Brooklyn in the late 1800s

So yeah, you’ve been to Brooklyn. Good for you. You got hyped up the first time you could tell your hip hop friends you saw where Jay-Z grew up. Or the first time you told your hipster friends you found your apartment in “East Williamsburg”…a.k.a. Bushwick. And the first time you told your baller friends that you shot hoops on Coney Island. But how many of you know anything of the origins of the place that’s pretty much synonymous with “cool” in popular culture today?

Welcome to Brookly—err—I mean, Breuckelen!

Yes, that’s right. The original Brooklyn was called exactly that, named after a small town in the Netherlands called Breukelen. Of course as with all of America, the land that the first Dutch settlers took over as their home was originally occupied by Indians—the Lenape tribe. But, as with most of this country’s history, we seem to choose to ignore them (I often wonder is it that we just don’t’ have any lasting records of their culture or we just don’t care to find and publicize them?).

Getting back to the Dutch colonization, Brooklyn’s first settlement was Gravesend (named after Gravenzande, Netherlands), which existed before there was even anything known as Brooklyn. The following year this was replaced by Brooklyn (which was in fact spelled “Breuckelen” back then), and within the next few decades, more of today’s neighborhoods started to be born—Flatbush, New Utrecht, Bushwick, and so on.

Downtown Brooklyn today

Brooklyn was actually an official town before the capital of the new colony across the river—New Amsterdam—which I’m sure you can deduce would become Manhattan. It wasn’t until the early 1800s that the urbanization of Brooklyn began, with the area that is today considered Downtown Brooklyn, immediately across the East River from Lower Manhattan. With reliable steam ferry service, Brooklyn Heights became a commuter town for Wall Street. Around the same time, the independent towns of Bushwick and Williamsburg were growing faster than they could handle, and thus they were soon incorporated into Brooklyn.

For most of that century, Brooklyn was an independently thriving seaport and manufacturing center, considered a twin city to Manhattan. They did not merge into what is today New York City until 1898.

Brooklyn Bridge today

People always seem to wonder what state Washington, D.C. is in. And I can’t really answer them. It’s not part of any state, I say, and of course it is not a state itself, either. This doesn’t seem to make sense to people.

Nor does it make sense to me. As capital of the United States of America, the District of Columbia was created to be the seat of government, neutral of all state laws. But as a result, the District’s 630,000-some residents today have no voice in U.S. Congress.

In 2000, the District of Columbia began issuing license plates adorned with the motto Taxation Without Representation, which highlighted the fact that D.C. residents pay Federal taxes, but do not have representation in Congress. In a show of support for the city, President Bill Clinton used the new plates on his presidential limousine, only to have them removed by George W. Bush when we took office a few months later.

While the presidential motorcade has been equipped with the stripped-down D.C. license plates since then, President Barack Obama finally brought back the taxation plates as he headed to a community service engagement at a D.C. school last week. See the full article from Politico below:

Obama’s new plates

Obama’s car gets ‘taxation without representation’ plates

By: Jennifer Epstein; 19 January 2013; Politico

President Obama’s car got new license plates Saturday in a show of support for the District of Columbia’s efforts to get greater recognition from the federal government.

Obama’s black SUV sported “taxation without representation” plates as he headed to a District school for a community service project. Three cars in his motorcade now with the new plates already had D.C. plates, but they read “washingtondc.gov” instead of sporting the motto.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said on Thursday that Obama had decided to put the plates on the car in recognition of the District’s residents.

“President Obama now has lived in the District for four years and has seen firsthand how patently unfair it is for working families in D.C. to work hard, raise children, and pay taxes without having a vote in Congress,” Carney said. “Attaching these plates to the presidential vehicles demonstrates the president’s commitment to the principle of full representation for the people of the District of Columbia and his willingness to fight for voting rights, home rule, and budget autonomy for the District.”

Former President Bill Clinton put “taxation” plates on his car at the very end of his second term, but George W. Bush had them removed when he took office.

A new license plate design often means a new plate number, but not so for the president, who keeps “800 002” on his car, whether an SUV or a sedan.

Not-so-edgy DC plates used by the Bush administration