535 replies to this topic

[Rail Paul]

Interesting Times piece on The Park Slope Of New Jersey.

Many Montclair residents trace their recent past to Park Slope, the Upper West Side, and Hoboken. And, are quite proud about it.

In some neighborhoods, property values and resale prices doubled and a few even tripled when the direct railroad connection to NY Penn Station opened in the 1990s. Nobody minded paying a few dollars more in taxes ($25,000 a year for property tax isn't unusual) back then.

One upward tax reappraisal (just before the property crash) and a deluge of tax appeals later, things aren't as rosy.

[Sneakeater]

Imagine how property values will soar if they start running the railroad on weekends.

[Nathan]

Interesting Times piece on The Park Slope Of New Jersey.

My point here is that people do choose to live in places for what you might broadly call cultural reasons -- and accordingly do think in terms of values in addition to property values (even if they're deluding themselves that the two are different). This may be hard for young people living in Manhattan to comprehend, because they probably haven't yet committed themselves to a neighborhood as a place to live, and are willing to keep moving around as things change (or as they just get bored). But as you become rooted somewhere, you start to care about its retaining the characteristics that caused you to choose to live there in the first place. Did your parents lightly move your family around every two or three years -- or did they work to try to maintain the quality of your town or neighborhood?

actually we moved every couple years...but I'll grant that's unusual

of course people want the neighborhood to remain static at exactly the point that it caused them to move to it (or, alternatively, if they were attempting to be ahead of the curve, remain static at the point three years after they arrived in the hood)...but life doesn't work like that. heck, I loved NoLIta when I moved there in 2003...by 2007 it was MPD southeast. and so it goes.

[Sneakeater]

But Brooklyn is supposed to be different from that. Brooklyn is more, like, real life than Manhattan is.

Or at least, that was the idea.

[Orik]

Right, which is why gentrification by means of Hooters is even scarier than Manhattanification by Batali.

[Sneakeater]

Don't disagree at all.

[Lex]

In Brooklyn we prefer our titty bars to be home grown like Barette.

[Sneakeater]

Which was barely even a titty bar. (And ironic.)

[Sneakeater]

(And still didn't last.)

[Sneakeater]

In Brooklyn, we even liked the Navy Yard Cocktail Lounge -- since at the time it was in a neighborhood where nobody even THOUGHT of living.

[Sneakeater]

Actually, when I lived in Brooklyn Heights, there was a titty bar in the Clark Street subway station. Hard to believe now. I'm ashamed to say I wasn't a regular.

[Lex]

(And still didn't last.)

I really miss it.

[Sneakeater]

Certainly more entertaining than the fake Mexican place that replaced it.

[Orik]

The internet is so great. With no publicity, a petition against chains in the EV got 150 signatures in a day (via evgrieve). I wonder how many people would sign a similar petition against park slope titties.

http://www.change.or...he-east-village

[Wilfrid]

It really is just the name and the corporate-chain association, isn't it? -- Because I guarantee that when the hot weather gets here bars in Park Slope, like everywhere else, will be staffed by shapely young women in tight, low-cut tops and mini-skirts or shorts. And nobody will mind.

It's really not about women.