#15 Sodom by the Sea.

Here's a fact for you: Blackpool has more visitors every year than Greece. Our rapacity for relentless cheesy awful is astounding. Coney Island, at the far frontier of Brooklyn, is New York's attempt to fill this need. You can entertain yourself on the Coney Island Cyclone - one of the few historic wooden rollercoasters still in existence (it was built in 1927) - play slots, dodgems and arcade games, eat fried chicken and ice cream, and lark around on the beach.


The boardwalk at Coney Island.

Recently, like everywhere in Brooklyn, Coney Island has become something of a gentrified shadow of it's former gritty glory; in 1893, the New York times dubbed Coney Island 'Sodom by the Sea', and matters didn't improve for another century. The Island's present-day claims to fame include its Mardi Gras Mermaid Parade, and the World Hot Dog Eating Championships, which Nathan's Famous hosts every Independence Day, drawing some 30,000 live spectators and several million ESPN TV viewers. (I will of course be in attendance avec camera this year, so watch this space to see if last year's record of 68 dogs in 10 minutes tumbles.)

And that's all, really. I can confirm it is a grand day out.

#13 I live in Brooklyn. By choice.

The Williamsburg Bridge and Lower Manhattan from DUMBO

The title - a Truman Capote quote - alludes to Brooklyn's hard-edged past. Recent past, really. Even in the early 90s, the old Dutch township of Breukelen was mostly a no-go area for Manhattanites. Times have changed. The relentless gentrification of even the grittiest corners of Manhattan (the Meatpacking district, the Bowery, Alphabet City, Harlem) has forced many modestly wealthy city folks across the East River.

They weren't all pushed, mind; many jumped. Brooklyn is attractive for all kinds of reasons - big living spaces (relative to Manhattan), a rich cultural heritage (the aforementioned Truman Capote, Woody Allen, Benjamin Britten, Aaron Copland, Jay-Z and Notorious B.I.G. have all called these hallowed streets home), some stunning museums and parks, breathtaking views of Manhattan, and top notch transport links. Oh, and no tourists.

The clincher, though, is Brooklyn's delivery on the melting pot dream - Hassidic Jews, Muslim and Christian African-Americans, Eastern European emigrants and Hispanics from all over South America live cheek by jowl. It feels how you imagine New York should feel.

Anyway, I too have now joined this...well, let's surrender to literary cliché and call it a 'tapestry'; it is more pertinent here than generally. For the next couple of months I'm living in a hostel in Bedford-Stuyvesant, about five minutes walk from where Jay-Z was born. (Did I mention I fucking love Jay-Z?) 'Bed-Stuy' suffers something of a hangover from its very bloody gangland past ('Bed-Stuy: Do or Die', as the saying goes), but is actually a beautiful place to live, with airy parks and wide, sleepy streets. I'm sharing a room with many sweaty traveler sorts in a feast of Bohemina bonhomie, drinking copiously, eating poorly, and washing rarely.


Mural in Bedford-Stuyvesant

#6 Culture vulture.

If the Brooklyn Museum were a woman, I would marry her in a heartbeat.

Now, New York is not short of high-minded attractions. The casual visitor is somewhat spoilt for choice. There is Broadway. There is the city ballet and opera. The Met. The MoMA. The Cloisters. The Guggenheim. The aforementioned visitor would be forgiven for not rushing off to Brooklyn to go to another beaux arts museum.

Do.

Really, do.

It's wonderful. The collections, of course, cannot match the Met in importance or range (though within the realms of African and Asian artifacts, the Brooklyn Museum is world class). That's not the point. The exhibitions are beautifully curated. The exhibits are well-lit, the signs printed in readable, serifed fonts. They are arranged so that the cloud-pleasing stuff that everyone visits (the special exhibitions - currently on Egyptian mummification - and the African anthropological collections, since this is Brooklyn) are close to the doors. The quirkier stuff - fabulous collections of Islamic and Buddhist art, for example - are squirreled away, and quiet.

I could go on, so I will. There are activity books and pencils for kids to do with their parents (my favourite: choosing your Egyptian burial artifacts on a budget). There are desks with copies of all the exhibition books to read, so you could learn more about any exhibits you were particularly interested in. Can you imagine the Tate letting you read the books it wants you to spend 40 pounds on? The shop actually had nice stuff in it. Oh, and the whole museum is set in the most beautiful cherry garden, so you can head outside and indulge in some hanami if you get bored.

Best of all, however, is the Target First Saturdays programme. After 5pm on the first Saturday of each month, museum admission is free, and a range of cultural events are put on. These events are themed around the special exhibitions, so this month it was Egyptian burial.

It wasn't quite as macabre as it sounds, since it was interpreted fairly loosely. In the foyer was traditional Egyptian music, along with a cheap bar. There were ticketed 'Meet the Curators' talks, and round tables held by students from local universities. I personally plumbed for a free screening of an arthouse film about burial rituals in Japan (again, less macabre than it sounds; Departures, if you're interested). Afterwards, I could have gone to a dance party in the center of the European beaux arts hall hosted by some specially-flown-in Egyptian DJs, and got my groove on about 10 yards away from some original Monet, Matisse and Cezanne paintings, if I'd fancied it.

The museum was brimming with a range of very un-museum-ish people, and I feel as though the Brooklyn Museum is more serious about its public service remit than any museum I've ever been to.

Please go.