"I Have a Lot of Nostalgia for Bonnie's Grill" David Sims, Film Critic at The Atlantic

Plus, the Park Slope playground his kids love and the film he's most looking forward to this year.

Hi! How was your week? Any plans for the weekend? We’re going to check out Open Streets and Open Stages this afternoon, and tomorrow is Mother’s Day. I requested a coffee slushy, per Helen Knight’s suggestion, to start the day, and then brunch.

For today’s letter, I talked to David Sims, a Film Critic at The Atlantic and co-host of the film podcast Blank Check. “According to my parents, my first movie they took me to was a revival of Annie at the New Yorker Theater…They claim I was enraptured, and it was love at first sight for me and movies,” David told me.

In 2008, following his return to the U.S. from England, where he’d lived for 13 years, David briefly lived in Park Slope. But he remembers visiting family friends who lived on Sterling Place as a young boy. “Back in the day, there wasn't much on Fifth Avenue. It was pretty…run down is too strong, but it was just quiet. There weren't a lot of big businesses or anything like that,” he said. “By the time I'd moved there, Fifth Avenue was booming.”

After living in several other Brooklyn neighborhoods, David and his wife recently returned to Park Slope with their four-year-old daughter and twin baby boys. “It’s a great kid neighborhood. My life is park-museum-playground,” David said.

In his interview, David talked about his childhood in England, early journalism career covering NYC education and politics, and becoming a film critic — “it's not like I got folded into The Atlantic and they were like, Great, you're our new film critic! I slowly built up my job as it exists now.” He also shared his local favorites, including a used bookstore, theater, Indian takeout, the playgrounds he takes his kids to, and more.

David Sims, circa 1987

[Kelley MacDonald] Hi David! When did you move to Park Slope?

[David Sims] When I moved to New York in 2008 after college, I moved to Park Slope. I lived on Sterling Place, and then I lived on Fifth Avenue and First Street. I remember I did come to New York being like, I’ll live in Manhattan. But I quickly realized it seems like young people are mostly living in Brooklyn now. My family had a friend who had always lived in Park Slope, and I crashed on their couch for a few weeks, and was like, This is a nice neighborhood. You could live in North Brooklyn, like Williamsburg, which was still vaguely affordable for a young person, although it was already exploding. You could live further east, but Park Slope was sort of a compromise of, This is a gentle enough neighborhood that's not that expensive. I had a shitty little apartment on Fifth Avenue.

Have you been in Park Slope since then?

No, I’ve done the whole Brownstone Brooklyn Tour. I moved from Park Slope to Fort Greene. Lived in Fort Greene for a couple years, then I moved to Bed-Stuy for seven years. Then, I went to Crown Heights, and I lived there for four years. Then I moved back to Park Slope, and we’ve been here a year and three months.

That’s quite the tour! So you’re very familiar with Brooklyn, and you were born in Manhattan and spent the first nine years of your life living on the Upper West Side. What was that like?

In my memory, it was quite an idyllic childhood. It was certainly a time of turmoil for New York, you know, New York was a little wilder back then. But I lived in this nice little Central Park-Upper West Side bubble. I have a younger brother, and we lived on 89th Street. We would go to Central Park, Riverside Park, the Museum of Natural History, and the Children's Museum. It was great. I went to P.S. 87. I did little league baseball, and I just ambled around Broadway and went to Ray's Pizza.

What were you like as a kid?

I was a chatty, little social kid. I always liked movies and baseball, the things I like now.

David Sims as an undergrad at Newcastle University in England

At nine, you moved to London with your family. What prompted that move?

My dad got a job at Bloomberg in London in ‘94. We spent a year of him shuttling back and forth, and then we moved to North London in ‘95.

How did you feel about moving?

Oh, I hated it. There's no question, it was hard for me, but at the same time, like everyone says, kids are resilient. I was the American boy in London, and I didn't go to the American School, which is the thing there. I went to regular English public schools, so I was always a little different, and I stuck out a little bit. But I made new friends and was a proper English kid.

How long did you live there?

Thirteen years. I was there through college. I went to Newcastle University and studied English.

David, pictured here during a press conference with Michael Bloomberg, covered eduction and politics during the final fews years of the Bloomberg Administration. “[It was] an incredibly fraught time for education, because Bloomberg was very pro-Charter School, somewhat antagonistic with the UFT…education reform was a big deal.”

When did you make your way back to NYC?

I came to New York after college and got a job at The Chief Leader. It still exists; you can buy it at any newsstand. My beat was education, like teachers' unions, the big city unions. It was in the classic days of New York journalism, back when New York had thriving local journalism versus what it has now. You know, I was a baby running around the city, getting to know all the other people on the beat.

How did you go from covering local education and politics to a film critic?