SATURDAY: Won't You Be My Neighbor Day

This burst of spring has brought everybody out of hibernation at last. I had no idea how long winter was going on until it ended.

Inspired by Pittsburgh City Council Member Bill Peduto, I hereby proclaim this Saturday, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor Day” in Park Slope.

I love spring in our little almost suburb. It makes me feel timeless.

If I could be reincarnated, it would be as a completely round old Italian woman hanging out in my lawn chair gossiping and getting my hair done once a week. I want a deep scratchy Brooklyn vibrato too. And I’m going to get me a bowl of hard candy today just like my grandparents’ neighbors Mr. and Mrs. Ostuni used to have.

Now, they knew how to be good neighbors.

Hanging out on the adjoining front stoops was the highlight of visits to the otherwise bleak ass-end of Whitestone where my grandparents had been exiled when the Prospect Expressway razed their 18th street Park Slop block. Damn you, Robert Moses.

Anyway, Park Slope in spring makes me think of Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street and the Ostunis and the time we had that post 9/11 blackout on my first day back from maternity leave when all my neighbors hung out on the front stoop and shared our wine and perishables.

Did you know that different blocks on the same street have different personalities? Apparently, the parkside block of first street has its own listserv, called ladiesfirst (or maybe firstladies). They compare notes on window washers as opposed to cleaning their own. Two blocks down hill on first street, a friend pointed out that the residents are never NOT out on their front stoops.

I was doing an article years ago about Chosen People Ministries, this Jews for Jesus offshoot that was laying siege to Brooklyn’s immigrant Russian jews, group-hugging them into converting. As I was interviewing, back in the days when you actually did it in person, I realized that my two main antagonists (the heeb Christian and the local Rabbi) were longtime neighbors, sharing a common wall to their townhouses for 20 odd years in the middle of Park Slope (and never once talking to each other).

Oy.

So, it’s spring. We’re out of our caves again, and I’m in a gossipy mood. So give me your best, juiciest, ANONYMOUS neighbor stories: good or bad.