The club has long been a behemoth in South Brooklyn politics, with its ability to turn out the vote and connections to elected officials. Judging by the turnout, the club also seems to have recovered from the unwanted attention it received from the 2001 mayor's race.

Among the attendees were Democratic county leader Vito Lopez, Rep. Jerry Nadler, City Comptroller Bill Thompson, Assemblywoman Joan Millman, and two candidates for Yvette Clarke's City Council seat: Wellington Sharpe and Harry Schiffman.

And walking in just as the introductions were finished, but before the Electric Slide began, was State Senator Marty Golden, a Republican.

-- Azi Paybarah

None of the elite streaming out of Manhattan and over the pretty bridge to the mirror world on the other side want to live on St. Marks Place. But what do they want exactly? Brooklyn isn’t a united front. The North Brooklyn of do-it-yourself fashion and vinyl siding (Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Bushwick) just feels separate from brownstone South Brooklyn (from Fort Greene to Park Slope). South Brooklyn is rich and pretty; North is rougher-edged and moody. “I’m firmly committed to the notion that there’s an unbridgeable divide,” said a 27-year-old Bushwick resident, who explained that he even feels this way about “literary-minded, quasi-hipsters” like himself who live in the nether regions of the Hills and Slopes and Heights. “I’ve always felt deeply uncomfortable in Park Slope. And for everything that’s hateable about Williamsburg, I have this feeling that they’re my people.”

Of course, all of gentrified Brooklyn is somewhat similar. It’s mostly white. It’s mostly partial to some form of indie rock. Refugees from small colleges like Vassar and Wesleyan may trudge North; shiny Ivy Leaguers could prefer the South—but the bottom line is that they all attended fancy colleges. Southerners reluctantly fork over deceptively low salaries for DVF dresses and Paper, Denim, Whatever jeans; Northern chicks would rather jump off the Williamsburg Bridge than wear something they didn’t iron on themselves. But in the end, they all care a lot about what they wear.

So why can’t they get along? It might be that development, from Ratnerville to waterfront condos, newly threatens the borough’s beloved low-rise lifestyle. The gentrifiers are being gentrified. Even Heath Ledger has stood up and declared, Not in my three-car garage! And like citizens of the Holy Roman Empire, Brooklyn residents turn in on each other, clinging to the rapidly eroding identities of their neighborhoods in a desperate bid for that increasingly rare New York commodity: personal authenticity.

“It’s more like World War II France,” said a 27-year-old Fort Greene resident on a recent Saturday evening, sitting at the bar Rope on Myrtle Avenue.

The place was typical South Brooklyn, filled with plainly dressed white kids, one black couple warily regarding the scene. But a group of twentysomethings from both sides of the metaphorical Mason-Dixon Line were drinking vodka tonics, grumpily discussing how, when they see a block-sized, generic doorman building sprouting up on Court and Atlantic, or a plastic-looking condo park rising Lego-like out of the dust in Greenpoint, they inexplicably get angry at the people who already live in the neighborhood, as if they were responsible for attracting that sort of building rather than the developers who’ve imposed it.

“Everyone loves to say who was part of the Resistance and who was Vichy, and the reality is most everyone was the same,” World War II guy went on.

“Everyone was a collaborator.”

‘OH, GOW- AH-NUS’

Pan over to Pete’s Candy Store in Williamsburg—which is not, of course, a candy store.

“Helloooo!” screamed the girl in the red cotton dress, hugging perhaps her fifth victim since she’d ambushed the amber-lit bar. “I love when everyone’s drunk!”

“I’ve been drunk for hours,” replied the huggee, a young man in camouflage.

More hugging: a girl with a clothespin in her hair, an indie rocker with a hairdo from a band called Cheese on Bread. A boy in a makeshift dunce cap—or was it a Harry Potter reference? How old were these people?—exclaimed, “Hey! It’s my CD-release party!” Whole decades, in human form, passed by—the 1950’s, the 80’s, cruel amalgamations of the two, black leather jackets and Facts of Life hair.

“It’s all coming back,” said a Fort Greene friend, 30, her chair batted around by the love-in tornado behind her. “Why I left.” She lived in Williamsburg years ago. But the kind of performative aspect so garishly on display in Pete’s makes many Brooklynites (especially the older ones) happy to abandon the party.

“I read on the Internet that this was the place to live if you couldn’t afford anything else … ,” said Jay Brandt, 24, standing outside another Williamsburg bar, the Royal Oak, on a recent Saturday night, smoking in a tight, striped sweater. He moved here 10 months ago from Minneapolis and works both at a hedge fund and the Chelsea restaurant Parish. “I heard it was a post-collegiate utopia.” But alas …. “I don’t like it,” Mr. Brandt said. “It’s insular and cliquey …. I’ve heard good things about Gowanus—is that how it’s pronounced? Oh, Gow-ah-nus ….

“Identity in New York seems to be so connected to your neighborhood,” he said. “I sometimes think, ‘There’s no way I can go to Williamsburg in this.’”

No doubt: The endless evolution of avant-garde fashion in North Brooklyn can be exhausting. For example, the other day at the Verb Café on Bedford Avenue, amidst a parade of studded belts, sundresses paired with cowboy boots and denim miniskirts paired with footless black leggings, a woman with a shaved head was reading Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet.

She was wearing a seersucker skirt, a belted black-and-white-striped secretary’s blouse, lime-green latticework pumps and a perfectly placed lime-green bangle. It was the bracelet that sealed the woman’s Williamsburgness, the extra work involved to a) find and purchase the lime-green bangle bracelet, b) remember one owns it, c) remember one also owns lime-green pumps, d) remember to put them both on, during the same morning. Williamsburg girls don’t forget the bangle, that’s the point. Anyone unarmed with such stylistic hand grenades feels vulnerable and exposed around her.

Candice Waldron, 32, recently opened a new high-end boutique, Jumelle, on Bedford Avenue, that sells clothes by designers such as Sonia Rykiel. “The style is really eclectic,” she said, describing the local customers. “A lot of women here wear vintage; they don’t really buy designer clothes. That was one concern about my store.” But “in the end,” Ms. Waldron said, “with the lines I would be selling I thought I’d be better off in Williamsburg.

“I like Park Slope a lot,” she said, adding that she’d considered a location there instead, on Fifth Avenue. “When I was doing my business plan, the average medium income was definitely higher over there.” But in the end, “I felt this is a better fit for me,” Ms. Waldron said. “I’m more in with this crowd.”

LITERATURE AND T-SHIRTS

While the North sees the South as moneyed squares, the South frowns on the North as poseurs—intellectual lightweights.

“In Williamsburg, everyone’s kind of illiterate. Relatively,” said Christian, a 29-year-old Williamsburg transplant who moved there from Park Slope and regrets it. “One time I was on the L train, and the girl sitting next to me was reading Women in Love, and I said, ‘That’s good—have you read The Rainbow?’ And she said, ‘No, this is my first Lawrence—is it all so deep and philosophical?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah … it’s literature.’”

On another occasion, he said, “I met a very bright and literate girl in Williamsburg, and we immediately started having a conversation about James Wood. It turned out she lived in Park Slope.”

Park Slope bears the brunt of a lot of Brooklyn contempt, so his heroic and creative defense was refreshing. And he speaks for the whole of South Brooklyn when he calls attention to its proficiency in both literature (Paul Auster! Jhumpa Lahiri! All those guys named Jonathan!) and literary critics; at this point, it’s fair to say that the easygoing nabes of Boerum and Cobble Hills are just as affiliated with the Slope, no matter what the early settlers of Smith Street might contend.

On that area’s border, Atlantic Avenue, just down from the proposed Ratner arena site, “Brooklyn” and “Breukelyn” T-shirts are hung proudly in the windows; the “bklyn”-embossed onesie has become a popular, even reflexive gift for the recent boom of newborns. In the window of artez’n, a store that caters to local artists, hangs a shirt that reads: Williamsburg. Too hip. Too far. Curiously, insultingly, the outline of the borough of Manhattan stretched down the front. (In Park Slope, legend has it that there’s a T-shirt printed with the motto “This is how we roll,” above a rendering of a stroller. This is how we roll?) Along the strip, one can also find “Red Hook” T-shirts, “Carroll Gardens” tank tops, all things “Park Slope”—the dream of a thousand real-estate agents realized in soft cotton and an array of fine colors.

“The ‘Fort Greene’ is so popular,” said Un Sook Lim, an owner of Enamoo on Smith Street, flanked by her partner, Michael Schade, who was wearing a “Cobble Hill” T. “Now everyone wants the ‘Windsor Terrace.’” But what of Williamsburg? It was nowhere to be found.

“It feels super-trendy …. I don’t feel comfortable there,” Jessica Furst, 32, the owner of artz’n said, musing on her popular anti-Williamsburg T-shirt. “But I don’t feel comfortable in Soho either.” She noted that it can be hard to get to Williamsburg.

“I laugh every time they shut down the L,” cracked her co-worker, who lives in Boerum Hill.

‘THESE YUPPIE BASTARDS’

One could argue that this narcissism of minor differences among neighborhoods masks a deep anxiety about change—not to mention nagging guilt about one’s role in that change. (As Mr. Flansburgh put it, “There are a lot of people who are perfectly well-heeled who talk about gentrification as if it’s an airborne virus that can kill you.”) But new arrivals to this fractured borough tend to be sweetly innocent to such angst.

“Is there any animosity between North and South Brooklyn?” an interloper asked a young group of picnickers in Greenpoint’s McCarren Park on a sunny Thursday afternoon. The foursome, three guys and a girl, were all dressed completely in black—even much of their skin was black with tattoos—and they were lying up against and on top of one another in black, artful, leisurely body configurations. Nearby sat a chipper red-and-white cooler, the kind that recalls your mom’s cold peanut-butter sandwiches at the beach.

“No,” said Carmen Mello, 22, a bartender with good hair, as her friends laughed wryly. “I mean, I don’t really like Park Slope, but it’s very nice there.”

“A Cobble Hill friend once remarked that Williamsburg is like Portland,” said the stranger.

“Portland!” Ms. Mello said, not smiling, her pale skin coloring. “I’m from Portland! What does that mean? That’s a compliment.” The group twittered.

“I don’t pass judgment on people,” said Montana Masback, 24, a bartender and guitar teacher who lives in Williamsburg. “And I’m sorry if these—”

“These yuppie bastards!” laughed another, smoking.

“—yeah, if these yuppie bastards, who don’t dress as well as me, think that way,” Mr. Masback said.

“I bet they don’t have a kickball league,” said another man, off to the side, also dressed in black. He was, the interloper suddenly noticed, holding a large tan ball.

Hovering around them, skeletal luxury condos clashed with the folksy baseball games and jungle gyms and … well, the kickball.

“No question about it—it’s hipper,” said Michael Brooks, 30, over the phone, of North Brooklyn. He’s a project manager with the Developers Group, the company that’s bringing high-rise condos to the McCarren Park area. “If there’s a hipness meter, Carroll Gardens is not on the same end of the scale as Williamsburg,” he continued. “There’s a lifestyle in Williamsburg. It’s become a place that people want to identify themselves with, being in a place that feels like everything is happening. It’s just a moment—there’s a moment in Williamsburg right now.”

Mr. Brooks should know: He himself has lived in Williamsburg for three years. He grew up on the Upper East Side.

Which, among other things, opens a frantic scramble to replace him at the head of his badly damaged organization.

Two names that come up: Darryl Towns and Joe Bova.

UPDATE:Just reached Bova, the chief of South Brooklyn's Stars and Stripes club, who hadn't yet heard the news. After a long pause, he pronounced himself "shocked." Then he said, "I would be interested - we'll have to see what the party rules call for now."

At the Caraville diner on Avenue M in Brooklyn, some seniors were finishing their midday nosh when Anthony trotted in at two o'clock. "What's cookin'?" he asked loudly.

A grey-haired Democrat named Sandy Litman, who wore a shirt with a picture of Tinkerbell and the slogan "Little Miss Attitude," smiled as she sidled up to the candidate. "Have you voted yet?" he demanded. Ms. Litman hadn't. "I'm going to vote for you!" she enthused.

"Don't forget: it's Weiner," said Anthony. Behind him, sign-bearers held "Weiner for Mayor" posters. Anthony wore a matching sticker over the breast pocket of his blue, rumpled shirt. Ms. Litman raised her eyebrows. "I know, it's Weiner," she replied.

In the rear corner of the restaurant, a pair of women stopped picking at their coleslaw and promised to support Anthony. "If this comes down to two votes, I'll buy lunch tomorrow," he exclaimed. Like most people in the diner, they hadn't voted yet, either.

Towards the end of the campaign stop, he was accosted by some hecklers. The first was angry about rising rent, and she didn't want to hear about Anthony's proposed tax cut. "I'm selfish. I don't care about the younger generation," she said, and made a reference to her "golden years." "I care about me!" Anthony told her to cheer up.

Then came a guy on the street. He was angry that Anthony had supported a smoking ban exception for the city's owner-operated bars, a point made moot after the ban became state law.

"I'm not going to vote for you," the man said combatively. Television cameras rolled. Finally, he walked away.

Under his breath, Anthony let some sarcasm slip. "I'm glad you got that off your chest," he said.

Anthony's final stop this afternoon was Edward R. Murrow High School, a few blocks away in the 76th election district, where Weiner plied poll workers with boxes of kosher cookies.

As of 3 p.m., they said, just 22 people had showed up to vote.

What we reported, and stand by, is that he played a key role in Green's South Brooklyn operation. His complaint, it seems to us, is with the Bloomberg campaign, as quoted in New York Magazine.

Anyway, here's what he wrote, minus an obligatory Mark Twain quote.

"Today a Politicker 'blog' repeated the lie that I was involved in the 'racist' Green campaign flyer. These are the facts. I attended a lunch of Mark Green supporters and campaign staff where the idea of such a flyer surfaced. I told them in the strongest terms that it was wrong. After leaving the lunch I contacted Fernando Ferrer. I then notified the Green campaign that I could not support Green and would endorse Ferrer for Mayor. The day after the lunch I campaigned with Fernando Ferrer with Assemblyman Peter Abbate at the AMICO senior center in Brooklyn. I sincerely hope that this finally ends the travels of this baseless lie."

Perhaps somebody else who knows his or her way around Nick's Lobster House can straighten the whole thing out for us.

UPDATE: Hmm. We've just been sent a November 2, 2001 Daily News story in which one Brooklyn politician defends the decision to use that flyer:

"My perception was, prejudice is in the eyes of the beholder. If someone is supporting someone's campaign, there's no reason on Earth why someone else can't point that out," Senator Kruger said.

To explain: Freddy, as the New York piece points out, essentially launched this year's campaign by embracing Carl Kruger, a South Brooklyn pol who played a central role in Mark Green's much-criticized appeal to white Brooklyn voters.

Mike, meanwhile, seems to have pursued rather extreme means of distancing himself from the affair. The kid who did the mechanical work of designing the flyer, Micah Lasher, is now a political consultant. (When we say "kid," we mean that, as we recall, he was 19, and an undergrad at NYU, in 2001.) His partner is doing work for Bloomberg. And Team Bloomberg is petrified of the flyer's taint:

"Bloomberg's advisors were so worried about flyer blowback that, after some debate, they had Lasher sign a notarized paper saying he'd recused himself from working with them."

Notarized?! This strikes us as quite a precedent. What better way to validate the charge that the flyer was racist, toxic, a page from Der Sturmer? And what better way to signal that you'll be an easy target for similar accusations in October?

When my fiancé, Edward, and I moved to South Brooklyn a few months ago from our respective Manhattan apartments, we bought coordinating throw pillows, joined the local library and deciphered which cuts of pork we wanted from the local Italian butcher. In all of this domestic arrangement, it seemed inevitable that we should settle ourselves into a nearby congregation and attend a church service now and again.

This past long weekend was the perfect opportunity to make our inaugural visit, and so after much debate about the proper arrival time, we stepped into the sanctuary of an Episcopal church at 10:56 a.m., four minutes before the service was to begin. There were three people seated. An elderly gentleman, a greeter, introduced himself. I'll call him Bob, as his diminutive stature, gentle manner and sartorial choice of flannel shirt tucked into belted slacks put me in mind of my grandfather.

A sad, hopeful look crossed Bob's face when we entered. It reminded me of a puppy at the pound, eagerly wagging its tail while its eyes pleaded: Don't leave! A few more people arrived in the moments before the service began, including another young couple new to the neighborhood but not the city (as evidenced by her woolly scarf and his heavy-rimmed glasses) and a young woman just arrived from a Midwestern college (as evidenced by her Old Navy khakis and prim side part). By the reception they received from Bob, they were all obviously visitors like us. All told, we were 20 people sprinkled throughout a spectacularly beautiful-and immense-sanctuary when the priest, a large middle-aged fellow who may or may not have had bottle-blond hair, began the service. It was lovely-or not; I was so distracted it was hard to tell. Among all that ornate marble swathed in white for Lent, and by the jewel-toned light filtering through the stained-glass windows, our paltry showing seemed a sad spectacle.

It was becoming clear what this small, struggling parish saw in us, the five fresh-faced Sunday newcomers: salvation. Never mind what we were looking for.

The priest waited until the end to announce what I had dreaded from the start: Everyone should please exit the side door to partake in coffee and cake after the service. Edward inched his elbow into my side, slowly, so as not to alert the couple behind us. I looked at him sidelong, furrowing my brow to mean: "Grab your coat and dart out the back as soon as the coast is clear." Edward nodded.

With the organ postlude omitted for the spare Lenten service, it was difficult to know without a musical cue exactly when to leap up and run, but I saw movement in the back from the corner of my eye: The other couple was making a break for it. Through clenched teeth, I hissed: " Now."

We were just crossing the threshold when Bob snagged us.

"Won't you please sign our registry and give us your address so we can let you know if we have events coming up?" he whimpered. I looked ahead as the other couple pushed through the inner set of doors, on their way to freedom. Bob saw me looking, and his eyes widened. He turned and took a step toward them, but then, realizing we'd be left unattended and free to escape, he stopped and pleaded after them: "Wait! The priest is coming! Oh, wouldn't you like to speak with the priest?"

The doors swung closed. They'd made it. Bob turned back to us, and as the set of his lips twisted in disappointment, I knew I could deny this man nothing further. I might recycle future mailings or dodge invitations to discussions groups, but I was much too cowardly to admit it to his face.

I went for the registry book and was calculating just how sinful it would be to give a false phone number when, like an Easter-morning miracle, the priest suddenly appeared at our side, smoothing his black robes. Perhaps 20 seconds had passed since he'd marched out of view-I imagined him throwing his special (break-away?) white Lenten vestments to the acolytes before sprinting up the aisle.

He turned to address Bob. "What about the other couple?" he demanded, his voice rising querulously. "Where did the other couple go?"

Bob took a step backward. "I don't know …. I, I tried to stop them, but …. "

"Chase them!" the priest shouted. "Chase them!"

Bob made for the door, but it was too late-the couple had vanished. The priest, perhaps noticing my white-knuckled grip on Edward's arm, laughed. "They must have been scared off by the incense," he said with a grin, like we were all in on a big non-denominational joke. Then the smile disappeared.

"Did one of you call here yesterday?" he demanded.

"I did," a voice behind us said, and a tiny flame of hope licked my brain. It was the single Midwestern woman, who must have been behind us all the while.

"Ah, good," the priest said, satisfied that the caller had not been one of the escapees. "Let me tell you a little about this church." A recitation of the history of the parish, the building and the stained-glass windows (very impressive), and a hard-sell description of the two-and-a-half-hour Easter eve service with subsequent feast ("a real blowout with legs of lamb and great haunches of beef"), followed.

"Well," said the priest, almost like a suitor at the end of a first date, "would you all like to grab a cup of coffee?"

There was a moment of silence, and I knew that I was going to do something very bad and very inappropriate.

"Actually," Edward said, stepping forward, "today is Heather's birthday, so we really have to run to go meet some friends." This is what I like to call a half-truth, but what my Sunday school teachers of yore would have categorized as a lie: It was, in fact, my birthday, but we had no plans to meet anyone for several hours. It worked, however, miraculously well, and everyone wished me a happy birthday as the seas began to part and we inched toward the door. Freedom was but a few steps away.

And yet, somehow, the thing that had welled up inside me, the bad thing I knew I was going to have to do, was not diminished. There was something about their innocent hunger-for our attendance, for our youth, for our souls-that, while holy and wholesome, made me unwilling to yield. Their need was too great, and I was too small. Everyone seemed to be looking at me expectantly. "Well, Edward and I have to run," I said, turning to the single woman. "But maybe you'd like to stay?"

Our eyes locked for a moment. Forgive me, I prayed, I know not what I do. Edward ushered me toward the door as the woman gave her faltering reply; her tone made it apparent that she knew she'd just been made my sacrificial lamb. "Maybe just five minutes," we heard her say as the door closed behind us.

We were a full block away before either of us spoke. "I cannot believe you," Edward whispered without breaking stride. "Why in God's name did you give them our real number?"

Heather Larson is an editor at Absolute magazine.

A couple of the contenders for City Council Speaker, Lew Fidler and Bill de Blasio, turned up at the Highway Democratic Club in deep South Brooklyn last night. Just a bit before de Blasio's entrance, one of their colleagues, Dominic Recchia, introduced Fidler as "the next speaker," engendering a bit of muttering among de Blasio partisans. (For the record, the other two names we keep hearing are Comrie and Quinn.)

Hank Sheinkopf, who was honored at the Brooklyn event, had this to say:

"Anybody who says they can predict the outcome of the next speaker's race is just an idiot."