Seattle: Seeking love with mullets ten years ago.
Seattle: Seeking love with mullets ten years ago.
  • Seattle: Seeking love with mullets ten years ago.

Because really, Brooklyn only became #Brooklyn! when, sometime in the early part of this decade, #Brooklyn! started becoming Seattle.

We were lousy with insane bike wars and lesbians pushing fancy strollers along tree-lined streets and moustaches and ridiculous coffee houses (yes, some of ours are also full of “lefties who love free wi-fi, poetry readings and open-mic nights”) about a decade before all of that business—plus cheaper apartments, done it—became a reason for crossing the East River.

Having your liberal oasis “discovered” by MTV and turned into a set for the Real World? So ten years ago.

Hipster grifter? Naked? Naked hipsters possibly grifting on bikes?

See you and raise you.

Ritual slaughter of Canadian geese in beloved parks? So over.

Not-quite-professional terrorists disrupting people’s days? 1999.

Weed as culinary secret? We said something about that in 2006 and wondered why we hadn’t sooner.

Rat tails and beards and love-seeking mullets and such. Been there, done that.

Kickball?

Kickball.

Battling a stadium invasion?

1995.

And, I mean, come on:

Brooklyn bacon 2010.

Seattle bacon 2001.

PROOF and TRUTH.

Eli Sanders was The Stranger's associate editor. His book, "While the City Slept," was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He once did this and once won...

37 replies on “And What Is Brooklyn, Anyway, Except a More Expensive Suburb of Seattle?”

  3. Golly Slog is just all atwiterpated about NYC today. Tell you what, why don’t we just skip all of this exhausting linking to Gawker (which is, apparently, the only news of what happens in Brookyln that exists based on this article) and accelerate to the part where Seattle and Brooklyn go into a room together, whip out their dicks and measure them with a ruler.

  4. How dare you even make that statement.
    Bacon? Kickball? If that’s how you compare cultures, that’s just sad.

    How about we talk about the lack of any really arts community that actually creates a movement.

    Esty didn’t start here. In fact, Etsy doesn’t even make a appearance here. It’s in Brooklyn, Chicago and San Francisco every year.

    Let’s talk about music. Free and open to the public bands at Prospect Park…woo Woodland Park Zoo free shows. Pahlease.

    If you want to compare cities…it would be more appropriate to say San Francisco or Portland are rival cities to Brooklyn.

  6. @4:

    Free music in the parks is so 1967.

    Free movies in the parks OTOH – we got that coming out our ears.

    And ESTY? Really? ESTY is your standard for “culture”?

    Man, talk about sad, indeed…

  9. Having lived in both Brooklyn and Seattle (both for 5 years each) I can say that they both have their unique charms and I love them both dearly – but Seattle WISHES it was Brooklyn. When I first moved to Seattle from Brooklyn a barista on Capitol Hill constantly harassed me (as I had a Brooklyn sweatshirt I always wore) about what the zip code of Brooklyn was, what the area code of Brooklyn was, etc. all of these inane questions like I didn’t have enough credibility to be wearing said sweatshirt. Finally one day I got up in his face all Brooklyn style as that is apparently what he wanted and asked if he was the motherfucking mayor of Brooklyn? NO. You are a someone who makes coffee. And as for my sweatshirt? More than 4 million people live in Brooklyn (how many live in Seattle?) and they DON’T GIVE A FUCK who wears a Brooklyn sweatshirt. He got all offended like how dare I talk to him that way (how dare I call him on his passive aggressive bullshit). Brooklyn would eat Seattle for lunch. Sorry.

  10. I don’t know how this was not figured out before Seattle’s “golden age (grunge age)”: That anything good/cool/hip/progressive will eventually be coopted and watered down by the mainstream, while the next round of hipsters will completely dismiss it on no merit other than the fact that mainstream/suburban people are into it. I eventually found just as much narrow mindedness in Seattle as I found in “the real” Lynnwood, where I grew up, although that narrow mindedness came with better haircuts, a better soundtrack, and more aestheticly pleasing sense of fashion.

  12. @9, Brooklyn has black people and immigrants and wide swathes of culture other than young, white, college-educated artsy people. That’s what makes it interesting. Seattle is essentially suburban, even the “gritty” urban parts. What people mean when they say “Seattle” is essentially “people who until recently lived in Lynnwood”, a la @10.

    Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

  16. I can’t seem to find a 2010 number for Seattle (the city proper) but it looks like in 2009 there were between 600,000 and 700,000 people. and @12 YES Brooklyn’s cultural diversity is pretty amazing and I experienced a great culture shock when I arrived in Seattle.

  17. the diversity in such a dense area is true. NY is America to a lot of people around the world. That being said, we have the most diverse zip code in the country, no?

  18. Um, Fnarf maybe you should come over to my neighborhood sometime – it’s like the freakin’ United Nations here in Squire Park – and many of the older folks on my block have lived in the same houses going on 40 years or more.

  20. Brooklyn has it over Seattle on the in-your-face vs. passive-aggressive axis, but apparently satire is lost on them. Brooklyn defenders, if you can’t take a joke, then fuck you.

  21. Um, Brooklyn is WAY more than Williamsburg. It is not a trendy, hipster place at all other than those 10 or so blocks. Xina and Fnarf are on the money. I experienced a massive culture shock when I moved here. I’m still not over it 14 years later. Sure, Seattle has it’s diversity. I live in the Beacon Hill area, have lived in the Central district, hang out in South Seattle which are areas full of diversity but it’s incomparable to Bklyn. The shittiest neighborhoods here are like nice neighborhoods over there. And don’t get me started on the smug passive/aggressiveness. 🙂

  23. Most of Brooklyn outside of the hip areas are crappy places to live. No restaurants, no shops, only seriously red-lined grocery stores that sell little else than iceberg lettuce and pig’s feet. It may be diverse, but it has little culture. You have to spend 20 minutes on the G train to get anywhere interesting.

  26. @18, how many people live in Squire Park, a thousand? I wish we’d bought the house we looked at there in 1999, though I love where I live now. But even Squire Park is less diverse than most of Brooklyn. Got any Peruvian restaurants? How about Senegalese?

    Seattle has some Peruvian, but it’s out in the burbs where they can afford to live (and where Will has never been) — Lynnwood, Shoreline.

    Actually, Brooklyn sucks compared to Queens.

  27. Fnarf, while it’s good to remind Seattlites of a relative lack of diversity, i don’t think the numbers game is the point of this post.

    I live in the country’s most diverse zip code, but I haven’t gone out of my way to catalog and cross-reference which restaurants are from where, etc.

    I will say this about the Seattle (see: Cap Hill) vs. New York (see: Brooklyn, see: Williamsburg, maybe some corners of Greenpoint) debate at large: When I stayed in Brooklyn, I found the “williamsburg hipsters” people talk about to be a lot friendlier and better at sharing space than folks on Cap Hill.

    which, actually, may have something to do with numbers.

  30. Fnarf:

    According to 2000 Census Figures (couldn’t find anything more recent on short-notice) Squire Park had about 15,500 residents; I imagine that hasn’t fluctuated terribly in the intervening decade.

    Too bad you didn’t buy here when you had the chance: aside from being one of Seattle’s most ethnically diverse neighborhoods (not as diverse as the Valley, I grant, but way better than just about any other neighborhood in the city), we’re also within walking distance of CapHill, First Hill, downtown, Madrona, Madison Park, and the ID – so even if we’re not as restaurant-dense as some neighborhoods, we’re literally only a few steps away from some of the best food this City has to offer.

  33. How shocking! The LARGEST CITY in the country has more diversity than a city of 700,000. Stop the presses.

    (and don’t get all statistical on my snarkiness: I know that Brooklyn alone is not the largest city, but even without the rest of NYC, Brooklyn would be the 4th largest city in the county.

  35. Eli, it’s disturbing that you could write this post and somehow edit out the 1.5 million non-white people who live in Brooklyn. But, sure, if you edit out most of the population of Brooklyn, then yes, it’s just like Seattle.

  36. Brooklyn has… texture. It has chewy goodness, and sharp bones you need to spit out. It changes all the time, yet stays the same, and it’s rarely boring. It’s not a place, it’s hundreds of them. Each neighborhood is like a large village or a small city all its own. Of the three dozen or more named places with zip codes, each can have multiple business centers, each hubs of their own neighborhoods. It’s a transient place, serving wave upon wave of immigrant, who then move out to Long Island or New Jersey when they “make” it. Yet, there are people who are born and live their whole lives in one neighborhood.

    It’s a melting pot that’s not warm enough to blend its ingredients. Distinct ethnic communities put down strong roots. There are at least two little Chinatowns at the moment, one of which rivals the large one in Manhattan. Greeks, Turks, Lebanese, Syrians, Indians, Pakistanis and Egyptians all have their little communities. A French enclave is growing up around Smith Street. Most of the Norwegians have moved out, but there’s still an annual parade in Bay Ridge. The West Indian Day parade is almost as impressive as Mardi Gras, and a lot louder. Huge Italian and Irish enclaves. Competing Hispanic communities, full of disdain for each other. It’s home to the largest concentration of Lesbian households in North America. There are two different, and large, Hasidic communities, the Satmars and Lubovichers, each in separate neighborhoods, who largely avoid each other, lest they start battling in the streets, calling each other goyim, and cutting off beards. Probably more churches/houses of worship per square inch and per capita than anywhere else on the planet. (Damn those bells!)

    Hundreds of thousands of cars pour through daily of commuters transiting Brooklyn to get somewhere else, like Manhattan or Long Island. Yeah, its a dirty place. It doubles as an ashtray and trashcan for commuters from Staten Island and New Jersey. Pigs.

    On the plus side, the dining is fabulous, shopping is excellent, food is fresh and cheap in those areas with competing markets, property taxes are low, the residents are not easily perturbed, mass transit covers over half of the borough well, and the other half sort of. A subway ride will get you to the joys of Manhattan, 24/7. And, you can have a car, if you really want one. Bicycle routes are improving, but still suck compared to Seattle.

    Brooklyn don’t get no respect. Yeah, so?

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