Posted in Bed-Stuy, Notes from around the 'hood., Photographs, tagged Bed-stuy, Community, Moment in Time, NYTimes on May 12, 2010| 6 Comments »
At eleven am last week my neighbors and I gathered for a group shot on a stoop in the sun to pose for the New York Times’ wonderful ‘Monent In Time’ series, photographs captured at exactly 15:00 U.T.C.
Though of course the photographs are heavily weighted to the West, pretty much every region of the world is represented.
Posted in Bed-Stuy, Notes from around the 'hood., Observations, tagged Bed-stuy, Recession, Spring on March 24, 2010| 2 Comments »
This morning at my morning cafe . . .
Two guys chased another guy down the street – waving hammers. I didn’t see it but the cafe owner, a long-time Bed-Stuy resident, did.
“He ran into the welfare office. Guess he’ll be alright there. But just read the news after the first real hot day of the year. You gonna see people gettin’ shot, people gettin’ beaten up. You gonna see all kinds of things come out when people see each other again. All the stuff goin’ on now, all the unemployment . . .”
It’s true. Just last week all kinds of resentments and suppressed tensions came out with the warm weather. A woman at the rooming house across the street, out at seven in the morning shouting someone’s name over and over and over, then a half-dozen people out on the steps and the woman walking down the street yelling at one of the men while two women sat on the steps yelling into their cellphones then one of the women forgetting about her cellphone to yell at another man on the steps, jumping from the street to the steps as she’s yelling, making great theatrical gestures, then the other woman yelling at her and into her phone at the same time . . .
The night before a woman out on the street rapping out: ‘B-I-T-C-H – that spells BITCH!’ over and over and over while another guy stumbled up and down the street yelling out what sounded like some kind of spiritual, sung dreadfully out of tune, but which turned out to be the Beatles ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ . .. .
When we were riding in the back of a gypsy cab going out for dinner, we passed a street in Clinton Hill blocked off by yellow police tape and cordon of police cars and ambulances. Cops stood on the street, bystanders looking shocked, angry, wary. And on the ground, just visible through the legs of some ambulance workers, the body of a man, a dark pool spreading out slowly beneath him. We didn’t find out if he was dead, or what had happened. Our driver clucked once, and our cab moved on (as it turns out two men were shot in a drive-by shooting, believed to be drug related. The bullet was intended for the 30 year old. The 70 year old was innocent bystander. Thankfully, neither man was seriously hurt).
Then a couple days later, it all calmed down again . . .we’ll see what happens when it gets warm for real . . . sometimes I wonder what the hard times are stirring up below the surface . . .
Posted in Photographs, tagged Bed-stuy, Brownstones, Rain on March 13, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Bed-Stuy, Notes from around the 'hood., Photographs, Street Art, tagged Bed-stuy, Graffiti, Photographs, Street Art on March 6, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Bed-Stuy, Notes from around the 'hood., Photographs, tagged Bed-stuy, Creativity, NY Blizzards, Snowmen on February 27, 2010| 2 Comments »
From the creative kids of Bed-Stuy (okay, one was in Clinton Hill but close enough):
Snowman using fruit and veg . . .
Snowman Monk. Or musician:
And finally, something, I’ve never seen before – a snowman PacMan game:
Posted in Bed-Stuy, Notes from around the 'hood., Observations, tagged Bed-stuy, Blizzard, New York, Observations on February 11, 2010| 5 Comments »
View from the window in the eye of the storm.
New York survived the blizzard. Schools closed, businesses closed, New Jersey closed – it was a big deal! From my perspective, the worst thing was all the ice this morning, and the expectation of days of slush to come (a few years ago, when I was here for a big snowstorm, huge snowbanks blocked off streets in Manhattan and weary New Yorkers had to climb up down jump across the slush, then climb up and down again, repeating the cycle at the corner of each street).
As a Canadian, I am of course used to snowstorms. What amazes me, however, is how New Yorkers respond. In Toronto, people clear their sidewalks grudgingly. In Montreal, where block long convoys of snowploughs and dumptrucks have most streets clear by dawn in even the heaviest of blizzards, the ice can remain on the sidewalks for weeks, even months. On my Brooklyn street, my mostly black American and West Indian neighbors are out almost as soon as the snow starts falling, and will come out repeatedly through the night and into the morning. You can hear them at three am, shovels scraping steps and sidewalks, like there is some sort of competition over who can get their steps and patch of sidewalk clean first. By morning, everyone is out on the street, shouting over the street, commiserating, even going over to help people stuck in deeper than the others.
It’s really one of the few times people on this street openly greet each other, a reminder that New Yorkers like to connect through calamities, big and small . . .
Posted in Culture, Street Art, tagged Anarchy, Bed-stuy, Billboards on December 19, 2009| 4 Comments »
Grand street side of Grand st-Metropolitan in Williamsburg.
I’ve always liked how New Yorkers deface their billboards in the subway. Unlike, say, Canada or even London (admittedly in London the authorities put the billboards across the electrified tracks, making it difficult – and dangerous – to get at them), New Yorkers merrily abuse the advertising that appears in the subway system, tearing off strips to juxtapose two or three different ads, making comments, drawing figures – or all three, until the original ad has been rendered into something else entirely. This has always seemed like a refreshingly anarachic response to corporate culture. Thankfully, even in these goody-two shoes, hyper-gentrified Bloomberg days, this tradition doesn’t seem to have disappeared entirely.
This in Williamsburg again. In the middle left, someone has thought to correct the original commentators grammar, complete with a useful lesson on the use of ‘we’re’.
Somewhere in Manhattan.
This poster, along with comments, appeared in Bedford Nostrand subway station shortly before the NYC Marathon
Posted in Bed-Stuy, Gentrification, Notes from around the 'hood., tagged Bed-stuy, Brooklyn, Gentrification on December 7, 2009| 1 Comment »
Bed-Stuy, or this corner of Bed-Stuy is being flooded with condos.
Two four story, close to hundred unit condos on Greene between Franklin and Classon.
Another 20 units (give or take) on 270 Greene (at Classon).
What looks like another four story, possibly close to a hundred unit building going up on Clifton Place between Franklin and Classon . . .
Another 20 unit place overlooking Beford and Greene . . . .
Another 100 or so units down Bedford, off Dekalb, off Myrtle . . . .
And smaller units dispersed around a ten block radius everywhere else.
This section of Bed-Stuy is on a corridor between gentrified Fort Greene and Clinton Hill and trendy hipster capital Williamsburg – and thus desirable real estate. Now – ten years ago, this was still a desolation zone. Not quite the war zone it had been in the mid-90’s, when crackheads and hookers lined the street that gentrification forgot, but bad enough. At night you’d hear fights on the street, periodic gunfire, and, sometimes in the mornings, crackheads standing on the sidewalk coming down off a binge, radiating menace.
Community activism, declining drug use, heavier police presence, and the inevitable sweep of gentrification changed all that. The local council needed development so they didn’t impose the same height restrictions as neighboring Clinton Hill, with the result that the Condos have marched in. En masse.
Almost all the lots these condos are being built on were vacant, or occupied by abandoned factories, so at least there hasn’t been any destruction of indigenous architecture. Many of the lots are owned by Hasidic Jews, who have moved up block by block up Bedford from Williamsburg, right to Myrtle. The Hasidim have huge families, and their particular (and oft peculiar) brand of Judaism forbids higher education, so many go into real estate speculation and construction. Possibly, the owners of these properties have held them for decades.
The question, as EV Grieve asked about development in the Bowery is, who are these being built for? What happens if they remain empty? Will they be converted into affordable housing, or will the owners hold out for the inevitable yuppie condo buyer? At 270 Greene, a 2 bdrm ‘loft’ will cost you as much as $635,000, what an entire brownstone would cost you just a few years ago.
You can see businesses on the main streets starting to rev up. On Franklin, the New Millenium has removed the hard plastic barrier in front of the condo, installed an LCD banner, and now advertises organic food. A new restaurant is opening up on Bedford, by Lafayette. On Franklin, a Fench pizza place has opened up near Bistro Lafayette. Perhaps they’ll even have to put a few more cars on the G train.
Time will tell . . . .at least nothing has come up like this I’m sure unintentionally hilarious ad (courtesy of Jeremiah Moss) for high-end (and evidently very white) condos in Harlem.
Posted in Bed-Stuy, Photographs, tagged Bed-stuy, Brooklyn, Graffiti, Murals, Photographs on November 13, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Some Graffiti and wall murals from around Bed-Stuy:
Man with Shopping Cart
This mural appeared a couple of weeks ago at the corner of Greene and Classon, on the wall of a store advertising ‘International News’ on it’s now very tattered awning. The store has been closed as long as I’ve been in the area – five years – but I think I’ve seen the man in the mural around the neighborhood, though not for awhile. A guy asleep on a chair usually inhabits this space but I haven’t seen him around for awhile either.
Mural For Nucy
Corner of Greene and Macy. Along with the Holy Quaran picture on the right, the blocked off windowframe has votive candles.
Community Mural
Community Mural on Green, corner of Nostrand.
City of strangers 
Spring in the ‘hood: Easter Sunday
Posted in Bed-Stuy, Comment, Gentrification, Notes from around the 'hood., Street Art, tagged Bed-stuy, Gentrification, Recession on April 4, 2010| Leave a Comment »
The blossoms are out on the tree outside my front door, almost obscuring one of the last empty houses on the street (five years ago there were at least a half-dozen). The slightly menacing and very monotonous tingle of the ice cream truck echoes up and down and all around the street . . .
Saturday morning, the block association on my street came out to clean up the planters, getting ready to put out the flowers in a week or two. People are out on the stoop, kids are on the pavement, and the first of the killer motorcycles has come roaring down the street. A few more fire trucks than usual were out today, but so far, no major repeat of the craziness that came with the warm weather a couple of weeks ago.
The dogs are out as well, barking in the back yards for any reason at all, their barking magnified by the canyon formed by the backs of the three and four story brownstones . . .
Down Greene Ave. one condo is almost finished, another sits three-quarters finished and almost wholly abandoned, the guard post unmanned most of the time, windows smashed out on the upper levels, a the two by fours and netting of a personnel barrier hanging off an unfinished balcony. The ten story tower, the tallest building in the area, looks over the neighborhood like an unmanned lighthouse. The almost finished condo, however, advertises the usual luxury flats and, from the polished condition of the flats inside the windows, the owners seem confident they’ll sell. The sister condo – almost identical in size and style – is going up just as fast.
On The Street that Gentrification Forgot, new housing built a year or two ago has made it seem almost like a normal street. Almost. An auto body shop has been converted into a woodworking studio where, amongst other things, the owners make violins. A yoga studio, sure sign that the neighborhood is reaching the gentrification critical mass, is rumored to be opening in a converted warehouse loft. Yet just around the corner is another condo, thin as a razor, also three-quarters complete and seemingly abandoned. The lower levels are open, guarded by a wooden fence that is so flimsy the whole thing fell right into the street during the storm a couple of weeks ago – where it remained for three days until someone finally came to put it right. I keep waiting for squatters to move in and inhabit the spaces with the floor to ceiling windows and, I’m sure, fine views of the neighborhood.
Up on Classon and Greene, in the old liquor store building, a mural has been painted on the side facing Greene, obscuring some of the old historic logs of companies that don’t exist anymore. Two young guys, one black, one white, were hard at work a couple of weeks ago, and I thought they might be producing some sort of community mural. Instead, it is an ad disguised as a community mural. It reads:
Like Jeremiah wrote in a post last week, street art is being/has been colonized by the corporate world so “sometimes . . . it’s hard to tell if you’re looking at gallery art, graffiti, or advertising.. .”What’s curious about this mural is its sheer dippiness, and its location on the border of Clinton Hill and Bed-Stuy (and across from another finished, but empty condo building). This makes no mistake that it is advertising, according to the video on the website it is part of a nationwide team of real estate agents “working with the best local talent to reimagine the way Fiesta gets advertised”. Whatever the case, I sincerely hope the mural it is tagged and defaced (in the grand NY tradition) very soon.
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