Be Our Neighbor? Some Would Rather Not.

So I was going to write about the Park Slope hatas article in The New York TImes, but I’m finding it hard to muster up a solid opinion. Park Slope is pretty much everything it gets criticized for (yuppy, cutesy, gentrified, homogeneous, smug, home to numerous organic baby food stores and Brooklyn wonder writers and indie film stars, etc).

Some of these things are bigger problems than others–the lack of diversity, for one thing, really is an issue. And I think the old jealousy excuse is kind of pat; the people who hate Park Slope don’t wish they lived here, they wish the neighborhood would go away or go back in time or just shut up. I don’t blame them, but I still like it here. But it does lead to self-loathing! But only sometimes! Which is another reason people hate Park Slope, I guess: all the comfortable guilt between sips of latte.

Still, the anti-hipsters wish Williamsburg would stop fussing with its hair so much while reading Proust, the counterculture is being edged out on the Lower East Side, and the young people are moving to the Upper East Side because of the weirdly cheap rents but they still think it’s boring. In New York, there’s plenty of neighborhood hate to go around. Love, too.