NOTE: This is a pretty long blog entry. But, it feels out a lot of emotion that has been going on in my life since my wife and I left Brooklyn last fall. In a sense, it's for my own need to mature, grow up as it were. It's not so much about community values, so much in the sense that I'm much more in tune with my community in the neighborhood where I now live, than when I spent most my time in Park Slope, Brooklyn, chasing my dreams. Well, I did meet my wife there. So, I guess some dreams can come true.
The New York Times ran an article today titled: "Park Slope: Where Is the Love?". There's been a lot of anti-Slope buzz on New York blogs, attacking the next big MelRose Place with hate and disdain.
For those not familiar with the Slope, it's a brownstone lined neighborhood in central brooklyn, the shape of a trapazoid that runs about twenty-five blocks north-south, and five avenues wide. On one side of the neighborhood is Prospect Park, which runs most the length of the eastern border, with the exception of about three extra blocks to Prospect Ave., the technical southern border, though the issue of dispute amongst old and new residents.
Current residents say that jealousy fuels the hate toward the overwelming new number of wealthy families who have moved into town homes that were $30,000 in the 1970s, and now go more than $1 to $5 million. The critics site their sarcasm at the brand that has been attached to a place that once had an edgy authenticity--be it on the organic side.
For me, Park Slope will always be that neighborhood where I met my wife, and then had to move out because we couldn't afford to raise a family there. In late 2001, when I first moved to Brooklyn, the Slope was one of the few neighborhoods close to Manhattan where life felt more like Sesame Street than Spike Lee's Crooklyn. There was an adolescence in the neighborhood then, a sort of "Coming of Age," which is such a powerful theme in so many of the authors who live in the area; a group of writers who produce what some critics call the "Brooklyn books of wonder." Many of these authors take great steps to keep the neighborhood as it was, a sort of Neverland. But the one thing that stands firm in New York is this: where there is money to be made, especially in real estate, there is change on the horizon.
walk through any of the neighborhoods in New York that now charge insane prices for housing, and I bet you'll find the remains of an old slum, the kind of neighborhood who had its authenticity defined in a Lou Reed lyric or Jack Kerouac verse.
I left living just north of the Slope to move to Chicago, the Brooklyn of the Midwest (it's like living in New York without Manhattan). When I returned several years ago, I could no longer afford to live on the north border of the Slope,finding myself forced down to South Slope on 16th Street, one of those blocks that doesn't hit Prospect Park. It was like living in Jacksonville, Alabama, and telling people I lived in Atlanta. Though, for me, it was still the Slope, where I could BBQ on the back porch or play guitar on my little stoop out front under the trees. However, then my rent jumped up to $2,200, for a 750 sq ft 1 bedroom. So, my fiance and I were pushed further south into brooklyn, all the way to Bay Ridge, which is like living in western Arkansas and saying you live in Atlanta. Eventually, we were priced out of Bay Ridge (go figure?), and ended up moving into Manhattan, to the northern edge of the Island in a neighborhood called Inwood. InWhere?
The neighborhood we live in now is much different than brooklyn. Even though we're in that part of the Island where people say, "Wow, I didn't realize Manhattan went up that far," we still, nevertheless, live in Manhattan. Our side of the neighborhood, which is east of Broadway, is one of the few places where you can get space for your money on this Island. We're a half block from the A Train for almost half the price of my rent in the South Slope. Of course, it comes with the headaches that the Slope tries to mask (think Park Slope early 1970s, or more recent crown Heights). But, there is truly an authenticity that exists in this neighborhood, an edge that can seem as hard as Manhattan bedrock at times, but an energy of the New America that makes New York something new and untapped by the rest of the country.
It's a long way to say it, but as the scripts begin to go through their first draft for the new series on Park Slope, rest easy critics. Because one of the great things about this city is that authenticity never leaves, it just moves around from time to time.
I like our neighborhood for the energy it possesses. Despite the trash on the streets and mysterious cars pulling up in front of buildings where packages are exchanged, there's also kids playing ball in the street, mothers walking their children to the train or to buy cherry ice on the corner. There's the old man selling Dominican patties for a buck; the man who sells shoes and everything else he can find out of a small store front where he seems to also live; there's the parades for dominican Independence Day, and the loud Spanish preaching echoing out of the Jesus Saves church on Thayer Street. And in all this, there is a sense of New York left untouched by branding. There's a real community. No fenses, no hiding on these streets, no $1,000 strollers here. But the mobile clinic and Good Will tables have lines going down the block.
there was a time when brooklyn hung on me like a dream hangs on you minutes after awakening. I came to New York dreaming of a life in Park Slope. But, now I'm living in Manhattan, where things are much more real. I don't mean Park Slope isn't real. I don't hold the grudge against it like many other writers. However, there's a time to grow up, and moving onto Manhattan raises your awareness to the reality that exists in New York City--to its diversity, its conflict between classes, its sharp divide between rich and poor within not just a couple of blocks, but on the floor beneath you in a six story rent controlled building.
Eventually--it's bound to happen--all those baby filled strollers in Park Slope are going to be retired. Children are going to outgrow there small bed rooms, families will sel their homes for less than what they thought they would get when they bought them in the early 2000s, and they'll move either Upstate, or to Chicago, or Boston, or Savannah. This city is, and always will be, in flux. It just so happens that the Hicksville that gave us Billy Joel is now just across the East River. But, stick around long enough, and it will change. All things change. Just ask any New Yorker. .
