Brooklyn's "Fourth-Largest City" Boast Threatened By Us

By Richard Connelly Fri., Oct. 8 2010 at 4:10 PM

Way back in the benighted `70s, there was a (terrible) sitcom called Welcome Back, Kotter, starring Gabe Kaplan and a young John Travolta (just to indicate clearly its levels of terribleness).

The opening credits each week featured a montage with the above sign, which led most of America to go "Brooklyn's not a city, right?"

Now, the sign is going to be displayed again, but as The New York Times reports, the boast might not be valid much longer if Houston keeps growing.

Writing about a ceremony where the current Brooklyn president Marty Markowitz received a copy of the sign, or maybe an original of it (no one's sure), the Times notes that "the Texans" might be overtaking the borough, and they didn't mean the football team.

And check out why we're growing, according to the Times:

Brooklyn's population plunged thereafter to 2.3 million, but it has been edging up, and by 2009 there were nearly 2.6 million people living in the borough.

Houston, however, is closing in. In 1970, its population was 1.2 million. Now it's about 2.3 million. Unlike Brooklyn, Houston has grown historically by annexing adjacent property and, more recently, by attracting refugees from Hurricane Katrina.

Yep, annexation and Katrina, that's why.

The blog of Brooklyn's The L Magazine wasn't impressed.

Well, our prized status as fourth largest (seriously, who even cares about this besides Marty Markowitz?) is now under threat from Houston, which is just a great blob of suburban sprawl spreading across southeast Texas like a grenadine spill in aisle seven. Oh no!

We consider ourselves dissed.