Will Bed-Stuy become Park Slope soon ?

Um, because they can't afford the rent in a safer neighborhood?

Maybe you should smile and say, "Hello," to people a couple of times. They are the newcomer, you are the local. They don't feel comfortable because they don't know the "lay of the land". Why not make them feel welcome?

I've been living in Bed-Stuy for more than two years now. I still consider myself as a newcomer of course.

Jet9011, you are right when you said most of the newcomers were afraid. That's why they don't look friendly to you. How would you feel if you were called "snowflake" and told "what are you doing here, you don't belong here"?

Since I moved in I've been trying to be friendly, to make eye contact and say hi. But at the beginning more than 75% of the locals would look somewhere else and ignore me. After a while some realized that they are the ones who appeared unfriendly or looked stupid. So now they say hi back to me.

Bed-Stuy has its own identity and will never become like Park Slope. I wish it could become safer and more welcoming to newcomers.

<--- sits beside by boygabriel, tells him/her to stop hogging the arm rest.

there's two of us, we can take him.

These popcorn buckets are always way too big. Yall can have some.

Anastasia --- too funny.

Let's kick off the show! - I'm a lifelong Brooklynite - Bushwick, East New York, now Crown Heights. I'm Afro-Latino. Those neighborhoods I grew up in in the 70's through now - not so friendly all the goddamn time.

I'm sure there were smatterings of really cool Sesame Street-ish blocks where it was block parties and cookouts and blah-blah and love and all that nice horseshit - but mostly it was life like on any other big city.

Some neighbors were awesome and became life long friends if not like family, some neighbors are assholes and punks and thieves and no one likes them and the rest of the block would wish they'd move away and bother someone else. Some were friendly some were not. Some you said hi to, some you didn't.

All these posts that harken back to some mythological Brooklyn past where everyone on the block just spent their days just talking to and loving each other and saying hello and what have you are bullshit (IMHO).

You may have "known" everyone on your block - people tended not to move around so much back in the day so that you'd recognize the people you see everyday, but that doesn't mean everyone got along - even when everyone on the block looked alike and made about the same money.

First rule of hospitality - the old-timers are supposed to greet and make new people feel welcome. The old timers are supoosed to be friendly and smiley and say hello. The old-timers aren't kings and queens or gods that new people have to kowtow to and bring offerings of food and jewels to - the old-timers have get off their high horse and be gracious.

If you or your kids were to mad-dog me or my wife every day - I'd have nothing nice to say to you either (nothing nice, anyway)

That's all.

PS - I prefer the nachos, popcorn sticks in my teeth.

Bedford-Stuyvesant will always be Bedford-Stuyvesant. My neighborhood has a unique character. What makes Park Slope the "it" place to compare to? The extreme prices? PSSHH...If rent/the sell price of a property was cheap in Park Slope, I would still stay in my home :-)