You are currently browsing the stories about the Park Slope neighborhood
No Privacy in the Community House Community
by Kathryn Holmquist 12/31/2006Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Park Slope
“The intersection of Fifth Avenue and Union Street is the unofficial town square of Park Slope, a bustling baby factory where expensive puppies idle beside a store that sells $28 Brooklyn T-Shirts and a wine shop called Red, White & Bubbly.” Fifth Avenue and Union Street is also the intersection where, in 1973, Raphi Allini, [...]
In Defense of the Park Slope Food Coop; or, I Heart Chaos
by Erica Weitzman 12/31/2006Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Park Slope
[The following is the second of two responses to "Confronting the Park Slope Food Coop", Fran Giuffre's blistering assault on the beloved Brooklyn institution, that has resulted in virtually nonstop Park Slope controversy for the last five years. In addition to Giuffre's historic polemic, another defense of the Coop, by the enigmatic "Dina", is also [...]
Lobbying for Adventure
by Julie Metz 12/08/2006Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Park Slope
“It’s not like I am going to die or anything.” My ten-year-old daughter Liza is begging me to let her walk alone to her school bus stop three streets from our Brooklyn apartment. She is as persistent as a lawyer in court, who, sensing that victory is at hand, refuses to let up on the [...]
A Tree Dies in Brooklyn
by Minter Krotzer 11/16/2006Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Park Slope
There was once, just a few weeks ago, a tree outside of my bedroom window. I am not even sure what kind it was – maybe Oak, maybe Maple. (In New York you don’t really bother to know the names of trees, birds, and flowers, and it issomething you feel guilty about.) I liked this [...]
Defending the Park Slope Food Coop
by Dina 10/24/2006Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Park Slope
[Here it is: The moment Fran Giuffre Fran Giuffre first realized that war was at hand. The first of countless responses to Giuffre's critical evisceration of the Park Slope Food Coop, it was followed, many long and difficult years later, by Erica Weitzman's similarly devastating counterattack. --Ed.] Dear Fran, I read your horror story about [...]
Confronting the Park Slope Food Coop
by Fran Giuffre 10/17/2006Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Park Slope
[Since its initial publication on Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, this piece has unleashed a firestorm of debate so fierce, and so utterly acrimonious, that it is easily the most controversial piece in the history of this website. Of the many responses that we received, the two that we are legally permitted to publish are by Erica [...]
The Dirt on Vets
by Molly McCloy 10/27/2005Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Park Slope
My cat Pancho had been throwing up for two weeks and my dog Mack was still scratching his ears after the ear mite treatment, so, in search of a new brand of cat food and some anti-itch supplements, I ended up at the local pet store just across from Prospect Park on the Southwest side. [...]
Chronicle of a Divorce Foretold
by Debbie Gershenowitz 08/18/2005Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Park Slope
The F train hurtles through the tunnel and suddenly we’re above ground. Lower Manhattan twinkles in the distance. I gaze at the view and for a second my anxiety has disappeared. As the skyline recedes, my stomach muscles return to the knotted state they’ve been in since this afternoon, when I made the appointment to [...]
Sweat: The Fortified Connoisseur
by Saki Knafo 08/18/2005Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Park Slope
I grew up in Windsor Terrace, a fan-shaped neighborhood hinged on a verdant traffic circle near Prospect Park. The circle was a lowlife Mecca, a point of convergence for the neighborhood’s various derelicts, criminals, drunks, addicts, lunatics, loners, vagabonds, and weirdoes. In the summer of my sixteenth year I took a job that occasioned my [...]
Spinning Out of Control
by Fran Giuffre 11/01/2004Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Park Slope
“We’re out of luck,” Steve said one Saturday afternoon as I returned to our apartment from doing my weekend errands. “The dryer just died. I have a load of whites in the washer and now I can’t dry them.” We were one of the fortunate people who actually had a washer and dryer in their [...]
Co-op Confessional
by Catherine Price 05/11/2004Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Park Slope
Wednesday 28 August, 7:30pm I sit on a folding chair in a circle of would-be members, sneaking handfuls of free whole-wheat pretzels as I wait my turn to speak. The twenty-three other people at the orientation with me are fresh-faced and earnest, dressed in shades of Lands End and L.L. Bean. When asked their reasons [...]
Catnap
by Elizabeth Frankenberger 02/17/2004Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Park Slope
First it was the remote control. Then it was a pill bottle, which jingled some before its contents spilled out, and last, a Yellow Delicious apple—boom! It is four o’clock in the morning and my cat, Alabama, has been knocking things around, dropping them to the floor from their perches, trying to jolt me out [...]
