Blog for an unnamed neighborhood

Parkside. That's where I live. Since moving here 7 years ago with my (now) wife, Mrs. Clarkson FlatBed, I've never known quite what to say when y'all ask what neighborhood I live in. When talking to my North Brooklyn brothers and sisters I often say "the other side of the park." But that's like calling an Asian person "Oriental." It depends on your "orientation." And it's way politically incorrect to boot.

Lefferts Gardens? Nah. We're too far south to be part of the K-Dog Nation. I leave it to the excellent Hawthorne Street blog to cover that scene. www.hawthornestreet.com. Lefferts Manor is a gorgeous, tree-crammed hood-within-a-hood just to our north. You can read all about the thrills of gentrification near the Prospect Park stop elsewhere too.

But when I stroll our one-year old daughter up to the Lincoln Road playground I feel like I'm entering a new groove. Can you relate? Do you exclusively go to the Parkside stop and smugly take a seat on the Q or B before the crowd at Prospect Park gets on and straphangs all the way to Manhattan? (unless a pregnant lady boards...of course...goes without saying...w'all get up for a pregnant ladies...never miss a chance to give our seats to a pregnant lady...)

Maybe Flatbush. But Flatbush is HUUUUUGE! Seen it on a map? It would account for nearly half a million people! That's not a neighborhood. That's an Eastern European country.

Not Ditmas Park. Again, if you're a CWEAF (college-white-educated artsy-fart)you can claim an urbane coffee shop (Vox Pop) and a couple fine but over-rated restaurants (Picket Fence, Farm on Adderley). And what's with this "Victorian Flatbush" neighborhood anyway? I think Mary Kay Gallagher came up with that name, and if you don't know who I'm talking about google her. Force of nature that one...

No, I live in Parkside. Bounded arbitrarily by Prospect Park, the Parade Grounds, Caton, Nostrand and, I dunno, Fennimore(?) this bizarre, never-dull rapidly changing staying-the-same African-Caribbean-CWEAF-American neighborhood is what it is. Only the Q at Parkside defines us. And so...I give you THE Q AT PARKSIDE.