Crown Heights lies at the center of Brooklyn’s Caribbean community, home to one of the largest expatriate populations in the US with immigrants from Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Haiti, and elsewhere. Nostrand Avenue, running north-south through Crown Heights, is dotted with roti shops and groceries, making it an ideal place to shop for West Indian ingredients.
We’ve heard all the jokes before: The sidewalks are so clogged with strollers that they’ve become impassible. Bars are about as hip as a windbreaker, are perpetually overrun by the under-5 contingent, and you’ll be shushed if you curse in public. There are no restaurants other than high-chair strewn pizza parlors, making it ludicrous for North Brooklynites to bother leaving their adult environs and subject themselves to the mercurial whims of the F train. Wary travelers take note – there’s a lot more to Park Slope than Gerber Organic.
When Kensington was developed in the late 19th century, there surely was no concept of what the neighborhood would become—the crossroads of countries, a confluence of cultures, an ethnic food shopper’s paradise. See what I found, traipsing through ten countries in five blocks of Church Avenue.
Nowhere in Brooklyn is there a more foreign enclave than Brighton. Under the elevated tracks of the B and Q, caressed by sea breezes, the sidewalks of Brighton Beach Avenue vibrate with a cacophony of voices: the Russian of women hawking pastries, the English of sand-seeking day trippers, the hum of shoppers hailing from Omsk to Kiev.
In a city that has everything, it can be options overload when trying to decide what to do or where to eat. But if you choose the right neighborhood, like Kensington and Windsor Terrace, you’ll find a nice variety of eateries and entertainment that doesn’t overwhelm. Quiet, but far from sleepy, these diverse neighborhoods show that sometimes less really is more.
Greenpoint feels a bit like a small town trapped in a different era, but in that warm and welcoming everybody-knows-each-other, life-is-fine-and-dandy kind of way. Though the neighborhood has seen an influx of younger residents over the last decade bringing with them new restaurants and bars, at Brooklyn’s northern most point, the new and the old fit together, creating a friendly, vibrant community.
The best thing about hanging out in Bay Ridge is simple: water. With a winding harbor-front esplanade and a huge, uncrowded pier offering panoramic bay views, the neighborhood has some of the most peaceful waterfront property in the whole city. A diverse mix of blue-collar immigrants bring the perfect variety of eateries, bars, and old-school Brooklyn that make Bay Ridge totally worth a ride on your bike or even the R train.
