by Angela Starita

When I moved into my new neighborhood, I was anxious to the point of nausea. Even today, the soap my husband and I used to clean the kitchen when we first arrived induces a nervous sadness, the feeling of a no-turning-back crisis. But this was one I’d brought upon myself. We’d moved from a wonderful 2-bedroom apartment overlooking the campus of an art school in the now idealized landscape of Brownstone Brooklyn, and that treasure in the currency of New York City real estate, just two blocks from the subway. But I wanted more space and a chance to garden. I got that in a house in Kensington, about five miles south of my old place, but culturally at a complete remove. Kensington is a world of immigrants and Hasidic Jews, row houses and dozens of brick apartment buildings along a road that runs straight to Coney Island. That last, Ocean Parkway, was the idea of the great Olmsted and Vaux of Central Park fame, and it had been an esteemed address at one time. (While I suspected this from the architecture of some of the older buildings, my hunch was confirmed when I heard an interview with David Geffen describing his childhood ambition to one day have an apartment on Ocean Parkway. It should be noted, that Geffen said this to demonstrate what a parochial world view he’d had as a young man.) The neighborhood’s eastern boundary, Coney Island Avenue, is overrun with car repair shops almost as desolate as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Valley of the Ashes. Read more »