The Other Borough

I have lived in NYC for a decade and have seen my share of snowstorms, blackouts, terrorist attacks and subway strikes and I always thought that there was some solidarity between the Manhattanites and their other borough compadres. See I always assumed we live mostly similar lives with similar issues and get similar services and that misconception was only reinforced when I spent 6 years in Park Slope or better known as the lower East East Side.
But when I moved my family further South away from food CoOps, play-dates for both kids and adults and bars completely content to be patronized by dogs and owners alike, I found a second Brooklyn.
Unlik Park Slope this Brooklyn is a long way to NYC both figuratively and literally., this Brooklyn is blue-collar, this Brooklyn is neighborly not because somebody else is watching, this Brooklyn is not afraid to call it Christmas, this Brooklyn is outrageous decorations not simple holiday decor, this Brooklyn is unpretentious but this Brooklyn is also cliquey, this Brooklyn is also a place where they keep kids away from the parks because they can just as well watch TV at home but more importantly this Brooklyn is shovel your own street. I'm not talking about your sidewalk or shoveling out you car but rather shovel the entire block.
See we all pay taxes but the guys in Manhattan see more snow-plows in an hour than we do in a day. Park Slope probably has block-committees who lobby the local assemblyman for early street sweeping duty.
But in the rest of the city where there are blocks which don't ever see a plow hooked up to a garbage truck we refer to snow removal as spring.
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