Is Park Slope the World’s Worst Place to Be Single?
Amy Keyishian has an article on the womens-y finance site LearnVest called “Why Broke is the New Single.” The piece is actually about how both states cause misplaced shame (you are more than your relationship status/bank statement, you foxy lady, you!), but has a pretty significant secondary thread about how being single in Park Slope — where Kayishian lived in her 20s — is basically The Worst:
It was awful. One time, I wanted to go to my local diner, but it was brunch time and there was a line. The host asked, “How many? One? Stand over here,” and went on to the next people in line—a couple.
“No!” they both shrieked. “Give her a seat!”
“But she can sit at the counter,” he told them.
I took the emotional bullet. “Sit,” I told them, heroically accepting my individual-serving place in this family-style world. “Sit in good health.”
She acknowledges, of course, that the horrors of singledom are not entirely Park Slope-specific, because:
a) Park Slopes are everywhere.
Wherever you live, surely there is a Park Slope: a neighborhood known for being child-friendly, where the sidewalks are choked with strollers, everyone seems to own a purebred Golden Retriever and all the guys with hot butts turn out to be carrying an Ergo when you catch up with them.
And also!
b) How you feel about your romantic status is probably only semi-linked to your ZIP code. (Also, according to Amy Sohn, all the Park Slope marrieds are also unhappy, so the ring is moot.)
All true. I can personally attest to this: it is very possible to be unhappy in so many places! But Keyishian’s hardly the first person to lament the endless frustration that is being single in Park Slope, land of strollers and lazy brunches and jointly-owned French bulldogs.
But here’s the thing: is it really and truly more depressing here than in Clinton Hill, Williamsburg, Astoria, Cleveland, San Francisco? Or is it just more…lamented? Anyone got insights? Horror stories? Tales from the trenches? Times someone made you sit at a diner counter because you were alone?
