We started our countdown last week, and we've already nearly come to blows in the office trying sort through all the great Brooklynites (some of us really wanted Pat Benatar higher on the list, ahem). Anyway, in today's edition, which great storyteller of life in Brooklyn was actually born in the Bronx? (For 100 through 91, head over here.)

90. Larry King
Born Lawrence Zeiger, King became a king of Miami radio in the late 1950s; almost 30 years later, he would land the CNN show that would make him a king of national broadcast journalism, known for his tame (by today's cable-news standards) interviewing style. He would keep it for 25 years, before retiring amid declining ratings. But King is almost as famous for his Brooklyn-ness as he is his TV show: for his honorary degree from Brooklyn College, and his stake in the Original Brooklyn Water Bagel Co., a Florida-based company that makes Brooklyn bagels from "Brooklynized™ Water," which will soon be sold in bottles at the Barclay's Center. Fuhgeddaboutit! Does it get any more authentic?


89. Beverly Sills
Born in Brooklyn and a graduate of Erasmus, Sills would go on to become one of the greatest sopranos of her generation and its leading interpreter of Donizetti heroines. Not content merely to retire as a star, she reinvented herself as a civic-minded philanthropist, serving on the boards of New York City Opera, the Metropolitan Opera and Lincoln Center, helping guide all those institutions from the 80s well into the aughts; one of her final acts before dying of lung cancer in 2007 was to help appoint the increasingly controversial Peter Gelb as the head of the Met; thus does her administrative legacy endure like her musical one.


88. Ben Shahn
Is Ben Shahn the original Williamsburg artist, working a day job to support his art habit? Well, kind of. Born in Lithuania to “politically active” parents (not a good thing to be in Czarist Russia) little seven-year-old Ben and the whole family got the hell of the Baltics in 1908 and—eye roll—moved to Williamsburg, a solid 90 years before it was cool. Shahn went on to become one of the best crossover artists of the 20th century, moving effortless between fine art and editorial work, just like the thousands of graphic designers currently wandering around Williamsburg. Though renowned as one of America’s great social-realists (his series on Sacco and Vanzetti is wonderful), Shahn’s most viewed work was probably his Martin Luther King Jr. portrait on the cover of Time.


87. Martin Amis
“Martin Amis” and “Brooklynite” don’t really seem to go together, but c’mon, the grouchy young lion middle-aged master eminence grise of English letters is gruff, outspoken, just a little bit pugilistic, and has a house in Cobble Hill—what’s more Brooklyn than that? His Money is a sleeper pick for all-time great Manhattan novels… Here’s hoping he applies his mean, muscular, hilarious prose to life in Brooklyn.


86. Charles Lockwood
The Father of the Brownstone Revival died in April, 40 years after the publication of his Bricks and Brownstones, the essential guide for those who'd bought a rundown row house and was trying to restore it to its former glory from the boarding-house disrepair into which it'd slid. Not only that, he made the brownstone revival seem like a way to reclaim our city's lost history, like a moral imperative, illustrating how a home's details could reveal the secrets of its past, inspiring many urban idealists to adopt those hoary signifiers of middle class affluence as their own.


85. Angelo Badalamenti
This film and television composer, known for his haunting melodies and dreamy orchestrations, wasn't just born in Brooklyn—he also taught music in Dyker Heights for five years while writing songs, orchestrating, and playing piano on the side, prior to his big break in 1986. That's when David Lynch hired him to be Isabella Rossellini's vocal coach for Blue Velvet. He ended up writing the music for the movie, too—around the time he also scored the best Nightmare on Elm Street sequel, part three—beginning a long and fruitful working relationship with Lynch that would include Twin Peaks and bring Badalamenti (currently with 77 IMDb credits plus two awesome Julee Cruise albums and more on his resume) much of his renown.


84. Martin Landau
Though he's settled now out in West Hollywood, where he runs the local branch of the Actors Studio, Landau was born right here in Brooklyn in 1928; he went to Madison for high school (which has turned out several Nobel prize winners, U.S. senators and a Supreme Court justice) and then enrolled in Pratt, where he studied while working as a cartoonist for the Daily News. But by 22 he quit the doodling business and began an acting career; early parts include a supporting appearance in North by Northwest and the master of disguise on the TV series Mission: Impossible. But of course you know him for his two greatest roles, later in his career: the philandering, uxoricidal ophthalmologist in Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors, for which he was nominated for an Oscar; and the morphine-addicted Bela Lugosi in Tim Burton's Ed Wood, for which he won.


83. Steve Hindy
The former Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press befriended his downstairs neighbor in Park Slope, banker Tom Potter, over their shared hobby—homebrewing beer. Soon it became more than a hobby, and bigger than their homes: the two quit their jobs and started the Brooklyn Brewery, which opened for business in 1987, long before Brooklyn had become the epicenter of all things hip (especially small breweries). In 1994, the company picked up their current brewmaster Garrett Oliver, and three years later moved into the former factory in Williamsburg that's still the center of its since-expanded operations. (And Hindy's still the company's president.) At most, Hindy helped shape the borough's recent transformation; at least, he gave us something delicious to drink—something to make us think of home and feel a tinge of hometown pride, no matter what borough or part of the world in which we might find ourselves.


82. Joe Torre
When the Yankees's arch rivals, the Dodgers, left Brooklyn in 1957, locals didn't shrug their shoulders and switch allegiances—they maintained a distaste for the Bombers for generations, rooting for a Los Angeles team before they'd cheer a Bronx team with anything but a Bronx cheer. When the Mets came along five years later, erstwhile Dodgers fans embraced the team as their own. Brooklyn's own Joe Torre played for the Mets at the end of his big-league career, then took his first management job with them, like a good Brooklyn boy would. But he failed to turn the team around, was fired, and kicked around the majors another 15 years before landing at the Yankees. Torre of course then led that team for 12 seasons, winning four World Series, as well as more pennants and division titles. But what true Brooklynite would have coached the hated New York Yankees? Yet alone have won them so many series? (This one was tough for us.)


81. Neil Simon
(More than half) of one of the greatest folk-pop duos of all time, Simon is among this country’s great songwriters, adding to New York lore with songs like “The Only Living Boy in New York” and “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard.” Oh. Wait. Neil Simon. Ok, Barefoot in the Park and The Odd Couple are still pretty great, and though he was born in the Bronx, his Brighton Beach Memoirs is a marvelous (and important) portrait of life in Brooklyn between the wars. (Paul Simon was born in Newark, by the way.)