The "slope"

 December 1968---trying to find myself. A friend and his wife have just moved to this strange area in Brookyn. They are always having company, so they invite me over for the evening. I am on Irving Place in Manhattan. "Take the F train" they tell me, and get off at the 7th Avenue station (this is Brooklyn, remember) then walk about 7 blocks to Garfirld Place and find their apartment. And so I do it---a journey to a strange land. ONly the second time on the F--when the train becomes an elevated and circles near Smith Street, I wonder if I am really on some surreal journey.  Finally I arrive. I know nothing about the neighborhood. But 8th avenue towards my destination is pretty deserted--those people I see walkkng on it seem very non threatening. But it is quiet and somewhat eeroie; finally I reach my destination, a brownstone on Garflield Place,between 8th Avenue and the park. My friend and his wife are paying 90 dollars a month for a large floor through. I visit wih them, then return to my apartment in Manhattan. 

I don't remember anyone referring to the immediate neighborhood as Park Slope. Did that come later. Actually soon after this journey I make several visits, not just to my friend, but I am in a therapy group that every other week meets in one of the participants house, and several members of the group live there. We are all in our early to mid twenties. The neighborhood becomes more and more familiar. Yet nobody crosses sixth avenue---everyone settles in close to the park. Two years later my ex wife and myself tell a close friend about the neighborhood---we take him there---he is enchanted and immediately moves to an aparmtne   on Berkeley Place and later buys a brownstone on Saint Johns Place between 7th and 8th. Other friends and acquaintances gravitate to the area.  Now a visit is pretty normal. By the mid seventies I am in the area a couple of times a month. Nobody dares go or taks about going to  the "other side" of Flatbush,  an almost completey Carribean neighborhood. 

My friend buys his brownsone on Saint Johns Place for about 270 thosand dollarrs. This is around 1974. In 1988, he will sell it for around 800,000 dollars. Two girl friends, sevearl mornings waking up in Park Slope and returning home, or to work. And then" nothing.

So it goes---my firsr encounter with the area---post pandemic I think I have been in "the Slope" maybe two or three times---not a lot in what will soon by six years.  By the mid eighties, people I know are living near 5th Avenue, a once dangerous area.--they are mostly the next geneation, in their twenties. It comes as no surprise to most New Yorkers that fourth Avneue has been gentrified---I even checked out a bar once on 3rd, Ah Brookyn---how you have changed. The last time I was there, I wandered west from 8th Avenue to 7th, looking at all the Brownstones, remembering the "cool" that the neighborhood once was considered as. You see it all, the nurses, social workers, actors, real estate people, all in their twenties and thirties, all thinking that the "Slope" reflected their individuality. Now a world of "what"? Complacency. acquried wealth. Leave it alone. Accept the present for what it is.