Man Made Lake

The Park Slope Blues

   Park Slope has everything I want in a neighborhood. Lots of trains, a humongous park, good grocery stores, loads of restaurants and bars, stunning architecture, garbage-free sidewalks, huge trees on skinny streets, even cyclists. So why do I hate every fucking inch of it?

   Who am I to complain about yuppies? I drink fancy coffee and read the New Yorker; I despise the dollar stores and nail salons that dot this city. So what if there are "children's clothing boutiques" and doggie daycares and a million other frivolous ventures? I don't exactly take full advantage of the fortune tellers or the Polish bookstores in my own neighborhood. The stroller jockeys are obnoxiously self absorbed, but at least they clean up the sidewalk in front of their house.

   I've concluded that I hate Park Slope because it's static. It's come all the way from bombed out slum to hippie haven to rich rich rich, and it has nowhere left to go. No longer a neighborhood in transition, I'm unable to enjoy the unique entity Park-Slope-circa-2008. It's just Park Slope and it will always be that way: a stable demography and a stable streetscape- in other words, dull.

Montgomery Place:

More Red Hook

Red Hook, Brooklyn

   Scheduled to be the next big thing, Red Hook ultimately missed speculators expectations because it breaks two fundamentals laws of New York real estate:
   1. Stay away from water.
   2. Stay close to the subway.

   The story of any city's social geography is always tied up in conflicting land uses. Conventional wisdom says a prospective buyer should avoid noteworthy sources of crime and air pollution. In New York, historically speaking, industry has always hugged the water and where industry left it was replaced by public housing and freeways. It follows that 5th Avenue, running down the exact middle of Manhattan Isle, as far from water as possible, is the city's most famously rich and stylish thoroughfare.

   Proximity to the subway is perhaps a more intuitive issue, however it is a phenomenon largely unique to New York within the United States. The outerboroughs have the worst commute times in the country and you get what you pay for.

   There are noteworthy exceptions to these rules being built right now along much of Manhattan's west side. Perhaps the final clincher for Red Hook was the fact that there is still a fair amount of functioning industry along it's waterfront, including a not-so-small container terminal. 

   Whatever the case, I couldn't be happier to see a sliver of stability in the city's streetscape and demography. Gentrification isn't so much a welcome opportunity for investment as it is in some cities; here it's more like an outbreak of a terminal disease that leaves a certain inevitability on the minds of all the city's renters.

Further reading: The Degentrification of Red Hook, Nov 12 2007, NY Mag

Newtown Creek

    At one time Newtown Creek was a beautiful site. Full of seafood, surrounded by wooded hills, the four-mile-long estuary was a popular swimming spot with the local Mespat tribe. Dutch explorers first surveyed the creek in 1613.

    America's first modern oil refinery opened on its banks in 1867, and before long it was home base for Standard Oil. Other industries moved in and the creek was widened to accommodate bigger barges. Over the last 15 decades, 17 to 30 million gallons of oil (Exxon Valdez was 10) have spilled into Newtown Creek, a water body that is essentially stagnant. Add copper contamination from the Phelps Dodge superfund site, runoff from unsewered industrial sites and waste transfer stations, and combined-sewer overflows of human waste. Many call Newtown Creek the most polluted waterbody in North America.

Hasidic Jews in South Williamsburg

    The Satmars, who may be the largest Hasidic dynasty, have their world headquarters in South Williamsburg.  I am convinced that Hasidic Jews are one of the most misunderstood minorities in New York.  There is something surreal about walking down the street surrounded by people wearing clothing both extremely uniform and centuries outdated.  For many people, their attire alone is alienating. 

    Many of the neighborhoods physical idiosyncrasies have very specific cultural ramifications.  During Sukkot, in late autumn, many Jews (not just Hasidim) build a temporary hut outside to eat meals in throughout the week-long holiday.  Thus the abundance of often obviously homemade square balconies that jut out from every apartment.

   

    According to the FAQ at HasidicNews.com, "In general, the Hasidic attitude towards non-Jews is one of contempt and disinterest. Children, especially, are taught how 'bad' and sinful non-Jews are and are constantly taught to refrain from certain behavior merely for the purpose of 'Chillul Hashem' - not to cause a bad reputation, as opposed to it being inherently unbecoming."  This may explain why they have their own hospitals, schools, even city buses (to other Hasidic neighborhoods!).

   

    Another noticeable particularity of the Brooklyn Hasidim is their strong preference for minivans.  Following a biblical mandate to "be fruitful and multiply," the average Hasidic family in the US has 7.9 children.  The Satmars have expanded beyond Williamsburg to their own suburban enclave upstate in Kiryas Joel, Orange County.  Since the town is overwhelmingly populated with Satmars, on top of being developed by them, it's a perfect microcosm for their demographic as a whole.  Coupling the extremely high birth rate with young arranged marriages, Kiryas Joel has the youngest median age of any American town over 5000, and the forth lowest per capita income of any American town over 3000.

    What fascinates me most is how such an insular old-fashioned group of people, who don't watch television, who won't allow women to drive, who don't mix with outsiders and dress like it's 19th century Lithuania can live for generations in the middle of modern New York City.  With such a strict lifestyle and a distaste for excess, how would it feel to walk by a thumping nightclub and see scantily clad women?  How could you be so xenophobic and then share your neighborhood with Jamaicans and Dominicans and ride packed subway trains to work?  Most born-again's wouldn't be caught dead in any city, but for whatever reason, Hasidic Jews have made Brooklyn their home.