By Jim Knipfel

Several years ago I was interviewing a wonderful woman by the name of Marie Roberts, who paints sideshow banners. She was born and raised in Coney Island, and lives there still. At one point near the end of the interview she asked me, “Are you from Brooklyn, or are you from Park Slope?”

The question, lighthearted as it was, took me aback at first. Not because I thought it was impudent or rude for her to ask such a thing, but because I knew exactly what she was saying. It was a valid point, and I found myself a little ashamed to admit that well, yeah, I lived in Park Slope, land of Volvos with Sierra Club bumper stickers and lesbians pushing double-wide designer strollers.

Over the years I’ve written a lot of disparaging things about my neighborhood and the changes I’ve witnessed there. The tidal wave of money and nicey-nice which, over the past 15 years, washed down from the park to 5th Ave., the disappearance of independent shops, the explosion of chi-chi cafes and children’s clothing shops. The property values that make it impossible for anyone but the very well-off to move there these days. Just a few weeks back I was in a laundromat where the owner complained that it was getting harder and harder to pay the bills. Not just because things were getting more expensive, but because business was drying up. All the buildings around there are being converted into condos complete with washers and dryers, so who needs a laundromat anymore?

While all that remains to this day the source of continued annoyance and dread, I think it’s about damn time to defend my turf. At least to a certain degree.

When I moved to New York (grudgingly) with my then-wife, my only stipulation was that we live in Brooklyn. 

I tend not to approach questions like “where do I want to live?” in the economic, geographical or political terms other people do. I tend instead to lean more toward gut instinct, mythology and direct experience. The sense I get of a place when I walk around. Maybe that helps explain why I ended up there in the first place—and why it may be best I don’t understand places in economic or political terms.

My reasons for insisting on Brooklyn were simple—sideshow freaks and literary history. Those are probably not the wisest reasons to consider when choosing a place to live, but I was young. All I knew was that Brooklyn had produced some of my favorite writers, and Coney Island was there. Those were good enough reasons for me.

But what neighborhood would be best? I took a few days and traveled around the borough, checking out Bay Ridge (people stared at me there), Greenpoint, Williamsburg (Puerto Rican kids threw bottles at me there), Sunset Park, Sheepshead Bay, Midwood, Carroll Gardens. But I stopped looking in Park Slope. It seemed obvious.

This was around 1989-1990, mind you, and the neighborhood was still rough around the edges, despite the trees and the brownstones. The dealers and hookers still came out at night, and there were bars you really didn’t want to be in after 10. But certainly in part because of that, I found a decent apartment for cheap. After all those years of living in slums and hellholes, the prospect of living in a place that was at least half-decent was very attractive. Grocery stores, bars, bookstores, diners, the subway, the hospital and the park were all right there.

Besides, Park Slope (I still can’t bring myself to call it “The Slope”) had a colorful history. (A cyclical history, too, and I was lucky enough to arrive right at the cusp.)

There was the DC-8 that came down at the corner of Sterling Pl. and 7th Ave. in December of 1960. There was the guy who dismembered a woman and rearranged the body parts into a kind of altar in the parking lot of the 9th St. post office. There’ve been a lot of interesting characters who’ve called the neighborhood home over the years, too—artists, novelists, filmmakers, actors, opera singers, journalists, dealers, musicians, oddballs.

What mattered to me most, though (again, I was young), was the fact that Henry Miller had lived there. In fact, he lived just a couple blocks down the street from me. I didn’t learn that until after I moved in, and immediately began strolling past his old house whenever I could, in the hopes that something might rub off. 

(I still do that, but nothing’s rubbed off yet.)

Miller moved into a duplex on 6th Ave. in 1917 after marrying his first wife, Beatrice. The now-historic brownstones were new back then, and even though Miller was unemployed, he was still able to get a good deal.

It was in that house that he first decided to become a writer, and several novels—Moloch, Tropic of Capricorn, Sexus—would be set there. A lot of the local landmarks he describes in those novels are still there—most notably the church across the street, the one he saw every time he looked out his front window. 

It’s funny. For  all my complaining about the changes in the neighborhood, last weekend I took careful note of things as I was walking about. For all the things that are gone now, I was surprised at the number of places that haven’t budged, that were there when I first moved in. Given how much and how quickly things have changed, that’s saying something.

The barbershop’s always been there. A tiny but magical record store on 7th is still there. The botanicas and psychic readers on 5th have stayed put, and so have Pollio’s and the butcher shop. A few little bookstores weren’t crushed by the arrival of the B&N, and a few have even opened since it came. A perpetually empty (but very good) Indian restaurant shows no signs of going any place. Snooky’s will always be there, as will the Grand Canyon, the 24-hour Greek diner and the all-night luncheonette. In fact, a lot of places are still here, even if the discount liquor store has been replaced by a fancy wine shop, and the head shop is now a cell phone store. Dee Dee’s Donuts over on 9th has been enveloped by a blob-like Dunkin’ Donuts, but still survives. The laundromat and dry cleaners are still on my block (for now), but the two bodegas are gone. And for reasons I cannot fathom, the ill-named Smiling Pizza, next to the subway station, is still in business, as is Mr. Falafel.

But my god, even though Luisi’s Tavern may have been replaced three or four times already, Jackie’s Fifth Amendment (formerly just The Fifth Amendment) is still there on the corner. You can open as many hipoisie bars as you want on 5th (and they have), Jackie’s ain’t budging. In fact, I don’t think anyone would want to try and touch that place. Hell, if you close Jackie’s, that would mean all the guys who drink in there would be out on the streets again, and lord knows the people in that neighborhood don’t want that.

So yeah, I live in fancy-ass Park Slope. Everything I need is within a ten minute walk. I don’t have to worry too much about being robbed or shot no matter what time I walk the streets. On sunny weekend afternoons I wouldn’t step foot on 7th Ave. on a bet. The haughty, self-righteous and tight-assed old indulgent parent types drive me out of my goddamn skull. But I was lucky enough to move in when I did and ended up with a great landlord, so I’m still in that same apartment and my rent is still shockingly cheap (suckers!). And wandering the sidewalks early in the morning or late at night when everyone else is still asleep, it’s easy to believe that it’s still 1920, and Henry Miller is still wandering around, too. At times like that, Park Slope is as Brooklyn as you can get.

Which brings us all back to that original question: “Do you live in Brooklyn or Park Slope?” 

Well, that all depends on how you’re defining Brooklyn. If by “Brooklyn,” you mean the Brooklyn of movies and cartoons, of heavy accents and wife-beaters (the shirts and the men), then no, Park Slope may not fit in very well. Nor would a lot of other neighborhoods. But if you’re thinking exclusively in terms of gentrification, then I’m not so sure. (I’m so tired of hearing 20-year-olds come into the neighborhood and complain about the gentrification). Given that the same changes that started hitting Park Slope around 1990 will, before too long, be hitting most every other neighborhood in Brooklyn as well (look at Coney), perhaps the question should be changed. 

Instead of asking “Is Park Slope a part of Brooklyn?” maybe we should be asking, “Is Brooklyn a part of Brooklyn anymore—or has Brooklyn finally, completely, become nothing but the myth it always strove to be?”