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If you had to choose one neighborhood from each borough that is most representative of the borough in its entirety which one would you choose? By "representative" I mean a neighborhood that encompasses the defining characteristics of the borough, best matches the borough's overall demographics and physical characteristics.
I recognize given the great diversity of the city that it's very difficult to pick just five neighborhoods but which would you choose and why?
Astoria is a disgrace. No authentic people live there anymore. Mostly homosexual transplants now. Woodside or Sunnyside by far represent what old school Queens was all about. Hard working middle class people. Unfortunately today just about every neighborhood in Queens is flooded with illegal immigrants so there is no part that is representative anymore. Trump will fix this problem shortly.
Manhattan: Gramercy/Flatiron feels all encompassing (like 16th to 30th st 6th ave going east). Hard to represent uptown with most things downtown though.
Brooklyn: Kensington or Gravesend. Kensington feels like a better hodgepodge of the vast amount of difference that the borough offers, but Gravesend has better old school class diversity to me.
Queens: Probably Sunnyside though Woodside feels more diverse and classic to me these days
Bronx: Pelham Parkway because of its mix of (note that this is how it feels to me) latino residents edging south into Van Nest, Black residents edging north into Allerton, Italian residents edging east into Morris Park, and odd hidden tranqulity that most people don't think about in the Bronx. You also get a certain amount of younger folk working for the hospitals and/or going to Fordham University. It's kinda like feeling like a gem in the rough, or as I've always felt about the borough, rough to the eyes but offering a rather nice and affordable standard of living if you know where to look.
I'd say Hell's Kitchen is pretty representative of all of Manhattan.
Demographically and economically it's relatively mixed, with a lot of old-timers (white black and Hispanic) hanging on in tenements and a bit of public/subsidized housing, some private middle-income co-ops and apartments, and a bunch of expensive new hi-rises. The eastern rim of HK is the edge of the theater district with a few office buildings, while the west edge, near the Hudson, is what's left of old New York's warehouse/maufacturing/trucking/shipping businesses. Obviously the whole Hudson Yards thing is changing the area radically. Still, I'd wager that in a dozen years, a lot of the far west side north of 42nd st won't look a whole lot different than it does now.
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