Park Slope

A view of the homes along 3rd Street

Photographs: Imogen Brwon

Entitled parents. Bratty, “gifted” kids in organic T-shirts. Yes, yes, we’ve heard it all about these brownstone-lined blocks, which march east from Fourth Avenue to Prospect Park West and south from Flatbush Avenue to the Prospect Expressway like phalanxes of beautiful, well-behaved children. Slope families are happy to have you believe anything but the truth—that their neighborhood is a diverse, community-oriented enclave with access to very decent sushi and a cleaner, less-crowded version of Central Park—if it means they’ll have a better chance of getting their kids into P.S. 321.

Take the N, R to Union Street or the F to Seventh Avenue, and you’ll quickly feel like you’ve walked into a Todd Parr children’s book: Every kind of family strolls the sidewalk here. And while New York City as a whole is no stranger to diversity or celebrity, in Park Slope those aspects have a very PBS feel—as if you, the stay-at-home dad, the gay mom and Maggie Gyllenhaal were all guest stars on some tasteful kids’ show.

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