The Borough’s Best: 20 Brooklyn Neighborhood Superlatives
Gowanus
All logic suggests that if Brooklyn were a country, Gowanus would be its flyover state. Long home to coal manufacturing and oil refineries, the environmental hazard it’s currently best known for is the infested waterway running through it. (The phosphorescent green Gowanus Canal isn’t the best known landmark of the neighborhood, though. That honor goes to the Kentile Floors sign which we’re worried might fall over if isn’t constantly being Instagrammed.) However, despite its, um, aromatic past (and present!), Gowanus is a bonafide, Whole Foods–approved destination in its own right, featuring some of the borough’s best new restaurants and bars (Runner & Stone, Royal Palms Shuffleboard Club, The Pines, et al.), making Gowanus a pretty awesome place to be. Unless, that is, you’re a dolphin who took a wrong turn and wound up in the canal. In that case, you’re fucked.