Wile Your Time Away

Many of you know that I prefer few things to reading. Compulsively consuming everything from newspapers and magazines to treatises on the special relationship between women and birds (parrots, specifically) and artists' manifestoes makes me a better art historian and, more importantly, conversationalist.

The latter is a great point of pride to any New Yorker, but especially a transplant, and especially a transplant to Brooklyn. It’s important to know your way around, but it’s invaluable to know your neighborhood history. That chic salon on the corner of Court and Baltic Streets used to be a plain old coffee shop and before that it was an Italian bakery with the best and cheapest cannoli you could ever ask for. Only a nickel each! Thanks to Jasmine’s mom, who is a bit of a history buff herself, for that bit of neighborhood trivia. And, actually, thank you to the Italian bakers for retiring before I relocated across the street. The tempting smell alone would have thwarted all my (half-hearted) efforts to avoid excess sugar. [Left: The intersection of Dekalb Street and Fulton Street, near my old apartment in Fort Greene.]

So imagine my delight when I found Brooklyn Revealed in the Daily Roundup as I scoured the NY Times online for an article about something other than the economy or grandmothers who will or will not help their daughters with their newborn children. (For the record, my grandmother was heavily involved in my childhood, as were my aunt and uncle, and I turned out smart, funny and, overall, just fantastic. Their words, not mine. And my, also really awesome, mother plans to help me with my children, albeit from an RV parked outside my co-op on the Upper West Side. Long story . . .) Here is a site with interactive maps and photographs so you can learn how streets got their names and the history of the six original townships that composed the County of Kings. It's a little time travel to a time of open spaces, horse carriages, and separate designations of citizenship, as well as a great place to cull a general sense of how far the borough has come.

In my own narcissistic way I looked for pictures of the neighborhoods I've lived in (Fort Greene and Cobble Hill [both in the red Brooklyn section) and places that my mother lived until she was nearly an adolescent (she was born in Fort Greene but hopped from Bedford-Stuyvesant [same red section] to Ocean Avenue [green Flatbush area]). Expect me to gush about the old photographs of the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the farms in East New York. Imagine the CSA’s we could have had! [Right: A view of Fulton Street, which, I think, is where the Fulton Street Mall is now. That’s where my grandmother used to shop for her nurse uniforms and holiday outfits for my mom and her siblings.]

If you find yourself with limited time to visit the borough, this should give you an idea of what Brooklynites mean when they say it's just quieter and slower paced. Despite our complaining about the Manhattanization of our neighborhoods, there really is a wonderful feeling of continuity with the various waves of those before us, who, at first dismayed at being pushed out of the center of it all, discovered a place to call home. Though, really, don't take the photographs too much to heart; there are McDonald's and Tasti-Delights next to beautifully restored brownstones and there aren't nearly as many horse carriages anymore. Rather than smell like Central Park South, we prefer the hot summer stench of the Gowanus Canal.