Brooklyn v. Manhattan and other thoughts

When I tell people I live in New York they are always saying one of two things, "I could never live there! It's sooo crowded!" or "That's soo cool." I think when it comes to NYC many people's experience with this great city is often limited to a long weekend visiting the corner where they tape the Today show, Times Square, and lots of shopping and eating for good measure. Let me assure the aforementioned "I could never live there group" that the places you visited on your long weekend here are not the places where New Yorkers hang out. I could spend every weekend for the next year doing the same things you did on your vacation here (and having a great time), and it would be a vastly different experience than the things I do for fun as a quote unquote local. Namely, and let's get one thing straight, I live in Brooklyn, and specifically, Williamsburg, and my hood is not at all crowded. I do not bump into people on the sidewalk here. Sometimes I don't even see people on the sidewalk. And when I venture into Manhattan from time to time I, like you, feel the sudden rush of shoulders and coats and stroller wheels flapping past me as I try to keep up and not get run over or pushed in front of a cab while crossing the street.

Which brings me to the first big difference between Manhattan and Brooklyn: the crowds. "Why is it so crowded?" you may be asking yourself as you remember the lines you stood in for pizza or how you were almost mauled while boarding the ferry back on your 1998 Spring Break trip. Think about the town you grew up in and when you go back 10 or 15 years later how it seems that the town has spread out and grown arms full of newness for consumers to consume; places that used to be cow pastures are now malls, your favorite old restaruant has been bulldozed in lieu of a luxury condo highrise. You can still pass by undeveloped spots or spots you didn't even know existed that have become a location. Now Manhattan is an island and only eight square miles and ran out of undeveloped spots some time ago, so as the population grows there are only two solutions--to keep developing or gentrifying (read: becoming a place where a white person will move) out in the burroughs (the immediately surrounding areas of Queens, Brooklyn, etc.) or continuing to divide and dubdivide whatever space already exists (and it being an island they're not going to be buying undeveloped land any time soon) and deal with the crowds. It's hilarious how the space issues have played out over time: unlike a lot of the rest of the country, where people are on an upward spiral of obtaining more space as they get older complete with more yard, dog, and kids, when you go into Manhattan you see a completely different mindset altogether. Small dogs are de rigeur, our not-quite 40 pound border collie mix, which is an average size here in Brooklyn, would be like a huge dog to have in the city (although you do see them on occasion and think, where do they put that big dog? In the suburbs this dog would be a normal size and you would not wonder where the owners kept him). Having something like a car in Manhattan is definately a luxury, you pretty much have to pay for a parking garage to keep one there and those often runs upwards of four hundred smackers a month. Here in Brooklyn, we park our car a block away, next to the park. Sure we have to move it every few days for the Street Sweeper Man, but it's free, and still considered something of a luxury.

Manhattan is like the fancy party dress you paid too much for but couldn't live without that you only find a reason to pull out of the closet once a year (notice how I also tend to speak about Manhattan in run-on sentences.) Brooklyn is that vintage jacket jem you found (a steal!) that goes with everything. Manhattan is also kind of like one of those celebrities who's always in the tabloids and is really pretty but hasn't made a good movie in a really long time because she's too busy designing her new line of wool panties or some such thing. Brooklyn is like that actress whose name you can't remember but she was really good in like, three of your favorite movies and probably the reason you can't remember her is because she had so much range that you hardly knew she was the same person from movie to movie and she's never been in US Weekly. Here in Brooklyn small family businesses thrive and even the McDonald's down the street is cash only. You look out on the shore and the twinkling city lights of the big city. They call Brooklyn a horizontal city for that reason while Manhattan is a vertical city. When you're in there maneuvering through that labyrinth of skyscrapers (never so aptly named as here) you lose a sense of which direction you're going; there's no where to look but up. Which can be a wonderful thing, too, for a gal like me, as long as you can find your way back to the horizon every now and again.