Is Carroll Gardens West "brokerspeak" for Red Hook?

This came up on the streeteasy.com forum today. I think we all could use a little clarification.

First of all: don't blame the brokers - blame Robert Moses!

Carroll Gardens, Red Hook, and Cobble Hill were once referred to collectively as "South Brooklyn". When the BQE/Gowanus Expy/Brooklyn Battery Tunnel severed Red Hook from the rest of the land mass, the adjoining neighborhoods took on their new identities. But what to call the lil' strip of Columbia Street and its appendages, cut off from its host body? Not Columbia Heights - that's an actual street in Brooklyn Heights. The CG/CH West denominations are helpful if you're looking for school zones - part of the strip is in PS29 (like Cobble Hill), the other is in PS58 (like Carroll Gardens). "Columbia Street Waterfront District" is what the business owners call it, and while it's clunky at least it's accurate. Of course, the waterfront itself is occupied by American Stevedoring, but that's another matter.

For those of us who live in and love this neighborhood, being on the "wrong" side of the BQE is a plus. Better parking (yes, we have cars), better access to recreation/biking, water views, big container ships unloading their freight at night by the twinkling lights of the cranes. Same schools, lower prices. Good unpretentious food - Margaret Palca's rugulach, House of Pizza's deep fried calzones, DubPies' meat pastries, Pit Stop's kid-friendly garden with petanque courts - nice people, and not as hard to get to as people think.