Brooklyn
Created | Updated Mar 16, 2002
Notice the British-like names, and then promptly forget them. These people are nothing like the folks back on that other big famous island. Trust me on this.
Brooklyn is also known as the Borough of Kings, or Kings County. Despite the name, no kings actually came from Brooklyn, because it is in America, where we don't have kings, just stockbrokers and redneck Senators.
Brooklyn is similar to Manhattan, its more famed sister borough, except that it's cheaper, prettier to look at, and the people are nicer. Unfortunately, Brooklyn lives in the shadow of the ugly skyscrapers that you can see from many of its charming, tree-lined streets of brownstones.
Some people, when in Brooklyn, say they are going to "the city" when they are going into Manhattan. Brooklynites who say this are merely reminding you that 100 years ago, Brooklyn was a city in its own right, and if it was still independent would be the second largest city in America. People not from Brooklyn who say that should be slapped. You might also show them a map.
Brooklyn has several famous landmarks, one of the most notable being the Brooklyn Bridge. True New Yorkers may spend a lifetime in the city without visiting the Empire State Building, a landmark far too frequently associated with New York by outsiders, but few will fail to cross that bridge. Many will walk over it on the lovely boardwalk that is thoughtfully provided for pedestrians. Feel free to walk across the bridge when you come to New York even if you aren't from Brooklyn.
Brooklyn is also known for it's great neighborhoods, beautiful parks, many, many churches, and famous sons and daughters who have gone on to write books, play baseball and talk back to redneck Senators in loud honking accents misunderstood by the rest of Americans.
It is also a good place to meet people actually from New York, instead of Manhattan's inevitable tourists, scam artists, and college grads slumming for a year before they go back to Milwaukee or someplace to build strip malls and eat McDonald's or whatever it is they do in the rest of the country.