maintenance. The cracks in the sidewalk need to be fixed, the advertising flyers people leave need to be cleaned up, and if a riot breaks out, there need to be people who manage the situation so it doesn't cause permanent damage to the community.

... Someone else likened Park Slope Parents to a town square where witches are burnt alive. The pyre has been lit, my friends. This FAQ alone certainly represents $325K worth of work, but no matter; Park Slope mommies are loading their shotguns. The end of this will not be pretty. Hipster kickballers: this is your future.
[Pic via]

And you know who else thinks you're a pussy? The New York Observer. (Wow, that's bad!). They got in touch directly with your womenfolk, and they're all fantasizing about Don Draper, the heroic asshole star of Mad Men:

Don Draper is a bastard, most of these women will concede. He cheats on his pre-Friedan-ized wife, Betty, going through mistresses like packs of Lucky Strike cigarettes. He is stoic, handsome, emotionally stunted. “Obviously, he’s physically attractive, but his lack of conscience is upsetting,” said Megan Donis, 34, a television producer who lives in Fort Greene.

Your significant other thinks that all your progressive talk makes you and your role models a bunch of little ho bags!

“If you just compare him, to, say, Patrick Dempsey on Grey’s Anatomy, Dr. McDreamy comes off as a whiny little sensitive bitch,” said Lindsay Robertson, 31, a co-editor of Videogum.com, resident of Carroll Gardens and a self-described member of the “Draper estrogen brigade.”

You thought you could wear a fannie pack and button-up sweaters and still be manly enough to satisfy a hot-blooded woman such as yours?

In suburbia-inflected Park Slope, scores of such Stepford Husbands can be found roughhousing with their toddlers at the playground, hoisting strollers up brownstone steps or putting together a nice little risotto for dinner.

“In New York, in the age of the metrosexual and all that, especially in neighborhoods like Park Slope or Prospect Heights, it’s not that unusual. In fact, it’s pretty accepted,” said Timothy Spence, 39, who lives in Prospect Heights and stays home with a 2-year-old daughter while his wife works in Manhattan as a graphic designer. “There just aren’t those issues of masculinity.”

You fucking fool. Go run some errands while your wife pleasures herself to thoughts of a strong-jawed cad.

But even as men proclaim themselves happy homemakers, some of their wives, or “partners” to use the popular parlance of the day, express ambivalence. “You appreciate a stay-at-home dad—as feminists, this is what we wanted!—but marriage now is all about equal partnership,” said the anonymous Brooklyn mom. “It works as a social system, but it’s not terribly erotic.”

While you shop at the co-op for what you think is your wife's favorite food, she's dreaming about her real favorite food: Don Draper's cock!

She recalled a recent conversation between her husband and a SAHD of their acquaintance (the men had cooked, of course). “They were talking very intently about something that went on in preschool,” she said. “And I just completely glazed over, went a million miles away in my head. I thought, ‘Jesus, fellas, get a life!’”

By contrast: “Don Draper is a hero. He’s a dreamer.”

Overall, this has been one of the most satisfying articles I've read in some time. [by Irina Aleksander, who clearly thinks you are a pussy.]

"Despite the negative reaction about the changing table from Focus on the Family-types, Cavanah says people are bringing infants into the store, and their "Sexy Mama" workshop series has been well-received."

[NY Observer]

"I absolutely can't believe that they're going to put these United Colors of Benetton kids into a high-rise in the middle of downtown brooklyn. Talk about some post-apocalyptic shit. I grew up BLACK in New York, and even I didn't set foot in Downtown Brooklyn until I was 30..."

Now they got some camera-ready glossy-ass Real Dolls™ living in a rotating health club above where the old Church's fried chicken used to be.

...it's times like this I wish I was a real black guy, a thick darkskinned brotha from east flatbush with a big-ass 'fro pick, instead of my little software engineering over-educated ass, so that I could summon a crew of like-minded ignorant black gentlemen with nothing to live for such that we could go and beat the FUCK out of these little survivor wanabees and take a dump in their hottub."

Slope-bashing hit the big time last February, when The New York Times’ David Brooks pegged the ’hood as ground zero of the “hipster parent moment.” He wrote: “Can we please see the end of those Park Slope alternative Stepford Moms in their black-on-black maternity tunics who turn their babies into fashion-forward, anticorporate indie-infants in order to stay one step ahead of the cool police?”

Some of this sentiment, to be sure, springs from the area’s transformation in recent years: Trendy boutiques and bars have replaced bodegas on Fifth Avenue; and the neighborhood’s nickname has gone from nice, crunchy “Dyke Slope” to crowded, congested “No Park Slope.” According to a recent study, nearly half the drivers cruising at any given time are searching for a parking spot.

At least to non-locals (such as Brooks, who doesn’t realize that Williamsburg is actually where the “hipsters” are), the Slope seems to represent all that is reprehensible about gentrified New York and modern urban parenting. “Non–New Yorkers think of it disparagingly as a hipster alterna-playground, and Manhattanites think of it as a sanctimonious PC stroller derby, like one big suburban PTA meeting stuck in a food co-op,” says novelist Steven Johnson, a longtime Sloper who jokes on his blog that “all writers with young children in NYC are legally required to live” there. “To the outside world, it’s too cool for its own good, and inside New York, it’s not cool enough.”

Even many residents maintain a love-hate relationship with their nabe. Graphic designer and community organizer Aaron Brashear says that his family shops everywhere but jam-packed Seventh Avenue. “We will not walk there because of the stroller brigades,” he says. Slope psychotherapist Peter Loffredo has sworn off the kid-crammed Barnes & Noble, Starbucks and both Tea Lounges, and not because he doesn’t like the coffee. “They’re overrun pseudo Romper Rooms,” he says. [TONY] [photo: Ben Goldstein]

“Park Slope isn’t even part of Brooklyn anymore,' wrote one commenter on Gothamist. "It’s seriously a lower rung of hell, filled with hateful English teachers." And on Eater.com, one posted comment said: "Park Slope and its ilk are why NYC is becoming more and more pathetic by the day."

And the locals?

"Park Slope is a perfect storm of stereotypes that provoke derision,” said Steven Johnson, a local writer and a father of three. “Since Park Slope is the neighborhood most explicitly associated with urban parenting, it attracts the wrath of people who think parents have gone way overboard. I imagine there’s some horror fantasy fusion: the well-off Park Sloper and co-op member who is obsessed with his kids. Oh, wait, I just described myself.”

By the same token, when we talk about “people who hate Park Slope,” we are talking in large part about a certain stratum of the chattering, Twittering class. “This whole thing sounds like white people being annoyed by and jealous of other white people, which I find kind of funny,” said James Bernard, a union organizer and a member of the local Community Board 6. “I live in the Slope. I love it. I talk about it as much as anyone else does. But I founded a charter school near Brownsville and I don’t hear anyone talking about Park Slope over there.” [NYT] [photo: Nicole Bengiveno]