A bunch of locals spoke to Time Out Kids for an article called, Why Do People Hate Park Slope. The article is out now in the June issue of the magazine on page 8.
The reporter, Lynn Harris, sent an email to those who were quoted to prepare them. She thinks that the tone of the piece was "far more snarky and anti-Slope than her original version."
The word smugness managed to migrate into the piece and it wasn’t her word. I sort of expected snarky because of the subject matter. Here’s the lede:
"It had to happen, Now that Brooklyn’s brownstone-laden Park Slope is more fashionable, it has become de rigueur to bash, slam, and otherwise trash-talk the nabe. The Slope has arrived — with its famous authors and Hollywood actorsensconced in fancy fansions — and so have its detractors."
She talked to Steven Berlin Johnson, Susan Fox, Catherine Bohne, Peter Loffredo, a frequent commenter on OTBKB and Park Slope Parents and others, including me. What I was getting at was why Park Slope is easy to hate — because it seems like we’ve got it all. We were easier to love when we were scrappier, schleppier Legal Aid lawyers and social workers. Now it’s rich people in fancy brownstones with a great school and a small town feeling. It seems like we have it all.
Who wouldn’t hate Park Slope?
I happen to live in park slope and i love it with all of my heart.
everyone close to me lives in park slope.
i may have friends who live in new jersey or boston, but it’s not because they hate park slope.
park slope has everything you could want, nice people, great schools of all varieties, the most amazing park in the universe, zoos, museums, libraries, and welcoming homes. just because you don’t have that doesn’t mean you should hate us for loving it.
living in park slope is one of my favorite essences of life, so don’t you say that it’s so hate-able when you know how amazing it is.
Park Slope is a wonderful place. Great atmosphere. Great neighborhood. Just an all around cool place to be in New York City. In the end, though, that is the very reason I hate park slope. Not because of all those things I said earlier, but because I’m too poor to ever live there. That’s why I hate it. Then again, if I could afford it with my present income, chances are: it wouldn’t be Park Slope or it would be somewhere in the far reaches of Queens.
I grew up on President Street and have seen the area transform dramatically. Whereas Sixth Avenue was once the median between the “have’s” of Seventh Avenue and the “have not’s” of Fifth Avenue, there has been a steady trickling down of yuppies from Seventh onto Fifth and below, pricing out the blacks and browns who once called the place home. It makes me sick actually.
I’m tired of trustfund babies, white hipsters and others of that ilk who have nothing but antipathy for minorities pricing out the idigenous folk who gave the place it’s native flair for decades. Such is Brooklyn’s sad tale.
I love park slope.
People aren’t so close minded. The question is why do people hate Park Slope. It’s the double edge sword of diversity. Many people gravitate toward people like themselves- it reduces conflict in the short term. In the city many people hold the view that although things could be better between all these different groups, it is only through living together and learning about one another that we will learn appreciation and tolerance. It is what we want for the our kids and for the world. I think Mark Twain said that travel is death to prejudice and in New York we have the rare opportunity to live in the world encapsulated. Park Slope has incredible diversity (maybe it could have more but compared to other places it really is something special). In my building we have an woman who is Chinese- Indian, an Irish guy, a Argentinian gay man, a Costa Rican gay man, a Jewish-Irish man, an Jewish woman who was born in Park Slope and a white guy from the upper east side. We have bankers, artists, a teacher, a judge and a stay-at-home mom. I’m sure that your buildings and blocks are the same. So what is it really that people have a problem with? I hear again and again about the sense of self entitlement but it may really be that people are so passionate about wanting the world to be a better place that they forget to stop and appreciate what it is that they have already. I don’t know.
My view is that Park Slope is a pretty good place to live. It has good parks, good schools, good transportation options, lots of good restaurants and easy access to cultural institutions. I like most of the people I know on my block and I have some good friends in walking distance. I certainly run into a fair share of people I don’t care for. It is also the city, so there are people on top of me and things I have to put up with that annoy me – like dog poop near my stoop and noisey neighbors. Its not perfect and I can think of a couple of other places where I would be happy living. But at the end of the day, the good outweighs the bad and I think I have it pretty good.
I get annoyed by people who hold out “the past” as some utopian time when we didn’t lock our doors and everything was perfect. It is not perfect now and it never was.
How can people be so closed-minded about whoever wants to move into any neighborhood? This is the melting pot city of the melting pot country and what makes it so great is that it includes all kinds of people. It’s funny, too, because my friends who have lived in Park Slope the longest (10+ years) are the rich lawyers and it’s the artists who’ve somehow moved here in the past couple of years by selling places they bought for peanuts in Manhattan long ago.
most of the bonus nook i get is from the string-of-pearls set. i guess that’s how it works on wall street, but i really miss the occasional mouthful of armpit hair, you know?
Tommy really is right. I just get so hot with the “rich lawyers and stock people” comments. My bad.
though i suspect the “tommy” above is my dad and i haaaaaate agreeing with my father, i agree with tommy wholeheartedly.
we just moved here a month ago and we love it. maybe we’re in the wrong part of park slope, but our neighbors in our brownstone are down-to-earth and friendly, and the parents we meet at the nearby playgrounds have been nothing but nice. i’ll admit that we have had to wipe some of the 321 slobber off our faces from the occasional overexcited mom or dad, but there are worse things to be excited about than a respected public school…
I am not obnoxious and I do not like the suburbs and people who know me love me and my very sexy husband and I have lots of fun. I’m trying to figure you out. What part got you so mad? What would make you suggest that living with me would be hell- although it is pretty hot! Do you disagree that you get a great deal of unwanted comments/advice in the Slope? Let’s clear this up. Maybe I gave too many examples. You should come to my BBQ or have a glass of wine on my stoop. Is it the comments about liberal hypocrisy? You would probably think that I was liberal if you met me- I love live and let live people which in theory is what I think liberal people want to be. I guess I should be more accepting of the people who “just want to help”. Actually thanks, I see that I could find a way to embrace them. With that logic, I will even try to think better of the suburbs. Is BBQ’ing on the sidewalk a bad thing (not that I’ve ever really done it). I’ve just noticed that in other neighborhoods the families are out front cooking and it looks like such fun! Sometimes I think that when things rate too high on the fun-o-meter people start to scream. Your thoughts?
Jessica – your problem is that no one likes you. Go move to the suburbs when you can be as obnoxious as you like and no one has to even know you are alive. I feel sorry for your husband (if you are even still married). Being with you must be a lot like living in Hell.
Funny, I moved to Park Slope 15 years ago with my banker husband and we think that it is self-righteous, prying, demanding liberals- like the ones that have run the Food Coop for years and had the same rules and facist ways for as long as I can remember- I never did join. If I sit on my stoop to have a cigarette someone will tell me that I should quit. When I planted my garden someone stopped to say that I should trim my tree. When I play music in my house my rear neighbor screams and calls the cops. My upstairs neighbor told me that I couldn’t burn incense because she didn’t like it. Another rear neighbor calls to tell me that my dogs look sad when they’re outside. My next door neighbor was sued for $300,000. because someone tripped over a garbage bag at the curb. The bottom line is this is not community because in a community people like one another and their differences. Differences get a ton of liberal lip service in Park Slope. The age old, I am open-minded meaning “you can come into my circle” not “I will draw my circle big enough to include you” rules the liberal narrow mindedness here. I am taking my banker husband and moving to Clinton Hill and I will be drinking on my stoop and cooking some bbq on the sidewalk on my last day. I am even going to play some music outside. Watch I’ll get arrested. That is why people hate Park Slope.
And just to add to the stroller mafia comments. I do remember the pecking order of home birth, midwife, doctors, labor relief (obviously the lowest) and then of course you could get yourself nearly killed for not breast feeding.
What I liked was the blog that ran a contest to see who could come up with the best slogan for Park Slope. The top three or four slogans were all very funny. I can’t remember them all, but I do remember the winner:
“Park Slope: What’s Ours is Ours”
LOL
You know what I love? All this bickering! It’s wonderful. It’s so silly. It’s all so inconsequential.
We live in New York, which is like a cluster of central European countries where each neighbor is alternatively allied or is at war with his/her neighbor. Get over yourselves. It’s such a waste.
I love living in Park Slope, with the park, my yard, my neighbors, the streets, and all the quirkiness that the neighborhood has all around it. I have no delusions about living in some mythical utopia. I love my old house, and I love raising my son here, and getting to know my neighbors who were born and raised in their homes. I want to make my life here, and I would rather worry about the bigger issues: will my son live in a better world than this one, will we achieve true equality in this country, and will my heirloom tomatoes come in this year or be eaten by the squirrels?
Really, people, enjoy your lives. Stop bickering over inconsequential trivial crap when you can actually better yourselves and your surroundings. You’ll all be dead soon.
I read Lynn’s article and thought it was spot on. But it doesn’t change my love for my neighborhood and the fact that they’ll take me out of it feet first.
Park Slope is yesterdays news. Boerum Hill is the new Park Slope!
Here’s what “ex-sloper” had to say: “the same thing happened to the Slope that happened to the West Village, Chelsea, the East Village, and any other neighborhood that gay people, artists, and progessive white people move into. Rich lawyers and stock people move in. They send their kids to private school, and live otherwise selfish lives… as people attempt to ‘buy’ into the slope rather than build it as a community, all those things everyone loves about the place will go away.”
I have a question, ex-sloper, from a sociological point of view: Why can’t gay people, artists and progressive white people also be rich? In fact, why can’t they even be rich lawyers and stock people? The very notion that you have to be some kind of sold-out, in the box, selfish automaton in order to have financial wealth is part of the problem. Integrity doesn’t come inherently with poverty anymore than corruption comes automatically with wealth. The “starving artist” is a paradigm, not an irrevocable condition. One could argue that the people who fled Park Slope and the other “hip” communities that you mentioned, did so rather than open themselves up to wealth and prosperity in such a way that they could have thrived in their chosen community. People chose to be transient for a variety of reasons. I’m all for bashing the robotic Stepford families in Park Slope, mainly for the damage they do to their kids, but let’s do it without imagining ourselves or any other adult groups to be helpless victims.
I love/hate it and I live smack in the middle of the high-rent district. We are a bit smug and I have a positive antipathy for bugaboos and I live in fear that I will make a fool of myself with some resident celeb. I would probably chase Steve Buscemi down the street given half a chance. And our building has been over-run lately with corporate lawyers and PR execs in search of themselves while banning undo childish noise from the halls. But we were always a bit self-satisfied and there is a lot to love about the neighborhood. I still make friends everywhere I go. Even when I’m hating it, I still love PS.
I’d love to love the Slope, and did when it was a community. But the same thing happened to the Slope that happened to the West Village, Chelsea, the East Village, and any other neighborhood that gay people, artists, and progessive white people move into. Rich lawyers and stock people move in. They send their kids to private school, and live otherwise selfish lives.
You can’t love or hate a whole neighborhood. But as people attempt to “buy” into the slope rather than build it as a community, all those things everyone loves about the place will go away.
Money just can’t recreate the qualities of neighborhood. So as Park Slope becomes a parody of its former self, a Disney version of brownstone Brooklyn, it will engender more “hate” from those who see through the hipocrisy.
I like Park Slope and everyone else can kiss my ass.
If you hate Park Slope don’t go there.
I do hate it a bit because I can no longer afford to live there. But, Kensington Gal… they’ll be hating Kensington someday, too. Maybe.
Now where have I heard that before, Abe? “If you don’t like it here, go somewhere else?” Isn’t that a typical right wing response to anyone who criticizes the current administration in Washington about its self-righteous (and consequently disastrous) approach to running the country? Oh, yes, and not coincidentally, it’s also what you’re told when you challenge the Park Slope Food Coop’s work shift policies. Right. Park Slope? Love it or leave it. That’s certainly an attitude that could lead to the betterment of any community!
Back in the day…. wah wah wah!!! You sound like such a whiner.
Someone always hates something. Its usually based on ignorance or jealousy. What a stupid article. If you don’t like Park Slope so much, go somewhere else.
I think Park Slope is easy to hate b/c the people who are moving there feel so freakin’ entitled… back in the day it was about community. Now that all those brownstones have turned over its about who has what. In the late 90s I lived here and my I-banker friends laughed and guffawed… why Brooklyn!? Now, they are moving here! No joke! One just bought a 1 family in prime area for a few millions. Anyway, what gets me is the people who make communitys what they are always get priced out. (or were the ones who turned over thier first co-op and had enough dough to buy a house out here)