As the manager of the high-end boutique Slope Jeans on Garfield Place in Park Slope, Stoykova caters to clientele with cash to spend, people who don’t flinch dropping $200 on a pair of jeans.

Slope Jeans was targeted by an armed robber on Nov. 12. Photo: Lauren Sausser

But that peaceful scene was shattered when Stoykova, working at the store on Nov. 12, was targeted by a gunman.

“He pretended to be a customer,” Stoykova said. “He said not to press any buttons or try something clever.”

She opened the cash register and handed over the merchandise he demanded.

The man, wearing a green jacket and a hat, took off with $200 and more than $1,500 of clothes, including several pairs of designer jeans and a leather jacket.

“I was terrified after he left. While he was in here I wasn’t really thinking, I just wanted him to get out,” she said. “The detectives come in almost every day with pictures. They are still trying to find him.”

***

By most accounts, Park Slope is a safe neighborhood. Its statistics show that it is the second-safest precinct in Brooklyn, the borough with the second-highest crime rate in the city. But a rash of armed robberies in the past month has set off shock waves in the community, making local store owners fearful that their businesses may be targeted next.

Mitch Spizek, president of the Park Slope Chamber of Commerce and owner of Little Things toy store, remained calm amid chaos as technicians worked to install security cameras and phone lines throughout the shop before Thanksgiving. Pre-holiday customers flooded the small store on Seventh Avenue, possibly portending strong December sales.

Spizek, a retired lieutenant of the New York Police Department, is keenly aware that desperate economic times can drive would-be thieves to take desperate measures. Before Thanksgiving, he organized a meeting with an officer from the 78th Precinct to offer tips to local business owners on how to better protect themselves from crime.

“Incidents are going to happen wherever you are. If you live in a city, something can happen. What we’re trying do is share information,” said Spizek, who decided to install the cameras after three armed robberies occurred in Park Slope within one month, including the robbery at Slope Jeans. “It’s something that I wanted to do anyway and this just solidified the fact that I wanted safety and security and I wanted to nip that in the bud.”

Luckily for Stoykova, Slope Jeans had security cameras installed before the robbery. Police have not arrested a suspect, but have a clear image of the man they are searching for.

In an unrelated case, police arrested a suspect in the armed robbery of the McDonald’s on Fourth Avenue in Park Slope on Oct. 13. In that incident, police said Neb Morrow, wielding a .380-caliber handgun, entered the restaurant and demanded money.

After fleeing the premises, police wrestled Morrow, 41, to the pavement. The gun and $1,500 in stolen cash were confiscated.

Franchise owners declined to comment on the case. The manager of that location, who identified himself as Widnil, said, “It’s something that we dealt with and now we want to move on.”

A third man, who demanded cash at gun point at a Game Stop in Park Slope in early November, is still on the loose.

***

New York City is an extremely safe place to live, insists Eugene O’Donnell, a professor at the John Jay College of Media, Crime and Justice. In fact, he said it’s safer than many other smaller cities around the country.

“It’s not clear why crime has improved and nobody really knows for sure. It has something to do with better policing strategies, but that’s just part of it. More cops make the city safer, but now the department is shrinking and the city is still getting safer,” said O’Donnell, a former New York City policeman.

Gentrification has played a huge factor in reducing pockets of crime across the five boroughs, he said.

“There are higher real estate values and less people with lower incomes, and this is definitely connected to the crime being reduced. There used to be no-go areas that now have million-dollar condos,” he said. “New York City is palpably safe and it’s reflected in neighborhoods I go into where people wouldn’t have been on the street 20 years ago. You can’t even fathom how safe it is.”

Officers from the 78th Precinct and representatives from the Office of the Deputy Commissioner, Public Safety declined to comment for this article.

***

In light of the recent armed robberies, it is clear Park Slope is not crime free.. On Christmas Eve 2007, Park Slope resident and writer Douglas Rushkoff was mugged at knifepoint outside his brownstone. Before calling the police, both he and his wife, Barbara, blogged about the incident online.

“The deep, dark secret about Park Slope is that there’s tons of crime here,” Barbara Rushkoff wrote on her blog, “A Girl Grows in Brooklyn.” “According to the detectives … Manhattan is safe, but Brooklyn is decidedly not.”

The post set off a maelstrom of controversy from Park Slope residents who were concerned their property values would decrease and from residents throughout New York whose neighborhoods are much less safe.

Douglas Rushkoff, who included a description of the incident and the ensuing media frenzy that followed in his book, “Life Inc.,” published earlier this year, declined to be interviewed on the subject, but wrote in an e-mail message, “The mugging was more about gentrification and the neighbors’ reaction to bad publicity. I don’t have good data on crime in Park Slope, and don’t trust the data that is out there.”

But Louise Crawford, author of the hyper-local Park Slope blog “Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn,” agreed with both former police officers Spizek and O’Donnell that the crime statistics released by the local precinct appear accurate.

“They were just being honest,” Crawford said of the Rushkoffs. “It was a trauma. It was not a very pleasant experience and they got criticized for dissing the neighborhood and there were a lot comments. Invariably, in the age of blogging and commenting, anything you say someone is going to jump on your back.”

Park Slope is a relatively safe place to live, she said, but it is still part of the largest borough in the largest city in the country.

“I don’t feel particularly safe on any street in any city when it’s dark,” she said. “This is Brooklyn. It’s New York City. In Park Slope, we feel safer because there are always a lot of people out and about and that’s always gong to create the feeling of safety in numbers. But as a New Yorker, I tend to be very, very confident when I walk down the street. I’m very wary and very alert.”

But Sean O’Brien, assistant manager of Video Forum on Seventh Avenue, has no qualms about walking 20 minutes from Park Slope to his apartment in Crown Heights every night.

“I’ve never felt threatened here or run into anyone that made me feel nervous,” O’Brien said. “I know there are a lot of families here but there are also just a lot of people who have been here forever. It’s way more like a community then some of the other neighborhoods. I think that makes it feel safer.”

Marc Garstein, president of Warren Lewis Realty in Park Slope, is a longtime resident of the community. He said people move to the neighborhood because it has a reputation as being safe and family-friendly.

“We live in a big city and I think it’s relatively safe here,” Garstein said. “I have no idea if the statistics are accurate or not but back in the 70s it was a lot less safe. You wouldn’t go anywhere near Prospect Park unless you could get out by dark. Now, it’s just too expensive for there to be that much crime.”

In a deep-blue City Council district where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans almost 10 to one, Republican Joe Nardiello realizes the odds are against him in his bid to beat Democratic nominee Brad Lander for the District 39 City Council Council seat.

Still, that’s not stopping him from putting up a fight.

“We are trying to wipe away partisanship,” said Nardiello, 47. “I have a voice, and I’ll be speaking.”

With just six weeks until the Nov. 3 election, Nardiello is facing an uphill battle as Republicans across the country work to regain popularity. The party suffered devastating losses in the November 2008 election, when dozens of Republicans lost their seats in national congressional races alone. Now, Nardiello and a small group of conservatives are trying to reverse this trend by traveling door-to-door in Brooklyn, touting new ideas and attempting to raise their political visibility.

Republican Joe Nardiello campaigns in Brooklyn for the District 39 seat on the New York City Council. Photo courtesy of Joe Nardiello for City Council.

Doug Muzzio, a political science professor at Baruch College, said the cause is all but lost.

“Republicans are simply out of step with the feelings of New York state voters and increasingly so,” Muzzio said. “It’s not only a local phenomenon; it’s also a state phenomenon. The Republican Party essentially doesn’t exist in New York City.”

City Council District 39, which represents about 120,000 Brooklyn residents, includes Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Columbia Street, Park Slope, Windsor Terrace, Kensington and Borough Park. The office is currently held by Bill de Blasio, who faces Mark Green in run-off for the Democratic nomination for public advocate, a citywide office, on Tuesday. De Blasio has held the position on city council since 2002.

Jonathan Judge, 23, president of the Brooklyn Young Republican Club, admits the Republican Party has done relatively little to reach out to the Brooklyn community.

“The Democrats take for granted 100 percent the enrollment advantage that they have here,” said Judge, a graduate student at New York University. “But whatever happens, win or lose, you can’t get discouraged and give up. Dropping the ball is the surest way to lose a political campaign.”

About 1.4 million Brooklyn residents were registered to vote in April, according to the New York State Board of Elections. Just over 1 million of those voters are registered as Democrats. Less than 132,000 consider themselves Republicans, with the remaining majority registered as independent voters.

Nardiello said he cannot win the general election without campaigning for votes outside his own party line.

“Most of the people in the district know me. Most of them are excited I am running,” Nardiello said. “If you can’t get Democrats to vote for you, you’ll never win in the 39th District.”

During the Sept. 15 primary, Lander won 41 percent of about 12,500 votes cast for the Democratic ballot, or over 5,000 votes. In the first-ever Republican primary for the district, Nardiello beat his opponent George Smith by securing over 500 of the 800 ballots cast.

A call and an email to Lander’s campaign office were not returned this week.

Republican Josephine Carita, 50, a member of the Brownstown Republican Club in Brooklyn, said, on paper, the numbers can be discouraging.

“The Republican Party has always been the underdog,” Carita said. “We need to tie in and work together and speak loudly and aggressively.”

It was just before noon on Saturday and four pre-teens from Park Slope were stuffed into a small recording studio on St. Marks Avenue in nearby Prospect Heights.

Sabrina Kentis, left, Jack Ellrodt, middle, and Ian Silverstein, right, spend Saturday mornings in band practice.

They had been practicing with their instruments for about half an hour with music teacher Jason Domnarski when 12-year-old Jack Ellrodt asked, “Can we turn on the AC?”

“What are you talking about?” Domnarski replied. “We haven’t even started sweating yet.”
This was no regular music lesson.

Domnarski, 28, a professional rock musician, founded the Park Slope Rock School one year ago when he noticed a demand for a creative, musical outlet for the neighborhood’s teenagers.

The Rock School, which organizes 12 middle schoolers into four different small rock bands, is held every Saturday. Domnarski charges $450 per student per semester – 12 weeks of small group tutoring. It’s a price many parents say they are willing to pay in order to compensate for budget cuts to music education programs in their children’s schools.

“I was surprised there wasn’t a program like that already there. It’s grown quite rapidly,” he said. “You really don’t have a rock-based curriculum at the public schools. I think that’s a very big draw. It’s a form of music they don’t get to play very much. They are very interested in that kind of music.”

Stacey Ruiz’s son Brandon, 13, is a Park Slope Rock School student who attends Park Slope Community Middle School. Ruiz said one of the main reasons she enrolled her son in the rock school was because of the lack of quality music he receives programming during the week.

“My son’s school is a very small school which shares a building with another school,” Ruiz said. “Unfortunately his school does not have the budget or resources to start a music program.”

This week, the Rock School played Neil Young’s “Cinnamon Girl.” The students hadn’t even registered as twinkles in their mother’s eyes when the song debuted in 1969. They enjoyed practicing it, all the same.

“I think working as a group allows them to feel more like performers at a jam session,” Ruiz said. “The music they play is something they can relate to and the parents as well. It kind of bridges the gap between the two. Take it from me – there is no ‘Twinkle Twinkle’ in this class.”

Jack, who had the tendency to jump up and down during his electric guitar solo, exclaimed mid-way through Saturday’s practice, “This is by far the most fun I’ve had all week.”

And having fun is a point not lost on Domnarksi. Wielding a grande coffee in one hand and two drumsticks to keep the band’s beat in the other, he tries to instill in the group solid music theory and an appreciation for giving a good performance at the same time.

“On a different level, it allows them an hour and a half every week to play in a band in a rehearsal space that sounds good,” he said. “This semester there’s a very good chance we’ll be heading into the studio to record.”

Ian Silverstein, 13, who performed vocals and a bass guitar this week, said these lessons are unlike anything he has ever done before.

“Jason is much more involved with us and the way we play music,” Ian said. “I just like to play with people who are good musicians and who are creative.”

Seth Miller said his son Asa, who plays the drums at the rock school, looks forward to coming to rehearsals every week.

“It’s just a great outlet for his talent,” said Miller, who listened to the end of Saturday’s rehearsal. “It almost brings a tear to my eye.”