2007 I come from Brooklyn. You wanna make something of it?

I come from Brooklyn. You wanna make something of it?

I grew up in the borough of Brooklyn and lived there up until I was 26.

Before they built the bridge, Brooklyn was a separate city. (You know the bridge I mean.) After the bridge came in, people from Manhattan moved out to the Brooklyn “suburbs” and commented into “the city” for work. In 1898, the politicians lumped together several cities to create New York City, including Brooklyn, now called Kings County.

Brooklyn became a haven for anyone who could afford to escape the filth, crime, and poverty of places like the Lower East Side. By the beginning of the 20th Century, Brooklyn was a city of immigrants—ethnic and religious groups that lived in close proximity and were just about able to get along with each other to avoid, usually, open warfare. It was a place for ambitious people; people who had dreams of making a better life for themselves and their families.

Brooklyn people got a reputation for being tough, self-assured, and self-sufficient. They were sometimes rude, often pushy, frequently demanding, and famous for having a low tolerance for baloney. They admired people who were smart, quick to make a joke, and willing to try new things.

We had our own major league baseball team in Brooklyn and they played in the World Series nine times. (I was actually on "Happy Felton's Knothole Gang" on TV. How lucky is that???) They left Brooklyn in 1957 and were never heard from again.

Brooklyn used to be a sure-fire laugh getter. Stand-up comedians would ask the crowd, “Hey, is anyone here tonight from Brooklyn?” Someone was sure to shout back yes, which set up the punchline. “Then, I’ll try not to use a lot of big words for ‘yiz’” or some other wisecrack to make fun of Brooklynites.

After I left Brooklyn, the city and the borough changed. A long era of drugs, gangs, guns, and street crime along with an economic decline drove many long-time Brooklynites to flee to the suburbs. Things got so bad that the City closed my high school, can you imagine how bad that must have been? 

It took many years for the situation to change. The crime rate declined. The economy picked up again. New people—young people—artists, students, alternative lifestyle people, new immigrants—moved to Brooklyn and it took on a whole new character (or characters).

When I tell people today I come from Brooklyn, they think of an East Coast artists’ colony, a happening place full of trendy restaurants and boutiques. Dat ain’t my Brooklyn.

Brooklyn is still part of me. Forty years of living in the oh-so-polite midwest have taken some of the edge off, I think. I don’t interrupt people (“interject” as Brooklynite Woody Allen likes to put it) as much. I am more tolerant of people who aren’t as quick or as smart as I am, because I know not everyone out here on the prairie comes from Brooklyn (and there seem to be a lot more of them as I get older). But, I can still hold my own and I still don’t take a lot of BS from people. And I am willing to try just about anything (“Gesta facere conantur difficile” is my motto).