July 2, 2008
Soda - Seltzer - Beer
I can't take credit for this one. My s.o. Jane took snapped it on her iPhone on her way to class this morning. We've since looked it up and it's indeed true -- people are still getting home deliveries of seltzer in these parts. (See the first story at that link, "Shlepping Seltzer.") I'm guessing that it's just that with so many New Yorkers, there are niche markets for quite a few things that might not have survived elsewhere. As I wrote over on trooantroo, my newish Brooklyn photo blog, it's stuff like a soda-seltzer-beer home delivery truck or the knife-sharpening truck that also rolls through the neighborhood that makes me love living here. As I put it over there, it's "the frequency with which you walk down the street and say to yourself, 'now, what in the the hell is that?'" Makes even walking to the subway a trip. (Photo credit Jane Andersen)
Brooklyn, distribution, Park Slope, photos
May 19, 2008
The Chattering, Twittering Class
I'm not all that surprised that the New York Times has decided that the hatred of my home neighborhood of Park Slope has reached the level of "trend" deserving of a Sunday style-section story. After all, New York City seems to be locked in a battle over its soul, and Park Slope is the most high-profile habitat of the sort of self-obsessed urban dweller that every New Yorker loves to demean and is terrified of becoming. And seriously, the number of strollers on Slope sidewalks on any given weekend can indeed be downright maddening.
What I do find surprising is that in that piece the Times used "Twittering" as a capitalized adjective with no explanation:
By the same token, when we talk about "people who hate Park Slope," we are talking in large part about a certain stratum of the chattering, Twittering class. "This whole thing sounds like white people being annoyed by and jealous of other white people, which I find kind of funny," said James Bernard, a union organizer and a member of the local Community Board 6.
I can't imagine that Twitter has reached the level of shared cultural trope. How many people do you think read that and thought "what the huh?"
11215, Brooklyn, Park Slope, Twitter
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