The Inbound Gowanus

When I was a little boy, my father had to drive me to and from a school several miles from where we then lived in suburban New Jersey. As he drove and I rode, we would listen to WCBS in New York. Our morning trek always coincided with the New York City traffic report, which always seemed to include some mention of a strange thing called the "inbound Gowanus." Being so young, I had no idea of roads and traffic, and never having been to Long Island, I had never heard of the Gowanus Expressway. I think I pictured the inbound Gowanus as some kind of giant monster that devoured everything in its path.

Many Long Island commuters, I now suspect, would not disagree with that description of the inbound Gowanus.

I thought of the inbound Gowanus tonight when I gave a class about Brooklyn to my API01 class. The centerpiece of this class was a recent New York Times article on gentrification along the Gowanus Canal, an area most known in New York for its stench and pollution than for anything else. But the Yuppies are, indeed, moving to Gowanus. I recall reading a story in the Times real estate section a couple years ago about a Yuppie couple who, priced out of Park Slope, bought a place between 3rd and 4th Avenues, near the Gowanus Canal. They insisted that they lived in a place called "G Slope." I wanted to scream at them, "Get over it! You do not live in Park Slope. The Gowanus Canal is not Park Slope!"

I am amazed sometimes at how much my students do know about the world. One of my students brought up the broken window theory--a theory that actively combatting low-level petty crime leads to a reduction in more serious crime.

I used this as a good springboard for getting into my conditionals:

0) "If you don't fix windows, people move out of a neighborhood."--expresses something that is always true

1) "If you don't fix the window, I'll move out."--cause and effect (often used in threats)

2) "If you would fix the window, I would stay."--promise or bargaining

3) "If the landlord had fixed the window, I would have stayed in Brooklyn."--explanation or regret

But it was interesting to discuss dear old Brooklyn. How I do not miss it! Or at least, how I do not miss paying upwards of $800 U.S. for a room in a neighborhood that was an hour away from anywhere in Manhattan. How I do not miss hearing about or talking about real estate prices in Park Slope or seeing modest little cottages in Ditmas Park advertised at $799,000. Private bathroom or no private bathroom, my housing situation can only get better from there.