The full text of the ad is:

Our DIVERSITY is our greatest STRENGTH.

When any New Yorker is atacked for who they are, what they believe or whom they LOVE it is a crime against all of us.

Keep our City strong.

LOVE LOVE. HATE HATE.

This is a totally on-pitch PSA that makes me proud of the city. To the best of my memory, this is the first time I’ve seen the slogan “Love love. Hate hate.” That’s a seriously good tagline. Also impressive is how timely this PSA is—the text seems to allude to recent hate crimes against a Muslim cab driver and several gay men in the Bronx, fresh wounds against the city. The campaign was launched October 14, not even 2 weeks after the Bronx attacks. The ads are produced by NYC & Company, the city’s public affairs division; more information in this press release.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

I received a lot of feedback on my post this morning, “On leaving Brooklyn.” It turns out I hit upon something a lot of people wanted to talk about—how Park Slope has spiraled downhill. Some of the responses are below.

But first, the piece had a serious flaw, which several readers identified: I never settled on a definition of “Park Slope.” I struggled with this while I was writing. You can draw a line around Park Slope, and 21st Street (where I live) isn’t in it. But 21st Street’s neighborhood has no name (we just call it “21st Street”), and I do most of my shopping, socializing and recreation in Park Slope. So I’ve always identified Park Slope as “my neighborhood.” Park Slope is also so massive, it influences the neighborhoods that surround it — a string of gentrified blocks that stretch from Brooklyn Heights to Windsor Terrace, which the newspapers call the Brownstone Belt. I also took it in stride that people from Park Slope frequently go to places like Coney Island, Dumbo, Fort Greene, and Williamsburg for fun (and to drink on warehouse rooftops). So that explains the sprawling geography of the post, even though I was focused on one particular neighborhood.

Also, a lot of people failed to read the last paragraph, or failed to understand what I meant. I know I am going to have gripes with Manhattan—the Financial District is barely a neighborhood at all—but it will be a fresh helping of gripes, not the leftovers I’ve been chewing on for years.

* * *

On Twitter, @ironicsans nailed it, saying “Occasional moves give fresh perspective on the city. Enjoy it.”

@amrosario wrote, ”Just so you know, you’re very perceptive regarding the ‘Park Slope attitude.’ I thought I was being a grumpy old guy re:the Slope”, and added, “So I think, if you move into manhattan, you’ll be writing that same blog post within a few years.”

@bigjondaniel wisely asked, ”Does every generation think their kids are worse parents than they were?”

* * *

On Facebook, several of my friends in Park Slope praised my post. I won’t name names, but I was glad to have their support. One friend wrote,

“I’ve lived in South Slope 12 years, but I only started feeling like a gentrifier once the huge influx of real gentrifiers started a couple years ago.”

* * *

I also received a handful of comments by e-mail. They are uniformly thoughtful and interesting. Here are some of them:

“Oh, this makes me so sad.  I left Park Slope in ’05 for other reasons and I never noticed the deterioration you’re talking about.  I miss the Brooklyn I knew a great deal, so while I’m not doubting your observation, I’m going to pretend it isn’t true.  I’m just not ready to give up the Park Slope of my memories.”

“It’s too bad you feel this way, it sounds like you live on an exceptional block. Yes the area is CHOCK FULL of douches, but I don’t think you’re going to do any better in Manhattan. Most likely, no one in your new building will be saying hello in the elevator. As someone who’s lived in 3 of 5 boros, I have found that neighbors run the gamut from friendly to curmudgeon and it’s up to you to change their attitude.”

“While I can understand your frustration with socially inept, rude people now in the hood, I can tell you it’s an old story. I grew up in Park Slope in the 60′s and 70′s, attending grade school at St. Francis Xavier and playing stickball on President St. My folks wanted to leave because of all the new “snobby” people moving in…basically the first wave of gentrifiers. They went out of their way to impose their  generally superior attitude on us hoi polloi, the street curs that they wouldn’t even acknowledge while they walked their Afgan hounds down the block, even if they’d seen us there a hundred times before. Now some of those people are likely the kindly old timers you speak of. No doubt they’ve brought a nice bohemian vibe to the nabe, but the Gelato shops and sushi places also crowded out most of the butcher shops, the bakeries and deli’s that made Park Slope a real working class commumity for so many decades. So perhaps it’s all a matter of perspective. For me, Park Slope started to lose it’s soul then. Good luck with Manhattan. Maybe the UWS would be a fine place to settle…it reminds me of Park Slope, just louder, bigger, more crowded, and more expensive. And…more rude, too-hip twenty and thirty-somethings that didn’t want to spend the trust fund money in Williamsburg or SoHo.”

“I think you are just getting older and have less tolerance of things.  The bearded guy may very well be a very nice and considerate person, but he may have been preoccupied at the time.  Big strollers and dogs have been in PS for a much longer period than 2002.”

“Since when does Park Slope = Brooklyn? Not that I disagree with your basic sentiments about Park Slope, but there are other neighborhoods in Brooklyn, you know. I moved to the Slope in 1985 and was already annoyed with the changes by the time you arrived, though we didn’t move out until 2008. Guess what? There are plenty of other Park Slope refugees — of the good kind — in our new neighborhood…and we still live in Brooklyn.”

* * *

Elsewhere, Brownstoner ran a link to my piece, unleashing their famously brutal commenters. So I can check that off my bucket list.

Also tonight, I got a mention on the mighty Fucked In Park Slope blog.

Update: Curbed, too!

Update: And Gothamist!

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

Two Saturday mornings ago, I was shopping at the C-Town on 9th Street in Park Slope. In the snack aisle I walked past a guy intently studying two bags of potato chips. He looked a lot like me, only with a shaggy beard and an untucked flannel work shirt, a popular look here. Next to him, an elderly lady asked for help reaching a box of garbage bags on a high shelf. “Just a second,” said the bearded guy, lost in his potato chip labels. “When you have a chance,” the woman said patiently.

I did the obvious thing. Since the other guy wouldn’t, I got the box for the woman. But I also had a very visceral reaction. I wanted to turn to the bearded potato chip scholar, get up in his face, and hiss, “Dude! What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

Fortunately, I didn’t act on that impulse. But the next time I might. And that’s why it’s time to leave Brooklyn.

I am leaving Park Slope because I am increasingly impatient with people too socially deficient to act like good neighbors. People who won’t spare five seconds to help an old lady. People who can’t figure out their way around without checking their iPhones. People who don’t say hi to the neighbors with whom they share a stoop. These things are getting noticeably worse. Rather than stew here and become the local grouch, I’m recognizing that I have passed my expiration date in this neighborhood. Time to exit gracefully.

When I moved to the Slope 8 years ago, the place had a reputation as a friendly neighborhood, especially as a haven for lesbians, writers and young parents. I remember walking through Prospect Park in autumn 2002 and seeing dads in fleece pullovers playing with their kids on the swings. “Those guys look like me in 10 years,” I thought, feeling as if I’d found long-term home. The kids were precocious, but there was a Lake Wobegone-style charm to this urban neighborhood where all the children were above average. Today Park Slope has a different reputation. It’s become an insane pleasure island for new parents with no adult social skills. It’s a place where it’s acceptable to be a mom or a dad and stay up until dawn drinking Jack-and-Cokes on the roof of a warehouse. You pay your dues to the Food Co-Op or the CSA not out of any sense of social responsibility, but as absolution for staying out too late on a Thursday eating wings.

By now, it’s old news that Park Slope parents take their kids everywhere. On any given night, you’ll find young children in the bars with their moms and dads. Walk around after midnight and you see parents out with kids in strollers or on trikes and scooters. I love kids, but I get a little weirded out when I see a toddler in a bar: I guess I can’t cuss here.

Let’s roll back to 2002. When I moved to 21st Street, there was no majority demographic on my block. It was a mix of immigrants (and their kids and grandkids) and young people from the usual menu of New York starter jobs—media, finance, education, advocacy, city government. Strangely enough, these people all got along and looked out for one another. When I got mugged in front of my apartment in 2007, I told one of my neighbors. Before long, three or four other neighbors who’d heard the news reached out to me to apologize. They felt ownership of the block, and they took its security very personally. They felt as if the block had let me down. That’s special.

Since then, developers have put up a few more luxury condominiums, a few nice restaurants opened around the corner, the schools have started to get better reputations, and the great churn of New York City real estate has flooded the Slope with young, progressive couples. People here still want to get along with their neighbors, but a gulf has widened between the multi-generation old-timers and the new residents. The new in-your-face parenting grates on the more conservative parents and the non-parents, and that friction make this place a fractured neighborhood.

About a year ago, a young couple and their two elementary-aged kids moved in next door to my building. My new neighbors have had a hard time fitting in. One of the first things they did was complain that one of the old men on the block played his music too loud. (He turned the volume down.) They installed a graffiti wall in their garden, so their children can practice street art. Their kids play behind a gate, never mingling with the other kids on the street. None of us know any of their names.

I guess these things bother me so much because I empathize with people who have trouble socializing. I’m a nervous guy from a family of shy people, from an awkward generation. Those of us born in the late 1970s and early 1980s were the failure-to-launch generation. We didn’t just watch “Arrested Development,” and were in arrested development. Aware of this, I feel like we have to prove we’re better than the sad expectations older generations set for us. As adults, we have to wise up and be fully functional. We should practice a vocation, care for the less fortunate, cultivate hobbies and interests, and set a good example. When I look around Park Slope, I don’t see this happening. I see too many guys my age who aren’t put together, who slouch when they walk, who can’t order a slice of pizza with confidence, who look fidgety and skittish. A lot of these guys are also fathers. It troubles me.

Now that I’ve indicted an entire neighborhood, I shouldn’t forget that Park Slope has been very good to me. Brooklyn has always been a place you can fit in if you don’t fit in anywhere else. I’m fortunate to have some solid friends here. But good people have been moving away. Chris to Chicago, Carol to Australia, Kelly and Justin to San Francisco, Ned to Los Angeles, Jess and Kip and Emily to the Upper East Side. Even Jonathan Letham, the novelist who helped give Brownstone Brooklyn its literary reputation, recently split for California.

My diagnosis: Park Slope’s reputation as a welcoming place went viral, and brought in new residents who made it a warped exaggeration of itself. Park Slope of 2010 is Park Slope of 2002 viewed through a Coney Island funhouse mirror. I offer no cure for this problem of deteriorated community, but I don’t want to stay here and whine. The borough across the river, to which I’ve commuted every workday for the last 8 years, looks pretty shiny. I made a plan. And so my last day in Brooklyn is November 15. It’s time to cede this neighborhood to the hip and despicable.

Might I encounter some despicable people on Manhattan? Oh yeah. But it’ll be a whole new kind of despicable.

Update: Reader reaction to this post.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

People often ask me for advice about moving to New York City. This post is long and over-sharey, but I’m writing it as a service piece to explain what it takes to find an apartment in New York in 2010. As some of you know already, I’m making a big move next month from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Here’s the story of how it happened.

If you don’t live here, the first thing you need to know is that New York real estate is not like other cities. Most people rent. You have to be pretty well set to buy even a tiny part of one floor of one building, especially in Manhattan. The mortgage crisis of 2008 changed nothing for renters; we weren’t the ones building McMansions in the desert. Low-end rental prices still climb a few percent a year. Access to the rental market is controlled by hyper-competitive brokers who act as go-betweens between landlords and tenants and are pretty much despised by all. Decades of odd rent-control laws mean some people pay drastically more than others for the same thing.

In 2002, I moved to New York and found my first apartment through an ad in the back of the Village Voice. I moved into a basic 1-bedroom in south Park Slope, paying $950 a month. To get it, I had to go through a sketchy broker who operated out of his car and required payment in cash up front for the security deposit, the first month of rent, and of course his $1,200 fee. But once I was in, my landlord was easygoing. I wasn’t on a lease and my rent was steady. (It went up once in eight years, by $50.) By now, my apartment is easily $500 cheaper than comparable units on the same block. (As an aside: I recently heard about a family across the street that was paying $200 a month for their rent-controlled apartment. They just accepted an offer of $80,000 cash from their landlord to move.)

Though I only planned to live in this apartment a year or two, I stayed because I liked having a good deal. Cheap rent was a wonderful gift. It let me splurge on experiential expenses like vacations, which matter more to me than real estate. I didn’t mind the long uphill walk home from the subway, the distance that kept friends from visiting, or the occasionally leaky roof and quirky plumbing. Financially, it was a safe choice.

But a few months ago, I considered a change. I’m further along in my career than I was in 2002. Brooklyn was starting to seem stale*. There was that other borough across the river where I spent an increasing amount of my time. On July 13, I made a plan:

• Save money all summer.
• After Labor Day, begin apartment shopping.
• Find an ideal apartment by November 30.
• Be living in Manhattan by January 1, 2011.

So what’s my ideal apartment?

• Studio or 1-bedroom.
• Anywhere in Manhattan below 59th Street.
• $2,000 a month or less.

This plan turned out to be totally possible. You can do downtown on 2 grand. $1,800 or less would be tough; apartments that cheap exist, but it might be on an unappealing street, or a wacky floorplan, or far from a subway station. Any cheaper than that and you’d have to look far uptown, or be really lucky, or be willing to make serious compromises.

To begin my search, my first course of action was to ask friends if they could recommend a real estate broker or management company. A few friends made suggestions, but the good brokers, upon hearing my budget, hurried me off the phone as soon as possible.

At the same time, I started browsing online listings for apartments. The default place to find cheap apartment listings is Craigslist, even though that site is overrun by spammers and con artists. A better choice is Street Easy, which at least requires the posters to provide their names. More importantly (as will become clear later in this post), Street Easy lists the exact addresses of the buildings. Through Street Easy, I made appointments with three brokers.

Broker one

A woman who offered to show me an apartment in the Financial District canceled 15 minutes before our appointment.

Broker two

Another broker arranged to meet me on 21st Street in Gramercy to show a couple of apartments. (I fell briefly in love with the idea of moving from 21st Street in Brooklyn to 21st Street in Manhattan. How delicious!) This broker dressed and acted professionally and seemed like a nice guy. But weirdly, a random friend of his joined us partway through the showing, and another potential renter show up after that. So at one point there were 4 of us on the tour. He had 5 apartments available in three different buildings, all on the same block. He told me he was charging a broker fee for apartments in one building, but not for the apartments in the other two buildings. I’m pretty sure the landlord of the no-fee buildings was paying the broker to fill the units, suggesting they were tough to fill. Indeed, they were dim and small, in old buildings with sagging floors. For the nicer apartments, the broker was asking a fee of 12% of one year’s rent, which works out to $2,880 for a $2,000 apartment. My hunch is any broker who ask a 12% fee anticipates that you will negotiate them down to 10% (or $2,400 in this case). Broker fees are unfair, but I decided early on I would be willing to pay one if the rent was a sufficiently good deal. The apartments in Gramercy were not good deals. On to the next broker.

Broker three

Next, I met a broker who worked for a real estate management company on Rivington Street in the Lower East Side. Friends who live there say this neighborhood is fun and convenient, despite the appalling traffic, the loud party scene, and its long-obsolete reputation for being gritty and dangerous. The broker I met was a mess. She couldn’t find her keys and had to empty her overstuffed pocketbook on a table to locate them. As we walked around the neighborhood looking at various dingy and unkempt apartment buildings, the broker complained about her life, saying she was trying to get a new job (at a Ford dealership). She told me her age (42) and how much she made last year ($60,000). She complained about having to climb stairs all day. Some of the apartments she showed me had serious problems. One had a bedroom window overlooking an active scaffold. (How long would it be there? Sometimes buildings have scaffolding up for years.) Another was directly over a garbage room and smelled accordingly. At the last of these depressing and disappointing apartments, the broker, growing desperate, said the apartment was listed at $2,000, but she was sure the landlord would accept $1,800. Her fee was 10%. I told her I’d think about it. As we walked back to her office, we passed two guys wheeling a beat-up oven down the middle of Rivington Street on a hand truck. The cart started to tip precariously, the oven door swung open, and the oven racks clattered loudly out onto the street. The broker knew them, and called their names, and the two men hollered back, laughing. “Those guys work for us,” she explained. Would that be my future oven?, I thought silently. This was not looking good.

The no-broker strategy

I decided to focus my efforts on the Financial District—which is where I work, and which was rumored to have good deals—and see if I could bypass the broker system. There are a lot of freshly-converted apartment buildings down there thanks to late-1990s and post-9/11 tax incentives. Downtown doesn’t have the cachet of other Manhattan neighborhoods, since you’re living in a business district with limited night life and few options for food and shopping.

I started looking for listings on Street Easy. I noticed multiple brokers posting very similar listings at the same addresses, and saw many of the listings were several months old. I spent a Sunday riding my bike around, examining address I’d seen listed and jotting down any place that had a flag or a sign indicating they were a residential rental building. Then I went back to the computer and looked everybody up. Most large apartment buildings have web sites now, something that wasn’t true when I was apartment hunting in 2002. I made a list of buildings that looked promising. And I started making calls.

When I called buildings directly and asked for their leasing offices, the first thing they asked was, “Are you a broker or are you looking to rent for yourself?” They’ll help you out either way. That’s because these buildings all work both with brokers (who charge fees as a go-between) and with renters directly (who pay no fees). Basically, I was being my own broker. Things moved very quickly.

Two Wednesdays ago, I called three buildings downtown that I thought were most likely to have something close to my price range. Two of them did, and could show them immediately. On my lunch break, I looked at 7 apartments and identified one that was clearly the best value. I e-mailed the agent from the company a few hours later to tell her I was interested, and asked if they would reduce the rent by $75 if I agreed to a two-year lease (for which they already dangling an incentive of 2 free months, amortized). She said maybe, and e-mailed me an application. I spent Wednesday evening completing the application, which entailed printing a stack of bank statements. The next morning, I dropped off my application. Two hours later, I got an e-mail saying I was approved, and they’d agree to the discount I asked for. They needed two certified checks for the security deposit and first month’s rent. I got the checks from the bank that day and signed the lease the next morning. Done.

I was pleased that I didn’t have to deal with a broker or pay a fee. The apartment is small, but in a nicer building than I had hoped for. There’s laundry in the building, a roof deck, and central air, perks I never dreamed I would actually achieve in Manhattan. There’s also a small gym I can use for free, which will save me money. The building is actually on Wall Street, giving me a vanity address I intend to have fun telling jokes about.

One thing that’s interesting about my building is that, because it took advantage of those tax breaks, it might become rent-controlled. There’s a lawsuit pending. I’m not banking on this lawsuit playing out in my favor, but that would be a fantastic stroke of good luck if it did.

The bottom line

Here’s how I recommend finding an apartment in Manhattan. Write down a goal, give yourself time, do your own legwork, negotiate, and be ready to pull the trigger in a split second. Before you begin, you should choose two of the following three options:

1. Spend more money than you’re comfortable spending.
2. Compromise on something you really want.
3. Live with a roommate.

I chose options 1 and 2. What did I compromise? Space. I’m moving from a small apartment in Brooklyn to a tiny apartment in Manhattan. In terms of city amenities, the Financial District is comparable to where I live in Brooklyn, but lacking compared to other Manhattan neighborhoods. Everything closes after business hours. There’s no bike shop and only one veterinarian. I don’t think you can even get Pad Thai delivered on a Saturday. But I’m 10 minutes from Union Square and my commute will be a 5-minute walk, which is worth a lot.

After 8 years in the same place, I’m worried most about what unforeseen consequences this move might have. Everybody knows me as a Brooklyn guy. I will still go back to Brooklyn often, for church, for parties, for the best pizza, for a Nets game if that arena ever gets built. But living on the other side of the river, going from 11215 to 10005, is a big mental leap. It’s exciting. It’s scary. I don’t work in finance, but nevertheless: I’m now a Wall Street guy.

* Check back tomorrow for a post with more about why I’m leaving Brooklyn.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

Today we have the approach to LaGuardia Airport. On the evening of Labor Day, I flew into LaGuardia on a Dash 8 from Roanoke, descending over the harbor, over Manhattan, over the Bronx, then turning and landing from the northeast on runway 4-22. This approach may provide the most spectacular view of any urban airport landing in the world.

You’re not supposed to use digital cameras on the plane, but I did anyway.

Brooklyn: Verrazano Narrows Bridge, Coney Island

Brooklyn: Red Hook, Gowanus Expressway, Prospect Park, Green-Wood Cemetery

Lower Manhattan (World Trade Center site at lower-left), the East River bridges, Downtown Brooklyn

Midtown Manhattan: Madison Square Garden, the Empire State Building, the East River, Queens and Brooklyn

The north half of Central Park, Upper West Side, Harlem, Upper East Side

The Bronx: Fordham University, Bronx Park

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

… with spotlights on the roof…

… until they flip the switch…

… and light up the sky!

On Saturday, the annual Tribute In Light display will trace the shapes of the Twin Towers into the New York City skyline, marking the 9th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. These symbolic towers of light are visible for many miles in every direction. Few people realize that the lights are not actually beamed from the former World Trade Center footprints, but from the roof of a nearby parking deck.

In the absence of any tangible, completed 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero, this once-a-year illumination is the best memorial we have. Fortunately, it’s very, very good.

Top two photos shot September 9, 2010. Third photo shot from a roof on Elizabeth Street in Soho during during the light test on September 8, 2010. Bottom photo shot from the Brooklyn Heights promenade on September 11, 2009.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

(Updated 8:19 p.m. ET) A producer from the BBC interviewed me Friday for a segment on the Islamic Center near Ground Zero. You can watch the video above or see it on the BBC News web site.

This was the latest response to my surprisingly popular “Hallowed Ground” photo essay. The BBC producer who filmed and edited this segment, Ramón J. Goni, wrote to me last week and asked if I would participate in an interview. I was impressed by his clips and his professionalism. I took Friday morning off from work to do the interview. The segment is what’s called, in BBC jargon, a “self authored” piece, in which the subject (me) talks for a few minutes without interruption. This was the best of all possible scenarios for me. I also means that where I sound unsure of myself or trip over a word, that’s exactly how it went down—it’s a very accurate edit of the interview. Ramón asked incisive questions but didn’t pressure me to say anything I didn’t mean. He asked me to walk past some of the places I photographed on the blog and say my thoughts about each one. I only declined one of his suggestions, which was to walk past an existing mosque in the neighborhood on Warren Street, which I didn’t photograph for my original post. I told him I didn’t have anything to say about it. (It’s not really my business.)

If you’re following the news, you know the New York City Muslim community center is still the story of the moment and shows no signs of simmering down. For much of today my interview has been the most-watched video on the BBC News web site. My original post has been viewed about 380,000 times. I’ve received about 250 e-mails in response to it. The overwhelming majority have been in support of my position that to disallow this Muslim center would be an unfair act of religious discrimination. I’m pretty sure my photos inspired a political cartoon. The Newsbusters blog ran one of my photos and essentially accused me of starting a talking point. Wow.

Plenty of other commentators have done a fine job of articulating a defense for religious freedom in New York City. I’m proud of everything I’ve written on this subject, and I’m ready to move on to other topics.

Previous posts:

• July 14: We’re better than this, really
• August 16: “Hallowed Ground”
• August 17: The uplifting response to my Ground Zero post

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

That’s what I was hoping to do with yesterday’s post, “Hallowed Ground,” showing photos of things as close to the World Trade Center site as the proposed Park51 Islamic community center. One by one, all the arguments against the center are falling away, so the only argument left is anti-Muslim bigotry. People who want to make that argument are free to keep talking, like Juror #10, until it becomes apparent what their true motivations are.

Since my post went live yesterday morning, I have received countless messages of support on Twitter and Facebook, and nice write-ups on several blogs, including The Daily Wh.at, Daring Fireball, Gothamist, Gawker and The Village Voice.

The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. As of this morning I’ve received 31 e-mails that were clearly in support of the post and the community center, 17 against it, and 10 that were neutral or offered varying opinions or asked questions.

Some examples of positive feedback:

“Excellent post. I’ve been telling folks they haven’t a clue and this is the best proof.”

“Love this. Fast food joints and bars have killed way more than any terrorist attack. Besides, religious tolerance is one of the reasons I love this country. It’s one of the reasons why others hate it.”

“Mr. Lang you are right on point. I have spoken in support of the mosque. I believe I am qualified because I survived the collapse of both towers as a paramedic and I have lost my health due to my exposure to what happen on 9/11. As a black man I know what it is like to be discriminated against and I feel the Muslim religion is being discriminated against. My name is Marvin Bethea www.unsunghhh.us and thank you for your pictures.”

“I’m writing you from Germany and I want to let you know that your statement is heartwarming for me because from where I stand it is sometimes hard to hear the moderate and reasonable voices in the USA through all the hate and ignorance of the so-called conservatives in your country. I wish that the Obama era lasts long enough to bring your country rel change inside the heads and the hearts of its citizens. Less hate, more understanding. A true sense of America’s responsibility as the only remaining super power. Stay strong, we look at you!”

“Thank you for your wonderful pieces supporting the Islamic community center in Lower Manhattan. I just read your ‘Hallowed Ground’ piece, and was utterly grateful to you and impressed by your courage. (Not to mention your common sense.) If only others in this country were as thoughtful and interested in the facts, we’d have a lot less vitriol. Somehow, they just can’t seem to de-link mainstream Muslims from murderers who claimed to be Muslim; they have no trouble distancing the Hutari from mainstream Christianity, as they should…but it’s too easy to scapegoat Muslims as the other. Thank you so much for taking a stand for pluralism and for supporting the progressive Muslim voices like the ones wanting to build the ICC. That’s the best way to drown out the voices of the extremists.
Best wishes,
Sumbul Ali-Karamali, JD, LLM (Islamic Law), www.muslimnextdoor.com“

Some examples of the negative feedback:

“Dear author, New york dolls, otb, mcdonalds, express bbq, vitamin shop,obriens, burger, Broadway cafe health bar, dunkin doughnuts, jewelry, t-shirt /hat tourist traps sellers, atheist, christian, Buddhist, Hindu, or Jewish radicals did not kill 3,000 people-Muslim radicals did. FYI-I’m Atheist- If you actually did your research you’ll find that new york has been on a slow downward spiral since Sept 11 2001. I AM A RESIDENT of LOWER MANHATTAN too, my neighborhood has been completely altered, people who lived here for generations moved, businesses perished replaced with generic tourist shops and crappy restaurants.Look into the first amendment and what kind of rights go along with freedom of religion (speech and PETITION)- and the Law Of Abrogation which annuls any peaceful transcript in the koran replacing it with violent texts to appease their god. On United flight 93 you hear their WAR CRY. You are seriously misinformed.”

“I agree that there shouldn’t be an arbitrary 2 or 3 block limit away from ground zero for any new mosques in NYC. There should simply be a 1-ocean away limit, to be strictly enforced until that distant day in the future when Islam around the world becomes merely a friendly and peaceful religion, instead of the current murdering, slavetrading, woman-hating, black-hating, gay-hating, West-hating, Christian-hating, Jew-hating, unassimilating reactionary political theocracy which sees itself as conquering and dominating and ruling over every country and culture it encounters. You appear to be extremely bigoted against the very culture you are lucky to be living in, and your position on this matter is cowardly and indefensible. And suicidal, by the way.”

“You ignore the idea that the ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ risks becoming a shrine to extremists, Muslim and non-Muslim alike. In the former case it would inspire the next band of terrorists, and it would stir the latter into attempting its destruction as an act of ‘revenge’. The Gentlemen’s Club is only at risk in the same way if Manhattan comes under Sharia Law.”

Several people asked for a photo of the actual site where Park51 is planned, and a map of the area where I took the photos. Here you go:

The proposed building will be just beyond the “Dakota Roadhouse” sign, in a retail space that used to be a clothing store. And here’s a quick map showing where I took my photos of the area around Ground Zero:

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

What’s my point? A month ago, I wrote about my support for a group of Muslim New Yorkers—whom I consider my neighbors—and their right to put a religious building on a piece of private property in Lower Manhattan. Since then, the debate over the Park51 community center, inaccurately nicknamed the “Ground Zero Mosque,” has jumped from talk radio to mainstream conversation, and turned nasty in the process. Sarah Palin wrote that, “it would be an intolerable and tragic mistake to allow such a project sponsored by such an individual to go forward on such hallowed ground.”

Look at the photos. This neighborhood is not hallowed. The people who live and work here are not obsessed with 9/11. The blocks around Ground Zero are like every other hard-working neighborhood in New York, where Muslims are just another thread of the city fabric.

At this point the only argument against this project is fear, specifically fear of Muslims, and that’s a bigoted, cowardly and completely indefensible position.

Update: Read some samples of reader feedback on this post.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

OK, did you watch it? Let’s talk about it.

First, the story so far:

A decidedly mainstream Muslim organization called the Cordoba Initiative wants to build a community center in Lower Manhattan. Some conservative political types—possibly feeling desperate after getting blamed for the housing crisis and watching their “Drill Here, Drill Now” slogan backfire in the worst possible way—have seized upon this urban “mosque” as a cheap way to stoke rage and anger among their supporters. The subtext, as I see it, is that plenty of fools are still so desperate to believe Barack Obama is a terrorist that they’re prepared to write checks to any organization that hints at similar leanings. Somehow this insanity landed in New York City this summer. Anti-Muslim activists, having rehearsed last month on Staten Island, are trying to shut down the Cordoba House project with as much noise as possible.

Now, where did this nutso video come from?

The ad above was released this month by the National Republican Trust—not part of the Republican National Committee, but actually a political action committee that came together to run smears against Obama during the 2008 campaign. It has a multi-million-dollar budget and ties to the web site Newsmax. (More here.) The ad is getting attention today because two TV networks declined to air it. Nevertheless, it’s getting a lot of exposure thanks to blogs and talk radio.

We could try to argue with the simple facts in this ad (like the fact that the planned Muslim center is actually on Park Place, two blocks north of the World Trade Center site, a dense and mostly commercial area that no New Yorker would consider “Ground Zero”) and its logic (that the Muslims investing in this building are terrorists who want to destroy their own neighborhood) but that would be falling into a trap. You can’t fight this one with sense. We’re talking about a TV commercial opposing a building on the basis of the religion of the people building it, punctuated with the line “We Americans will be heard.” I wonder what Thomas Jefferson would think of that.

I work close enough to the World Trade Center site to see it from my office windows. Like every person who works in Lower Manhattan, I work with, shop with, and commute with Muslim people every day. The idea of a PAC in Washington producing ads attacking these neighbors of mine just makes my blood boil. It should make yours boil too.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.