Brooklyn

Polar Bear Club swimmers make their annual icy plunge into the Atlantic Ocean on New Year's Day at Coney Island in the Brooklyn borough of New York City.

Pop Gym, a Brooklyn-based martial arts collective, is bringing self-defense to unexpected venues—and the vulnerable.

Costumed dancers participate in the annual West Indian Day Parade on September 3rd, 2018, in Brooklyn. The parade is one of the biggest celebrations of Caribbean culture in North America.

The case of the 20-year-old's disappearance in rural Iowa was a tragedy. The discovery of her body became a political crusade against immigrants that her family and community never condoned.

Lee's role in gentrification is complicated, despite his vociferous criticism of the phenomenon, because in some ways he's responsible for the Brooklyn of today.

Hasidic Rabbis prepare to pose for a group photo on November 19th, 2017, during the annual International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries.

Edison-era lightbulbs, known more for their fashionability than sustainability, have become a symbol of gentrification in the hipster capital of the world, Brooklyn.

New York University roboticists are betting that a tiny aquatic machine will inspire the community to care about Brooklyn's neglected Superfund site.

An early look at a Pacific Standard story that's currently only available to subscribers.

The end result of an AirBnB'd neighborhood is not a profitable artist collective; it's an international bedroom community of "post-tourist" upwardly mobile workers.

Housing affordability is highly variant from city to city, neighborhood to neighborhood. Don't buy the hype about the Lone Star state.

A Brooklyn man who spent more than a dozen years in prison for a crime he likely did not commit will receive $3 million from New York State. He may get even more from New York City.

Brooklyn is the land where myths become geographic fact, at least when it comes to the New York Post.

Evidence of a convicted murderer’s possible innocence sat buried in a case file for more than two decades. Now, a prosecutor in Brooklyn will have to answer for the mistake.

The borough has experienced a drop in average per capita income, but there's a good reason for that.

What can we learn, if anything, from the drop in median household income in New York City's most populous borough?

Stop blaming young people for rent hikes in Brooklyn.

How development in the Big Apple is affecting places far outside of the city's metropolitan area. Welcome to the sixth borough?

"If they struggle for too long, they're leaving New York for Seattle, Chicago, Austin, and in some cases, even Tampa. We can't have our generation's Patti Smith moving to Tampa."

The New York Observer doesn't want you to rent—or ride—a bike.

New York debuts its bike-sharing program later this month. Could increased ridership on the city's already-crowded streets result in a big jump in traffic accidents?