The onetime home of Woody Allen, Mae West, Neil Diamond, Mel Brooks, Barbra Streisand, and numerous other celebrities, Brooklyn is the composite of numerous distinctively ethnic neighborhoods, including Brighton Beach with its large Ukrainian and Russian population, the Italian community of Bensonhurst, and the Orthodox Jews that make up Borough Park.

There's no doubt as you drive or walk through different sections of Brooklyn that the neighborhoods take on their own identities. Park Slope, for example, is a trendy outgrowth of Manhattan, with fashionable shops and cafés. Sheepshead Bay is home to seafood fresh from the fishing boats that dock at the marina. Brooklyn Heights, sitting high on a hill overlooking Manhattan, is a posh neighborhood founded in the early nineteenth century as a suburban alternative to city life. Bensonhurst is an older Italian-American neighborhood, rich with tradition. Row houses and red brick buildings characterize the various residential neighborhoods, stores line the bustling streets, and municipal buildings make up the downtown section of the busy borough.

While Brooklyn is home to a lot of small, tightly knit neighborhoods, the overall borough is one in which residents take great pride. Brooklyn is as big as many of our country's largest cities (only Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York itself are larger).