If you shopping in New York, there are two ways to look at Brooklyn. One is that to take an F train outside Manhattan is to waste precious 5th Avenue, SoHo and West Village time. The other is that, as everyone knows, Brooklyn is where the city's creative class lives nowadays, and you really should head over the Brooklyn Bridge to find out what they are doing.
Home to artists, writers, chefs and - increasingly - hip stars such as Adrian Grenier and Maggie Gyllenhaal, Park Slope is a neighbourhood that feels both laid-back and stimulating. While the area is known for trophy strollers and venti lattes, shopping there, more than any other part of Brooklyn, feels like a combination of New York and its own scene.
The most emblematic example of what it has to offer is probably the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Store (372 Fifth Ave., 718-499-9884, http://www.superherosupplies.com). The costume shop (its motto: "We can help you with your nemesis problem") is owned by Dave Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and the publisher of McSweeney's books. Aspiring Peter Parkers and Clark Kents will find inspiration in the large jars of magic gum, grappling hooks and the "fully serviced capery," while their parents might look for costume ideas as Halloween approaches. And like many a superhero, the store also has a secret identity: it harbours the non-profit tutoring centre 826 NYC, which Eggers founded for school-agers.
Just as Brooklyn restaurants have won the approval of Manhattan food critics, the area is a bastion of gourmet shopping. "Locavores" wear their memberships to the Park Slope Food Co-Op (782 Union St., 718-622-0560, http://foodcoop.com) on their sleeves. If you can get a friend to sign you in, you can share in the neighbourhood's gourmet mindset at warehouse prices. Brooklyn Lager is another classic experience; in fact, beer in general is taken seriously. Bierkraft (191 Fifth Ave., 718-230-7600, http://www.bierkraft.com) stocks more than 600 different brews, geographically arranged, along with edible souvenirs such as fine cheeses, preserves and (as only seems fitting) designer potato chips. If you are couch-surfing for the weekend, their gift basket should be a well-received hostess gift.
BookCourt (163 Court St., 718-875-3677, http://www.bookcourt.org) is the kind of sociable neighbourhood bookstore traditionally associated with New York that has become endangered everywhere, thanks to big chains. Friendly staff members like to banter about everything from celebrity chefs to the meaning of life; well-known authors are often found browsing here. Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn, might be the area's main local hero, but the piles of signed copies of everything from cookbooks to young adult novels attests to how many bestselling writers live down the street.
Park Slope is worldly enough to boast a designer travel store, Flight 001 (132 Smith St., 718-243-0001; http://flight001.com), with a Tyler Brûlé-era Wallpaper* magazine sensibility. Where most luggage shops err on the side of practicality, the range of fashion-minded designers includes Alexander McQueen for Samsonite, Paul Smith, Mandarina and more. There are also stylish versions of normally blah travel accessories, such as moneybelts and travel pillows, as well as an overnight kit with a thong, condom, toiletries and a blank goodbye note for those who consider James Bond a jet setter to emulate.
Nearby, Cog & Pearl (190 Fifth Ave., 718-623-8200, http://cogandpearl.com) has a more down-home solution to another travel dilemma, the original souvenir. Everything behind a striking glass storefront is handmade, from cloth-bound books to sneakers by Species by the Thousands, local designers whose tastes run to the delicately artful, with vintage fabric, rather than the graffiti you might expect. The storeowners, whose contrasting tastes inspired the store's name, run what feels like a hip museum gift shop from across North America.
Among Park Slope's many small clothing boutiques, Bird (430 Seventh Ave., 718-768-4940, http://www.shopbird.com), owned by a former buyer at Barneys, is one that doesn't feel like a pacifier to an émigré from downtown, but a shop that could be anywhere. It has the season's requisite trendy jeans and the latest T-shirt line from L.A., but specializes in designers who are emerging in Paris or Buenos Aires. Subtly chic, and with posh accessories, almost everything in the store is equally suited to whether you look like a model or are pregnant, and in fact patrons are often either, or both.
Lacasapark (542 Washington Ave., 917-373-1548) is the kind of shop worth visiting as much to say you did as for the offerings there. It is owned by a globetrotting Gap designer, who sources vintage clothing from around the world. On an unassuming stretch of Clinton Hill, its main competition for visitors is a bustling community church. Like Helena Christensen's West Village thrift shop, Butik, it feels like a retail form of keepin' it real - a project that suits Brooklyn to a baby T.
If the stigma of being a borough is that one will never be quite as respected as a downtown neighbourhood, there are times that works to a shopper's advantage. Fashion insiders scour the outlying locations of Century 21 (472 86th St., 718-748-3266, http://www.c21stores.com), the city's famous discount department store, for the relative quiet and lack of competition for deeply discounted Balenciaga, Fendi, et al. While it means taking a subway to Bay Ridge, the sacrifice is one that locals understand - and further evidence that, to be cool, sometimes you need to get out of town.
Jessica Johnson is writing a book about the zeitgeist of shopping that will be published by McLelland & Stewart. The Shopping Atlas appears in Globe Travel the first Saturday of every month.
