If you want a different answer, ask a different girl

Although we don't travel in the same circles, Jonathan Van Meter and I have some things in common: we're both forty-something, gay, Irish-Catholic working-class progenies, successful, class-busting, and starry-eyed about Manhattan. But that's where we part ways, because Jonathan Van Meter hates Brooklyn and I don't.

In a gratuitous piece for New York magazine, which has become a highbrow version of The New York Post, Van Meter talks about pulling himself out of the dreck of south Jersey and landing with both light feet in the middle of the biggest party on earth, Manhattan. For him, Manhattan is the center of the universe, and he's afraid of leaving it. "...[I]t's so difficult to get here--to get in--in the first place, it feels like you might lose your spot should you leave it unattended, even for a day."

He's angry because all of his fabulous friends have left Manhattan for Brooklyn and now treat him like a moron for not doing the same. He's a "Manhattanite to the core." I don't know who his friends are, but maybe he should rethink his relationships. Maybe it's not Brooklyn; maybe it's them. For one thing, those who berate him for not leaving Manhattan are the same ones who turned up their noses at Brooklyn a decade ago. They're making even me hate the new Brooklyn. They certainly don't live here because they fell in love with the ethnic character that made Brooklyn an interesting melting pot of ideas. They don't have a history here. Do they even know where Bay Ridge or Sheepshead Bay is? They've made Brooklyn, or part of it, an annex of Manhattan. They live here because it's the economical thing to do, and they no longer fit in with the new, ultrarich Manhattan. If times get bad again and the stars leave their eyes, no doubt they'll fold up their billfolds and head there.

I left Brooklyn for DC about the same time Van Meter "arrived" in The Big Apple. At the time, Brooklyn was a crappy place to live. Crack vials lined Park Slope, buildings crumbled, and the stretch of Atlantic Avemue where Van Meter spotted Al Sharpton in his robe was lined with welfare motels and bail bondsmen. Today, luxury condos there start at three-quarters of a million dollars.

There were many good reasons for Brooklyn's demise: postwar industry dried up, suburbia seduced, and New York City was in financial ruin. That left plenty of opportunity for gold diggers. Those who remained truly were the survivors and were usually too poor to go elsewhere. Van Meter didn't experience the city's worst decay and crime in the 1970s and 1980s. By the time he came here, things were at rock bottom and just starting to turn around.

According to Van Meter, he's been to Brooklyn, on average, once every year since he moved here 17 years ago. His notions about it are outdated and skewed. He knew about Two Boots on 7th Avenue but said it was too far. It takes me only 20 minutes to get from Park Slope to midtown, so he must have quite a low tolerance for distance.

Oh, yes, and those "surprisingly good" restaurants your friends mention--they really are good, and not surprisingly either.

Van Meter didn't mention Prospect Park or the Brooklyn Botanic Garden or Fulton Ferry Landing, which to me are as equally wonderful as their Manhattan counterparts. He summarily paints the natives who've lived here for decades as wretched, manacled denizens who would get out if they could. I'm a third-generation Brooklynite, and I had a wonderful upbringing in Flatbush. I wouldn't have traded it for another. I grew up in a multicultural neighborhood where everyone played together. I live two miles from where I grew up, and the Brooklyn I know now is worlds apart from the Brooklyn I knew then. I live within two miles from my family, and that's both close enough and far away enough.

I dreamed of Manhattan, too, and I love it, but I like having it there, not here. Like Van Meter, I relate to Tess McGill in Working Girl, who used her Staten Island head for business and bod for sin to land her own Manhattan office and the affections of Harrison Ford. But Van Meter got the Welcome Back, Kotter reference all wrong. Maybe Kotter's dreams were his ticket out of Brooklyn, "but those dreams have remained and they've turned around." He's back in Brooklyn...and happy. Get it?

I'm glad Jonathan Van Meter hates Brooklyn. There's no sense in being someplace that makes you miserable. His specious arguments appear to be based on poor research. Besides, he has his sights set on Queens. Wait until he finds out Brooklyn and Queens are on the same island.