Brooklyn Skeptic

It’s been hard to avoid hearing about Park Slope in the news recently. The New York Times printed an article in the weekend Style section that addressed some of the neighborhood ire. Between a Sex and the City-style television show that is set to take place in Park Slope to a group of “stroller nazis” (i.e. women who have children and choose to push them in strollers all in the name of the Third Reich) trying to shut down local bar Union Hall, there’s a lot to talk about. The thing is, none of it is very interesting. In fact, it bores this shit out of me. Wait a minute, Park Slope has been yuppified? Get the fuck out of here (and by here I mean this small, overpriced Park Slope boutique)! What tipped you off, genius?

Anyway, I don’t really want to get into it, because Lord knows there have been enough articles and comments about the subject. But as a young man in his mid-twenties who has no children, is not a coop member (and thus has never missed a shift or been on probation) and has not been pushed in a stroller in the past twenty years, here are three things that I like a lot about Park Slope.

1. There are more old man bars than you can throw an orthotic insoled shoe at. Off the top of my head, I can think of Farrell’s, O’Connors, Old Carriage Inn and of course Jackie’s Fifth Amendment, all of which have enough stories and old man musk to last me until I’m sitting on one of their bar-stools talking about World War 4 and when I was forced to vote for President Chelsea Clinton.
2. Park Slope teens are bad ass. While they can be pretty intimidating, they’re also incredibly impressive, and seem to run in packs like wild dogs. These kids will get shit done when they’re older. And by “shit” I mean more than just chain-smoking outside of Tea Lounge.
3. Park Slope is the perfect place to spend a hungover Sunday. There are a ridiculous amount of diners to eat away your headache, a massive park with endless green grass to sit in as you contemplate how you’re failing at life, movie theaters all around to sit in darkness and watch better looking people make life decisions so you don’t have to and, most importantly, a great collection of bars, delis and wine stores to have another drink on a Sunday evening while you forget that you have to be at work the next morning and that you’ve been late every day for the past week and that maybe your horoscope was right and you really are going to need to make some drastic changes in your life.

Anyway, there you go. Park Slope can be annoying, stuck-up, snobby and overpriced, but so can Williamsburg, Brooklyn Heights, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Prospect Heights and many other Brooklyn neighborhoods. Stop complaining about it, or the Park Slope teenagers will put their cigarettes out on your face.