In my lifetime, I often wonder...

Restless Native wrote: Sell it to me, and let me make some more money off of these johnny come lately Park Slope Dopes while the gravy train is still in the station. From there I'll continue to contemplate my next business move. 8)

Wait a sec - I thought that you would rather rent to your junkie friends?

Restless Native wrote: [quote=WhyFi][quote=Restless Native]Sell it to me, and let me make some more money off of these johnny come lately Park Slope Dopes while the gravy train is still in the station. From there I'll continue to contemplate my next business move. 8)

Wait a sec - I thought that you would rather rent to your junkie friends?

Actually I would put all my skel friends up in there, only problem is, with the exception of 1 or 2 they're all gone.

Only me and a couple others I grew up with are either too stubborn or too rooted here to be chased out like all the other real people were. 8)
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Why not have your friends and others from these forums who are not satisfied with their rents and I don't blame them, pool some money ,get financing and start your own co-op.
Be your own builder it's a lot cheaper [just an idea]

Livetotravel wrote: Let's squat the damn thing - move in right now, winter be damned, get our friends to join us, put sweat equity into it and fix it up and maybe even start a community garden on the newly repaired roof ...

oh, gawd, I gotta quit smokin' this shit

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The 80's are over

alafairnadia wrote: ... but seriously, the real people comment is irritating as hell.

BINGO! i wanted to call him an asshat for the comment myself, but i was afraid of being singled out as a yupster

alafairnadia wrote:

(okay. sorry for the TOTAL tangent but seriously, the real people comment is irritating as hell. stagnation = reality? please)

Definitely feel like I'm enduring some sort of invasion, probably clones or mannequins rather than zombies, but thanks for the analogy anyway, I'm going to use it from now on.

Anyway, I guess what you're saying is that people like me are 'stagnating' here, but as I've said before and I'll say again, I have nothing against change. I'd be thrilled if Park Slope was inundated with West Indians, hell I wouldn't even mind Mexicans or perhaps even Russians (maybe). Arabs are fine too, Chinese, no prob. There's just a very particular type of individual that gets me, and we all know who they are.

Hamilton wrote: Yuppie bodysnatchers?

just call me Goke

Restless Native wrote: Anyway, I guess what you're saying is that people like me are 'stagnating' here, but as I've said before and I'll say again, I have nothing against change. I'd be thrilled if Park Slope was inundated with West Indians, hell I wouldn't even mind Mexicans or perhaps even Russians (maybe). Arabs are fine too, Chinese, no prob. There's just a very particular type of individual that gets me, and we all know who they are.

I don't know if I speak for anyone else here, but my problem with your constant harping about "yups" is that you seem to have a VERY broad and overreaching definition for what that is, and you seem overly quick to use it to completely dismiss or belittle anyone who, say, expresses an interest in having decent coffee or a bookstore available near their home or expresses or complains about crime.

Restless Native wrote: There's just a very particular type of individual that gets me, and we all know who they are.

The mythical bearded hipster/yup?

apollonia666 wrote: [quote=Restless Native]Anyway, I guess what you're saying is that people like me are 'stagnating' here, but as I've said before and I'll say again, I have nothing against change. I'd be thrilled if Park Slope was inundated with West Indians, hell I wouldn't even mind Mexicans or perhaps even Russians (maybe). Arabs are fine too, Chinese, no prob. There's just a very particular type of individual that gets me, and we all know who they are.

I don't know if I speak for anyone else here, but my problem with your constant harping about "yups" is that you seem to have a VERY broad and overreaching definition for what that is, and you seem overly quick to use it to completely dismiss or belittle anyone who, say, expresses an interest in having decent coffee or a bookstore available near their home or expresses or complains about crime.
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I tend to feel Restless was fortunate enough to have inherited a house from his parents and lives in a bygone era of Denis Hamills Hippy Hill delusional recall of the 70's and he and Hamill detest any type of change that they are not part of. I think he should grow up ,accept change and get on with his life.[just a suggestion]

Restless Native wrote: [quote=Hamilton]
I tend to feel Restless was fortunate enough to have inherited a house from his parents and lives in a bygone era of Denis Hamills Hippy Hill delusional recall of the 70's and he and Hamill detest any type of change that they are not part of. I think he should grow up ,accept change and get on with his life.[just a suggestion]

Oh so now you want a piece of me too? I thought we were boys

Yeah I was "fortunate" enough to have inherited a large building here, guess I would be more palatable to you if I came here this year from some cul de sac with mommy and daddy's money and bought it instead? I grew up w/ zero social capital and still caught up to and am now surpassing all these "professional" types, who had everything handed to them their whole lives, so put that in your 'hippie' pipe and take a few puffs.

Not sure who or what the hell "Hippy Hill" is, but if you're talking about the old parkside bums, I come from a different generation than them. Only contact I had with them was watching my friend's father slap them up once in a while when he was out there pimping out shelter ladies.
Whatever. The Judd Nelson Breakfast Club routine is getting tired. You have a multi-million dollar inheritance from your mommy and daddy, and you're calling out other people on what they got? You make a lot of assumptions about people who post here and newcomers to the neighborhood, but you're living in a glass house, even if it's a brownstone.

Subject: No I don't want a piece of you

Sorry to disappoint you but I don't have a hippy pipe and don't smoke anything ,your response to Junkies of Windsor Terrace [ on another forum] led me to believe you were of that generation and would know of Hippy Hill.
My suggestion was to calm down and accept change and not to constantly rant about yuppies, as it becomes tiresome and goes nowhere.
I'm very impressed with the many versions of your life that you have presented and i eagerly await the next one.

Subject: Good morning Park Slope

looks like were off to an early start

Subject: Lets not Monopolize this thread

When I graduated from high school thanks to a bad luck roll of the dice,i wound up in jail.

It took time but upon release I managed to buy two Hotels on my own.
[No advise,no help from others].

One is on Park Place the other on the Boardwalk,they are are both in high rent areas and have provided me with a very good income

In fact I have so much money I hired someone else to laugh all the way to the bank for me.

Hamilton wrote: "I tend to feel Restless was fortunate enough to have inherited a house from his parents and lives in a bygone era of Denis Hamills Hippy Hill delusional recall of the 70's and he and Hamill detest any type of change that they are not part of. I think he should grow up, accept change and get on with his life.[just a suggestion]"

In 1976 my wife and I were both 30, were each earning a skimpy $15K/year, and were expecting our first child. We saved what we could and bought a co-op apt on Plaza St. and Union for $30,000 (which seemed like a huge amount of money at the time!). The day after we wrote a $300 check as a good-faith payment for the apartment, the cover story of New York Magazine, written by Denis Hamill, was "The Death of Park Slope". I nearly had a heart attack (imagining our first real estate investment going down the tubes), until I read the article and discovered that the Park Slope to which Hamill referred was the Italian/Irish neighborhood of his childhood, which was now dying because of all the damned yuppies (i.e. people like my wife and myself) moving in.

Shortly after, I got a better look at the phenomenon than I would have liked, because I joined the Board of Directors of the co-op and saw first-hand the facts of life of gentrification, as more and more well-to-do lawyers and bankers and doctors displaced the social workers and teachers who had previously lived in the building. The new folks wanted to renovate the building's aging infrastructure, which caused the monthly maintenance to rise, which of course forced even more of the previous co-op owners to sell as they could no longer afford to stay there.

Note that the people being forced out were not the people Denis Hamil mourned losing, but rather the first folks who had moved into a long-decaying neighborhood determined to improve it and make it their own.

Now they in turn were being displaced (while making substantial profits on the sale of their apartments) as they had previously displaced Hamill's favored ethnic groups.

What is happening now in the Slope, which Restless Native apparently appreciates as much as Hamill did (i.e. not much!) is not new. It's been happening since at least the late 1960's, and probably started even before that.

The Fifth Avenue we enjoy today was a drug- and drug-dealer infested pit just 15 years or so ago (or less!). Cars parked on the street throughout the Slope regularly had their side windows bashed in and their radios stolen so that junkies could score another fix.

Gentrification sucks for those who get forced out ... but most of us who live here now would not want to live in the funky, ungentrified Park Slope of the 60's and early 70's... or on the Fifth Avenue of 15 years ago.

As much as I sometimes make fun of baby strollers that cost a small fortune, and $5 coffees, I'm really glad that I can park my car on the street without having to worry about junkies vandalizing it.

Some years ago the daughter of either Denis or Pete Hamill wrote a letter to the Times (or was it New York Magazine?) complaining bitterly that she could not afford to move back to her family's ancestral neighborhood, because of gentrification and its impact on prices.

My own daughters are similarly unable to afford the neighborhood in which they grew up (both attended PS 321).

They'll have to do what my wife and I did 30 years ago: find a neighborhood on the cusp of revival, get in as early as possible, and hope for the best. I only hope they get as lucky as we did.

Subject: Yuppies Begone

Why is it when I view Restless Natives messages ,I keep seeing him as Howard Beale in the movie Network ,window open and yelling

YUPPIES, I CAN'T TAKE THEM ANYMORE !

YUPPIES, I CAN'T TAKE THEM ANYMORE !


I'm have to stop viewing him before I wind up doing the same.