The backlash continues.

I actually enjoyed the  "I Hate Brooklyn" piece in this week’s New York magazine. Passionately written by Jonathan Van Meter, his article may well become the Emancipation Proclamation for all those who refuse to budge from Manhattan.

"I have an irrational fear of leaving Manhattan. For one thing, it’s so difficult to get here, to get in- in the first place, it feels like you might lose your spot should you leave it unattended, even for a day. For another, there is the ever-present anxiety that, God forbid, you might miss something…"

This writer certainly has an ax to grind about Brooklyn. And a lot of anxiety. There’s a certain pathos to what he has to say. Born and bred in South Philadelphia, he wants no part of what he left behind in the old neighborhood.

"A class-jumper like me can’t go home again. You can bet that Saturday Night Fever’s Tony Manero did not move back to Brooklyn during the dot-com boom because of the "amazing deals" to be had on townhouses in Sunset Park."

Van Meter left Philly to meet the holy grail of career ambition in New York. But he was also lured here by the action. "I wanted to go where the people danced," he writes.

Clearly his dislike of Brooklyn is a little over the top. But it’s  partially due to the fact that he’s lost so many friends to what he calls the new suburbia: "I detest Brooklyn because it has siphoned off so many that I once held so dear and scattered them to the winds in a borough so huge that it has no center, no beating urban heart that I’ve been able to find."

Sawing away at the world’s littlest violin, Van Meter sounds a little lonely now that Brooklyn has become so in. Well, he can keep Manhattan as far as I’m concerned. Brooklyn is getting a tad crowded anyway (see Postcard from the Slope_Weekend Crowds, May 3) and we’re not recruiting to our side of the river anymore.

Na Na Na.

Speaking of sides: is their going to be a big Manhattan vs. Brooklyn baseball game? A color war?  Are people gonna start sticking their tongues out at each other?

Can’t we be adults about this?

Nobody ever said that Manhattan wasn’t way more exciting than Brooklyn. Or that Brooklyn culture surpasses the cultural landscape of the borough next door. We’re not knocking the Metropolitan Museum or Opera, MOMA, the Guggenheim, the Frick, the 57th Street galleries, Chelsea, or what’s left of SoHo.

Who doesn’t miss the ease of a quick walk or bus ride to some great Manhattan destination for shopping, eating, seeing movies or theater? And if you work in Manhattan, walking to and from work is utterly luxiurous. Being able to stagger home after a late night at Area, the Mudd Club,  or the Tunnel (ah, but I date myself) was essential back in the go go eighties.

Most of us aren’t doing that anymore.

What’s Van Meter getting so agitated about? We all love Manhattan and couldn’t live without it. Brooklyn wouldn’t be Brooklyn if Manhattan wasn’t next door: it’s our lifeline to the bigger world beyond our little brownstone paradise.

Some of us just don’t choose to live there anymore. Or can’t afford it. Or prefer the scale of Park Slope, Ft. Greene, Prospect Heights or Kensington. And the diversity. The public schools. Prospect Park. Three bedrooms.

Van Meter’s closing paragraph moved me because it reveals so much about the writer himself (and maybe all of us): "Despite all of Manhattan’s recent letdowns-the unbearable expense, the runation of great neighborhoods, the disappearance of favorite bars and friends – I keep choosing the First Borough again and again not merely out of habit, but because giving up on Manhattan would be giving up on the dream."

This Brooklyn backlash is about so much more than meets the eye. It is at the very core of what we dream about, long for, aspire to become.

It is so very New York, isn’t it?

Does anyone read the New York Sun? I do now that I spent part of the last three days checking to see if Meghan Clyne’s article, for which I was interviewed, made it onto newsprint (or more to the point, into the web edition).

And what do you know? Her piece,  "Envy is in Air Surrounding Writer’s House," is in the May 2nd issue of the Sun.

Clyne seems to have rounded up quite a few local authors for her piece about the scuttlebutt surrounding Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Strauss’ purchase of a house and two lots on Second and Third Streets.  Lynn Harris, author of "Breakup Girl to the Rescue! A Superhero’s Guide to Love, and Lack Thereof," told Clyne:  "I’m envious of him because his house is extremely expensive and incredibly close to mine."

The author’s age seemed to be a humorous (or not so humorous) bone of contention for Ms. Harris: "What is he, 19 now? He should at least have a starter mansion first." .

"To Ms. Harris Mr. Foer’s new mansion symbolizes the objectionable aspects of his fiction. ‘What people say specifically is that his writing is precious and self-important … and it just makes me think that therefore he must have a precious and self-important brownstone,’ she said."

Nasty, nasty.

Clyne’s article did provide some much needed facts about the real estate deal. Doulgas Ellman Real Estate confirms that the Foer’s new residence is 7000-square feet and that it occupies not two but THREE lots. The garden alone covers a pair of 40-by-100-foot lots. For Clyne’s article, Douglas Elliman would not comment on the sale. But according to one of Clyne’s sources,  "the closing on the townhouse was not yet final, but the payment negotiated was less than $6.75 million."

THREE LOTS. They may have gotten a good deal afterall.

According to Clyne’s piece, and something I didn’t know: Jonathan Safran Foer was listed as one of the 50 most Loathesome New Yorkers in the New York Press article of the same name in 2003.  "He’s so precious, over-the-top," Alexander Zaitchik, editor of the New York Press said of Mr. Foer. "You just want to punch the guy every time he opens his mouth for an interview."

It’s the New York Press that really has the low-down on Foer’s book advances and movie deals: Ready for some sour grapes, friends?  New York Press writer Harry Siegel, reported that the novelist received a $500,000 advance for his first book, "Everything Is Illuminated"; $1 million for the movie rights (the film is to be released in August), and another $1 million for "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close."

My quote seems to fit into the portion of Clyne’s article that begins:  "Mr. Foer’s purchase as a landmark event in a real-estate boom that has been sowing hostility in those it has left behind, writers or not:"

And here’s where I come in:

"A Park Slope writer who says she was inside the residence, pre-Foers, during a house tour, Louise Crawford, said: "It’s hard for those of us living in our little apartments, with all of our envy, … feeling marginalized by this real-estate climate, to see anyone in that house."

I guess I said something like that. I should have been taking notes. But being the interviewee and not the interviewer, I was a tad flustered.

I must say, Clyne did manage to pull an article out of her debatable premise that the Park Slope literati is fuming about the Foer/Krauss purchase. I think it’s a stretch, but it is definitely having its 15 minutes.   

And so am I.  I wonder if anyone else read the article in the Sun?

-Louise G. Crawford

On Friday night, we could wait no longer. My husband, daughter, and I decided it was time to hear my son’s band. They’ve been practicing for months but he’d made it clear that he’d tell us when he was ready for us to come to a rehearsal. And that we weren’t to intrude before that time.

But we knew that all the other parents of band members had heard them play. It was time for us to have a chance too.

It was time.

Cool and Unusual Punishment is the name of my son’s band and they rehearse every Friday night in the drummer’s apartment. The drummer’s parents are extremely good natured about the noise. They actually keep the drum set in the living room.

Cool parents.

The people in their apartment building are good natured too.  Apparently last week they called while the group was rehearsing a song  called "Where is My Mind?" by the Pixies. the drummer’s mother came into the living room holding the telephone: "The woman downstairs would like to speak with you," she said ominously. The kids got nervous, of course, sure that she was calling to complain about the noise.  But it turned out that she loves the song, "Where is My Mind" and just wanted the band to play it again. And so they did.

Last night my son gave us the okay: he allowed us to come over and hear what the band has been up to. We sat on the couch in the drummer’s living room and listened for 15 minutes or more as the band played the four songs they’re been rehearsing for the gig at CBGB’s next month. They did two originals, "Where is My Mind," and the Queen classic,  "Another One Bites the Dust."

I don’t know what I was expecting but boy was I impressed. My son took up the bass less than a year ago. And it’s only since this CBGB’s gig that he’s gotten serious. He looked so grown up playing his bass, eyes closed, his long hair swinging into his face, moving his fingers up and down the fret board. As to the others, I really had no idea. But I have to say, they really blew my socks off. The music sounded great, the arrangements were interesting, and they play very well togther.

Walking home from the drummer’s apartment, my son kept asking my daughter what she thought of his band. She wouldn’t say at first, but later said it was too noisy and that she didn’t like it much.  I’d chalk it up to an acute case of sibling rivalry. Still, he looked a tad dismayed.

"What about us? We loved it," I said.

"I know, I know," my son answered. "That’s what parents are supposed to do. You guys love everything I do."  he said.

"Well, there are things I don’t love that you do like your grade in math," I retorted.

"Oh, I know. I meant the artistic stuff. You always like that…" he said.

Well, it’s nice to know he thinks I’m supportive.

We don’t know the date of the CBGB’s gig yet. I hope he decides to tell us because we’d like nothing more than to be in the audience rooting for the band. Then again, if he doesn’t invite us, that’s his perogative. This is something he’s really doing on his own. And like some very worthwhile things in life, sometimes you just don’t want your parents around.

I had a really sour taste in my mouth from those sour grapes I’d been eating. So I went for a run in Prospect Park yesterday around noon.

Oh the utter pleasure of running around the park on a sunny spring afternoon. Heart beating fast and limbs moving through air, many thoughts coagulated in my brain.

I found myself dwelling on the $6.75 million house that Jonathan Safran Foer bought (see Postcard April 28) as I was still struggling to put my finger on why everyone (including myself) is making such a big deal about it.

Sour grapes is definitely part of. That is, the natural tendency of New Yorkers (and other humans, too) to disparage what they cannot attain. The term comes from an Aesops Fables called "The Fox and the Grape:" 

"One hot summer’s day a Fox was strolling through an orchard
till he came to a bunch of Grapes just ripening on a vine which
had been trained over a lofty branch.  "Just the thing to quench
my thirst," quoth he.  Drawing back a few paces, he took a run and
a jump, and just missed the bunch.  Turning round again with a
One, Two, Three, he jumped up, but with no greater success.  Again
and again he tried after the tempting morsel, but at last had to
give it up, and walked away with his nose in the air, saying: "I
am sure they are sour."

But I digress. My run, as it always does, managed to cleanse my mind of all negative thoughts and real estate regrets. I am at the top of my world – in my own private Richard Meier glass apartment (as it were), when I run around Prospect Park alone.

Ah the mastery, the sense of power, the feeling that I am joyfully alive.

After one lap of the park, I ran out of the park on Third Street and ran past the Foer/Krauss residence. And guess what? I saw Jonathan S. Foer standing in the yard talking to a workman who was cleaning the limestone house next store. I gathered that Jonathan was urging the workmen to use more plastic covering so as not to spray debris into the Foer/Krauss garden.

I backtracked a bit and made quick eye contact with JSF who is a small man with dark curly hair and eyeglasses. Not tall, he looks like a hundred brainy guys I grew up with on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Standing there in his voluminous backyard, he looked oblivious to the fact that all of Brooklyn blogdom is a-quiver about his multi-million dollar purchase. And of course he didn’t have a clue that the runner who’d just run by was…

…OTBKB!

When I got back to the apartment, I told my husband and he suggested we bring the Foer/Krauss’ a box of sumptuous chocolates from The Chocolate Room on Fifth Avenue. Send out the old Park Slope welcome wagon. Because none of this is really about them. Personally, I’m glad to have highly literate and interesting people in our midst.

It’s sour grapes, that’s all. And a healthy dose of anger at the rich person’s neighborhood that Park Slope has become.

My post, "The House That Jon Bought" and Hugh Crawford’s photo of the Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss’  backyard-to-be seem to be making the rounds in blogland.

I just discovered that Curbed the New York Times’ real estate blog, reprinted Hugh’s photo and an excerpt from this blog about the house having great bones and a block deep backyard.

Brownstoner, a Brooklyn real estate blog, was the first to pick up the two photos and my comments. All this attention meant that nearly 1000 people have stopped by OTBKB in the last 24 hours.

Wednesday afternoon, I got an e-mail from Meghan Clyne, a staff writer at The New York Sun: "I’m working on a story about Jonathan Safran Foer and his new house, and I read your blog about it," she wrote. "I’m wondering whether we could talk by phone. Could you give me a call as soon as you get a chance? I’d really appreciate it. Thanks much, and look forward to talking with you soon."

Meghan and I finally spoke Wednesday evening by cell phone.  "You’ve been there," she said. "is it, like, a really huge house?" I explained that I’d seen it many years ago on a house tour and that I didn’t have a good recollection of the layout but I did remember that it was a big, wide house. More like a mansion than a typical brownstone. 

Judging by her questions, Clyne seemed  to be working a very specific angle for her story. She wanted to know what the Park Slope literati was thinking about Jonathan and Nicole’s purchase. "Are the writers of Park Slope angry and/or envious that this young writer has the money to buy this big house?" she asked (I am paraphrasing here as I wasn’t taking notes).

Truth is, I really have no idea how the other writers of Park Slope feel about the Foer/Krauss purchase. I heard a non-writer today say, "What do they need with such a big house?" But I haven’t actually talked to any writers about it.

But I’m sure envy is a factor. Envy makes this city go round. And writers can be an envious lot. But that wasn’t really my beef with the whole thing. Personally I’m not that high and mighty about the art and commerce thing. I don’t believe that true artists have to be starving in garrets.

But a part of me feels  bad (but not that bad) that these two serious artists are going to be known as the couple who spent $6.75 million on a house in Park Slope. The timing seems really odd: they both have new novels out AND they decide to buy this mega house. Plus Nicole’s publicity photo is way too sexy, her blouse way too low.

I’d fire their publicist. It’s too much at once. If it were me, I’d want people to focus on my literary accomplishments and not how much money my in-laws have or how much Jonathan has stocked away from his bestsellerdom or how gorgeous Nicole is.ou thi

Could it all be a marketing ploy?

God knows, it’ll probably sell books. And in this day and age, that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?  The hokey pokey that is.

I did tell Clyne that their reputations as serious writers may get blurred a little bit by this media frenzy. Clyne seemed excited when I said that. "You think their reputations are going to be blurred?" she repeated. It was probably the only thing I’d said that meshed with her story.

I hastened to add that I think Nicole Krauss is a really talented writer and that the excerpt from her new novel, "The History of Love," published  in the New Yorker last year was absolutely spellbinding. Jonathan’s "Everything is Illuminated" was also a powerful work (I haven’t read the new one). Not only are they a real estate power couple, but they’ve got bucket loads of talent, too.

For me, what’s irritiating about the price tag on that house is that it epitomizes the state of real estate in Brooklyn right now. I’m probably not the only one who feels completely marginalized by what’s going on out here; the sense that this is becoming a rich person’s neighborhood. I will never be able to buy a house and that was always my dream. Being priced out of your own community feels very lonely and very sad.

It seems to me that Brooklyn has moved beyond gentrification into the realm of big-money development (and possibly corruption). Just look at the condos on Fourth Avenue and everywhere else, the coming Whole Foods, Ikea, the Atlantic Terminal Mall, the proposed stadium and on and on. It’s all about money and politics now. Maybe it always was.

Space is power in this city. Most of us are crammed into too-small apartments. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was jealous of all that space Jonathan and Nicole are getting.  And I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was jealous of all the acclaim and money they’re receiving for their work. It’s a writers dream to be well-reviewed, read by the public AND paid the big bucks for what you do.

And to have a big, big house to do it in: that’s making it in my book.   

From the sidelines, we gawk, we gossip, we kvetch. Our ambition is fueled by envy. Our satisfaction mitigated by the desire for more. And then we take the moral high ground when somebody actually makes it to the top and gets the perks we want.

That’s the way it is in this town. At every level, I might add. At every level.   

I’ve actually been inside the house. The house that authors Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss are buying for $6.75 million. It was on the Park Slope House Tour years and years ago. As everyone knows, those house tours are a form of real estate porn. You get to be a voyeur, to see what it looks like inside those houses you walk by day after day. Fantasies abound as you pass. Ah the envy, the longing, the sense that such wonderful lives are lived beyond the stoops of those brownstone and limestone glories.

It’s a nice house the house they’re buying. And not only that: the yard goes from Second Street all the way to Third Street. That’s right. It includes the empty lot you pass when you’re walking to Prospect Park on Third Street (close to PPW). The current owners keep their SUV in the vacant garden lot and they have a fancy wood playground set there. Every time we walk by, my daughter invariably says:  "I really, really want to try that playground one day. There’s no-one ever in there."  And then I have to explain that it is not a public playground but a private yard for a boy and a girl who never use their fantastic playground equipment.

The thought just baffles my daughter’s mind. I figure they’re at their Hamptons beach house most weekends so they just don’t have the time to use that glorioius playground that my daughter wants to try.

The house on Second Street that the Foer-Krauss’ are buying is super deluxe; a to-die for brownstone. The decor, however, is ugly, ugly ugly. Overdone wall treatments, expensive appliances, bad art. Way too much money combined with  way too little taste. That was my feeling, anyway. But the house has what you call great bones. Really fantastic bones, I would say and lots of historic detail. I would be MORE than happy to live there. And so would you.

But that yard. It’s a yard where a house might be. It is so super duper luxurious to have all that space. In Brooklyn. What a garden it could be. What flowers. Trees.

I’m kind of excited about Jonathan and Nicole moving there. I bet they’re going to do wonderful things to that house; big, comfortable writing rooms, a  library or two with shabby chic sofas, no doubt. A voluptuous living room, an inviting kitchen with a view of their gigantic backyard. 

I’m glad that place is going to a couple of talented writers – maybe they’ll even use their gigundo backyard. It’ll be great for daydreaming, star gazing the Brooklyn sky, and hours and hours spent reading on a hammock.

That’s what I would do.

*Monday night Hugh Crawford went out and shot those pictures of Jonathan and Nicole’s backyard-to-be from Third Street. This and all the Postcard from the Slope pictures are by Hugh Crawford in case anyone was wondering.