Hastings is Brooklyn’s younger, smaller, ahead-of-the-trend sister, where canvas bags were toted to grocers and filled with organic heads of Hudson Valley lettuce long before the battle cry on plastic. Just a 30-minute ride from Grand Central and the 42nd Street bustle, it’s home to a slope of shops that’s an unblemished spectacle of small business, granting this colorful river town oasis status to tastemakers. History tangles with the charming conveniences of restaurants, wine shops and village-wide tag sales. Homes represent a medley of architectural styles—Victorians to Tudors, commuter apartments to Arts & Crafts bungalows—a speckling that perfectly matches the quirk of the downtown. Grab locally-roasted coffee while taking in New Jersey’s cascading Palisade cliffs in the distance, or spend the afternoon plucking through antiques for idiosyncratic interior touches for your home.