[ONE MORE DAY! WHERE YOU AT BK??] 209 Reasons Brooklyn is So Very Badass
Erica | Wednesday, December 31, 2008 at 12:00AM 
So, we were totally inspired by NY Mag's recent "Reasons to Love NY" piece here at FIPS HQ. We've also been jonesing to do a yearly wrap up type piece that gives mad props to our fave nyc borough, BK, and reflects all of the diff reasons its the bad-assest .
So, we came up with an idea and now we need your help (like REALLY need ur help b/c we only have one day left!!).
In honor of 2009, we're putting together a list of 209 reasons Brooklyn is totally and completely badass.
We're looking for specific reasons such as: "The volcano roll at JPan brings me more satisfaction than my vibrator," and also more general stuff like: "more hipsters per square foot than anywhere else on Earth" (ed note: except for Echo Park).
Why do you think Brooklyn is so badass? Pretty please, tell us?
We're gonna gather together everyone's entries and pub them all on January 1, 2009.
Email us at effedinparkslope at gmail dot com or leave a comment. If you have a blog/tumblr/et al and want a shoutout back, make sure to include your info (and feel free to reblog-n-spread the word!...we'd love to hear from as many BK peeple as we can).
Pslope Love, new years 
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Reader Comments (39)
Lucali's Pizza
The Brooklyn Flea
Coney Island
The above ground F Train
Prospect Park: the smaller/cooler Central Park
Cosctco
Bigger/badder/better/less crowded Trader Joes
The Q train (well, mostly)
Your neighbors actually give a shit/bother to say hello
Trees!
Only the occasional siren/shouting/party next door
Farmers market at Grand Army Plaza
Ikea and Fairway, happy neighbors!!
Saturday morning brunch in Park Slope at A.O.C. Bistro... Their French Toast is the most divine in the world... or at least Park Slope!
aliandsethinthecity.blogspot.com
I don't know about all of Brooklyn, but at least where I live, I don't feel like I'm going to get mugged and/or ass raped. This is important for a recent-to-New-York-southern boy.
because your local little old lady has likely manned the barricades in the sixties, smoked pot in the seventies, and has *definitely* told someone to go fuck themselves. Not your average granny!
Cafes that give you free wireless and don't mind if you sit around all day.
Whole neighborhoods without Starbucks,CVS and The Gap, where the biggest businesses are laundromats and Pentecostal churches.
Good Brunch spots without lines out the door.
spacious apts
community
Because the guy at the bagel store genuinely misses you when you don't come in for a few days.
NEIGHBORhoods
Prospect Park
The Bridge
Brooklynites - Native & Transplanted Ones
Locally Owned Businesses
Plus this year - my voting precinct in Park Slope voted:
989 Obama
11 McCain
http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/31/45/31_45_eg_obamaville.html
and there was a line outside the voting precinct half way around the block at 5:45am waiting to vote...
Because there's a cloud of benzene gas traveling UNDER GROUND from the Gowanus and into Park Slope.
Because we have the tallest memorial to the victims of a prison ship anywhere (and it's all lit up now).
Because when you hear someone got shot last night a few blocks away, you're not shocked.
Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Biggie Smalls, Jay-Z...
Because Brooklyn Academy of Music kicks Lincoln Center's ass.
Totonno's
Di Fara
The Cyclone
Re-sold cop cars
The dull roar that went on for two hours after Obama was declared president-elect.
The fact that a public that was shut out of Bruce Ratner's stupid development plan for the Atlantic Railyards has managed to stall the project until the economy tanked. Yay!
The Brooklyn Bridge
Crooklyn
Because within a one-block radius I have access to groceries, beer, dry cleaning, laundry, drugs, wine, liquor, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Russians, Arabs, black folks, white folks, Asian folks, rich people, poor people, teachers, clerics, hicks, lawyers, Republicans, Democrats, Ron Paul supporters, sushi, yoga, dogs, cats, rats, psychics, botanicas, underwear, outerwear, shoes, glass, hardware, drywall, lumber, car service, a community garden, bars, rocks, grass, video rentals.
I can't even imagine what more there is if I spread that radius another block.
I think the Brooklyn Flea is kind of lame. I can spend that kind of money in Manhattan. Just call it a hipster yuppie market--that's not a flea market.
I could do this all day.
1) Fistfights over who has the best pizza (seen it!)
2) Your Synagogue, Church, Mosque, etc. as opposed to that other Synagogue, Church, Mosque, etc. down the block that I wouldn't be caught DEAD in!
3) People who don't live there but still LOVE Park Slope.
4) People who actually live there and still HATE Park Slope.
5) Living next door to a known mob boss actually raises the value of your home.
* Crispy Shrimp at Hunan Delight
* Sauteed Green Peas and Cashew Nuts at Red Hot
* Volcano Roll at Jpan
* Celebrate Brooklyn concerts in Prospect Park
* PS107
* Studio Creative Play
* Music for Aardvarks
* Brooklyn Children's Museum
* A kid-friendly place to raise my kids
* REAL DIVERSITY no matter what the haters say
* Union Market
* Pizza Plus and Pizza Plus Lady!
* FIPS!!
Whistles on New Year's Eve at Pratt (and sometimes burn the xmas tree)
You can move here from Detroit and retain street cred.
*White Castle Drive-Thru
*Chassids parking Chanuka-Enforcement vans on 7th ave to run Menorah Missions on the last night of Chanuka
Having been born in Brownsville when Truman was president and Impellittiri was mayor; having grown up in Brooklyn in the 1950s and 1960s, the son of two Brooklyn natives, the grandson of four people and the great-grandson of eight people who made the borough their home; having great-great-grandparents who owned a candy store on Stone Avenue (now Mother Gaston Boulevard) when horses routinely shit in the streets; as a graduate of P.S. 203, J.H.S. 285, Midwood High School, Brooklyn College and the Hebrew school of Flatbush Park Jewish Center; as someone who’s taught at BC, at LIU downtown and at Kingsborough CC in Manhattan Beach, and who’s worked at stores on Fulton Street, 86th Street and Bay Parkway, and in Kings Plaza and who was a delivery boy for Canarsie Laundry and Midtown Florist in Fort Greene; as someone who’s seen Brooklynites from Gil Hodges at Ebbets Field to TV on the Radio at the McCarren pool; who’s been mugged in Flatbush, Coney Island, and on the D train going over the Manhattan Bridge; who ate at Garfield and Dubrow cafeterias, Jahn’s Ice Cream Parlor, Famous Dairy Restaurant, Cooky’s, and went to movies at the Loew’s Kings, the Brook, the Marine, the Albee and the Elm; who saw Rhody McCoy and Howie Golden and Carlo Gambino (a neighbor) and Hilda and her cowbells; who witnessed race riots, the burning and looting of a neighborhood during the Summer of Sam, the fireworks for the Bicentennial from the top of my car on the Gowanus Expressway and for the Brooklyn Bridge centennial from the 86th floor of the World Trade Center; who was in Park Slope the day the plane crashed and at Prospect Park listening to Gov. Rockefeller on the first Earth Day; who saw campaign posters for a candidate for borough president that read, “Abe Stark we love you, but Brooklyn is dying!”; who today has college students whose main desire is to get out of the dangerous Brooklyn neighborhoods where violence is common and which they call a jungle – I think Brooklyn is so badass because I know it will survive and can endure everything, even well-meaning, self-congratulatory fucked newbies who think the borough is “so badass.”
Yeah, but can it survive self-congratulatory, seen-it-all, full-of themselves full-of-shit alter kocker assholes?
Okay, Richard, if you're so smart, what was the name of the computer / kung-fu expert on the original UK version of The Office?
Richard,
Best. Comment. Ever.
Thank you.
-a fellow native.
because i live in a refurbished building that was formerly the hospital where barbra streisand was born, but now the hallways smell like weed because it has become a waystation for college grads between school and a real job
The Old Fashioned at Weather Up!
The braised spare ribs at Buttermilk Channel! ZOMG! I DIE!
creepy/ crazy bowling at melody lanes means bowlmor can eat a dick!
Sam's pizza and chops: Go for the thin-crust pizza, stay to watch Louie down Merlot and Coke!
Tug boat horns
Brooklyn Social
Prospect Park barbecue Sundays
McCarren Park Pool concerts (RIP…for now!)
Improving G train
TVOTR formed there…and Les Savy Fav
Fette Sau
People come from Manhattan for overrated street cart food because Brooklyn is cool
Hot dads
Really hot moms