“Everybody in Brooklyn is miserable.” — Kathryn Grayson, “It Happened in Brooklyn” (1947)
“Well, if you believe that, I’ve got a bridge I want to sell you.” — A frequent proposition
Where else can you ride one of the world’s most famous roller coasters, then take a few wobbly steps and settle your stomach with a knish?
This is Brooklyn. It’s been Brooklyn, actually, for a lot of years–the Cyclone has been rattling on Coney Island since 1927, and knishes have been peddled there for at least that long–but it’s a while since tourists stormed the borough’s beaches, and its neighborhoods, and everything else wonderful here.
If ever.
(From “My Favorite Year,” a favorite movie, 1982):
Benjy Stone: “Bring Alan Swann to Brooklyn?”
Belle Carroca, his mother: “Well, why not? What are you ashamed of?”
Stone: “Everything!”
Look, I love Manhattan. The Bronx and Staten Island, too, even if I’ve never been to Staten Island, except for the ferry. Queens. Been to Queens a lot, and Queens is cool.
But Brooklyn!
When I was a kid, there were two real places whose mere mention would light my face.
Texas. Texas meant cowboys. (This was before I learned Roy Rogers was actually Leonard Slye of Cincinnati.)
And Brooklyn.
Brooklyn was funny. People from Brooklyn had this outrageous, hilarious accent. Sgt. Bilko came from Brooklyn. The Kramdens lived in Brooklyn.
The Dodgers–everyone’s other favorite team, because they weren’t the Yankees, who mashed them annually in the World Series brought to you by Gillette and Mel Allen–were from Brooklyn.
Turns out Brooklyn, maybe, was only slightly more imaginary than the Magic Kingdom.
“The lingering sense of Brooklyn as a land of boundless mirth with baseball obbligato was the creation of certain screen writers and comedians,” Roger Kahn wrote in his classic on those old Dodgers, “The Boys of Summer.” “Working for a living, they synthesized that Brooklyn.”
On the other hand, maybe Roger, a child of Brooklyn, was too close to appreciate the fascinating cultural mosiac that–albeit with a few different tiles–it remains today.
There are tourist-friendly “attractions,” to be sure.
Prospect Park sprawls nicely–it’s two-thirds the size of Manhattan’s Central Park and designed by the same team–and it has a zoo, band shell, botanic garden, trees that bloom in the spring and people who play in it without fear.
“This is truly a neighborhood place,” says Eliot Niles, a Brooklyn-born guide (Brooklyn Attitude Tours) and historian. “And when I say `neighborhood,’ I’m talking the greater neighborhood of Brooklyn.”
It’s anchored by Grand Army Plaza and a monument that rivals Paris’ Arc de Triomphe in splendor, if not size.
“This,” says Alex, a driver, in a Russian accent that’s still thick after 30 years here, “reminds like in the Roman Empire.”
On the park’s edge is the Brooklyn Museum, devoted to art, intended in the beginning to be the world’s largest museum before Manhattan took control of the budget (we’ll get to that), and channeled funds toward its own Metropolitan. Brooklyn’s Egyptian collection is especially strong, but represented here, too, are such Americans as Thomas Eakins, John Singer Sargent and Georgia O’Keeffe (including her rendering of the Brooklyn Bridge).
There used to be a ballpark right here. Forgive us, briefly, while we shamelessly wallow in nostalgia.
“My dad,” says Niles, “was an avid, avid Brooklyn Dodgers fan.”
The team moved to Los Angeles after the 1957 season. Before that, and especially after, a major chunk of Brooklyn’s middle class spun off to their own private Los Angeleses.
“It left a hole in his heart, and it left a hole in the heart of Brooklyn–both metaphorically and geographically, because Ebbets Field was in the heart of Brooklyn. You remove the center, you’ve got a vaccuum that took decades to fill. Some say it was never filled.”
“The Dodgers were following a trend,” says Brooklyn borough president Marty Markowitz, who at 61 is old enough to remember. “It was very sad. But that was then.”
Back to now.
The amusements of Coney Island are humming again, fewer than in their prime last century but certainly with a lively carny buzz, complete with freak show. Coaster buffs adore the Cyclone, and they should. The ever-dwindling number of Chicagoans who still miss Riverview’s Bobs will find the Cyclone familiarly terrifying (as well as, at $5 a ride, a refreshing bargain in a time of $48 theme-park admissions).
The Promenade, in the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood just off downtown, was built in the 1950s as a salve to property-owners distressed by construction of the highway that rumbles beneath it. Today, it provides the best possible view of Lower Manhattan.
(One of the delightful ironies, given the long rivalry between the boroughs: Manhattan looks best from Brooklyn. Manhattan, on the other hand, is forced to look at Brooklyn from its side of the East River. No contest.)
Brooklyn has always had a strong cultural presence, nourished by waves of immigrants who brought that sensibility from the old country. This is the city that nurtured Gershwin and Copland, along with the author of such elegant lyrics as: “Goosestep’s the new step today . . . “
Mel Brooks.
Speaking of comics: Woody Allen. Henny Youngman. Buddy Hackett.
Rodney Dangerfield got his act together at a pioneer comedy club in Sheepshead Bay (another Brooklyn neighborhood, down the water from Coney Island and memoir-filled Brighton Beach) called Pips. Adam Sandler played there. A very young George Carlin. Billy Crystal. Seinfeld. Just about everybody.
It’s still there. You can catch a party fishing boat at the harbor across the street (full day: about $35), land a mess of bass or flounder or porgies or whatever they’re bringing in today (even tuna, sometimes), clean up, have some fried calamari at Randazzo’s Clam Bar (if you don’t mind a little wait) and then catch a comedy show a few steps away, all for less than a middling seat on Broadway.
Or, if you’re not up for clams: a bowl of borscht at the Sarai Cafe or a kebab at the Turkish Yali Restaurant, or go Italian at Marie’s or something fancier and fishier at Lundy’s, all right there.
Lundy’s. The Lundy brothers are long gone (there’s an interesting story there; you won’t read it here), and it’s had a ride bumpier than the Cyclone’s–but the restaurant, its raw bar and its pure Brooklynism have survived.
Neil Diamond, I’m told, was a regular here. Woody Allen’s picture with the owners is on the wall.
At the bar, you might meet Charlie, a frequenter, who knew the guy (“He’s a neighborhood guy–he’s a nut case. He was a shucker here.”) whose arrest for harassing dwarfs (I’m not making this up) inspired that day’s New York Post Page 1 headline: “Hi ho, hi ho . . . it’s off to court he goes.”
Or Cari-Ann, a tattoo artist with a Rosie Perez (yes, Brooklynite Rosie Perez) delivery who works next door: “Not only you gotta pay millions of dollahs to buy these brownstones . . . there’s no place to stick youah cah . . . “
Which brings us to the boom:
When Manhattan’s own revival left well-paid but not filthy-rich professionals out in the residential cold, some began to look across the river. So did real estate people who can spot the beginning of a trend better than you and I.
Brooklyn had the buildings–primarily historic, structurally sound if sometimes neglected and often subdivided, brownstones. It also had a subway system that could carry commuters to Manhattan jobs lots faster than, say, highways from Connecticut and New Jersey, even Queens.
Boom.
“It’s become so popular, so chic to live in Brooklyn,” says Markowitz, “that it really has caused a lot of upheaval in neighborhoods that wish to preserve their unique residential character.”
There are 600 pre-Civil War buildings in Brooklyn Heights. Almost all, today, are out of your price range.
“You’re sitting in the first suburb of Manhattan,” says Eric Wakin, co-author of “The Big Onion Guide to Brooklyn,” just off the presses. We were sitting on a bench on Montague Street, in the shadow of a mansion worth millions. “It’s gotten phenomenally expensive here in the last 20 years.”
Al Capone used to work and tend bar in Park Slope. Unless he changed professions (which, of course, he eventually did), he couldn’t afford to live here anymore. Actor John Turturro, native, lives there now. A neighborhood video store, I’m told, has an entire shelf permanently devoted to Turturro films.
Ft. Greene, beyond shabby not long ago, today has, among other things, a French restaurant and other conveniences consistent with its new residents, attracted by renewal and proximity to another of Brooklyn’s points of pride. The Brooklyn Academy of Music is longtime home of the Brooklyn Philharmonic and core of an expanding cultural center that includes the new Mark Morris Dance Center and more to come.
Bedford Stuyvesant (given humanity by Brooklynite Spike Lee in “Do the Right Thing”) was notorious.
Sara, an eye technician and friend to Cari-Ann, the tattoo artist: “Ten yeahs ago, they would say, `Take this house. I’ll give it to you.’ You would say, `Get the hell outta heah.’ Now youah not gonna be able to touch it, because theahs no brownstones left to buy.
“Pawk Slope. Gawbbled up. They go fuh 2, 3 million dollahs . . . “
But while Pawk . . . Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights and Ft. Greene and others are being gentrified (DUMBO, a once-derelict former commercial district Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, now has lofts for sale, new construction next to the lofts and, of course, a new Starbucks), other neighborhoods are preserving their residential character.
Crown Heights. No stranger to strife–something approaching civil war between resident African-Americans and Hassidic Jews in 1991 helped bring down Mayor David Dinkins and elevate an enforcer named Rudy Giuliani–it is now a stable, bicultural, fascinating place to explore. On Nostrand Avenue, shops braid hair and sell barbecue; on Kingston Avenue, three blocks east, you can buy hand-crafted matzos (in season) for $16 a box and hats of any color, as long as they’re black.
Behind Peter Luger restaurant–Brooklyn’s most famous steak house, justifiably, which opened in 1887–other Hassidic Jews (and pioneering artists, including a blond from Kenosha) have converted a crumbling Williamsburg neighborhood, once a haunt of crack whores and drug peddlers, into 1887 Jewish Eastern Europe (with kids on Big Wheels).
Brighton Beach, for at least a generation almost solidly Jewish (Brooks grew up next door to drummer Buddy Rich), is still almost solid, but now with a mix of Russians. “They come from all nationalities,” says Alex, the driver, “then their families come and they reunite.” The Golden Key grocery on Brighton Beach Avenue intoxicates with a blend of aromas–sausages, smoked fish, pastries, trays of stuffed cabbage and blintzes–before I’m thrown out (in Russian) for taking unauthorized photos of the sausages, smoked fish, pastries . . .
The old timers still come to Court Street in Carroll Gardens to buy fresh ravioli or to enjoy the homemade fettuccine at a ristorante named for Marco Polo; trendy newcomers cut over to Smith Street in Cobble Hill, parallel to Court Street, to graze its stream of restaurant consciousness; seekers of the rhythms and flavors of the islands head over to East Flatbush, which is next to Canarsie.
(The Kramdens lived in Bensonhurst, but for unknown reasons their address was in Canarsie. The moon in the opening of “The Honeymooners” rises over Brooklyn. Jackie Gleason’s birthplace? You have to ask?)
There’s even one of the great cemeteries. Among those resting together, presumably in peace, in Green-Wood Cemetery: Leonard Bernstein, Joey “Crazy Joe” Gallo, William “Boss” Tweed, Charles Ebbets and Horace Greeley.
To lovers of cities–old American cities, fashioned as much by world events, and international social and political upheavals, and by the promise of a better life, as by subdivision developers–who feared those cities had been homogenized into an urban Wal-Mart, Brooklyn is a revelation.
“Brooklyn,” says Markowitz, “is unlike anywhere in America. It is home to everyone from everywhere. It represents New York at its finest.”
With a bridge for the ages.
Until the Brooklyn Bridge opened in 1883, Brooklyn was an independent city, linked to Manhattan only by a navy of weather-sensitive ferries and a vague sense of shared destiny. That’s why Brooklyn has a downtown and Queens, always an outpost, has bungalows. In 1880, Brooklyn was America’s third-largest city, behind New York and Philadelphia; 10 years later, Chicago had climbed into the No. 2 spot, but No. 4 Brooklyn’s population had soared nearly 40 percent, to more than 800,000.
With the opening of what then was easily the world’s longest suspension bridge, Brooklyn and Manhattan were now fused by a granite and steel umbilical. In 1898, after a referendum with hints of impropriety, the merger was made official, and Brooklyn went from city to borough.
(Today, Brooklyn’s population–about 2.6 million–would still make it the country’s fourth largest city; Manhattan’s 1.7 million, taken alone, would put it sixth, between Houston and Philly.)
Visitors can walk across that bridge, leisurely, from Brooklyn to Manhattan, or from Manhattan to Brooklyn, in about a half hour. It’s a broad wooden boardwalk, mostly, with cars on either side quickly becoming irrelevant as the journey continues over the East River.
“It’s part of the popular culture,” says Wakin. “Frank Sinatra sings on it [in `It Happened in Brooklyn’]. And it has this fantastic view.”
And it’s free.
They take the walk from Manhattan, sometimes, to get that view, and a picture, of where the World Trade Center used to be.
The smart ones keep on going and discover a treasure most didn’t realize was here.
Once more, from “My Favorite Year”:
Alan Swann: “But now, I must take leave of you, for Stone and I journey to dine in some far-off land called . . . Brooklyn.”
Of that plan, even the real Kathryn Grayson (discovered by former Coney Island singing waiter Eddie Cantor) would no doubt concur:
Nothing to be ashamed of at all.
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IF YOU GO
GETTING THERE
American and United fly almost hourly non-stops flights out of O’Hare to LaGuardia (in Queens), and ATA has frequent non-stops out of Midway. Recently quoted fares were around $250. One-stop fares on AirTran Airways (also Midway) were quoted at about $190, but the stop, in Atlanta, can add more than three hours to what’s a two-hour non-stop flight. Expect to pay $25 to $30 for transportation to downtown Brooklyn, more for outlying areas (including Coney Island and Sheepshead Bay) in the borough.
GETTING AROUND
Subways and buses ($2 a ride) provide coverage, and the subways are especially easy to figure out. (Same subways, and same price, get you to Brooklyn from Manhattan.) Standard, metered taxis are rare; instead, Brooklynites rely on the “car service,” luxury sedans either hailed on the street or called by restaurants (or by you), which have more or less set fares; ripoffs are said to be unusual. Renting a car is an option best left to those who know the territory.
TOURS
A very good idea, especially for understanding Brooklyn’s neighborhoods. Two highly recommended options: Brooklyn Attitude Tours (718-398-0939; www.busyfingers.com/brooklynattitude/aboutus.html) and Big Onion Walking Tours (www.bigonion.com; 212-439-1090). A third, based on quality hearsay: New York Like a Native’s Brooklyn options (718-393-7537; www.nylikeanative.com). If you’d rather go it alone, Big Onion has a new book of Brooklyn walking tours: “The Big Onion Guide to Brooklyn” (New York University Press, $17.95).
STAYING THERE
Perhaps no developed city in the world this size (about 2.7 million) has so few decent hotel rooms, though more are under construction. The one full-service hotel is downtown’s excellent, well-located Marriott New York at the Brooklyn Bridge (718-246-7000; www.marriott.com), which has an addition to come; expect to pay at least $200 a night. A Comfort Inn (718-368-3334; www.choicehotels.com) with rates as low as $129 opened last year in Sheepshead Bay; it’s a 25-minute walk to the nearest subway, but there are plenty of nearby restaurants. There are others, but for now, most leisure visitors use Manhattan as a base.
DINING THERE
A feast reflecting the borough’s immigrant traditions and evident diversity. A sampling, mostly icons: Peter Luger Steak House (the basic steak, at $36.95; cash only) is carnivore heaven. Everyone stops for cheesecake ($4.75 for the original; stick with that) at Junior’s, a downtown diner. The River Cafe offers a dreamy view of Lower Manhattan and $78 prix fixe dinners; same view at lunch will cost you about half that. Grimaldi’s, a short walk from River Cafe but without the view, has by acclamation New York’s best pizza (coal oven, fresh everything, $12 and up). Longtime favorite Lundy’s, in Sheepshead Bay, changed owners in November but still packs them in for specials like whole roasted red snapper ($25.95). A few steps away is Randazzo’s Clam Bar, a Brooklyn classic (fried clams, $7.95) that’s worth the inevitable wait; farther down Emmons Avenue is Maria’s, an Italian old-timer. Loved Marco Polo Ristorante, in Carroll Gardens, happily old-fashioned, as is the clientele. The Coney Island area is walk-up paradise: Skip the anywhere Big Mac and instead try a knish at Gregory and Paul’s ($2.50) and wash it down with a hot dog from Nathan’s ($2.25; average dog, great mustard, exceptional fries). And untried but recommended by people I trust: Bamonte’s, Italian, the real Brooklyn thing, in Williamsburg; Frankie’s 457, the current hot celeb choice for Italian, down the street from Marco Polo; and Queen, top-shelf Italian right downtown.
INFORMATION
Call the Brooklyn Tourism and Vistors Center at 718-802-3846; www.brooklyntourism.org. Or another excellent source: Brooklyn Information & Culture, 718-855-7882; www.brooklynx.org.
— Alan Solomon
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Brooklyn films
Few cities, and the people who live there, have been featured in as many Hollywood movies over the years as Brooklyn. Some have been good ones. A partial list, alphabetically, with year and star:
– “Blonde From Brooklyn” (1945; Lynn Merrick)
– “Boys From Brooklyn” (1952; Bela Lugosi)
– “Brighton Beach Memoirs” (1986; Jonathan Silverman)
– “The Case Against Brooklyn” (1958; Darren McGavin)
– “The Chosen” (1981; Robby Benson)
– “Cowboy From Brooklyn” (1938; Dick Powell)
– “Crooklyn” (1994; Alfre Woodard)
– “Do the Right Thing” (1989; Spike Lee)
– “The Fighting 69th” (1940; James Cagney)
– “Guadalcanal Diary” (1943; William Bendix)
– “It Happened in Brooklyn” (1947; Frank Sinatra)
– “It Happened in Flatbush” (1942; Lloyd Nolan)
– “The Kid From Brooklyn” (1946; Danny Kaye)
– “The Lords of Flatbush” (1974; Sylvester Stallone)
– “My Favorite Year” (1982; Peter O’Toole)
– “Radio Days” (1987; Seth Green)
– “Saturday Night Fever” (1977; John Travolta)
– “Sophie’s Choice” (1982; Meryl Streep)
– “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” (1945; Dorothy McGuire)
– “Two Mugs From Brooklyn” (1943; William Bendix)
– “Vampire in Brooklyn” (1995; Eddie Murphy)
– “Whistling in Brooklyn” (1943; Red Skelton)
— A.S.
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Asolomon@tribune.com
