Every city with hipsters wants to be a Brooklyn
For more than a century, cities around the world have compared themselves to Paris. Many claim to be the Paris of the East: Bucharest, Prague, Istanbul, Beirut and Shanghai to name a few. There’s also the Paris of North America (Montreal), the Paris of South America (Buenos Aires) and the Paris of the Plains — Kansas City in the Jazz Age.
But now the wannabe city is Brooklyn. Every neighborhood with a critical mass of bearded hipsters, bike shops and vegan cafes calls itself “the new Brooklyn.” Ballard is the Brooklyn of Seattle. Glasgow and Melbourne both claim Brooklyn cool. And Oakland, California, has been called the Brooklyn of San Francisco so many times that Julia Cosgrove, editor of AFAR travel magazine, says she “can’t bear to read another story about it.”
There’s even a Brooklyn of Paris: the once-gritty suburb of Pantin. Its derelict, graffiti-covered warehouses have been taken over by galleries and artists, turning it into the hippest place in the City of Light. Just like in Brooklyn, real estate prices have shot up, and old industrial buildings now house luxury lofts.