Screenshot of the Gothamist interactive rat map
Bushwick is the neighborhood of many innovative ideas, hundreds of artists, a ton of new bars and well, of thousands of rats. The good folks over at Gothamist put together an interactive map of NYC using the numbers of rat complaint phone calls to 311. And yes, Bushwick won! With 965 rat sightings Bushwick effortlessly won over neighboring competitors such as Bed-Stuy (626), East Williamsburg (431) and Ridgewood (542). The phone calls were places between 2010 and 2012, and if this was any other neighborhood, I would try to argue that the number of phone calls doesn’t necessarily mean that we have more rats that other neighborhoods. It can easily mean that people just complain more… But as I have experienced walks home down Dekalb Ave on a garbage night… (I would chose to walk on the road and rather be hit by a B38 bus than to walk on a sidewalk…) So I will say only one thing: GET A CAT! [GOTHAMIST]
Meow! Instagram photo by the author.
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About Katarina Hybenova
Proud founder of Bushwick Daily. She writes, takes photos, and sometimes video. Born and raised in Slovakia, she has studied in Prague, Leuven and New York, traveled the world only to find home in Bushwick or should we say Ridgewood :) She is interested in yoga, running, human & cat friends.
I can definitely identify with walking on the road and risking bodily injury to avoid the scitter-scatter of rats moving from garbage cans to their lairs!
hahahah yes, Nekoro, we had our rat-freak-out conversation late night at Tandem hahaha
Hey, it’s a shit hole. Why is this news. Rats like shit holes.