In 1985, we moved to Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Friends and relatives thought we were nuts. What's wrong with Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights? Isn't Fort Greene dangerous?
What is was was interesting. It was filled with interesting characters, dead and living. Marianne Moore, a poet about whom I'd written my masters thesis, had once lived in a house very similar to ours just two blocks away. Richard Wright had written Native Son around the corner. Bill Lee, jazz musician and father of Spike, used to play the piano before PTA meetings at P.S. 20 where both of our daughters attended elementary school. Spike Lee lived in the neighborhood, too, filming She's Gotta Have It in various Fort Greene locations. Which reminds me: shots of our house appeared in an episode of The Cosby Show, our 2 seconds of fame. My daughter and I were filmed walking on the sidewalk out front. Sadly, we ended up on the cutting room floor.
Fort Greene back then had its dark side, which is why some people failed to see its positive characteristics. There was a fair amount of crime, most of it drug-related. In fact, there was a crack house on our block. I'm going to save this story for another day because it's long and politically charged. It's a story about community organizing, about how ordinary people make changes by coming together and working with other groups and agencies for the common good. If you think this task is easy, it might be because you never did it. That's all I'm saying, for now.
Recovery to Equilibrium
1 year ago
1 comment:
I'm kind of embarrassed to say that, growing up in Manhattan, we were real snobs about Brooklyn, treating it like it was a dangerous foreign land. Then my sister married a Brooklynite, and their house near Boston has a big poster of the Brooklyn Bridge in it. Every year on my brother-in-law's birthday, they walk across the bridge. I see it's a much more interesting place than I knew.
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