Anyone else noticing that Brooklyn seems to be losing its magic? How did it morph into such a bland mini-Manhattan? Don’t shoot the messenger, please!

 

“Brooklyn,” the brand has been a huge worldwide phenomenon. When I first moved my office to Bushwick back in 2008 (the same year that Roberta’s Pizza opened), I could tell being in Brooklyn upped our cool-quotient a million-fold. There was no place in Manhattan we could have moved that offered similar cachet.

Mind you, there are many kinds of Brooklyn cool:

• There’s Spike Lee’s Ft. Greene (although he hasn’t lived there since 1998 when he moved to the Upper East Side)
• There’s Dumbo which reminds me of a Brooklyn Tribeca
• Williamsburg, which first signaled a shift away from Manhattan to a younger, hipper Brooklyn.
• Red Hook which is uber-cool but so hard to get to unless you have a car (and all your friends do too).
• And dozens of other unique neighborhoods.

But what is specifically disappearing is the hipster Brooklyn of Roberta’s and the Wythe and Marlowe & Sons in Williamsburg, i.e., the bearded and tattooed butchers and picklers that put a particular style of Brooklyn on the map all over the world along with their reclaimed wood, taxidermy, mason jars, and Edison bulbs. That is all done. So what’s next?

If you want to see what’s replacing “that” Brooklyn, you’ve got head to Manhattan, specifically to the Bowery, to check out the newly opened Sister City Hotel brought to us by Atelier Ace.

I’m predicting that when we look back in five or ten years, the opening of Sister City will be seen as one of those seminal moments when the culture shifted back to Manhattan and away from Brooklyn.

Sister City’s impact on design will be major. It’s got that Scandinavian aesthetic, which I believe is the coolest, new direction. Reclaimed wood replaced by light-colored wood, an airiness and lots of plants.

In Brooklyn, meanwhile, the glass towers are taking over. They’re going up fast. Both for residential and for hotels.

This switcheroo to big glassy hotels like the William Vale (pic above right) explains why people are less likely to head to Brooklyn. Additionally, I have not heard of any new breakout restaurants or hot new retailers that are absolute must-sees. Smorgasburg has been a huge draw since it started in 2011, but nowadays people are more likely to want to check out Hudson Yards or Essex Market or the South Street Seaport.

 

Read on below for examples of changes I’ve observed. It will be interesting to see how comparable Brooklyn-style neighborhoods in other cities are faring, e.g., what’s going on in LA’s Silver Lake or Miami’s Wynwood or East Nashville?

 

Here are some additional examples of how things are changing in Brooklyn:

Eats and Drinks:

The new Time Out Market in Dumbo is phenomenal. But as I noted, the vast majority of the restaurants are from Manhattan. This would not have been the case a few years ago.

What I’ve observed is that the best Brooklyn chefs have moved out of the borough – some to the Berkshires, others to Manhattan and California. In the meanwhile, the closures in Brooklyn are mindboggling.

During the last 12 months, here are a few notable ones that really bummed me out:

• Norman, the Scandinavian restaurant in the A/D/O creative space in Greenpoint. I LOVED that place, but for me, it was too much of a hassle to get out there.
• Dale Talde’s restaurants and his Three King’s Restaurant Group all fizzled out.
• Andy Ricker’s Pok Pok in Red Hook closed.
• Battersby in Cobble Hill closed (and the chef is now operating Floret at Sister City – based on my lunch, however, he needs to dial up his game).
• Izakaya restaurant Teo closed after just five months. Operated by the Momofuku alum Joaquin Baca, the restaurant was popular with critics, but couldn’t get enough business in Bushwick.

Retail:

Brooklyn is filled with the same stores you find in Manhattan, e.g., Apple, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, H&M, Uniqlo.

• A few interesting new brands are popping up, e.g., A Land which is the Korean Zara is on N. 6^th Street in Williamsburg, but I haven’t been inspired to make the trek
• In writing this, I realized I had not done a major Brooklyn retail patterning trip since 2017. It was two years ago that the new Supreme with its skate bowl, opened but you needed a reservation to even stand in line which ticked me off.
• I did get out to Industry City to check out Japan Village late last year when it opened. That was worth reviewing, but no need to revisit. I have many similar stores in Manhattan.
• The only reason I’ll get out to Brooklyn now is to check out a major launch. Otherwise, it’s the same stores as well as the same problem of empty storefronts. Making the whole thing even worse is how impossible it is to get from one end of Brooklyn to another on public transportation.

Brooklyn Art Galleries/ Museums:

My favorite is Pioneer Works in Red Hook, but it is a massive schlepp to get there.

The Brooklyn Museum rarely delivers. The last show I saw there was Frida Kahlo, and it was okay but not worth the $50 we spent on an Uber to get us there and back.

Independent galleries are often only open on weekends and have short hours. And again, getting from one to the next is a hassle.

 

Bottom Line.

Is Brooklyn becoming more like Manhattan? Yes! But with the added challenge of needing a car to navigate around the borough. In other words, Brooklyn is looking more and more like a mini-Manhattan – but one that happens to be highly inconvenient if you rely on public transportation.

Is it still cool? Yes, but it’s a shadow of its former self, in my opinion.

Over the last two years, I’ve noticed a difference in people’s attitudes about the borough. It may be due to the then-impending L Train shutdown, which didn’t happen but made people feel unsettled and look for new places to live, change jobs, or relocate their businesses.

The most significant change I’ve noticed is that when people come to NYC now, I no longer get requests for visits to Brooklyn.  People seem to be much more focused on checking out the new neighborhoods and scenes that have emerged in Manhattan.