This is a bit of a diversion from the normal Global Dashboard diet, but as a Brooklyn resident I cannot help reproducing parts of a sterling defense of NYC’s better borough from 1946, dredged up by the Paris Review:
Walt Whitman described Brooklyn as “the city of homes and churches.” And it is true. View any Brooklyn-bound rush-hour subway crowd. The workday is at its fever-wracked end. Fathers, husbands, wives and loving children are anxious to reach the comfort and solace of their families. They want to take their ties off and open their collars. They want to get into their slippers. They want to listen to their radios; to laugh with the high-priced comedians, to weep with the maudlin true-life-story actors. To outsmart the experts. And what is happening in Manhattan across the river at the precise moment? Bartenders are setting them up again. Showgirls are tiredly getting into their muslin and crepe de Chine for another gay evening of smiling at out-of-town buyers on the loose. Waiters are moodily turning the tablecloths and breathing on the silver. Manhattan flexes its muscles for a night of gaudy and artificial fun, while the good burghers in Brooklyn relax and act with quiet dignity like human beings. For Brooklyn has a heritage of culture and charming society to uphold. It was of national importance when men like Henry Ward Beecher mounted the pulpit of Brooklyn’s Plymouth Church and gave forth a fiery sermon damning slavery. The effect is still felt on every young student today, for the colony’s first free public school was opened in Brooklyn in 1661, fathering the modern-day public-school system in New York City. These are facts not easily overlooked.
Nor is the American premier of the hot dog to be lightly scorned. Here is a delicacy which brings enjoyment to all classes of people—the rich, the needy; the bright; the dull; the beautiful, the plain. Where was this savory social leveler first introduced to America? On a Brooklyn sand bar known as Coney Island, “the world’s largest playground.” A hearty German baker, Charles Feltman, is reputed to have laid the first made-in-America frankfurter tenderly between the fluffy halves of a soft roll, dabbing its succulent body with mustard, back in the happy days circa 1870. To this day, Feltman’s restaurant is renowned for its food and atmosphere.
The piece goes on about how good Brooklyn is for some time, and ends with a fine flourish:
In other, and terser, words, Brooklyn is quite a place. True, like any large community, it has its slums, its shabby and seedy districts, its low-down bars, its smoky and dirty industrial centers, its percentage of honky-tonk, its share of crime and lawlessness. There is as yet no established heaven on earth.
Brooklyn is too big, too virile to be pushed around. And much too proud and accomplished to be ignored by Manhattan. For Brooklyn is the sturdy base upon which frail and flimsy Manhattan rests. And, if in the stealth of a dark and quiet night a bunch of Brooklyn boys were to snip the bridges which shackle Manhattan to us and let the whole dang island float off to sea and destruction, it would serve Manhattan right. It was bought in a crooked deal in the first place.
