Shop Talk Redux: That country known as Brooklyn

In this week’s edition of Shop Talk, Joan Klein tells us where to have fashionable fun and suggests we venture “across the bridge in that sector of the country known as Brooklyn” to explore that distant land’s natural beauties. Or to be more accurate, the pool at the Hotel St. George.

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The St. George pool in the Hotel St. George, just across the bridge in that sector of the country known as Brooklyn, is just another bit of paradise in a fine atmosphere of deep green glass and transparent water. All of the water comes from artesian wells which have been sunk to depths of 200 feet beneath the hotel and it passes through filters and heating coils which bring it up to the proper temperature for swimming purposes. It is all very invigorating and exciting and you owe it to yourself to hop over there and find out how that bug-a-boo "daily dozen" can be made pleasant and interesting when taken in the right surroundings.

Now I can totally forgive Ms. Klein for her “eww Brooklyn” snobbery. After all, she wrote this column over seven decades before the borough became cool and the New York Times started spotting new “trends” on every Brooklyn street corner. (At first I wishfully read “artesian” as “artisanal” and started imagining Klein and Brian Williams enjoying fancy cheeses together at a flash artisanal cheese mob. Alas, this was not meant to be.)

As I read this bit of Brooklyn mockery, I couldn’t help wondering—is it possible that the 1930s spirit of Klein has possessed the body of Michael Patrick King, the writer and creator of the CBS sitcom, 2 Broke Girls?

Preposterous, you might be saying to yourself, but think about it: King’s use of outdated borough jokes in 2 Broke Girls and his promulgation of expensive and conspicuous consumption on Sex and the City greatly resembles Klein’s Shop Talk column, which also centers on snobbery and consumption.

I have just definitively proven that Michael Patrick King is Joan Klein reincarnate. Check and mate.