"My Brooklyn, Then and Now" Sees the Good in Brooklyn

Photo credits: Left, Neal Boenzi/The New York Times; Damon Winter/The New York TimesWendell Jamieson’s essay in last Sunday's NYT’s travel section is the antithesis of Fucked in Park Slope. “Why’s that, because it’s actually well written?” you might ask. Funny, dick. No. Jamieson walks through Brooklyn and sees it with a loving eye, talking about what he thinks are positive changes and pointing out old businesses and cultural centers that still thrive here. And he’s completely earnest. We, on the other hand, tend to come at it like a bunch of immature assholes who can only express ourselves sarcastically. We talk shit about every new idea and whine when we can’t have something we didn’t even care about until we were told we couldn’t have it.

When Jamieson says “Brooklyn has come to represent: stylish yet relaxed, ironically embracing its industrial roots,” he generally means it in a positive way. “Of course, there are more than two Brooklyns, and it’s impossible to visit or name or know all of them... But these worlds feel in sync now. I wonder how long it will last,” the motherfucker writes later in the essay, as he actually enjoys living in the present and seeing the good in things.

“But Brooklyn is still Brooklyn. Like me, my son has been mugged. Like me, he rode around in the back of a police car looking for the guys who did it. Like me, he never found them,” Jamieson writes, finding the bright side of being mugged in a father-son bonding experience. Meanwhile, we get worked up about every change at the Coop as if the future of civilization depended on it. Jamieson acknowledges the problems but doesn’t harp on them, which is really our bread and butter here at Fucked in Park Slope.

We do have one thing in common with Jamieson and that’s drinking. “I had an old-fashioned not too long ago… That drink was an aberration in a borough that has gone cocktail mad. This is a wonderful development.” He goes on to name a few bars and their signature drinks. In fact, he talks about drinking all throughout the essay, including listing the contents of a mini-bar. At the end of the day, we can get behind that. Because drinking and eating is how we all tolerate each other here in Brooklyn.

Like Jamieson says: “So the borough has become a Valhalla of bars and restaurants...”

Read the whole essay, “My Brooklyn, Then and Now,” at the New York Times.