Ten reasons why Park Slope is a good place to be broke (even if SJP moves in)

Everyone’s a-tizzy with rumors that Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick are moving to Park Slope with their growing brood. Yes, that would change… a lot of things. The new standard mom jeans will be Current/Elliot stovepipes instead of Lee Easyfit and everyone will be divided into haves and have nots. (My kids have played with hers, yours have not.) But if people are worried that the neighborhood is going to get even more uppercrusty… pshaw.

SJP actually grew up poor and describes herself as sometimes “super-frugal” in this really interesting interview in the New York Times from 2000, just as Sex and the City was becoming the phenom that paid for Jennifer Connelly’s old house. And anyway, gossiping about Matthew and Sarah is totally free, making it one more item to add to our list of things that still make Park Slope as good as anyplace else to be broke, even with a couple more millionaires living in the midst. The other reasons:

1) You can save on grocery bills by nursing your entire family and nobody will give you a second look.

2) The food at the CHIPS soup kitchen rivals Rosewater’s on some nights and the Franciscan nuns are hella cool.

3) Fence fashion. We know someone—a great dresser, even—who plucks all of her clothing off of fences in the Slope on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Maybe SJP will toss out a few crumbs herself.

4) No job? Start a blog. Type Park Slope Blog into Google and you get more than 2 million hits, but still unclaimed URLS as of Monday 3 a.m. include: TheStraightSlope.com, NoSlopeRadio.com, SlopeOpera.com, SlopeScum.com (that’s a goodie–if you don’t grab it quick, FuckedinParkSlope will). Also up for grabs: ParkSlopeDad.com and ParkSlopeMom.com. How are they still available?

5) If you can’t afford organic food for your kids, send them to the tot lot with a McDonald’s bag and watch the fruit-juice-sweetened, non-GMO snacks fly their way.

6) Free shows every night—inside the Richard Meier building. (Yes, some people call it Prospect Heights, we call it Upper Park Slope North.)

7) Pizza. Every slice from Flatbush to the Prospect, Fourth Avenue to Prospect Park West, ranked here by surface area, weight, and other key factors.

8 ) Up to four hours a day of free childcare at the Park Slope Food Coop—or 28 hours a week! You’re not supposed to leave the building…

9) The Qi Gong massages at Sunshine Best Body Work (4 Park Place, 718-783-1268.)

10) Really nice kids’ things for sale on the street (below).

11) What’s your reason?