Do not tell the Germans Red Hook isn't cool anymore. The Brooklyn Paper reports that some of German architects and planners checked out the Hook and found it gave them a warm and fuzzy feeling like Kreuzberg, the West Berlin neighborhood that used to be hard against the Berlin Wall. One of them said: "This is a city as I like it...Rundown can also be read as rich texture.” Here is some of the Kreuzberg-Red Hook comparison:
A period of neglect hit both neighborhoods after their peaks. In their heydays, circa World War II, they were blue-collar settlements, but that gave way to long periods of urban decay....Kreuzberg suffered by being on the frontlines in 20th-century Europe...It was in West Berlin, but the area near the Berlin Wall was an economic dead zone.Other (tenuous) similarities: Turkish immigrants in Kreuzberg and Latino vendors at the Red Hook ballfields. A lost battle to stop the big Ikea in Red Hook and a lost battle to stop McDonald's in Kreuzberg. Also, we would point out that Kreuzberg has the U1 U-Bahn subway line, where as Red Hook has, well, the B61.
· Germans: Ich bin ein Red Hooker [Brooklyn Paper]
· Live from Red Hook: A Short History of Degentrification [Curbed]
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