By Eric van den Berg
"Everybody loves Brooklyn 'cause everybody got their own borough in Brooklyn." Elijaah Gules is scurrying of to meet a friend at a restaurant on Fulton Street in downtown Brooklyn, but he can spare a minute to introduce me to the borough.
"The Russians got Brighton Beach, the blacks got Bedford Stuyvesant, the Jews got Borough Park and in Crown Heights nowadays you got the Jamaicans," Gules said.
Borough President Marty Markowitz has a similar angle on his town. A large sign bearing his name, hanging above a nearby expressway welcomes me to Brooklyn: "You name it, we've got it" the sign says.
Sprawling, diverse, cosmopolitan, Brooklyn may be all this, but one of it's most defining characteristics is its size. Brooklyn is big. With its 2.5 million inhabitants, only Chicago, Los Angeles and New York itself are larger U.S. cities. Kirsten Schwarzenberg, a Williamsburg resident who has lived in Brooklyn for seven years, felt slightly overwhelmed by Brooklyn's sheer size when she moved over from rural North Carolina.
"It's so big. It's almost like there's not one Brooklyn. Every neighborhood is different," Schwarzenberg said.
Schwarzenberg is on to something. The borough has only relatively recent become "one Brooklyn." Brooklyn as it exits today is a union of six historic Dutch colonies, founded between 1645 and 1661. One of these colonies, the town of Breuckelen, or Brooklyn, began to grow rapidly at the beginning of the 19th century. Spurred by continuing immigration from Europe throughout the century, the expanding city of Brooklyn had absorbed all the towns within it's current boundaries by 1896.
Only two years later, Brooklyn joined the four other boroughs in forming what was then called the City of Greater New York. This fast haphazard growth fueled by progressive waves of immigration yielded the "patchwork quilt" make-up of Brooklyn we still now today: A highly dynamic demographic landscape where ethnicity and other neighborhood characteristics can change abruptly.
Some neighborhoods have been claimed by half a dozen ethnic groups over the course of their history. The waterfront area called Sunset Park offers a striking example, having been home to Irish, Polish, Finns, Swedes, Norwegians and Italians drawn to its shipping industry throughout the 19th and the 20th century. Now, the area welcomes the newest wave of immigrants. Since the 70s, Puerto Ricans and Chinese have started to pour into the area, while the European contingent has been moving away.
Most Brooklynites stress that the diversity of the borough is one of its strong points.
"And the nicest thing about Brooklyn is, we all get along" Gules said.
Recently, however, a breed of immigrants that even Brooklyn had never seen before has come to the borough, and they are not universally appreciated.
Manhattan yuppies and hipsters have found their way to a number of enclaves along Brooklyn's east shore. Ever-rising rents in Manhattan forced New York's poorest upper classers (namely artists) over the East River in the 80s, with richer professionals following quickly in their footsteps. The North Side of Williamsburg was the first to see the arrival of the Manhattan rent-refugees, and by now has thoroughly gentrified. The rising rents here now are forcing the hip-but-not-so-rich out and on to less green but cheaper pastures, such as Dumbo. Recently even the more remote Red Hook has begun to see the arrival of the first art galleries, signaling the onset of gentrification.
On Bedford Avenue in North Williamsburg, the epicenter of Brooklyn gentrification, the effects of this process are obvious. Bedford Avenue is littered with small but hip clothing boutiques, and nice little bars can be found in it's side streets. The crowd consists of hip, mainly white, youngsters, who now and then congregate in vacant lots or warehouses for parties.
Two miles away, on Downtown Fulton Street, gentrification is yet to strike, and a different Brooklyn still exists. A Staples and a McDonald's rank amongst local stores. The crowd is mainly black and consists of families as well as bands of young adults. The most famous landmark is Junior's Restaurant, which famously claims to sell the best cheesecake in the world. A local street hawker is selling big jugs of E-Z Clean.
Most native Brooklynites appreciate the recent influx of the well-to-do, in spite of the change it has wrought on the character of parts of the borough. At the very least they see it as an unavoidable side-effect of dropping crime rates.
"Back in the day Brooklyn was a rough borough" Gules said. "Some neigborhoods were really terrible. Then in the 80s and 90s things started getting better."
Gules relates these changes to the influx of non-natives with a bit of money to spend around the same time period. ""I mean, these people moving over here doesn't bother me. They've done Brooklyn a lot of good." Gules said.
Some, however, do not appreciate the mono-ethnic qualities of the gentrification process.
"It used to be I'd never see white people walk around Bedford Stuyvesant. Nowadays I see white people, but it's only them moving into our neighborhoods, it's not the other way around. Most black people don't have the means to do that," a black traffic cop from the area, who wished to remain anonymous, said.
Most other locals don't share this sense of racial inequality.
"Color's not important. I don't mind who lives here," Rosa Crandell, a retiree from Clinton Hill, said. "All I care about is that the neighborhood is so nice nowadays. And you know what? It just keeps getting better and better." Crandell's words
(See BROOKLYN on Page B3)
(Continued from BROOKLYN on Page B2)
find resonance around Brooklyn. It is hard to find a place in Brooklyn were the locals won't tell you that the neighborhood is on the upswing.
In Coney Island, Sebastian Bencomo reminds me that things were different once. As I put my hand in my bag to grab my notepad he jumps back. "No what are you gonna pull out of that thing?" he asks me. When he sees I am merely trying to acquire information, he is put at ease. Here in Coney Island, once home to one of the world's biggest amusement parks, things improved in the late 80s he explains, shortly after Russians immigrants settled in Brighton Beach in huge numbers.
From Coney Island, the Empire State Building is a mere speck on the horizon, dwarfed by the huge blocks of housing projects. Walking along the boardwalk, staring over the Atlantic Ocean were the seemingly endless streets of New York City abruptly come to an end, one feels far, far away from the hustle and bustle of Manhattan. Schwarzenberg of Williamsburg often comes here when she needs a rest.
"That's definitely something you won't find in Manhattan." Schwarzenberg said. "There are some neighborhoods that have an almost suburban character to them. Their pace is more relaxed."
Schwarzenberg concludes that it's a good thing I'm running around her borough interviewing the local.
"I think if you tried this stunt in Manhattan your average conversation would last six seconds," Schwarzenberg said.
Coney Island is a great place to go during a summer afternoon. (Eric Van den berg/The Chronicle)