The Brooklynite: Flappers Were the Original Hipsters
So, what did I find in these issues? Basically, I found treasure. Absolute treasure. It turns out—not that this is any huge surprise—that Brooklyn has always attracted smart, funny, literate people who don’t take themselves too seriously and enjoy taking the piss out of Manhattan. And while The Brooklynite certainly borrowed heavily from the editorial rubric established by The New Yorker—mixing irreverent pieces with more serious journalism—it put its own distinctive spin on it, rendering The Brooklynite a literary time capsule of Brooklyn in the Roaring 20s.
In one of my favorite pieces in The Brooklynite, “Petting for Beginners”, the magazine offers up several suggestions as to where “the light recreation and fine art” of petting can take place. Included among these are the Botanic Gardens, (“Any dub can find shady nooks. Work fast; the garden closes at sundown.”) Shore Drive, (“Excellent romping ground for Bay Ridge students.”) and the Brooklyn Bridge (“Advantages—no car required. Disadvantages—awful on rainy nights. Frequented by sailors.”) Another article asks “Are Taxicabs a Menace?” (Spoiler: yes!) And yet another recounts the existential crisis that one writer endured while he was waiting to have a phone placed in his apartment. Titled “Number Please,” the author writes, “To pass through the seemingly simple procedure of having a telephone installed is usually enough to hurry a normal person through the throes of dementia.” We think Park Slope resident Sir Patrick Stewart would really relate to this following his own troubles with Time Warner Cable last fall.
Perhaps the most eerily similar article, both in content and in tone, is titled “Bringing Up Children,” which starts off with an opening paragraph that could be written, basically verbatim, today:
“It is high time that I let my readers in on my secret of how to best raise children.
You will agree, of course, that this is the most vital topic of the day. You take any of the problems, such as the European debts (as a matter of fact, these are mere pin money compared to my own personal obligations), the fall elections, prohibition, static, traffic control, increasing frankness in the drama and allied arts, the higher costs of shaves and haircuts, amateur theatricals—take any one of these problems, national or local, and it pales into oblivion behind the problem of child-rearing.”
Seriously, if I didn’t know from holding these magazines in my own hands that they were actually 85 years old and from smelling that old papery smell that’s kind of like what dry, uncooked spaghetti smells like when it first hits boiling water, I wouldn’t believe that they weren’t written today. And, also, great shout-out to the “European debts” which would eventually lead to the rise of National Socialism in Germany and we all know what happened next. Oh, hindsight, you wily bitch. You’re such a tease.