Once in a while we'll feature the perspective of someone who strongly disagrees with one of our posts. Today, a Columbia alum/Park Slope native takes issue with our jokes about his neighborhood.
When I was still in school at Columbia, a distant year ago, and people asked me where I was from, the response "Park Slope" inevitably elicited a laugh or a groan. I also heard, "well, that's not really Brooklyn" a lot.
Look, I am and will probably always be Park Slope's harshest critic. The neighborhood has changed a lot since I was a little kid playing with Super Soakers out on the front stoop. It sounds silly to say, because Park Slope was already a very middle-class neighborhood when I was born (in Park Slope, at Methodist Hospital, by the way), but it's true.
Today, there are many more strollers and a lot fewer junkies on the block where I grew up. That's probably an improvement, but it also has meant middle-class people (and working-class people) can't afford to settle down in the neighborhood anymore.
