Playing Too Nicely In The Sandbox: The New Yorker Parodies Park Slope Parents
“The first rule of Park Slope Parents is you don’t talk about Park Slope Parents.”
Or so goes the premise for the Friday, January 29 The New Yorker humor piece titled Park Slope Parents’ Fight Club: A Friendly Reminder Of The Rules.
The set-up is structured as an email to the listserv well-known to Park Slope Parents (PSP) members:
“TO: Park Slope Parents Listserv
FROM: JennFletcher14@rocketmail.com
SUBJECT: Re: Rules of Park Slope Parents’ Fight Club
Just sending a friendly reminder to all parents after SOMEONE left a roll of medical gauze in the rec center last Thursday!”
The “Re” in the subject title is the tip-off that these “fight club” rules have been circulated around before, e.g.:
“FIRST RULE OF FIGHT CLUB: You MUST be a resident of Park Slope proper.
No exceptions. We would love to be more lenient about this one, but we simply don’t have the resources to run an efficient Fight Club if overwhelmed with inhabitants of fringe neighborhoods. It would be unfair to official Park Slope denizens. Our hands are tied. 🙁 (For those who will inevitably ask: Greenwood Heights is NOT considered Park Slope.)”
(NB: Humor understood. Factually false. “Fringe neighborhoods” allowed.)
The thirteen rules take on the familiar tropes lampooned on the web and over smoked pollack fishcake and bosc pear crêpes during Sunday brunch at Rosewater. You’ll hear about children’s allergies, organic soaps approved by Ellen, securing the chef’s table at Brooklyn Fare, and more.
Of course, the context is Fight Club, so rules are violent and badass:
“NINTH RULE: NO derogatory trash talk.
This is not a forum for verbal assault. If you develop a personal issue with another member, we advise setting up a time for a peaceful, mediated sit-down over coffee. Then you may return to Fight Club and beat the shit out of each other.”
But for all the talk of violence and aggression — this humor piece seems somewhat careful, didn’t it? Yes, many of the checkboxes of parodying the Park Slope stroller set are checked off, but gently so. It seems the kid gloves were on.
We asked Park Slope Parents founder Susan Fox about her response to the piece.
“It seems as though a few of the folks who moderate Park Slope Parents were given a ‘nod.’ Ellen is one of our moderators, as is Rachel, whose YahooID is ‘RachelFran,” says Fox. “[But] missing from the mix was me and I’m not sure if I should be thankful or hurt!”
The Park Slope community — say what you will about them — can take a lot more ribbing than this. So where are the bare knuckles?
This isn’t by far the first time the PSP has been lampooned. Shit Park Slope Parents Say, written and performed by Katie Goodman and Soren Kisiel, has a bit more teeth to it:
Similarly, Michael Showalter’s The Slope series — which came out in 2012 — hilariously documented the fictitious lives of lesbian Park Slopers Ingrid and Desiree (Throwback: Tea Lounge makes a cameo in Season 2, Episode 3).
This isn’t the first time The New Yorker has waded in our Gowanus-friendly waters either. In a life-imitates-art scenario, the magazine recently shined a spotlight on the Park Slope’s very real Speed Dating for Mom Friends.
Here are some other titles we’re looking forward to:
- YIMBY The Real Estate Slayer: A tell-all Community Board 6 docudrama about fighting off President Donald Trump who attempts to build a new Vegas on 4th Avenue.
- The Green-wood Cemetery Walking Dead. A post-apocalyptic fantasia that tells the story of zombies who eat everything in the Park Slope Food Coop except for the Israeli products.
- Baking Bad. A former student at Le Cordon Bleu is down on his luck and now teaching after-school baking classes to Park Slope kids. After finding out he has incurable celiac disease, he begins cooking meth in the basement of PS 321.
Perhaps it’s time for Fight Club author Charles Palahniuk to take a whack at Park Slope. A nice, healthy whack. We’re sure we’ll be just fine…after we’ve cleaned up the blood and teeth.