Surprised nobody had posted this yet. Curious to hear your opinions.
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I spent two weeks there last winter and only place on the list I got to was the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. No opinion on the rest, but I loved the garden even in the dead of winter.
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Malai, the ice cream shop, is the BOMB.
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Maybe Ziggy will weigh in on this, him having done Brooklyn food tours for years. I wonder if there’s an overlap. As for me, well I live there, I’ve almost always lived there & I’m guessing that, when not traveling, I’ll continue there. And yet, very little overlap.
I really like the start of the article, focusing on Red Hook. Although the omission of Red Hook Winery as a stop confuses me, the inclusion of Sonny’s & Steve’s Key Lime Pie in a major tour article is nice. Other than that, and the major parks/garden, its like we live in a different borough. But, that’s okay. Its a very, very large borough and I dont think that I’m exactly the target age for the article either. In my opinion, they did a good job making sure that folks didnt just go to Williamsburg but, did I mentioned its a very large borough? A great example of how you can spend a month here without going to just about any of the places mentioned can be found in several tourists’ accounts on HO. Like FlemSnopes’ (Doug) accounting of his stays. Just my off the cuff reaction. I’m sure I could expound at length if desired 
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I know very few places in Brooklyn (friends of ours live there, but… well, life gets in the way), so I found this interesting, but I am especially enjoying the Brooklynites’ input 
Its an ok itinerary. I’m guessing the author hasnt lived in Brooklyn long and very young. I dont know how you can mention Sunset Park and not mention Green-wood Cemetery. Or mention Coney Island and the Boardwalk without mentioning Brighton Beach.
Food looks good, but only one proper meal in 36 hours. A lot of tacos, dumplings, and one average pizza (L&B). Red Hook and the Key lime pie is a good mention (my food overlap). The dumplings in Sunset Park are good and very cheap but there are so many great options there, including right next door to the Dumplings (Hainan Chicken House). Yemen Cafe is meh.
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Same reaction. A few good choices (I agree with Hainan), but I wouldn’t really know where to begin. There was a lot of coffee stops (how much time wasted standing in lines?) travelling between areas and nibbling proposed but too little amounting to a meal. I was just in Redhook in late morning hours, and it felt pretty dead commercially (not really recovered from flooding and pandemic) altho always scenic; biking around it probably makes sense.
I would say author was overall more interested in checking off boxes (needed some social media faves less covered areas), need at least one snack in each neighborhood than finding good characteristic food and the best activites and putting together a solid visit to any. Its hard with covering so much geographic ground. Commenting at a superficial level and not relating to food (because we ate at somebody’s place) I was just in Bushwick for a Saturday garden tour, and the street art of all kinds on Starr Street, just north of and adjacent to very lively Maria Hernandez Park, was great - I dont think an evening or night visit as proposed to this area would show off street art or the park very well. For that matter, only visiting Prospect Park at night, for a concert, is a bit of a waste! Finally a series of drop-bys or dip-ins to rapidly and recently gentrifying neighborhoods may not be the best way to see the whole of New York. but maybe these neighborhoods are the ones that the target audience best relates to.
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Well to start, my non-local local paper is now garbage when it comes to reporting things about NYC. After killing the Metro section, they have to treat the city as though they are visitors which frankly it feels like most of the reporters are. Used to be all sorts of stories about happenings in the city and “tri-state” area. I doubt the NYT reporters even use that phrase anymore. Any who.
So after saying the story is going to skip “the most touristy and overdeveloped areas, including Williamsburg and Dumbo” where does the tour start? Dumbo. Though she doesn’t say it by calling it Brooklyn Bridge Park. Do Sunny’s and Steve’s really need more billing? I think they’re already on the list of everyone who ventures into Red Hook. No mention of Hometown or DeFonte’s. No planning needed for them either if you’re going to put UnTable as a option. No planning needed, if you don’t mind a long wait for a table on a Friday night. Reminds me how much I miss Hope & Anchor.
I agree the story veers young and impecunious. An entire weekend and food is mostly consumed standing up and dripping down your shirt. There’s a whole big world of reasonably priced food from ambitious young chefs that you can eat sitting down off of china.
I mostly stick to Manhattan when I visit, so I likely won’t make it to any of those places.
Talking about Red Hook and Thai, something I noticed the other day… Somtum Der is now Goog Thai Cook Shop!
My reaction was the same as yours – big place, lots of options, so hard to be critical of a short article. That said, I do think it was unfortunate that the author went to Red Hook (a great neighborhood) and did not stop in at Hometown Barbecue, one of the very best barbecue places in the whole country.
It was nice to see the praise for Elsewhere, a vibrant music club.
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ya know, I thought that about Hometown too, but because it was the first stop for the day on a bike I figured it was still closed. But no it was for Friday afternoon. but it just shows how the article is just a random collection of data points, not a real attempt to give a visitor information about great stops in the featured nabes
Something else that really bothered me about that column was the assumption that the reader is able-bodied (able to hop on a bike) and white (some non-white tourists may feel uncomfortable biking around an unknown neighborhood). But I don’t think that’s exclusive of the NYT (of which I am an avid reader).
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Seems like it’s the same group though.
" Starting from March 15, 2024, Somtum Der Redhook will undergo a transformation into a brand new restaurant. Please stay tuned for more information."
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One more annoying thing about these 36 hour stories, its not 36 hours.
If you start an itinerary at 4:00pm on Friday and have the last event recommended at 1:00pm on Sunday being something that will take a few hours, probably to 4:00, that’s 48 hours. Journalists at the NYT apparently struggle with math. Why not call it 48 hours or even a Weekend in ____?
Rant over.
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they are offering plans for hours of activity and not including sleeping hours, is my guess. tho where the people who are pingponging around the neighborhoods are laying there heads is puzzling. Williamsburgh perhaps?
