This is the landlord-tenant language divide. Tenants often complain their landlord hikes up rent, adds fees or takes their time to do necessary repairs. Landlords complain of their high property taxes, late rent checks and the cost of maintaining properties. On each side is a gut reaction to what a space should lease for, and often, neither is interested in the other's cost-related woes.

My roommate Will recently got a call from Eugene, the owner of our two-bedroom apartment in Prospect Heights, about our upcoming lease renewal. A few of his initial suggestions sounded a bit shady. Looking to increase his revenue, Eugene suggested we pay our own heating costs on top of a $200 rent increase. Other suggestions, like charging extra for our outdoor space, which was previously free, were also thrown out there.

To catch you up to speed, Will and I moved into our apartment on Jan. 1, 2008, and received a discount of half a month's rent to deal with the poor state in which the apartment was delivered. Beyond the $725 we saved, we put our own sweat and money into scrubbing the floors, painting all the walls, and replacing light fixtures and outlets, putting down carpets on ugly tile floors, and making an actual home out of a previously mold and grease-covered, albeit spacious, mess.

The building was built around 1930, and what was one large four-bedroom residence on the second floor was split up into a pair of two-bedroom apartments that top three commercial spaces. Over the year we've resided on Washington Avenue our oven was replaced; the ceiling has been temporarily repaired three times thanks to a leak; and our bathroom faucet was recently replaced for the same reason. Sometimes our heat doesn't come on, and Eugene recently relieved our heating pipes of the air that had accumulated within them.

For all this, we've paid him $1,450 every month.

AIMING TO WRAP MY head around why Eugene might think his proposals were realistic in such an economic climate, I did some research. Clearly a small-time landlord, Eugene bought our property in 1987, and lived here for a while before eventually moving out to Coney Island with his wife. According to a property records search for his name, he also owns the space that houses a garden store down the street and an auto repair shop in the Stapleton section of Staten Island. (This does not include, and I am not aware of, any properties he may own that are listed under names other than his own, though he's made allusions to other properties.)

According to city records, Eugene will pay about $19,755 in property taxes this year on our building, an increase of $3,279 over the previous year. Annually, the residential units in my building rent for $31,800, on top of what rent he collects from a women's accessories shop and a vegan restaurant downstairs.

From the perspective of my landlord – who compared our Prospect Heights rent with the high prices in Park Slope and concluded that he should be making more of a return – neighborhood amenities have improved and many new buildings have gone up over recent years. According to a 2007 report by the Furman Center for Real Estate at NYU, Prospect Heights had a rental vacancy rate of 2.7 percent and the median monthly rent, including regulated units in the area, had increased to $801 from $696 in 1990.

Despite the current economic forecast, these factors embolden Eugene's argument in favor of a hike. But from the tenants' perspective, according to a study of Brooklyn real estate by brokerage Marcus & Millichap, 85% of the housing stock in South Crown Heights/Prospect Heights (we live on the border) is either rent-regulated or subsidized, so why are similar apartments without the same regulations?

AFTER WILL AND OUR neighbor, Chelsea, played phone tag with Eugene about his proposals, we set up two meetings. First, to strategize a counter proposal and second, to present said proposal. Fearful that our market-rate apartment could garner whatever amount another tenant would be willing to pay – and the recent influx of young renters to the area would be far more willing to pay since we've fixed up the place – we set out to bridge the landlord-tenant language divide.

A few days before our meeting with Eugene, Will, Chelsea and I sat in my living room and discussed our options. Will, having previously lived in a rent-stabilized apartment, was pessimistic about what we could do to prevent such a drastic increase, considering the lack of regulation on our apartment. Chelsea was worried that her smaller apartment, with no outdoor space, would see the same increase as our larger and more expensive apartment.

After my previous landlord kept rent static for three years, I felt like our investment in the property should at least win us a freeze for the upcoming year. Like a lot of people, we were all worried that the economic climate could mean less income at the same time we might get hit with an increase in housing costs. Like many basic costs of living now, income is not keeping pace with housing costs.

Our proposal included a 5 percent rent increase - an extra $870 annually for my apartment and just above the 4.5 percent increase on one-year leases for regulated apartments. Next, we devised a demonstration of how we've made real homes of our previously uninhabitable apartments and plan on remaining in them for the foreseeable future, guaranteeing rental income through a troubled economic climate. We figured if Eugene wanted us to take on heating costs, we wouldn't like it, but we would take on the extra $1,000 or so per season (for both apartments combined) if the rental hike was capped at 5 percent.

Should the meeting turn negative, we resolved to stick to our talking points: the country is in a recession; we're great tenants who've put our own time and money into this property.

Our aim was to stay positive, lest the landlord-tenant divide grow further.

FINALLY, THE DAY CAME and the three of us sat down with Eugene. He began with the proposed $200 increase as he laid gas bills from Keyspan across the table. Visibly distressed over the cost of heating, it was clear that it had become his main concern. We offered to pay it, as long as our rent hike didn't exceed 5 percent. He was starting to back off the $200 figure and we knew it could be a lot worse.

After some consternation about his profit margin, Eugene claimed to have a mortgage on the building to impress his point upon us. He did have bills to pay, but I reminded him that property records indicate the contrary, which he denied and stated "that is my personal business."

Next came the immediately dismissed suggestion that we chip in on the water bill, but it was merely a last ditch effort before he finally agreed to our proposal.

Overall, I think we came out fairly unscathed, though I still do not believe that our costs should have gone up at all considering the return. But I realized that when the rent goes up, there isn't always a return for the tenant - hence the value of homeownership. The residential rent increases in our building will pay about half of Eugene's tax hike this year, and unburden him of heating costs. Though he did promise a new enclosed structure for garbage cans and to fix pipes that tend to leak onto the floor below, both of these issues are his responsibility anyway.

In the long run, Eugene is like most landlords of average Brooklyn buildings: he squeezes what profit he can, and re-invests as little as possible into the comfort of those who live there. But from his perspective, Will and I live in a cheap apartment, close to transportation and Prospect Park and with little discomfort at all.

But at least for now, we've compromised and bridged the landlord-tenant divide.

The email was from my friend Rachel, inviting me to a clothing swap at her Boerum Hill apartment. After listing other monetary commitments, family holiday presents and the cost of living these days, she pondered, "When do we New York women get to treat ourselves with new winter things and fuzzy sweaters and gauzy scarves? Don't we all deserve a little cashmere?"

Perhaps we do.

Last Saturday afternoon, while Borough President Marty Markowitz was across town extolling the virtues of spend, spend, spend for the Shop Brooklyn initiative, I arrived at Rachel's to find a room full of about 10 20-something ladies and a sea of dresses, skirts, jackets and blouses scattered about the bare floor. At one end of the railroad apartment sat a plate of cheese and crackers, brownies and treats. At the other, a wall-length mirror and a group of bustling, partially naked women excited to exchange their unwanted duds for the discards of others. One woman's trash is another's treasure, after all.

"Everyone gets presents!" my friend Melissa said as she greeted me at the door. "Beats spending money I don't have."

I began to lay out my items alongside the others. From my bag emerged two cashmere sweaters from J Crew that were too small; an H&M sweater dress I just wasn't into; a pair of untouched Polo tennis shoes; and a vintage blouse from Levi's, among a few other items. I quickly noticed these items on the backs of my fellow swappers and realized I should probably move a little faster.

I scooped up an olive Max Studio military-style jacket and it fit perfectly. I hadn't anticipated such a great find, so I put it away and kept on searching. Next I came across a silver Armani Exchange dress with a deep V-neck cut; a one-of-a-kind wrap dress by Zachary's Smile; and a pair of blue-striped flats from American Eagle. They all went immediately into my eco-friendly shopping bag. Thanks, ladies!

My friend Julie tried on a stonewashed denim skirt and was checking it out in the mirror. "It's so '80s in the best possible way!" shrieked Rachel, who had taken the liberty of trying on the reject items, including an extra-long baby blue sweatshirt with the imprint of an eagle.

Once the feeding frenzy subsided, we stood around chatting, drinking wine, eating cheese, debating Maureen Dowd's recent column about Tina Fey. As ladies came and went, more items were tried on and scooped up.

"It's such a good idea because no one wants to go shopping anymore," said a young woman named Cara, as she slipped a few of her finds into a bag.

A FEW DAYS AFTER the swap, The Times' Style Section chronicled the embarrassment of spendthrift Upper East Side shoppers, scared to be seen leaving luxury department stores with ball gowns. To that same end, mid-level shoppers who once may have inflated their stylish closet by throwing a few items on the credit card are no longer embarrassed to admit that they actually can't afford a purchase, or would rather save the money.

As the ladies of the upper crust know, to conserve isn't in the best interest of our wardrobes. However, for those of us whose pastures suddenly aren't so green, a swap means realizing that the cute red Nicole Miller dress shortsightedly thrown on your credit card in the good times might inevitably lay wrinkled on the floor of your girlfriend's apartment.

The scary economic forecast is forcing a generation of young Brooklynites used to instant gratification to awaken to the reality of our consumption – not just in the form of personal debt, usually thrown on top of educational debt, but in our moral and social deficit; that the effect of our consumption also has detrimental effects on the climate we pollute and the human rights atrocities that we ignore in sweatshop labor. The economic meltdown is reminding us that trade should be more fair, and that we might need to get our closets in order.

"Think of it as getting new things for Christmas," Rachel's email had said. "And getting rid of all your closet ghosts before the New Year."

Soon, designer Kate Goldwater appeared in the doorway with a bag of goodies. Ms. Goldwater, a 24-year-old Clinton Hill resident, owns the East Village boutique AuH20, where all clothing is handmade in-house by the designer from recycled materials like old T-shirts, slips, ties, vintage dresses, costumes, curtains and other unwanted fabric. This means no sweatshop labor, mass-production, or carbon-dioxide-emitting shipments and an affordable price tag.

"It's so hard to give stuff away," she had said on Saturday, considering all the new forms her unwanted duds could take.

In fact, in the few days since she lugged two huge bags of clothes back to her shop, she has already refashioned a few of the items. "I picked up a red-and-black horizontal striped top that looked overwhelming as is, but I reworked it a little and combined it with a black tank; I think now it looks pretty cool," she said via email a few days later.

"This was like an early Christmas for me – well, early Hanukkah! – because I use recycled clothing for my designs every day. What better material to use than what's already out there?”

Ms. Goldwater, however, didn't cut up everything she picked out on Saturday, including that slimming, red Nicole Miller dress.

"You don't think it's too tight?" she had asked me. Nope, I told her, you look great.

Plenty of Brooklynites have humorous anecdotes about the celebrities they've seen filming on location all around the borough, and, of course, in Manhattan, too. Lately, though, it seems like there's a film crew at almost every turn, and blogs like filminginbrooklyn.com are there to capture images and stories from various sets around the borough.

One such set, for the film Synecdoche, NY, starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman and now in theaters, was shot on location in Dumbo in 2007. Recently filming in the borough were: Brooklyn's Finest, starring Richard Gere; a remake of The Taking of Pelham, One Two Three, starring Denzel Washington; Hungry Ghosts, a film directed by Michael Imperioli (who also stars in Life on Mars); and Julie and Julia, written and directed by Nora Ephron. A few other television shows have shot recent scenes in Brooklyn, including The Real World, Ugly Betty, Rescue Me and Flight of the Conchords.

Modern-day Brooklyn first reached America's mainstream consciousness via Spike Lee's now classic movies like Do The Right Thing and Crooklyn. But these days, a vast spectrum of studio films, network television and independent production companies are shooting on location in Brooklyn, thanks to the city's creative boom and incentives offered by the mayor's Office of Film, Theatre & Broadcasting.

"When we started with the Bloomberg administration in 2002, the problem was productions were going to other parts of the world, mostly Canada, to fake New York in another city," said Katherine Oliver, the mayor's commissioner of film. "So it's wonderful now to have filmmakers shoot their television shows and feature films in New York and fake other places."

Ms. Oliver added that in a scene shot for Julie and Julia, Prospect Park was used to fake Paris in the summertime.

The much anticipated Notorious, due out Jan. 16, was shot earlier this year on location in Bedford-Stuyvesant and chronicles the life of rapper Notorious B.I.G. For Biggie's die-hard fans, Fox Searchlight has created a video blog about the making of the movie.

"We shot in the exact same neighborhood, the exact same streets were he worked, where he sold drugs, the same streets where he started in hip-hop," director George Tillman Jr. says in an interview on the site. "Actually, we shot in the same homes, the same apartment buildings, where he lived with his mom."

Brooklyn, he adds, is purposefully a character in the film.

"No matter what you do, if you really shoot in New York people can tell," added cast member Marc John Jefferies, who plays Junior Mafia's Lil Cease.

MOST NEW YORKERS WOULD agree, and over the last six years the mayor's office has set up incentive programs to bring more productions to the city, like the Made In New York tax incentive, vendor discounts, free marketing determined by the size of the project's budget, free permits and free police assistance. "All of that represents a significant savings on production even aside from the tax credit," which is 35 percent, Ms. Oliver said.

"When you are shooting multiple locations throughout the city, getting from one to another is a total nightmare," said Colleen Ryan, a producer for independent video production services company Raw Media. I have had shoots in midtown; when you have to send someone to get equipment or other necessary items it can take hours to navigate through the traffic."

Ms. Ryan, who recently worked on a pilot for Fox shot in Williamsburg, noted that it might not generally be cheaper to film in Brooklyn, but that "everything was more convenient and we were able to get a lot more locations shot in a day. Another plus, better and cheaper food options for the crew and half of the people working on set lived in Brooklyn."

Brooklyn is also home to an emerging group of shows, centered on borough residents, and made not for television, but for the Internet. The Burg, a sitcom about hipsterdom in Williamsburg, and The All-For-Nots, a Brooklyn indie rock spoof of the Monkees, were snapped up by new media studio Vuguru earlier this year, a company owned by ex-Disney chief Michael Eisner. The casts and creators of both shows recently spoke on a panel at the Paley Center for Media called "A Sitcom Revolution: Taking it to the Web." (Tonight's Paley Center program is entitled "Same City, New Borough: The Real World Does Brooklyn.")

ALONG WITH THE PRODUCTION boom, emerging also is a new Brooklyn-centric consciousness in film, detached from the iconicity of Manhattan. The lineage is a relatively short but enduring one (think Cosby Show 20 years ago: the Huxtables lived in Brooklyn Heights) that continues to sprout branches: Soon, The Real World, with eight cast members residing in a loft on Red Hook's Pier 41, will beam the borough weekly into the homes of teens and tweens nationwide.

And whether filming for YouTube, television or the big screen, film production has brought local jobs not just to out-of-town actors, but to Brooklynites. A partnership between the city and nonprofit Brooklyn Workforce Innovations has trained 150 New Yorkers for free to be production assistants over 13 four-week cycles. A new public service announcement that the Office of Film will start running next week thanks New Yorkers for hosting film crews in their neighborhoods. One version of the ad reads: "Rebecca is a camera assistant and lives in Brooklyn. She is one of the 100,000 of your neighbors employed by the television industry."

"It was totally by chance that we started interviewing these people and the majority of them are living in Brooklyn," Ms. Oliver, the film commissioner, said. "To your point about the creative community there, it's amazing."

"All I heard was a bang and then ahhhh," said Tiffany, a blonde, tweed-laden shopgirl, as she mimicked the reaction by covering her face with both hands. Though, she added, customers continued shopping despite the stinky interruption.

Retailers across Brooklyn hope that will prove true for consumers this holiday season, despite the foul retail forecast.

"I think there's a certain amount of fear in everybody that people will not come out and spend," said Peter Meyer, chair of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce and a president at TD North Bank. "Though we're hoping they will spend for the holiday season and, if they do, that they keep it here locally in Brooklyn."

It was Wednesday and Mr. Meyer and Borough President Marty Markowitz had just wrapped up a press conference on the Fulton Mall to announce Shop Brooklyn, a new initiative aimed at attracting tourists to the borough's retail sector and keeping Brooklyn dollars in the borough. A new Web site, www.ishopbrooklyn.com will aggregate information on participating retailers, who will display Shop Brooklyn signs in their windows advertising sales.

"I feel very strongly that we have not an obligation, but that we should look into our backyard before we search the Web or get in the cars and go to some other state - that we ought to be spending and shopping locally," said a bundled-up and admittedly worried Mr. Markowitz. "This way you'll spend more time shopping and less time traveling; and at the same time you're helping the retail climate in the borough, so it's a win-win for everybody."

Over the last decade, Brooklyn retail has paralleled the residential boom, with new shops, restaurants and entertainment opening to cater to residents new and old. In recent years Target, Ikea, Urban Outfitters, Circuit City and Trader Joe's have opened big-box stores, while small businesses boomed along major commercial and residential corridors like Seventh Avenue in Park Slope, Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, and Smith Street in Carroll Gardens and Boerum Hill.

Across the spectrum, the diversity of price points offered to consumers include everything from high-end fashion to the Fulton Mall; Trader Joe's to tiny Hana Foods in Williamsburg. Now, in the midst of an economic slowdown, one has to wonder who will survive.

ON BROADWAY IN SOUTH Williamsburg, which has seen revitalization in recent years, sits designer menswear shop Yoko Devereaux, founded by creative director Andy Salzer in 2001. The comfy men's sweaters, blazers and slacks combine a dash of uptown professionalism with a healthy dose of downtown style.

"I definitely think that, across the board, retail is getting pinched," Mr. Salzer said. "Who will survive? Sadly, since my crystal ball is broken, I have no idea who will make it through this."

Yoko Devereaux has sought to diversify by launching a jewelry line called Old Money, which ironically transforms vintage coins into necklaces; designing dress shirts for the staff of the Tribeca and Soho Grand Hotels; and collaborating with Mexico City-based housewares company DFC on a line of functional artwork.

"I don't know if they ease worries, but those kinds of projects definitely create additional revenue streams and, of course, they're extremely fun to work on," Mr. Salzer said. "Any opportunity to connect with your customer is important - not only for the brand but also for the bottom line of your business - more so now than ever."

The easiest way to connect with your consumer is, of course, to have a sale. Reaching out to customers, via an email list or advertising, is also important, and stores with a core consumer base definitely have a leg up in a bad economic climate.

With Black Friday approaching - or Brooklyn Friday as Mr. Markowitz proclaimed - retailers are gearing up for the shopping season and hope to attract customers by knocking prices down.

"Every type of customer is undoubtedly looking for ways to have a great holiday, but simultaneously a much thriftier holiday," Mr. Salzer said, adding that Yoko Devereaux's current collection will go on sale on Black Friday, with a bi-annual sample sale beginning Dec. 12. "It makes sense that we really respect our customer's situation right now."

And what of the jobs retailers provide throughout the borough? "Of course I'm worried," said Mr. Markowitz, standing on the bustling corner of Fulton and Jay streets, near Borough Hall. "If retailers have a reduction of activity, they'll lay off Brooklyn workers - most of them employ Brooklynites and that worries me very, very much, and it hurts our commercial areas. It hurts our neighborhoods if there are empty stores, it's not a healthy thing."

BUT BACK AT BEACON'S Closet, I had done well for myself. Tiffany had sorted through two bags of my unwanted garb and determined that she could sell a portion of it for $264 retail. With my options to cash in 35 percent or spend 55 percent of that money in the store, I opted for the cash. Behind me, a Park Slope dad had the same idea.

"The economy's bad," he shrugged, collecting his bounty.

Ms. O'Brien was drinking a glass of water in the children's section of the central branch in Grand Army Plaza in advance of her hosting duties. We were discussing Governor David Paterson's proposed $20 million cut -- 20 percent of the overall budget -- to state library funding as reported by the Library Journal earlier in the day.

"I think we're in a zero sum game right now," continued the anchor and special correspondent for CNN. "The economy is tanking; the automakers are hemorrhaging money; you see all the financial institutions trying to figure out what to do with their bailout money; and all the people saying, ‘Wait a minute, if they don't stabilize the housing market it's never going to get better'; the Dow is bouncing up and down like a basketball.

"I understand the focus on some the big issues, but I think what all of our elected officials -- whether it's President-Elect Obama to Governor Paterson to people who are selectmen or assemblymen -- have to realize is that you cannot keep cutting the budget for critical things like libraries and things that are easy to push to the side. At some point, those chickens come home to roost."

Nearby, Brooklyn State Senator Velmanette Montgomery agreed. "There are many reasons we should not cut libraries," she said. "I hope that whatever the governor has proposed, the fact that he proposed it, doesn't mean that it will happen to the full extent."

According to the New York Library Association, $3 million in funding has already been cut from the budget this year.

"The library community is outraged by this proposal and the continued targeting of libraries to solve the state's budget shortfalls," said Michael J. Borges, executive director of the association, in an official statement. "Library aid has already been cut twice this year, in April by 2 percent as part of the adopted 2008-2009 state budget and then again at the special session in August by another 6 percent."

THE LOBBY OF THE central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library had been transformed into a gorgeous, black-tie banquet hall on Thursday night, complete with floral arrangements and video tributes to the evening's honorees. Library patrons didn't want to focus on the bad news, but rather on the institution that has meant so much to Brooklynites for the last century.

"I feel like at the end of the day everyone loves a book, that feeling that we get when we are engaged with a beautiful piece of writing is beyond the budget cuts," said author Andrea Davis-Pinkney standing next to her husband and partner, illustrator Brian Pinkney.

The couple were two of the evening's honorees for their many children's titles and involvement with the library. They have done much of their research at the central branch just steps from where they live with their young children.

"Buying a book is a privilege," said Kevin Pemberton, president of the Brooklyn Vanguard -- a group of 20- and 30- something patrons dedicated to expanding the library's intellectual presence -- who clocked a lot of hours at the Linden Boulevard branch as a child. "Every time I go online for a hardcover or soft cover, you have to have a level of disposable income. For those who do not, we need to provide that vehicle so they can continue to learn, so they can continue to go out and make the most of their lives."

Danny Simmons stood nearby wondering when his brother Russell, the godfather of hip hop and another of the evening's honorees, might appear, adding he barely had to twist his arm to come down and show his support. The discussion soon turned to the national economic woes.

"People need to sacrifice a little more -- poor people can't sacrifice anymore, the middle class can hardly, hardly sacrifice anymore, so where else can it come from?" Danny Simmons asked. "I think there's some very, very wealthy people in this country. I agree with Obama -- people who make $250,000 or more, if you took a little more from them they wouldn't miss a meal; they wouldn't miss paying their bills; they wouldn't miss a whole lot of things. I've talked to my brother about this, who is amongst the rich, and he's like 'If I got to pay a little more, then fine.'"

Danny Simmons sits on the board of the Brooklyn Museum and the Brooklyn Academy of Music in addition to being the vice chair of Rush Philanthropic, which he founded with his brothers, and is certainly feeling the pinch when it comes to funding cultural institutions in Brooklyn.

"We're all looking at the same thing: where's the money going to come from? We're all trying to develop new strategies to raise money," Mr. Simmons said, "and I think the library is going to be in that position also."

Across the room, I caught up with Assemblymen Joseph Lentol, the head of the Brooklyn delegation to the State Assembly, who was quick to cite the $1 million in funding he garnered for the library, which he does not believe will be cut from the budget. I asked if he is in favor of tax increases to prevent cuts to state education and library budgets.

"Yes, I am, except the governor isn't in favor of [raising taxes] so I don't know if he'll do that, so we'll really have to wield the ax carefully," he said before pausing. "You can always be optimistic and hope for the best."

Even in Albany?

"Even in Albany."

Brooklyn, like the rest of New York State, is bound to vote overwhelmingly for Senator Obama, but with the race tightening in its last days – and even with polls heavily in his favor – the residents of Kings County are at once excited and apprehensive about what tomorrow will bring.

Mauri Weakley, 25, a fashion merchandiser who lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant was shopping in a local Brooklyn boutique recently when conversation turned to the election. "We were all discussing how we'd either be drinking champagne in celebration for Obama or straight whiskey if it were McCain," she said, adding "this is the first time many of us had ever wanted to post a picture of a potential president, or wear political pins or bags supporting a candidate. For Obama, clearly."

After the previous two presidential elections did not go in the left's favor, much to the dismay of Gore and Kerry supporters here who felt jilted, nothing seems impossible, despite Mr. Obama's lead in the polls. There's a plausible sense among young people in Babylon Brooklyn that the democratic process has eroded to the point where a stolen election would come as no surprise, though a disputed election would garner far more scrutiny now than in previous years.

Down the street from the Gate, at Bar Reis, conversation on the outdoor patio turned to the frightening possibility that John McCain could pull it off and win – a definite doomsday scenario – and what foreign locales might see an influx of ex-pat Americans fleeing the right-wing policies of yet another right-wing president. Chatter across the bar made it apparent that these Brooklynites want nothing more than to wake up on Wednesday to find a smiling President-elect Obama on their television screens; to find President-elect McCain would be sacrilegious.

Though Senator McCain incites less derision than our current president does in Brooklyn, there's a palpable sense among Democratic voters that he is no longer the maverick he claims to be, or perhaps once was. However, the senility displayed by Senator McCain over the final weeks of his campaign barely accounts for the contempt Brooklyn liberals seem to have for the Republican ticket.

With Oliver Stone's film W fresh in the minds of the borough's intellectual class, there's a sense that the Sarah Palin wing of the republican party could prove far more detrimental to a country already brought to its knees by foreign wars and economic crises. "Palin is the next level, it's so scary," a friend had told me after emerging from a screening at the Cobble Hill Cinema.

"I have heard so, so many conversations at the next table over at a bar or restaurant involving somebody's personal critique or analysis of Sarah Palin," emailed Marcus Batista, 30, a retail manager who lives in Greenpoint. "I think that the [political] opinions of most people that I interact with or overhear are pretty unvaried, it's not that interesting or heated of a topic, it's way more fun to talk about Palin."

Some Brooklyn residents, especially those who've traded small-town America for the big city, resent the perception espoused by Ms. Palin and others that the borough and its ilk are less American.

"The best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call real America, being here with all of you hard-working, very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation," Sarah Palin had said in Greensboro, N.C., on Oct. 17.

Lefty Brooklynites might argue that it is the best and brightest of America – the individualists, the leaders – that have split those same small towns. And the implication that such a large swath of America is unpatriotic or somehow less American was greeted by heavy skepticism in taverns across Brooklyn.

Despite the harrowing nature and length of this presidential campaign, twenty- and thirty-something voters across the borough, especially those who voted disproportionately for Ralph Nader in 2000, are excited to have the opportunity to vote for a candidate who they believe is legitimately the best, rather than a lesser of two evils, and actually has a good chance at winning.

With that in mind, Mr. Batista, an Ohio native, hopes to help Mr. Obama just a little bit more by casting an absentee ballot there because he says "my conservative father lives in Stark County and I feel obliged to negate his vote; some call that oedipal, and I think that's gross."

Mr. Ellis, a self-professed "big Obama supporter," was seated amongst the nine like-minded volunteers who had arrived at his railroad apartment on North 8th Street to call fellow MoveOn.Org members in Ohio and North Carolina and urge them to help get out the vote in their communities. At the end of the night volunteers had called 490 members, made contact with 150 of them and 18 agreed to volunteer over the final weekend of the campaign. As of 10 p.m., the final 170,000 calls had been made nationwide.

Mr. Ellis recounted how he made a serious effort to vote in the previous two presidential elections, but it wasn't until 2006 that he began to make a concerted push to affect the midterm elections by calling swing states in favor of Democrats. "I love this program because I really feel like I'm doing a lot for the campaign."

The calling program, started by MoveOn.Org in 2006, urges members in traditionally blue states to call their swing state brethren during crucial elections. Volunteers at Mr. Ellis' home were urging other MoveOn members to join canvassing and phone banking efforts at MoveOn offices in their home states. The program also signs up members to make calls from home, an easy way to get involved in national politics.

"I did a lot of calls in 2006 in the call for change campaign – MoveOn.Org made 7 million calls," said Mr. Ellis, though he added, those calls were to infrequent Democratic voters, far less likely to want to chat about their politics.

During the five or six Williamsburg parties he's hosted this election season, Mr. Ellis said he had many great conversations with members all over the country, most of whom have said yes to volunteering or had already done so.

"My husband and I volunteered during the 2006 midterm elections for MoveOn," said Elizabeth Pugh, a neighborhood resident who brought her husband with her to make calls at Mr. Ellis' apartment for the second time. "That was a really satisfying experience because Democrats took back the House and the Senate and Rumsfeld resigned; we were really excited for all that."

Armed with the experience of having a tangible affect on local elections around the country, Ms. Pugh said she was happy to volunteer during the final weeks of the campaign, though she was still uncertain whether Senator Obama will win on Tuesday.

"I have an 8 year old, he's a big Obama fan, so that's why I'm here tonight," Ms. Pugh continued. "I was too depressed [to volunteer] before 2006."

Nearby, in the Uniondale section of Hempstead Iona Emsley cringed.  For the last 19 years, Ms. Emsley has worked with various chapters of ACORN--in Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island--to fight for social, housing and immigrant rights. 

"All the negative impact on the organization, for all the hard work that we've done, it's like we did it in vain – for just one night," she told me. "For somebody to spread our name like that across the country – I was so mad I almost wanted to punch the wall when McCain said what he said just to malign us."

We were sitting in a drab room whose white paint had long since turned yellow on the second floor of an outdated office building on North Franklin Street.  Plastic chairs were scattered chaotically. It was four days after the debate and the occupants of those chairs had just wrapped up a workshop for new Americans about how to get out the vote come election day, just two weeks away. 

The coalition of groups working on registering voters, especially new Americans, in Hempstead and surrounding areas include a plethora of acronyms that few people bother to decipher, including the Long Island Immigrant Alliance, the Central American Refugee Center, and of course the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. So far the project has netted 3,000 new registrants.  Now it's up to community organizers to help get them to the polls on election day. 

ACORN in Brooklyn has worked with communities on a variety of fronts, most notably on Starrett City, the nation's largest federally subsidized housing complex comprised of 46 brick towers in Canarsie, where the majority of its 14,000 residents earn less than $40,000 per year. When a bid to purchase the complex for $1.3 billion came up in early 2007, ACORN organized tenant organizations and garnered the support of local, state and federal officials to oppose the deal, which would have removed the complex from the Mitchell Lama program and inevitably raised rents. The owners of the complex later came to an agreement with federal, state and city officials on the sale, which was conditioned on preserving the complex as affordable housing.

Back in Hempstead, Alexandra Garcia, a young Ecuadorian organizer had commuted from Crown Heights to facilitate a Spanish workshop for New Americans on how to get out the vote. We had been discussing the recent republican attacks on organizers going back to Rudy Giuliani's lamentable scoff at Senator Obama's experience as an organizer at the Republican National Convention.

"In the local economy," she said, "immigrants contribute a lot, we are hard workers and it's about time that our rights are defended – and publicly – so that they feel like everything that is regarding immigrants isn't just in some obscure corner of every house in every city and every town."

At the end of the workshop participants took home lists of newly registered voters to call about getting out to vote, and all had opted to be part of the calling program.

Back in Manhattan the day after the debate, as is tradition, both presidential candidates attended the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, where they participated in a self-deprecating roast at the Hilton-owned Waldorf Astoria hotel. 

"We all know the press is an independent, civic minded, non partisan group," Senator McCain joked. "Like ACORN."

The event was a humorous glimpse into the souls of two men who have been forced to stay so rigidly on message during their campaigns, yet Mr. McCain, showing little humility, joked about the two groups his campaign has maligned most in recent days: the press and community organizers.

"We had gone back and forth, back and forth to our politicians and they gave us the runaround," said ACORN organizer Atlanta Cockrell, of her fight against a negligent landlord in Hempstead during the early 1990s. "Someone told us about ACORN in Brooklyn, so we jumped in our cars after work and said let's go to the meeting and see what's going on. We found out what was going on and we liked it, so we left and asked if we could have a chapter of our own."

Empowered by her newfound ability to organize people, Ms. Cockrell and her associates later convened a meeting with their landlord. "We went to his office and danced on his table," she laughed. "Everything we asked for, we got it."

For organizers working in under served communities in New York and across the country, life is never really about the distant goal of winning a war, but at the very least a battle here and there. 

"We're working for all people," Ms. Emsley chimed in. She wore a bright red ACORN shirt and visor with the slogan 'The People Shall Rule.'

"If the garbage pick up is not made on time, or if they're neglecting our streets to clean them; it's affecting all of us in the area that we live.  So ACORN is not about singling out for Obama or whatever, we're just making sure that the people who have the opportunity to vote get that opportunity. As a citizen it's your right to vote, so that's all we're about, getting the people registered and to vote.  Forget about all the other little politics and everything else, we're not about that. 

"We're about getting people registered – who can tell that there isn't quite a number in there voting for McCain?"

"It's funny," Mr. Hoch said via phone from his home in Williamsburg. "There's a guy about a block away from me – an old school Puerto Rican cat – and there's a new ATM machine on Grand Street, so he's like, 'Yo man, I be seeing these kids, man, they go to the ATM machine and they forget and they just leave their receipts in there, and I go and I get them because I want to see how much money they got in their bank account.'

"He's like, 'Yo, these kids be lookin' bummy, I mean the bummiest, motherfucking, cheap looking kids and they got like $150,000 in their savings account, $280,000 in their savings account. This one motherfucker never takes a bath and he got like $400,000. He just leaves his receipts there in the machine.'"

Chatting with Mr. Hoch, 37, a 20-year Williamsburg resident originally from Queens, is to peer into the souls of every character that's made an impression on his life. It's those characters, composites of which he breathes life into on stage, that are the focus of his new one-man show Taking Over, which begins a run at the Public Theatre on Nov. 7.

Taking Over tells the story of Williamsburg's gentrification through the voices of eight residents, whom Mr. Hoch transforms into effortlessly.

There's Robert, the intoxicated host of a Brooklyn block party; Marion, an older black woman lamenting the high cost of almond croissants; Kaitlan, a white newcomer selling t-shirts on Bedford Avenue; Francque, a French realtor selling luxury condos; Launch Missiles Critical, a rapper threatening to move to Canada; Stuart, a Jewish developer; El Dispatcher, a Hispanic dispatcher for a car service; and Kiko, a Puerto Rican-Polish man recently released inmate who tries to work on a neighborhood movie set.

"New Yorkers are being erased from the city, particularly our stories," explained Mr. Hoch. "There's a lot of justification of the good things that gentrification brought, so it's sort of a given – celebrating the good things about gentrification and not even discussing that the good things about it are not for New Yorkers."

THE HIP HOP THEATER Festival has staged free previews around the city, and I caught the last performance at the Grand Street Auditorium in East Williamsburg. Finally, to Mr. Hoch's relief, he got to perform to a hometown crowd.

"When I do this show in Berkeley, Minneapolis, and Washington, D.C. – you know the Robert character, at the beginning and the end? – people were scared of him when he came back at the end after the show, they were like, 'Oh no, not him again.' They really cringed but here he's a hero, and I had gotten so used to doing this show outside of New York City.”

Robert, angry about the litany of changes in his neighborhood, announces that he'll be around until October, when he'll be forced to move away from the only neighborhood he's known. "Because he's drunk, he says all this shit that people are afraid to say."

Luckily for his audiences, Mr. Hoch is not afraid to play devil's advocate in often awkward conversations about class, race and the economic factors involved in Williamsburg’s gentrification, which he refers to as "a vacuum community" full of "resident tourists."

"The new luxury condos and organic muffin cafes were not put here for people that lived and worked and struggled through the blight of the ‘60s and ‘70s, and that seems to be O.K. with folks who love the green spaces and love not getting robbed," he said with a hearty laugh. "Everybody justifies their own role in gentrification--we all have a role in it."

It might seem like Mr. Hoch's resentment toward the “resident tourists” that now surround him might overwhelm his inherent love for New York City, but he recognizes that Brooklyn's complex issues over shifting demographics don't have a singular cause or solution; nor are they as detrimental as the demographic upheaval seen throughout New York's history. His aim is to help people recognize themselves in the process, and be aware of how they've impacted their community.

Citing Adrian Piper, a conceptual artist and philosopher who studied under John Rawls at Harvard, Mr. Hoch pointed to the concept of “white people fatigue.”

"What she's talking about is that there's a whole lot of white folks on the left – liberals, Democrats if you will – that have this fatigue about not wanting to do the work necessary to figure out their own place, and their own role in the scheme of things,” Mr. Hoch said. “These folks don't want to do the work, they just want it to be fixed.”

Struggling, authenticity and the “real” world are themes that appear in every scene in Taking Over, which seamlessly weaves together an almost invisible pattern of human and economic impact.

The mostly native crowd at the Grand Street Auditorium was enamored with Mr. Hoch, cheering him on with shouts of “go home” to Kaitlan, the entitled newcomer, who was forced to sell t-shirts when her allowance was reduced from $5,000 to $1,000 per month. She preferred Williamsburg when it was "grittier."

"I think Americans come to New York to simulate struggle, but they don't actually struggle, because you're not getting exploited at your job working $4 an hour like an immigrant is,” Mr. Hoch said. "The struggle is: 'Oh, my God, it was so hard I had to deal with this realtor who tried to screw me, and she wanted to take a $4,000 commission, can you believe that?'"

IT'S EASY FOR NATIVES to tell newcomers to go back to where they came from, when those who were bred here are often haunted by the ghosts of a now nonexistent city; and it's clear that Mr. Hoch derives at least a little bit of pleasure from that. But the playwright really wants his audience to come away with a new understanding of how their own economic impact has shaped Brooklyn's demographics.

Cue Mr. Hoch's story of a non-native friend who until recently lived in a $2,500 per month Dumbo loft, prior to the building's condo conversion.

"If you weren't paying that money to begin with, and making that economic footprint, they wouldn't be kicking you out," Mr. Hoch told him. The friend later moved to the South Bronx because it "feels like a real neighborhood." Mr. Hoch responded, "It's not your real neighborhood, it's someone else's real neighborhood."

Although many of New York's boroughs have seen similar patterns to what Mr. Hoch portrays in Taking Over – though perhaps not to the same extent as Williamsburg thanks to it's proximity to Manhattan – he doesn't see an end to Williamsburg's opulent era, even in light of the recent financial crisis.

"I think maybe some of the really risky construction projects that were part of the gold rush, if you will, may be put on hold for a few years," he said. "But I think the money is still going to come into the city because the people that are coming, are coming with cash, they're not coming with stocks. They're not coming as retirees either, these are kids; some of them are trust fund kids, and maybe those trust funds are about half of what they used to be, but they got cash in the bank, that hasn't changed."

These days, Mr. Jafri might hear crickets more often than he'd like. It was the Sunday before the European markets began to tumble, during peak open house hours, and the buyer traffic through Brooklyn's newer towers was slow. Just a few days earlier, The New York Times had declared that "the credit crisis and the turmoil on Wall Street are bringing New York's real estate boom to an end."

About 20 people currently live at 20 Bayard, the concierge informed me, and four units are available for purchase: two one-bedrooms in the neighborhood of $600,000 and two larger two- and three-bedrooms for over $1 million each. Royale Concierge offers a variety of amenities for an additional price, including dog grooming, maid services, massage therapy and dry cleaning.

The building overlooks McCarren Park. And the spectacular views of Manhattan, Mr. Jafri assured me, would not disappear behind any new buildings that spring up along the waterfront, which is zoned for a mere six stories.

On my heels was a woman in her 50s, looking to downsize from her three-bedroom apartment nearby because her daughter would soon be off to college. She didn't wince when Mr. Jafri gave her the price tags on the largest apartments, perhaps because she was looking to rent out her current three-bedroom to pay the mortgage on a new, smaller place.

Impressed by the crickets and the views, she stuck around weighing her options. Mr. Jafri seemed excited that he wasn't twiddling his thumbs in an empty model apartment without even a real TV to keep him company.

"Today has been slow, I don't know why," said Rawle Howard, a broker with the Corcoran Group, across town in the living room of a $749,000 three-bedroom at 647 Washington Avenue in Prospect Heights.

I was the only person there and we got to talking about the economy. The former Lehman Brothers employee seemed pretty happy to have made the leap into real estate, even if the boom has come to an end.

"I think that [the recession] is going to be longer than anyone expected and I think people will really start to focus on what they can actually afford," Mr. Howard told me.

At the Modern Post, a new typical glass tower just next door, a young couple were the only potential buyers for a cramped $789,000 duplex penthouse studio loft with an enormous terrace overlooking the surrounding three- and four-story buildings. The young woman quickly noticed the narrow staircase was not high-heel friendly, and her beau remarked that the second terrace, off the lofted bedroom with Manhattan views, was tiny. Even if they could afford it, they didn't want it.

From the roof deck it was possible to feel like the ruler of an auto repair kingdom, with mechanic shops and junk yards dotting Washington and nearby Atlantic Avenue like plots of farm land. Soon after, we hopped in the elevator, leaving an almost desperate broker behind.

THIS IS BROOKLYN'S REAL estate dilemma. Extra special amenities played an integral role in luring buyers when neighborhood amenities were lacking, but with prices still sky high and memories of the borough's boom fading fast, it seems the only reasonable options are to start cutting prices or to offer condos as rentals. Both of these things are already happening. A pretty kitchen backsplash and walk-in closets just won't cut it anymore.

A young broker named Jonathan was sitting on a stack of concrete slabs beyond plywood walls at the Isabella, yet another location on Washington Avenue near the Fulton Street C train station. The building boasts 63 units--four of which are in contract--a concierge, gym and roof deck. The building is scheduled to be completed in February.

"Bad timing?" I asked him.

"If you have money, it's not a bad time to buy," he responded, as I was signing a release form to tour the building, which is still far from completion. He had been chatting with two other brokers, looking bored, as I approached the building.

After walking through a concrete maze of stairs and hallways filled with construction materials and even a dust-covered wheel barrow, we entered a two-bedroom model apartment with two bathrooms on the second floor. Out of the large windows was a quintessential view of historic brownstone Brooklyn. The mortgage broker was comfy on the plush couch, surrounded with stock-footage-filled picture frames. She seemed surprised to see us walk in, and briefly looked up from her BlackBerry to chat until Jonathan informed her I wasn't actually in the market for an apartment.

A map in the brochure for the Isabella had the popular Q/B train line on Dean Street and Sixth Avenue, rather than it's actual location four blocks farther away on Flatbush and Seventh avenues. It's safe to say that nobody living on Washington Avenue between Fulton Street and Atlantic Avenue is regularly going to walk all the way to the Q/B at Seventh. A lot of minor details factor into a buyer's decision; and brokers are going to put the best face they can on any neighborhood by giving the impression that the distance to transportation and nightlife is less than it might be. Some buildings and neighborhoods just have more to sell than others.

BACK IN WILLIAMSBURG, BEYOND 20 Bayard's view of the BQE, sits 22 Monitor Street, a four-story building closest to the Graham Avenue stop on the L line. On the corner was a handwritten sign announcing the open house where apartments start at $379,000.

Chester, an older kindly man and the owner of the building, nervously approached me down a long narrow hallway as I walked in the front door. He greeted me without making eye contact or saying much of anything besides his first name; and let me wander freely through the duplex ground-floor apartment in the front of the building.

The apartment was spacious, with two large common rooms on either floor, two bathrooms and a decently large bedroom with a glass door looking out onto a private outdoor area. It was clear, though, that the materials were cheap, and the only extra investment made on the property was the modern kitchen tiling and appliances.

Chester told me that traffic had been slow all day, and that he has yet to sell any of the building's eight units. With fewer amenities and a location off the beaten track of Williamsburg's heart, he seemed a bit worried that the apartments might not move, or at least not soon. But the duplex, at $499,000, was the most expensive unit in the building. The majority were smaller units, with balconies, for $399,000.

"They have been on the market for two months," Chester said nervously in a thick Spanish accent.

I asked him why he thinks they haven't moved yet.

"People are afraid because of the market. I hope it goes back to normal soon."

But I'm not sure anyone knows what normal is anymore.