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September 2, 2011
Prostitutes Returning to Flatbush Avenue?
Brownstoner via Here's Park Slope
Urban "renewal," Ratner style?
Last year I was at O'Connor's when I overheard an old-timer talking about how Flatbush Avenue near Eighth Avenue, by the Montauk Club, used to me a major gathering place for prostitutes. It's difficult to imagine that such a highly visible, relatively upper-class location could once have been run down enough to attract that element, but it was, and not too long ago, either.
Well I'm not sure what to make of this, but a reader sent this comment into Brownstoner the other day:
Shortly after midnight on Thursday, I spotted a very sad new development on Flatbush and Dean, across from the totally deserted arena skeleton: A young pimp working with two teenage hookers. He was dressed in all white and the girls were doing their best to vamp when he got a car to stop and check them out.…It’s definitely because that whole area is deserted while every body waits for the supposed arena crowd spillover payday to open businesses there that this kind of activity could take place. It is funny because the Flatbush Avenue renovation has been heralded by the pols as the necessary upgrade of the gateway to the new, improved Brooklyn. So in addition to an arena and some planters you now get street hookers and pimps hustling.
If this is true (and it wasn't some sort of undercover sting), it's a sad development indeed.
NoLandGrab: Sure, one can't believe all one reads on Brownstoner, but this doesn't sound all that unbelievable.
Posted by eric at September 2, 2011 9:47 PM