Beset by developers. (HDC)

Besides a subway stop, Van Cortlandt Village has everything a residential neighborhood would want. The Bronx community is quaint, abuts two large parks—Van Cortlandt Park and the Jerome Park Reservoir—and is reasonably priced (well, for New York). And—bonus points—all this charming, reasonably priced real estate lines narrow, winding street originally laid out by Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmstead.

Life in this delightful enclave would be great, The New York Times reports, if only the residents didn't have to fend off so many unwelcome advances from developers. The story then goes on to lay out all the information the paper's readers would need to know to consider a move there. Bring on the influx of new residents! Bring on the developers!

Okay, maybe that's giving too much credit to the power of The Times to move the masses, but it's an odd hallmark of the real estate section's "Living In" column to spend the first half of a story talking about how sleepy and unspoiled by the stroller pushers and hipsters a neighborhood is, then to devote the second half to lots of practical information to help those same stroller pushers and hipsters decide if they'd be interested in moving there.

And as it turns out, Times readers, Van Cortlandt park is an excellent place to move. It's relatively inexpensive—at least it was.

“If these properties were in Brooklyn, in Park Slope,” one broker told The Times of the affordable real estate, “they would be $1 million and over."

Plus, it's only about 40 minutes from midtown Manhattan (express bus service and the 1 train isn't a bad walk). Naturally, readers would be concerned by "the commute" given that this will basically be a bedroom community.

On the weekends, Lehman College and the few shops along Sedgwick Avenue provide entertainment. There is, they should be pleased to know, a historic district (the neighborhood housed a fort during the Revolutionary War) and a co-operative of Tudor houses trying for a landmark designation. Not quite Park Slope, but given a few more years, a couple of dimly lit bars serving craft brews, an upscale baby shop or two, who knows?

The only downsides are the elementary and middle schools (the schools got Bs and Cs, although there are a few excellent high schools) and those pesky developers continually trying to build high rises to serve the masses priced out of Manhattan and Brooklyn, looking for a pretty, leafy neighborhood with reasonable prices and a not-to0-terrible commute.

Don't all move at once now.

kvelsey@observer.com

Bushwick teems with life. (straatis/Flickr)

It's kind of surprising that it hasn't happened already, that it took until July 17, 2011, for The Times to write one of its "Living In" columns about Bushwick.

After all, the paper, in its unending fixation with the mysterious borough of Brooklyn, has written about Bushwick no fewer than 164 times in the last 12 months, according to Nexis. (Theirown archives say it's 10,000+ times, but that seems a little high.) Compare that to 2006, when Bushwick was mentioned a mere 112 times. In the intervening years, those numbers were 133, 131 and 147. We smell what the Styles section would call a trend.

The trend has also been away from the typical fair of crime, arson and neighborhood mayhem and toward the much plusher confines that pass for news on Eighth Avenue these days. There is the no-longer-bourgeoning art scene, the new hipster mini-mall on Wyckoff, collectives!, how Roberta's may just have the best pizza in the city, if it weren't for the schlep (which can't be worse than going to DiFara's).

A healthy number of these stories are about real estate.

What, then, is so special about a "Living In" column? Well, it is a rite of passage of sorts, a coming of age, in the eyes of the Gray Lady, of a neighborhood. There was Cobble Hill in 2001, and again in 2006. Oh, and we almost forgot, 1983, when it was referred to, no longer, as "a poor man's Brooklyn Heights." Why? Because the houses were selling for more than $400,000. Crown Heights had its debut in 1985, and did not reappear, with the tide on Franklin Avenue, until last year. It took longer to come around to Bed-Stuy—2003 and 2009, the same two years Greenpoint got the treatment.

Bushwick was certainly no worse off than these neighborhoods back then, so it is a mystery what took so long. Certainly the housing stock is beneath those mentioned above, though the violence and test scores are at times and in places comparable. Perhaps the right demographic had simply not shown up yet.

One of those residents, an entrepreneur named Katja Bartholmess, said it was precisely this new activity that attracted her and her husband, Daniel Susla, to the apartment they bought on Knickerbocker Avenue this year.

“I like areas that are transitional, where things are happening, where I can see potential,” said Ms. Bartholmess, who runs a branding strategy company, Copygold.com, and sells baby clothing at Babysnappy.com. As a native of East Berlin who saw her city grow after the wall fell, she added, “I view transition and change as a very positive force.”

Their journey to Bushwick, like many others recently, began in Williamsburg, where Mr. Susla, a music executive, was living when Ms. Bartholmess immigrated from Germany. They moved into an apartment on the neighborhood’s south side and stayed for four years.

“We had a big patio there, so we had concerts, and masquerade parties, and an underground restaurant for a few months,” Ms. Bartholmess recalled. Still, after a few years, a staleness set in as the neighborhood gentrified. “It’s now a perfect place for someone else, not me,” she said.

You see, Bushwick is not stale.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

There is barely a mention of the 1988 police riot bearing the park's name, which made the 10.5-acre greensward briefly famous. Nor the nostalgic crustpunks who still set up there every summer, wishing it were still 1985, aggressively panhandling on nearly every East Village corner. Instead we get this,

"There's no issues there," [Community Board 3 district manager Susan] Stetzer said. "We have a big playground that was renovated very, very recently. It's very nice. The park is well used. We have a rat problem, but so does a lot of the rest of New York City."

Speaking as a resident rather than as a district manager, she described something bittersweet about having witnessed the slow gentrification of the park. The playgrounds - there are actually three - are shinier and more colorful than when she used to take her son there in the late '70s and early '80s. But, she said, they loved the park then, too, and that era had its advantages.

"It was a much stronger, much closer community then," Ms. Stetzer said. "Everyone knew everyone, and they weren't necessarily people like you."

While trying its best to make this nabe seem family friendly, the article does highlight the scarcity of big apartments and good schools.  Largely unmentioned? The largest bar scene in the city. 

Perhaps the article is just part of a stealth campaign to clean up the city's biggest frat house. By which we mean the East Village.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo