Sunset Park Rocks

While I was bouncing around Peru, Time Out, in their annual article on where to live, profiled Sunset Park, promoting it as an alternative to Park Slope that has already seen an influx of influx of students and young professionals. Up until the past couple days, I really hadn’t seen any sign of this “influx.” Even now, I’d say trickle more describes what’s happening.

Just tonight, I spotted a 20-something artsy white chick clutching a Bed, Bath, & Beyond bag as she looked around my local bodega, Life Deli. Nothing says just moved quite like a Bed, Beth, & Beyond bag when combined with curious nosing around the bodega in search of, well, to be honest, some kind of semi-upper end organic product that they just don’t sell yet.

Over the weekend, I spotted another artsy white chick walking up 45th Street towards the subway at 4th Avenue. Lisa and I spotted a few skinny, bearded literary types as we walked around on Saturday night. So, yeah, there’s definitely more white folks of the moved to Brooklyn from Podunk variety — like me — now then there were during my first go-round in the Sunset Park (2001 through 2002) or even in this past fall. But what does it mean for the neighborhood?

Much ado about nothing, I say. Fact is that this neighborhood just isn’t as glamorous as Park Slope or as multi-cult hip as Clinton Hill and Green, or as aesthetically appealing as Ditmas Park. The services that exist in those neighborhoods don’t exist and they aren’t coming anytime soon.

Observational data suggests that this influx of students and young professionals doesn’t consist of people who have embraced the neighborhood — shop at the grocery stores, wander around 5th Avenue on weekends, try the unsung great restaurants like Isabel’s and El Tesoro — as it does of people who sleep and watch telly in Sunset Park but do everything else with the other college-educated white people in Park Slope.

Whether or not that’s good or bad I don’t know. I just know that, until I see a bearded hyper-literary type at El Tesoro or an artsy chick ducking into Mini-Max on a weekend day to buy something for the house it just is.

Wandering up to Nha Trang Palace — the best Vietnamese in the City for my money despite what the folks on Chowhound might be saying — on 8th Avenue in Sunset Park — a couple Thursdays for dinner and I came across this place on 46th or 47th and 5th Avenue.

At first glance, there doesn’t seem to be anything that unique about it but as near as my research — a rudimentary Google search for “lechonera” — shows, a Lechonera is a restaurant that serves Dominican, Cuban or Puerto Rican-style food, with an emphasis on suckling pig and pork, which does make it unique since it’d have to the first non-Mexican joint to open on 5th Avenue since the failed Pollo Campero experiment. I don’t think this is a sign that Borinquens, Cubans, or Dominicans are flocking back to Sunset Park but more a recognition that with Tacos Matamoros just down the way, another Mexican joint just ain’t going to fly.

I just hope they do a better job with the foods than they’ve done with the lettering on the plywood. Unless, of course, the small “h” is some sort of symbol or marketing ploy or something.

Snapped a couple other pics while walking up to 8th Avenue that night. Hope you enjoy…

I know what you’re thinking. Another blog about how cool and intriguing it is to live in such and such a neighborhood in Brooklyn. We all know that Brooklyn’s literally littered with neighborhood blogs and that certain ‘hoods like Clinton Hill and Park Slope seem to have more bloggers than actual residents but Sunset Park Rocks will be different. We promise.

We ain’t doing this to fight the power and complain about development or gentrification nor are we are doing this to disseminate news about every little thing that happens in our nabe. We’re doing this because, well, we thought it’d be fun and we happen to like were we live. A lot. As simple as that. No high-minded literary or political agenda is at play.

Living in Sunset Park is pretty similar to living in any other neighborhood in a lot of respects. They are things we like and things we don’t. But it’s also different in a lot of ways that the folks blogging about brownstone prices in Clinton Hill and The Slope aren’t aware of. Not only does the neighborhood’s ethnic tableau make for some of the best eating in NYC but, with its growing Asian and Hispanic populations, it also provides a sneak preview of what our City, outside of Manhattan and Staten Island, might look like in 10 or 20 years.

Lisa’s been living on the same street in Sunset Park for several years now. I’m on my second go-round in the nabe in eight years in New York City. We each have our own perspective, likes, and dislikes. Lisa will be big on hair and nail salons and some neighborhood gossip while I’ll be talking booze, grub, and sights.

At the end of the day, I guess we’re just two more people from Brooklyn blogging about our neighborhood but don’t let that stop you from reading Sunset Park Rocks because our neighborhood is infinitely more compelling than yuppified and gentrified BK nabes that will go unnamed.