My kinda town, New York City is - and unlike many other Manhattanites (ashemedly including myself, back in the day), I do not fetishize my home borough these days. Yet when it comes to the tourism and much else in the Big Apple, fuhgeddaboutit – Manhattan remains the proverbial “800-pound gorilla”, an attention hog with all the flashiest sights, dining, shows, and yadda yadda yadda. But the so-called “outer boroughs” (besides Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island) have really been coming increasingly into their own of late, thanks in part to the influx of many creative but non-affluent New Yorkers forced out of our fair isle by high rents. The nearly equally historic borough of Brooklyn (founded by NYC’s first settlers, the Dutch, in 1634 as Breukelen, and now NYC’s most populous borough) in particular has become an oasis of cool, and its... keep reading