Destination: Brooklyn
If Manhattan is the face of the Big Apple, the largest borough is its heart

By Barry Yeoman

Originally published in Attaché, March 2005
For Fifth Avenue Fair photos, click here


ONE MORNING LAST SUMMER, on the plane to New York City, I found myself seated next to a family that was planning to give their 12-year-old her first bite of the Big Apple. Happily juggling guidebooks and maps, they had meticulously charted a route that would cover Central Park, Radio City Music Hall, the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, the Garment District, and Ground Zero—all in a very busy 12 hours.

Me? I've seen those places more than a few times, so I followed the locals to Brooklyn to see the mermaids.

At the end of the subway's scenic F line, I joined a throng scrambling to crowd Coney Island's Surf Avenue for the 22nd Annual Mermaid Parade. Largely unknown to out-of-towners, the parade attracts a glorious cross-section of Brooklynites, from old Russian immigrants to countercultural artists, plus families of every hue and language group. On this warm Saturday, the air smelled of salt and French fries. We stood across from Pete's Clam Stop and cheered the madcap procession of creatures that lend the parade its nautical theme: Dancing sea monkeys. Promenading bluefish. Sumo-wrestling crabs and boxing lobsters. ("Go for the tail!" shouted the woman beside me.) A bearded, billowing jellyfish. Pikes on bikes. A sea monster dancing the Electric Slide. And of course, mermaids of all ages, from kindergartners to grandmothers.

My friends and I stood at the barricade and cheered—and then, when the happy anarchy subsided, we retired to the Coney Island boardwalk, an Atlantic Ocean amusement park haven since 1895. As the post-parade crowds milled around, we devoured deep-fried clams, listening as a "Dunk the Merman" hawker implored passersby to try their luck. "Who's next? Who's ready? Dump Frank in the tank," he pattered, as I squeezed the last of the tartar sauce into my cardboard tray.


WHEN I'M LOOKING FOR AN AUTHENTIC New York experience, I often skip the skyscrapers of Manhattan and cross the East River to the city's largest borough. Brooklyn, population 2.5 million, doesn't have the flashy neon of Times Square. Instead, it has fascinating ethnic enclaves, stately brownstone neighborhoods, and of course the world's most atmospheric boardwalk.

If Manhattan is where New York amuses itself, Brooklyn is where New York lives—a patchwork of communities that seem worlds apart from one another but are often separated by mere blocks. In a few hours of walking and subway hopping, you can experience Polish, Italian, Hasidic, Ecuadorian, Caribbean, Vietnamese, and American-hipster cultures—then finish your day at a seaside supper club listening to live Uzbek music. You can experience the old-fashioned worlds of "The Honeymooners" and Saturday Night Fever. You can also walk the serene streets of gentrified Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights, and Carroll Gardens, where cozy cafes and world-class restaurants cater to a growing population of young professionals.

Indeed, what I love most about Brooklyn are the places where old and new intersect. Last spring, at Park Slope's Fifth Avenue Fair, I walked along the oak- and pear-lined avenue taking in the elements of a traditional street festival: a chili-draped booth selling Italian sausage; children from a local church singing "Oh What a Beautiful Morning"; pony rides and cotton candy and antique automobiles. But the new Brooklyn was on display, too, with its chair massages and vendors of Pad Thai, designer beers, and organic Asian pears. From behind a table where residents could sample ginger-soy edamame, a storefront Pentecostal church had flung its doors open, and joyful, amplified Latino-flavored gospel poured into the streets. It merged with hip-hop and barbershop, not to mention rock-and-roll by a band called Lubricated Goat—a perfect cacophony mirroring the borough itself.

Those cacaphonies repeat themselves all over Brooklyn. When Marcia Savin, author of The Moon Bridge, settled in Carroll Gardens in the late 1970s, she said, "What I found was an America of 50 years past. Small family-owned shops and restaurants offering Old World delicacies at amazingly low prices. Old men playing bocce ball in the park. Latinos playing dominoes on the streets. Chain stores were nonexistent but social clubs were everywhere.

"That hasn't changed," she adds. "But Brooklyn now marks the future. Successful authors, filmmakers, and musicians have moved into the Victorian row houses, where they work and raise families. Manhattan chefs open new restaurants in storefronts, and young designers launch their new lines. We Brooklynites savor Manhattan's offerings, but we're more likely to eat in the new gourmet restaurant around the corner. Some things never change, though. Our streets still ring with the voices of new immigrants calling to their children in languages of faraway continents. And their children answer in English."


ONE SATURDAY AFTERNOON LAST SUMMER, I took a rambling walk through Brooklyn, wondering what I would encounter if I set out without a map. In two hours, I crossed four continents and took in such a feast of exotic tastes and sounds that I half-expected border guards to ask for my passport at any moment.

I was strolling along a nondescript part of the Kensington district-brick rowhouses dotted with hair salons and dry cleaners—when suddenly the signs went from English to Bengali. There were Bangladeshi fishmongers and hairdressers; boys in white robes riding bikes; a shop stocked with hundreds of Bangladeshi videos and CDs. On one corner, groups of men entered a storefront mosque, removed their shoes, and stacked them on shelves in preparation for evening prayers. I entered a neighborhood restaurant where groups of male customers sat together watching the satellite station ATN Bangla on a big-screen TV. I ordered greens and chickpeas seasoned to immigrant taste buds; with a salad and a flaky samosa, the bill was $5.

Outside the restaurant, I noticed three sidewalk vendors selling paan, the heart-shaped betel leaf rolled with fennel seeds, chunks of raw ginger, and other spices. "Good for the blood," said the teenager who took my 50 cents in exchange for the concoction. I chewed slowly; these were strong and unfamiliar taste combinations.

By the time I finished my snack, I was in another district altogether: Borough Park, home to the largest Orthodox Jewish population outside of Israel. The end of Sabbath was nearing, so the streets were full of families walking to synagogue. Some men wore large fur hats; their wives covered their heads with wigs and scarves. Children in traditional clothing played Red Light, Green Light, 1, 2, 3. In front of one home, a grandmother regaled her brood with stories of her Brooklyn childhood. "We played ball against the stoop," she told them. "It was called stoopball."

Borough Park extended for many blocks before Hebrew and Yiddish gave way to various Asian languages. Now I was in Sunset Park, where two cultures live on parallel avenues. On one side, the No. 1 Fei Long Market sold live crabs, Japanese eggplants, water wax gourd juice, preserved radish, pickled mustard greens, quail eggs, and chrysanthemum-mulberry tea. On the other side, I found myself in the middle of a Hispanic block party with grills blazing, a fire hydrant transformed into a children's sprinkler, and adults playing dominoes. A neighborhood DJ blared rhythm-and-blues. Around the corner, I stopped at Paletería La Michoacana and tasted the store's unusual homemade ice pops—sweet tamarind spiked with intense chili powder. I ended my walk in the neighborhood's hilly park, where adults played soccer and children whacked a SpongeBob piñata. From the peak, an orange-purple sunset lit up the Manhattan skyline.


I STARTED MY SUMMER WITH ONE BROOKLYN PARADE. I ended it with another. Each Labor Day, the Crown Heights neighborhood hosts the city's largest street festival, the West Indian-American Day Carnival. For one day, Eastern Parkway is closed to traffic and lined with vendors of Caribbean fare: curried goat, cassava, cow-heel soup, macaroni pie, shark, oxtail, cook-up rice with pig tail. Other merchants offer music and T-shirts from a panoply of island nations. An estimated two million people show up for the festivities.

By the time I arrived, it seemed all two million had lined the sidewalk. The parade had already begun: not the Kiwanis Club floats and marching bands of small-town America, but rather large trucks broadcasting loud, live, infectious music, each surrounded by hundreds of dancers in tropical colors and feathered get-ups the height of two-story buildings. European standards of beauty were discarded: The dancers ranged from XS to XXXL, all of them lovely. "Up in the air! Up in the air!" a musician in a yellow tank top sang from atop one truck—and below her, a frenzy of flags from Barbados, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Haiti, Grenada, St. Lucia, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago flapped in the air like hummingbird wings.

A young woman walked past me. Her T-shirt sported the Guyanese flag and the words "I will never, never forget my roots." I thought to myself: Nor will Brooklyn forget its roots—which is why I'll return time after time.

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SIDEBAR: GETTING THERE

From New York's LaGuardia Airport, it's a $20-$25 taxi ride to most Brooklyn neighborhoods.

What to read

Brooklyn! The Ultimate Guide to New York's Most Happening Borough, by Ellen Freudenheim with
Anna Wiener (St. Mark's Griffin). An up-to-date neighborhood-by-neighborhood insider's guide to the best restaurants, cultural events, and shopping in the borough.

Where to stay

Try a B&B. You'll get architectural character and an authentic neighborhood feel.

Baisley House: One block from Carroll Gardens' restaurant row, this 1845 row house is furnished in period antiques and gilded-frame paintings. F or G train to Carroll Street. 294 Hoyt St., 718/935-1959

Brownstone Brooklyn Bed and Breakfast: Two simple and sun-drenched rooms in a turn-of-the-century Renaissance Revival home in Prospect Heights. No. 2 or 3 train to Grand Army Plaza. 290 Park Pl., 718/857-6066

Where to eat

Sugarcane: The flavors of mango, pumpkin, curry, and ginger perfume this bustling Trinidadian restaurant at the edge of Park Slope. The drink menu is as alluring as the food; try the sorrel martini or sugarcane mojito. No. 2 or 3 train to Bergen Street. 238 Flatbush Ave., 718/230-3954.

The Grocery: This New-American restaurant, with its pale-green minimalist decor, attracts serious foodies to Carroll Gardens. A rotating menu includes dishes like ratatouille stuffed squid with chickpea fries and radicchio. F or G train to Carroll Street. 288 Smith St., 718/596-3335.

Yolele: This Senegalese restaurant in Bedford-Stuyvesant is part art gallery, part bistro, part festive neighborhood gathering spot. The service is leisurely, so adjust your mental clock and imagine yourself at a local eatery in Dakar. C train to Franklin Avenue. 1108 Fulton St., 718/622-0101.

JRG Fashion Café: Dining on a breezy balcony, taste the influences of Caribbean (mango- and sorrel-roasted salmon) and Indian (Madras curry chicken) in Guyanese cooking. B, N, or R train to Pacific Street; Q or No. 2, 3, or 4 train to Atlantic Avenue. 177 Flatbush Ave., 718/399-7079.

2007 Update

On a recent trip to Brooklyn, I discovered two neighborhood restaurants checking out: Flatbush Farm, which specializes in seasonal dishes using local and organic ingredients (76 St. Marks Ave., 718/622-3276); and Beast, a New American restaurant with a cozy neighborhood feel (38 Bergen St., 718/399-6855). Both are near Prospect Park and can be reached by the Q train to 7th Ave. or No. 2 or 3 train to Bergen St.

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