Park Slope is Dead, Says The New Yorker... But Is It?

The New Yorker stopped by The Rub’s final dance party at Southpaw last week, and found plenty of people who thought that cutting edge nightlife and creativity were “dead” in Park Slope, and that maybe Southpaw’s closure would be the nail in the coffin for the once gritty nabe.

“I don’t like to use the word ‘gentrification,’” Matt Roff, a co-owner of Southpaw, told the New Yorker. “I prefer—I don’t want to say ‘progress,’ either. I see it more as the nature of the beast. This is just how it goes.”

But Roff’s partner Mikey Palms had previously told the Brooklyn Paper that they were closing the place because: “I’m kind of over Park Slope—it’s not a destination for nightlife anymore.”

When it was announced last month that Southpaw, Fifth Avenue’s iconic music venue, , live music fans lamented the death of a club that once hosted eclectic acts like TV On The Radio, Sufjan Stevens, KRS-One and Slick Rick.

“I wouldn’t say nightlife is dead here, but it is certainly not the same neighborhood it was in the 1990s,” Rick Gallo, of children’s band Rolie Polie Guacamole, told Patch last month.

And indeed, most people go out in Park Slope not so much to be seen (the Lower East Side and Williamsburg take care of that nicely), but because they just like their local watering holes.

“It shouldn’t be so much about what’s cool, but more about what’s comfortable,” said Park Sloper Yael Glina, 25. “I prefer the more classic experience of a bartender knowing your name and wanting you to be there.”

Still, when the New Yorker approached a young man outside of Southpaw last weekend and asked whether the closing of the club signaled the end of an era in the neighborhood, he replied: “Park Slope is dead,” and lamented that he only just turned 21.

What do you think? Is the closing of Southpaw the “end” of Park Slope’s cool? Or is there plenty else to do in the neighborhood?