gentrification
We stumbled onto the words of an angry, succinct blogger who calls himself
Blognigger; he's black and a software engineer and lives in
Park Slope. He's at the forefront of several wars: he's black in America,
and in a mostly-white neighborhood, which he will soon have to leave: "I make $106,000 a year, and I'm a pauper in Park Slope. No, literally - we have to leave. I have two kids and my rent has just been raised to $3500 a month. I've lived here since 1999 (when 5th avenue was still a total shithole), and now I'm going to have to uproot my family and move out of brooklyn... I can't afford to live here anymore without my wife doing online surveys and shit to supplement our income." But what are his thoughts on the Real World decamping to downtown Brooklyn for their upcoming season?
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stroller derby
So yesterday the
Times weighed in on everyone's most detested yuppie mecca,
Park Slope. Today, the new issue of
Time Out New York piles on! "Websites like Gawker and Curbed crackle with anti-Slope invective, hurled at the twin bugaboos of the 'Stroller Mafia' (pushy, indulgent yuppie parents) and the bleeding-heart 'People’s Republic of Park Slope' (headquartered at the Food Co-op)."
Update: Via email from Maureen Shelly: "Hi Ian. I'm the EIC of Time Out Kids. Just wanted to point out that the Park Slope piece you turned up is from last year — not the upcoming June issue. Our piece was also by Lynne Harris, who penned the Times story. I guess she felt she had more to say on the subject."
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Magical Brooklyn
"To its detractors,
Park Slope is both haunt and hatchery of New York’s smuggest limousine-liberal yuppies. It is, if I may further summarize the bad publicity, overrated and hypocritical. Its glorious brownstone blocks and jaunty cafes are awash in carpetbagger entitlement, ruled by snarling 'Stroller Nazis.' The neighborhood is a ground zero of all that is twee and lame. It is, God forbid, the suburbs." Well done. But what do the anonymous blog commenters have to say,
New York Times?
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in bad taste
Cyanide Death Rocks
Park Slope! Yes, it may be a slow news day, but a senior citizen died under mysterious, poison-y circumstances in a posh neighborhood of Brooklyn. With the Pope finally gone, this gives the tabs a pittance of material. [via
Gothamist]
we hate your kids
An actual letter from an actual
Park Slope parent, sent out this afternoon on the "Park Slope Parent" listserv, does all the work for us when making fun of the uptight helicopter anal-retentiveness of this self-fascinated breed! The problem?
"My daughter's good friend was at another friend's house for a playdate and the children were left unsupervised in a room with a computer with no software protection on it for inappropriate content... They googled 'naked women and men', were on for quite a while, and you can imagine what they saw (everything, according to the mom, videos and all)." Adds our tipster, "If you Google the search in question, you'll get a Youtube video, a feminist porn site and an essay by Naomi Wolfe." We'll show you the full email and then we'll Google "naked women and men" and "show" you something else!
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shut up, brooklyn
On that bastion of important community issues known as the
Brooklynian messageboard, a user named BrownStoneOwner has a question about taking her doggie to Prospect Park: "I noticed recently that whenever I take my frenchie and poodle off the leash in Prospect Park, I get screamed at by people playing soccer or cricket to put them back on the leash. These people are usually very rude and agresssive." But wait, there's more! (As if advertising your brownstone-owning status isn't annoying enough.) Not only are these people
rude, but they're also
black and
Mexican.
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parochial news
All writer Lynn Harris did was ask people on
the Brooklynian messageboard why people hate
Park Slope, and all that it represents, so much. (She's working on an article for
New York.) The brownstone neighborhood used to be cheaper and down-to-earth, with lots of lesbian couples and artistes, but these days it's known for armies of anal-retentive richie moms with their passive-aggressive strollering. The article will "focus not just on WHAT people say they hate about Park Slope, but also WHY the hate seems to have become a meme of its own. Why PS and not other gentrified, Bugaboozled parts of Manhattan? Why has Park Slope become shorthand for all that is evil and twee?"
Answer our poll!
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urban anthropology
Among creative, evolved-ish
Park Slope parenting types, bringing your kid to the bar is perfectly acceptable. After all, what better way to express your feelings of, "I'm not sure I'm really ready or equipped to be a parent! I still haven't been a rock star/fashion designer yet!" Last week, Union Hall put an end to nonsense and banned strollers. Outrage ensued—how dare parents not be allowed to drag their spawn to whatever inappropriate venue they want? It was babies versus a bar, and the babies won, the
The Brooklyn Paper reports.
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there goes the neighborhood
It's not just
babies and lesbians anymore in
Park Slope. There are hostages too.
Gridskipper's Hunter Walker lives there and
files this report, "The yuppified Sunday evening calm in Park Slope has been shattered by what is reportedly a hostage situation in a brownstone on 9th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. Neighbors heard gunshots and say that a man inside the home has taken hostages. The block has been roped off and the area is swarming with police personnel including a hostage negotiation team and a bomb squad robot." [
Gridskipper]
There's a tree in
Park Slope and on this tree there is a ziploc bag, crucified there with silver pushpins. And in that bag there is a bag and on that bag there is a note and on that note there is some writing and that writing, it does say: "Hey You—The Juvenile/Adult Delinquent, Stop cutting off the bag and get an education and maybe even a life!" And no one notices that the punctured tree is silently weeping for where it is and to whom it gives shade. [
Passive Aggressive Notes]
From the first
MenuPages review of
Park Slope Restaurant, a diner in that oft-caricatured neighborhood: "Thankfully a dying breed. Ever since buying my brownstone here a year ago and becoming a resident of Park Slope, I've been put off by the type of greasy spoon this place represents. Thankfully, month by month, these types of places are being pushed out to make way for more refined establishments more suitable for the next gen of Park Slope: educated, affluent and discerning. No thanks, I don't need burned toast, mushy bread,
manufactured pasta in red sauce and other tired dishes just because the're [sic] cheap. I want to pay a lot for my food and get a lot for what I've spent. When my broker said 'Park Slope is the next Chelsea," and I said "but what about the Park Slope Restaurant?' she waved her and dismissively and said 'the days of that place and the cheesy dollar stores that go along with it are numbered.' I hope so. I'm growing impatient." Even if this is parody, it's still chilling.
So the Scores strippers maybe shouldn't have gone to the
Daily News with word of
their date with all the Park Slope kids. Now the school has disinvited them from the party and may cancel the event altogether. What has our society come to when a group of exotic dancers can't hand out candy to children? [
NYM]
no sexy witches
Strippers handing out candy to
your children!
It could happen to you! (If you live in
Park Slope.) According to the
Daily News, a half-dozen Scores exotic dancers are heading to Brooklyn's Middle School 51 to work the candy booths at this Saturday's Haunted Halloween Carnival Benefit for the Puppetry Art Theatre. And parents are
outraged! Well, like one parent is outraged. It's Park Slope, parents would probably only get up in arms about this if one of the strippers said Carroll Gardens kids were better behaved or something.
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A
Park Slope mom is incensed! It's Tuesday, and also, her daughter has been issued a warning letter from the Sanitation department for 'vandalizing' her own stoop with a chalk drawing after a neighbor called 311. Says the mom: "Admittedly, this drawing was not her best work—she usually sticks to cheerful scenes, not abstracts, frankly—but to send a warning letter like that is outrageous." Also: "This whole thing is ridiculous." Yes. [
Brooklyn Paper]
school daze
Last week's very special issue in the
New York Times about seventeen-year-olds in the city caused something of a scandal with a certain set of
Park Slope parents—a group usually known for their calm, undemanding approach to life. David Helene, a resident of
Cobble Hill and a senior at Packer Collegiate Institute,
discussed the differences between his school and rival Brooklyn institution Berkeley Carroll: "I don't go to Park Slope much. I have friends who live there, but I think the kids who go to Berkeley Carroll are kind of cocky. The partying is also way more intense there than over here. They drink a lot more than we do, and I've heard that the drug use may be a little more." And now there's big trouble.
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to serve man
Spotted at the
Park Slope Farmer's Market on Saturday. "Evidently," notes the photographer, "not everyone in Park Slope is a vegetarian."
Gawker
