Highlight: A giant Santa is flanked by Nutcracker soldiers at Dyker HeightsIce skating in Bryant Park, the tree at the Rockefeller Center, the lights on Fifth Avenue – everybody knows about Christmas in Manhattan. But December in Brooklyn?
Not so popular.
The New York borough used to be known more for its high crime rates than its tourism potential – mafia film Goodfellas was shot here, as was Saturday Night Fever. But Brooklyn has reinvented itself and at Christmas it really holds its own against Manhattan.
The glitzy Christmas light displays at homes in the neighbourhoods of Dyker Heights and Bay Ridge are so over the top that they draw 100,000 visitors each December. So while the coaches were unloading at Rockefeller Center last week, I was hopping on a minibus with Brooklyn native Tony Muia for a tour of New York’s most unsung Christmas gem.
‘Rockefeller Center? Fuggedaboutit,’ shouts Tony as we cross the East River.
The most famous concentration of lights is along a block of houses in Dyker Heights (or Dyker Lights, as it’s renamed this time of year). But to lead us in gently, he takes us through middle-class Bay Ridge. The lights here are ‘more tasteful’, says Tony.
Themed: Julia admires the lights with Tony the guideOn 84th Street is where the tradition for gross Christmas lights started when, in the Eighties, resident Lucy Spada irritated the neighbours with her garden decorations.
They decided that what they couldn’t beat, they’d join – and the corner with 12th Avenue now has the highest concentration of festive lights in the area.
Lucy’s house is still the centre of attention and the garden of the two-up, two-down semi is crammed with everything Christmas-related imaginable: life-size statues of choirboys, a host of angels, snowmen, reindeer, 14ft Nutcrackers that had to be installed by crane. There’s even a throne for a live Santa, who occasionally makes appearances. The house opposite is like a theme park with 30ft wooden soldiers, human-size elves and reindeer on the balcony (they’re so realistic that for a second I think the family is up there, waving to me), 500lb rocking horses, merry-go-rounds and a 14ft Santa presiding over proceedings – all waving, spinning and moving around the garden.
Having a flashing time: Neighbours compete in Bay RidgeThere are other amazing houses – one whose owner has set up his lights to flash in time to Christmas songs from Jingle Bells to Mariah Carey, and who has his own radio station. Another has all the neon of Las Vegas in just three storeys – music blaring, Christmas greetings flashed up in English, Italian and Greek, and a tree with 12,600 lights.
It’s no wonder that, as Tony tells us on the way back to Manhattan, Brooklynites prefer to get their Christmas kicks at home.
It takes guts to take on the might of the Manhattan Christmas myth. But Dyker Heights has done it.
You look at the Rockefeller Center decorations afterwards – and they seem positively Scrooge-like in comparison. I think Brooklyn has won.
Travel facts
Tony Muia’s Christmas Lights Tour runs every night until December 30 and costs £35 for three-and-a-half hours. See www.asliceofbrooklyn.com for details and to book.
British Airways (www.ba.com) flies from London to New York from £444.
The all-suite Buckingham Hotel on 57th Street (www.buckinghamhotel.com) has rooms from £88. Stay four nights in January and get a fifth free.
source: dailymail
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