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City Journal says this Williamsburg hipster striding past one of the area’s many organic eateries is evidence of how Brooklyn has reinvented itself as a “postindustrial hotspot.” If you want to know about the forces that have transformed Brooklyn over the past few decades, this article is a great place to start. This must-read essay that starts with a firsthand account of what it was like to live through the decline of Park Slope in the 1980s:
Our neighbor’s house reflected the Slope’s perilous condition. When we first moved in, Mrs. Lehane, always wearing a faded but neatly pressed dress, thick stockings, and lipstick, used to sweep the sidewalk with the intensity of a corporate lawyer on a gym treadmill. Now, her lipstick was smudged, her dresses were torn, and her stockings sagged. Instead of elderly renters, she took in “former” alcoholics and drug addicts living on disability payments … One day, Mrs. Lehane disappeared—to a nursing home, I heard. Many of our friends and acquaintances—fed up with vagrants on their stoops and graffiti, or terrified for the safety and education of their kids—left as well. I don’t know what combination of denial and passiveness made us stay. It seemed inevitable that something terrible would happen.
And so it did…
It’s good. Put it on your Instapaper.
How Brooklyn Got Its Groove Back by Kay S. Hymowitz, City Journal Autumn 2011 via Metafilter.
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