Friday, March 4, 2011

Brooklyn II

By the way, I recently was in a conversation with someone from our childbirth class (Yes. Long story.) who referred to this other couple from the class as "not very Brooklyn." I knew what she meant, but was thinking about it afterwards, and realized I disagreed. The people in question, in fact, are Brooklyn as hell. What she meant to say was, they're not very Park Slope.

If you doubt that there is a distinction, let me direct your attention to this episode. In short, a noisy bar is set to open on a busy street near where they're building a giant basketball arena. The people who live in houses right near there are upset, very justifiably I'd imagine, and one of them has started a petition. The petition uses language and argumentation that are, oh, a tiny bit racially insensitive. It's hilariously clueless and *very* Park Slope.

(I love Park Slope, by the way, but am a little relieved not to be able to afford to live there anymore. You get tired of defending it to people, especially when stuff like this happens.)

The latest stories, including one in the Wall Street Journal (!) are suggesting that the letter's author doesn't really exist. If that's true, I think it's a little bit of a relief, but also a little sad. The letter is such a pure distillation of a certain kind of person that it'd be a shame if it was fiction. But in that case, whoever did write it is a very talented satirist. And Park Slope certainly needs more of them.

No comments:

Post a Comment