I’m having a little bit

I’m having a little bit of a hard time adjusting to the new neighborhood. Before Park Slope became super gentrified over the past 10 years or so, it was more of what you might consider a “typically” Brooklyn neighborhood. Friends of mine who grew up in the area are tell me it’s completely unbelievable how quickly things changed from a somewhat deprived area to a place now known for cute high-end boutiques, great restaurants, hip clubs, and expensive apartments. Even though I understood this on an intellectual level and have certainly traveled around Brooklyn enough to understand it from a visitor’s perspective, I don’t think I fully comprehended how luxurious the Slope is in relation to other near-by areas. Specifically, say, Sunset Park, where we know live. We’re only 30 blocks away, and once we get bikes, the trips to visit friends or go out to eat or whatever won’t be very difficult. But when we moved in, I didn’t really take into full account the fact that our immediate neighborhood—the place from where you want to run out for ice cream, order take-out, or go to the gym—is not equipped like the Park Slope I’m used to.

There are a lot of local Mexican food places. There are women selling mango slices and coconut nectar on the street, there are sparsely stocked hardware stores, a plethora of dollar stores, some neon-lit Chinese take-out places, and little corner stores. All things considered, I’m conflicted about how I feel. Guilty that we’re renting a beautiful apartment for a comparatively high price in this area, thus adding to spreading gentrification? Happy that we’re finally in a spacious apartment? Sad about leaving a convenient area? Proud that we’re not bowing to Park Slope’s now-outrageous housing prices? Ashamed to feel sad or proud?

One of my and J’s small luxuries is that we do drop-off laundry, which is a bit more expensive than doing it ourselves, but it saves so much time that we consider it money well-spent. The place we’d take it to in Park Slope might have elicited some initial guilt from me the first few times we dropped off clothes, but the place was always busy and friendly, had a computerized system for everyone dropping off, and it was obvious the drop-off service comprised a majority of their business; we became friendly with the people working there and I didn’t think much of it. Last night, we went to bring our laundry to the new place for the first time.

It was a small business with just one woman in the back who didn’t speak much English. A couple was waiting for their clothes to dry in a nearby machine and watching a Spanish soap opera. They stared at us. After getting across to the woman that we were dropping clothes off, she had J fill out form by hand. At the Park Slope place, I felt like I was conducting routine business, on par with dropping off dry cleaning. Here, I felt very much like we were handing someone else our dirty laundry to clean. Which, well, is what we were doing.

I know there’s an adjustment period to any new area, so I’m prepared to wait it out and explore. There’s just a lot more to get used to than I first thought.

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