When You Get Caught Between Red Hook And New York City The Best That You Can Do Is Chinese Takeout

The Brooklyn Paper (.pdf) finds people who say what we feared they were thinking:

The Queen Mary 2 christened the new cruise ship terminal in Red Hook last week, drawing plenty of oohs and ahhs from onlookers, lots of platitude-filled speeches from politicians and one unanswered question from skeptics, “What’s in it for Brooklyn?”

More than 2,000 luxury cruisers spewed forth from of the world’s largest passenger liner on Saturday into the Red Hook sun and then promptly got on buses to Manhattan or the airport.

“This is a very nice terminal, but Brooklyn means nothing to me,” said Hoanes Koutouduian, a visitor from Portugal. “I’ll be staying in Manhattan for the food, drinks, and the jazz.”

But it’s not like they weren’t warned:

Cunard, which operates the 23-story boat, did little to encourage the Queen’s passengers to remain in Kings. The company’s Web site, for example, refers to its new port of call as “New York, New York.”

“See the bright lights of the Big Apple,” it reads. “Some come just for the shopping: there’s Bloomingdale’s on Lex, Tiffany’s on Fifth, Barneys and the unique boutiques along Madison. Or head downtown and explore the trendy shops of SoHo.”

. . .

“This is a joke,” said Tonya “Lenell” Smothers, owner of the neighborhood’s popular boubon-filled liquor store, “Who gets off a boat and goes to general contractor or a Chinese restaurant with bulletproof glass?”