Why, God, Why?

Park Slope, the TV show. What's wrong with Williamsburg as a setting? The people there are totally more annoying than Park Slopers.

The Park Slope of Berlin

There was an article about what sounds like the Park Slope of Berlin in the Sunday NY Times. The author pointed out that while it may seem like the Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood has a very high density of children, what it actually has is a high density of people of childbearing age. The same is probably true of Park Slope - it's an interesting distinction.

Park Slope = New Jersey?

A few months ago I ran into a guy I used to work with, back when I worked for other people. We were both department heads at the company, although this was in 2000 when you could be 24 and a department head just because you'd seen a website once. The company met a slow, tedious and somewhat bloody demise, and everyone who worked there got flung into different industries or stuck on unemployment insurance and living in their parents' basement. The few remaining people who soldiered on in the Internet industry are still working in it today, and sometimes I encounter them on projects. This was the first time I ran into someone on the street, though.

I was unloading Milo from the car after a shopping trip to Fairway, when I saw a guy walking down the street who looked sort of familiar. I didn't have too much time to figure out who he was because I was mostly involved in trying to convince Milo not to fling himself up the stairs to our apartment building. But he'd apparently seen me too.

"Hana?" he asked.

I smiled, spent a few seconds trying to remember his name and where I knew him from, and then said hi back.

"Wow,'" he said, pointing at Milo. "I see things have changed for you." He said it in a way that made me think he'd previously viewed me as someone not only unlikely to reproduce, but maybe even someone who shouldn't reproduce. But given how I'd been back then, that was probably the vibe I'd given off. The last time I'd seen this guy Steven and I were dating, I was living in the East Village, and frequently had trouble making it into work by 10:30. Also I had hair that someone in the office (a straight man, amazingly) had once referred to as "New-York-fabulous."

And now I had on no makeup, hair pulled back in a ponytail held with a clip that only minutes before Milo had been chewing on, and ... um ... I think stretch yoga pants.

But back to this guy. He is a father. I know this because he was a father back when we worked together, which was unusual because most people in the Internet world in those days were swinging single people sleeping with their cubicle-mates. He had pictures of his kids up in his office, and he never went out with us for drinks. Also, he didn't live in Manhattan. From what I remembered, he lived in New Jersey.

"Do you live here?" I asked him while trying to wrangle a flailing Milo.

"Yes, just up the block." He motioned to an apartment building a few doors down from my own.

"Have you always lived here?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. "For about ten years now."

Which is to say, in my previous life when we'd worked together, this guy had lived in Park Slope and I had mentally filed it under "New Jersey." In other words, suburbia. Boring-land. Place where stupid people with stupid kids live with their stupid minivans.

"Well," I said. "I guess I'll see you around the neighborhood." Then I unloaded the groceries, got in the car, drove myself to Ecuador and moved in with a nomadic Grateful Dead tribute band. No I didn't. I took the groceries inside while my husband parked the car. I put my son down for a nap. Then I probably paid some bills and ordered stuff online from Target.

I've seen this guy around the neighborhood several times by now. I run into him at the park a lot. Sometimes at the playground. Sometimes hanging out at the Tea Lounge. We both have kids, you see. And so I have become my worst nightmare. So it goes.

What Would Godard Watch (if He Lived in Park Slope)?

Just in case anyone thought for a minute that people who live in Park Slope aren't as revoltingly artsy as those who live in other sections of the world's most artistically pretentious borrough, I refer you to the "what other people in your zip code are renting" feature on Netflix. While people in other zip codes are hording their copies of Snakes on A Plane or Bad Boys II, we're all about adventures in French surrealism.

An annotated sampling from the list of what our neighbors are watching:

1. A Life Apart: Hasidim in America
If this is being rented by residents of 11215 in order to better understand the hordes of Hasidim who live in nearby zip codes, then I applaud the open-mindedness of my neighbors. Alternately, it's being rented by Hasidim themselves, which seems sort of strange, but so is wearing a black wool coat in August.
Artsy-fartsy rating: 1 star

2. The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
A Werner Herzog documentary about a German teengaer in 1828. Seriously, though, if you were going to come up with a joke title for a super pretentious foreign film, wouldn't this be it?
Artsy-farsty rating: 4 stars

3. Une Femme Est Unne Femme
Godard film #1
Artsy-fartsy rating: 5 stars

4. Weekend
Goddard film #2
Artsy-fartsy rating: 5 stars

5. Downtown 81
If there is anything we like as much as Godard, it would have to be starving underappreciated Brooklyn artists who shoot heroin and die young - in other words, this film about Basquiat.
Artsy-fartsy rating: 4 stars

6. Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. 1
And German avant garde cinema! We love German avant garde!
Artsy-farsty rating: 6 stars - bonus star for being German not French

7. Crooklyn
Okay, this at least makes sense to me. A movie about Brooklyn is popular in Brooklyn. Fine.
Artsy-fartsy rating: 2 stars

8. Guiliani Time
I'm fine with this choice too. Understandably, people want to watch a movie about how much everyone hates Rudy.
Artsy-fartsy rating: 1 star

9. My Best Friend: Klaus Kinski
A documentary about famous documentary film makers. Well, fine, considering that you can't cross the street without running into a documentary filmmaker. One lives in our building and one rents an office down the hall from me and I barely know anyone.
Artsy-fartsy rating: 3 stars - I mean come on, it's about the relationship between two barely-famous documentary film makers

10. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
So Godard isn't artsy enough for you? Werner Herzog too pedestrian? You know what's even better than being French New Wave or a German documentarian? Genre film from the 70s involving subway graffiti artists! Why limit your expression of irony to t-shirts that say "I Heart Cocoa Puffs" or trucker hats (which are so 2003 anyway) when you can be ironic in your Netflix queue.
Artsy-fartsy rating: -2 stars


And finally: full disclosure.
Number of films mentioned above that are in my Netflix queue: 2.
Which ones? I'll never tell.

In Search of People Exactly Like Me

You know spring has arrived in Park Slope when it is no longer possible to walk more than three feet without someone asking you to sign something. It's always something that ordinarily I would support (Democrats, the environment, gay rights) but I never stop to sign anything because, first off, I'm busy. If I'm walking down the street it's not usually because I'm just ambling around the neighborhood checking out the sights. Usually it's because I'm GOING SOMEWHERE. Quickly. So get the hell out of my way.

Also, I say no because the signature seekers always frame the question in a way that makes me want to hit them. It's always, "Do you have a minute for the environment?" or "Can you help the Democrats?" or "Are you in favor of equality for all?". Why is it so tempting to scream NO and then beat the person with their own clipboard? I usually want to say, "No. I hate the environment. I don't have a minute for it," and then duck into the nearest nail salon.

But mostly I have no respect for the clipboard people who choose Park Slope as their territory. As someone who was, many years ago, one of these very same people standing on a street corner with a clipboard yelling "Can [insert soon-to-be-defeated-Democratic-candidate's-name-here] count on your support on Tuesday?", I have to say that Park Slope is for pussies.

97 out of 100 people who walk by you on the sidewalk in Park Slope are Gay Democratic Greenpeace Supporters for Human Rights. The odds are good that no one is going to scream things like "Go have another abortion" at the Pro-Choice clipboard carrier, or "Jesus hates fags" at the gay rights activist. In fact, if they say anything to the clipboard-carriers it's probably "Frank! Saw you at the co-op Thursday! When are we getting together for that organic tea we keep talking about?"

So dude, pick a harder neighborhood - that's all I'm saying. Everyone in Park Slope is already all signed up for whatever cause you've got. We're double signed and triple signed. We belong to the People's Front of Judea AND the Judean People's Front, just in case. We love whales so much we want to marry them. We love the environment so much we don't even use electricity, just huddle around our cups of soy latte and discuss socialism by candlelight. We compete over who gets to sort peas at the Co-Op, for God's sake.

Go somewhere you might actually find a contrary opinion instead of twelve organic shoe stores. I suggest Queens.