Is there anything more to say about Brooklyn cool? We thought the topic was exhausted, but over the weekend The New York Times’ T Magazine examined the meaning of Brooklyn as a brand in a brief essay. “To the extent ‘Brooklyn’ now designates more than a mere landmass, it means: small-batch production, urban husbandry, period facial hair, a fixed-gear bicycle, ‘Girls,’ ” the author found. Confusingly, however, areas as diverse and long-standing in their own culture as parts of Paris, Berlin and Stockholm are now said to be undergoing “Brooklynization.” This only starts to make sense once you consider that “everything we now associate with the word ‘Brooklyn’ actually originated 10 years earlier, in Portland, Ore.” It’s a strange case of the idea of local going global. “We reach out for reality, and no sooner do we brush it with our fingers than it turns into a brand,” said the Times.
Brooklyn: The Brand [T Magazine]


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