Brooklyn the new Never Never Land
by Onata Peters
When I was a little girl I had an obsession with Peter Pan and Never Never Land. The concept of a place where you could be a kid forever was too good to be true. Never in a million years did I think I would end up living in the modern day Never Never Land….Brooklyn, New York.
The other night I met up with a bunch of friends and coworkers for dinner in Brooklyn. As I waited for my friends to arrive it dawned on me that I couldn’t really tell what age anyone was in the restaurant. It was like everyone took some kind of youth serum and decided to stay somewhere between 20 and 30 years old. When my friends showed up I realized you couldn’t tell how old they were either.
Here are the peeps that made up my dinner crew that night:
- A un-employed 20 something that had just quit her job a few months ago and was telling us about the recent trip she managed to take to Africa even though she has no source of income.
- A 30 something Brooklyn middle school principal that told us about all the cool things his kids were learning but at the same time asking us if we had heard that new Jay Z song that was leaked on Hip Hop.Com. He couldn’t wait to hear Jay’s “joint” on loudspeakers in the club.
-A nearing 40 something married couple talking about the family they were planning on starting in the near future. They also told us that they had found what could be the “dopest” jean shop in New York. They were able to find their favorite designer denim for $150 instead of the normal $250 that they pay at Bloomingdales.
By the looks of all of us at the table that night you’d probably guess that we attended the college down the street. Each one of us walked in with an ipod, a few of us had backpacks, and even though most of us were coming from work we all had on jeans. So if that wasn’t confusing enough, the conversation about sports leagues in the hood that we wanted to join really threw us into the “how old are they really?” category.
We had all decided to join a league/team of some sort. So we all did a little research and came up with a few options. Brooklyn has teams that consist of everything from dodge ball, kickball, bocce ball, roller derby and the craziest sounding of all a water gun assassin game. This is a game where you have to basically stalk your opponent and shoot them with your water gun at any given point in time or place for points.
I checked out Bocce Ball because the match was held in a bar on Saturdays and I wasn’t into the idea of being voluntarily stalked by someone with a water gun. I figured I could have a couple of drinks and exercise a bit of sportsmanship all at the same time.
The match was hilarious. There was a lot of strategizing, yelling, and drinking. By the time we got around to game 2, the bar was full of different teams consisting of that ageless Brooklyn dynamic. I left that day with a good alcohol buzz and a couple of new friends. I’m sure there are other places in the world where you can be a grown up kid for the majority of your life but Brooklyn’s definitely making a name for itself in that department.
If you haven’t experienced Brooklyn yet then take this advice from Peter Pan and me… “ Forget them. Forget them all. Come with me where you’ll never, never have to worry about grown up things again”.
Come to think of it… the only thing that would really make Brooklyn a true Never Never Land was if a little thing called rent didn’t exist.
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