Real Estate Brokers Agree — Follow The Lesbians

Sure, blame it on the strollers:

As the Park Slope mommies, daddies and Bugaboos multiply, a fringe group that once dominated a piece of the neighborhood has taken itself back to the fringe.

. . .

The southward shift of the lesbian community is far from surprising.

One obvious reason is the skyrocketing cost of living in Park Slope. On average, men earn 21 percent more than women, an income discrepancy that becomes wider for women-only households. But finances are only part of the neighborhood’s waning desirability among lesbians.

In the end, the real turnoff may be simply too many people who look like one another.

“I went to the Tea Lounge the other day and it totally freaked me out,” said Gabrielle Belfiglio, a lesbian who once lived in Park Slope, but has since moved to Windsor Terrace. “Everyone looked like they were part of the same photo shoot, posing with a laptop or a baby.

“There used to be a sense of diversity that isn’t there anymore,” she added. “You can walk around Windsor Terrace and Kensington and see a Hassid next to a woman in hijab next to a Jamaican kid. You can be who you are in that mix of people.”

It’s great to feel comfortable in a “mix of people” . . . do the Hassids and women in hijab feel the same?

And although I like the idea of tying the decline of lesbian community in Park Slope to the male-female economic gap — interesting theory! — this story isn’t exactly new, is it? Even the Times was writing about the exodus from “Dyke Slope” back in January 2005:

When Emily Haddad moved to New York shortly after finishing college in 2001, she didn’t know much about the city, but being gay, she knew she wanted to live in a gay-friendly community.

Her neighborhood of choice? Park Slope.

“It seemed like lesbian central in New York,” said Ms. Haddad, 24, whose unaccented speech belies her North Carolina roots.

Park Slope was the neighborhood where she marched in the Brooklyn Pride Parade during her first summer in New York. She spent another afternoon at the Rising Cafe, a lesbian coffee shop on Fifth Avenue, and ended up in a spirited discussion with some women from Dyke TV, a weekly television show. It was also the neighborhood where she volunteered at the Lesbian Herstory Archives, on 14th Street near Prospect Park. The Archives, and by extension Park Slope, became her adopted home.

But she never did make Park Slope her actual home, nor did any of her lesbian friends. “Dyke Slope,” as it is affectionately called by many lesbians, was too expensive for them, as it has become for many other New Yorkers. Instead, Ms. Haddad found a cheap, newly renovated two-bedroom apartment in a rowhouse on 51st Street, deep amid the residential sleepiness of Sunset Park. She splits the $1,500 monthly rent with a female roommate, who is straight.

(In fact, it’s such old news that the Brooklyn Paper story even features a picture of someone who was interviewed in the Times piece. She’s still not living in Park Slope.)

St. Mark’s Place T-Shirts To The Contrary, Punk’s Probably Dead By This Point

Punk rock comes full circle as a former East Village club actually becomes a “dive bar”:

After a 15-year run on Third Ave. near St. Mark’s Pl., Continental celebrated its last night as a punk rock club on Sunday night. Trigger, its owner, plans to convert it into a dive bar, offering acoustic folk music on Sunday nights.

But for Continental’s punk finale, the volume was definitely higher than acoustic. Way, earsplittingly higher.

The final performers included such legendary acts as the Bullys, Lenny Kaye, Handsome Dick Manitoba with most of the Dictators, and C.J. Ramone.

. . .

Throughout the evening, the musicians made references to the neighborhood’s demise and the spread of New York University.

“Can you imagine in 40 years — this will be happening in Bushwick?” Kaye mused, envisioning the end of a future music venue on the current edge of gentrification.

C.J. Ramone, sans Ramones black mop of hair but with a clean-shaven head, blasted through Ramones favorites like “Blitzkrieg Bop” and “Chinese Rock” with Daniel Rey on guitar. As the familiar Ramones songs blared, young punkers in jeans and black T-shirts started diving off ledges into the crowd and surfing on top of the packed sea of punk fans’ hands.

“N.Y.U. just f—ked the whole area up,” Ramone said in between splashing the crowd in front with beer. “No offense to you guys paying a lot of money to go there — but this sucks.”

Not to ruin the mood, but it doesn’t seem like its NYU’s fault more than it’s just the fact that punk’s not as lucrative as it once was:

After the club’s last show ever ended, Trigger said what killed Continental wasn’t just the neighborhood’s change.

“A punk rock club in this neighborhood — so much has moved out to Brooklyn,” he said. But he also added, “There’s not such a strong scene as there was. I used to get 400 demos a week. Now I get five or 10. Kids are into hip-hop and electronica. S–t happens.”

And not to put too fine a point on it, but isn’t Dick Manitoba like 52 years old?

Backstory: No Local Bands From New Jersey But Boy That Plasma Television Has A Great Picture!

No Sheet, They Even Steal Flower Pots

While it’s true that society needs hot-sheet havens to which one can spirit away prostitutes, most decent citizens agree that none of us deserves to have their outdoor planters stolen:

Can you imagine living in a neighborhood where everyday you have to walk the streets and see drug paraphernalia and condoms? Well, welcome to the lives of people who live on 68th Avenue and Woodhaven Boulevard.

On Wednesday, September 13, Community Board 6 was introduced to this problem by members of the 68th Avenue Alliance, who came to the meeting to discuss how the Haven Motel, located at 68-02 Woodhaven Boulevard, has drastically changed their way of life.

“Prostitutes and hookers are out on the street at all times of the day, this is not a way of life,” said a woman who wished to remain anonymous.

A man by the name of Dennis Dicheck, a resident of the area for over 20 years, talked about his personal encounters with unruly people.

“Condoms are left in front of houses and on driveways, there’s been an increase in fighting, and you can’t leave flower pots out or someone will steal them — it happened to me,” he said. “Someone was urinating in front of the house and my wife said, ‘This is private property.’ The person responded with ‘That’s why I am doing this.’ There is no regard for someone’s property.”

. . .

If one of the neighbors happens to go to the motel to complain, they might receive the same line that Dicheck received, which was, “We can’t help you, these people come from the ghetto.”

“It’s sad that people have to put up with these situations,” added Dicheck, “and people who don’t bring positive qualities to a neighborhood.”

And Everybody Hates The Yuppies

Tom Lehrer can adjust his lyrics accordingly:

The Hasidic and Spanish communities of south Williamsburg are often rivals over the neighborhood’s housing stock, but they cooperate when it comes to keeping out a common enemy: gentrifiers.

Evidence of both the competition and the teamwork were on public display this Monday afternoon on South 8th Street between Bedford and Berry.

In the middle of that residential block, developer Michael Zazza has plans to tear down two of the oldest buildings in Williamsburg and put up a 20-story luxury condo in their place. “This is not going to be Jewish,” complained Ms. Cohen, who lives in an eight-story affordable apartment building down the block. “It’s going to be a new trend: Yuppies. They’re going to take over the neighborhood.”

Cohen was joined by over a dozen other orthodox Jews, the Four Borough Neighborhood Preservation Alliance (4BNA), Queens Councilman Tony Avella, and a few members of the local Spanish community to call on New York City to landmark 118 South 8th Street, an 1840s building which served as a social hall in the 19th century for Democrats, Republicans, Suffragettes, philosophers, healers, and teetotalers alike.

“This building represents the identity of this community,” argued retired firefighter Serafin Flores. “This is an important symbol which might be destroyed.”

When the Star asked Flores about the local rivalry between the two ethnic groups, he said, “We are competing for housing, let’s be honest. But on this, yes, we are united.”

Rabbi E. Katz quickly jumped in to agree to disagree and to just plain agree. “We have a problem,” he explained. “Everybody needs housing, but now we are united.”

Out: Grimy Auto Repair Shops, Dingy Industrial Buildings And Dilapidated Private Houses; In: Glistening Office Buildings, Putting Greens And Super Bowl Parties

Bruce Ratner should have set his sights on Long Island City in Queens, where apparently they’ll build anything:

Changes are a-comin’ to the Long Island City skyline in the form of development that will transform neighborhoods once cluttered with grimy auto repair shops and underutilized industrial buildings into streets lined with towering residential units and glistening office buildings.

. . .

Dingy industrial buildings are being demolished or gutted to make way for glistening new condos or sprawling residential lofts, and recent groundbreaking ceremonies paved the way for construction of the $200 million, 15-story Citigroup Office Tower at Court Square Two, which will house the national headquarters for Citibank’s credit card division and branch banking business.

Some of the exciting new things planned include:

• “A 20-story tower with 120 condos, a running track and a swimming pool with a retractable dome at 45-56 Pearson St. on a site that housed the former Sternberger Warehouse parking lot and several dilapidated private houses.”
• “Four stories are being added to a century-old factory and former power plant at 50-09 Second Ave. which will boast 175 condos, a fitness center, a kids’ playroom and a screening room for Super Bowl parties and other affairs.”
• “A 17-story development dubbed the ‘Crescent Club,’ will rise at 41-17 Crescent St. just north of the Queensboro Bridge The development will feature 110 condos, a lap pool, a putting green and a landscaped back yard.”
• “Real estate mogul Jerry Speyer is coming to Queens. The city chose the owner of Rockefeller Center and the Chrysler Building to build a mammoth tower of at least a million square feet on a site where the Queens Plaza Municipal Garage now stands.”

All this change and yet still no laundromat within short walking distance.