Brooklyn: Oh, Baby!

I strolled the boardwalk from Little Odessa (where I live) to
Coney Island, watching ships coming into port. I walked
through the shuttered amusement parks, now battened down
for the winter months. I boarded the F train for a wonderfully
Brooklyn kind of ride, high above its neighborhoods, its
cemetaries, its backyards.

Exiting at Prospect Park, I sipped coffee and strolled up
Prospect Park West, marveling at the beauty of the late fall
day, exploring a truly wonderful treasure of a natural space. I
watched and laughed as 7^th Avenue’s insufferable stroller set
cowered from the unleashed fury of last bell at the high school
on 5^th Street. As the torrent of youthful energy emptied itself
into Park Slope’s streets, you could feel reality touching down,
if only for a moment. I spent much of the afternoon perched
above the street at a café table, reading, and loving the
human landscape.

This didn’t begin to touch the surface of the borough that is
calling my name – as the F train rumbled out of the Slope and
on to the trestles that carry it across the Gowanus Canal,
affording riders the heavenly view to downtown and beyond,
last rays gleaming off of steel and glass -- I wished I could
freeze the moment in time.

It wasn’t always this way. "I’m not moving to Brooklyn," I
insisted, "because it’s just moving to another outer borough,
and I’ll still want to move into Manhattan as long as I’m not there."

For someone who was living in Queens at the time, those are
pretty ridiculous statements.

My neighborhood at the time had all the character of a dust
mop – it was diverse, we had cute architecture – hell, I lived
in a Historic District! We were 12 minutes from midtown on the
subway, 8 minutes home by cab (late at night, when I got off
work), we had superstores, malls, you name it – but all the
convenience in the world can’t buy character. No sir.

So, I left. And Brooklyn seems to have been in the stars,
because it’s where I got the apartment of my dreams, at a
price for which most of my Slope neighbors would kill.

Who was I to argue?

And further, to discover that all roads lead (literally) to
within 3 blocks of your door, every subway excepting the F
train (okay, the 7 and the L, but those are useless to me
anyway) a stones throw from your house – now that’s what I
call public transportation.

It seems appropriate that all this has come to pass at the
anniversary of my arrival here in New York. Just as I roamed
Manhattan’s streets at Christmas time, drinking in the
newness and getting high on the energy, I now discover this
new city, this place Brooklyn.

It’s being in a brand-new place, all over again.

Brooklyn doesn’t have to prove anything to anyone – this
city of millions has just about everything a human being
could want, and has everything a city of its size should,
including the bad parts. It has its Downtown, it has artsy
fartsy (god help us), quiet and homey,  expensive and
trendy, it has ghetto, it has beaches, grand parks,
it has more subway stops in it’s center than most places
in Manhattan (we have more lines running into Atlantic/Pacific
than Times Square!), we have BAM, the saucy Brooklyn
Museum (those words will never sound the same),
Prospect Park, Fort Greene Park, we have celebrities, but
most of all, we have our own personality.

Unlike other boroughs, Manhattan does not lead us on
a string – we’ve got plenty to do over here, thanks. And
don’t even mention BAMCinematek. Or the Promenade.

How can you not love a city of 2.4 million that in 1999, has
within it’s limits, a paltry two Starbucks, three Gap Stores,
one Banana Republic and absolutely no J.Crew? Zilch. Zippo.

Big sister Manhattan may be the dominant, but Brooklyn –
baby, she ain’t no submissive.