Comments

I definitely agree that it’s a strange city we live in where a place like Red Hook is celebrated. I think the thing with that neighborhood is that it feels pioneering, and I think that’s one key quality that attracts a certain kind of NYer. People who live or want to live there look at the neighborhood and see that it’s in the beginning stages of development, it has a few cool restaurants and bars to keep them occupied and a gigantic Fairway and then see more potential for the neighborhood to further develop. It’s a “frontier” neighborhood. And since Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights, Carroll Gardens and Boerum Hill are becoming increasingly more expensive and producing spill over, the next natural place would be Red Hook.

So those in Red Hook deal with the limited commercial development, the desolate feeling and muddle through the lack of accessible transportation with the idea that in the future it will be booming. But that was the idea with Williamsburg and I think we’ve seen that place develop only so much. When I moved to NYC in 1998, Billyburg was touted as the next best thing. But it pretty much looks like it did a few years ago.

The bottom line is that for people looking for a certain sensibility, FoHi will be dismissed as a viable place to live despite the fact that there is plenty of commercial and residential development. The problem for some is that it’s just not the “right” development.

Posted by pellegrino31
on May 9th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
What I find even more interesting than the turnaround process is what caused some of these neighborhoods to get to be the way they are in the first place, not really taking into account the more industrial areas.

Growing up in Canarsie in the 70’s, there were always certain areas that I just knew were off limits. I worked in East New York for a number of years in the early to mid 90’s, which at the time had one of the highest homicide rates in all of New York City and I literally was kicking away crack vials away from the doorway on a daily basis of the business that I worked out of for 4 years. What amazes me most is that some of the notoriously crime ridden neighborhoods have some of the nicest homes, and proximity to mass transit.

I also can’t figure out how the high school I went to, South Shore has gotten to the point where the city pretty much has given up on it and is closing its doors by 2010. It saddens me to read stuff like this and to actually think that it would be unsafe to walk on the block that I grew up on.

Posted by LarryB
on May 9th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
My dad grew up in Canarsie in the ’50s and ’60s. We drove around his old neighborhood a few years ago for reasons that escape me, and I remember he was actually scared to be driving around these side streets, right across from him old high school. He didn’t go to South Shore, but my mom grew up just a few blocks away — she was out of high school by the time it opened, but my uncle went there. You know, I was actually a little surprised to find out they were closing South Shore, because the immediate neighborhood — Flatlands, I believe, not Canarsie — isn’t awful. My great aunt, who’s pushing 90, still lives there, and I make my way there from time to time. It’s largely Caribbean immigrants now. Still seems fairly nice and safe.

Of course, you can’t accuse that neighborhood of having good access to public transportation, or having great housing stock, for that matter. Cute mother-daughters, but nothing spectacular.

Posted by Steve
on May 9th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
I could go on and on about growing up in Canarsie. I wouldn’t trade it in for anything and have forged some lifelong close friendships from the ‘hood.

But yep, the L from Rockaway Parkway is definitely not the best ride into Manhattan (you’ll get a seat every time though!), even though I was able to walk to that station; mind you it was a pretty miserable walk. The option that always put my mom at ease was to drive to the Q train and park in Midwood near the Ave. J area, conveniently located next to DiFara’s Pizza, which I am guilty of never even trying… don’t recall having chowhound as a resource back then.

Posted by LarryB
on May 9th, 2007 at 10:07 pm

Confirmed: Nice ‘hoods are lame

Posted by Steve on Wednesday, May 9th, 2007

I gained a certain amount of local blog notoriety some time back by openly wondering why grungy, desolate, inaccessible Red Hook was suddenly considered “hip” while lovely, safe, thriving Forest Hills was terminally uncool. My conclusion: Hipsters like to feel like they’re slumming it. Red Hook is hip precisely because it’s so scary and ugly, whereas FoHi doesn’t get a second look largely because it’s so nice. Trust-fund punkers don’t want nice, Joey Ramone’s hometown or not.

Some people agreed with my theory. Others had their doubts. But I recently happened across an excellent – if dated; it’s from the 2005 height of the real-estate boom – article about “Booming Queens,” in which the president of the Corcoran Group says:

Queens has this gritty feel to it in parts, which makes it feel cool. When I go to speaking engagements and people ask what is the next big thing, a lot of speakers are starting to say, “Queens, Queens, Queens.”

Forest Hills, needless to say, is not one of those gritty parts she’s talking about, though it does get some nice coverage in the article. And surprise, surprise – “Queens, Queens, Queens” aside, her starmaking real-estate agency barely covers the borough outside of Astoria and LIC, both of which can be plenty gritty. I’m going to have to claim validation here – cool people hate nice neighborhoods. If Corcoran says it, it must be true.