Census: In Brooklyn, work trumps love

Brooklyn, we work hard. TOO hard, apparently, to get sumpin’ sumpin’ on the side. The Daily News this week looked at newly released Census data that seem to indicate all of us busy ass hustlers in the borough are too focused on paying rent to worry about getting your romantic life in order. The paper quoted experts who said Brooklyn’s socioeconomic diversity means these results are not surprising. “They are beginning their careers and postponing marriage,” CUNY sociologist Richard Alba told the News.“They tend to concentrate in the same neighborhoods,” which means Williamsburg, Greenpoint and Bushwick, the area that has the most balanced cluster of both single men and women. Hm, not really surprising. Editorial comment below. 

The Census data do not mean that everyone in Brooklyn is blue balling/whatever-the-female-equivalent-of-blue-balling is all the time. It means that we don’t marry or settle down right away because we’re either not that interested in it, not that worried about it or just don’t have time in between gigs and jobs and assignments and school to commit to full-scale relationships. It does not count that kinda-casual hookup person you end up going home with again at 3am when the only people left in Rosemary’s are the crusty old locals, or the one night stands, or the friends with benefits, or whatever permutation of 21st century relationship you might have.

Listen, I just got back from a week in San Francisco where you can actually feel a different degree of hormones in the air: you know that thing in New York where everyone walking on the sidewalk looks at everyone else up and down to size them up? And occasionally you get the smile or the hungry eyes? That doesn’t happen there.

Several friends and local experts in SF bemoaned the dating scene: too few girls, too few datable dudes, that sense that people just don’t socialize in public as broadly as they do here and, perhaps most of all, the fact that the bars close two hours earlier (last call was 1:20 at one place!) — the crucial two hours when lots of totally awesome hookup decisions are often made.

In summary, we have it lucky here, so run with it while you can. Hell, who wants to settle down when there’s just so much fun stuff to do and so much of the world to be conquered? Now, back to work with you.