Local
A Call for Narrative
At a moment when it has become largely irrelevant to the approval of the Atlantic Yards proposal, the New York media has finally noticed some of the real light unfiltered by the Ratner PR projection.
What’s For Dinner
By Marjory GarrisonAs part of an ongoing series, The Rail will be visiting dinner tables throughout the borough to examine how economics, culture and taste influence what for most remains the principal meal of the day. Whether expense or convenience, diet or tradition, access or ideology, What’s For Dinner aims to enrich our understanding of the diverse local factors that inform our decisions about the food we eat. These are the politics of the plate.
Up with Downzoning:
By Aaron BrashearLast year, my wife and I moved from the increasingly hectic Fort Greene section of Brooklyn where we had lived for over 20 years to a country-like (to us) neighborhood block in Greenwood Heights, the South Park Slope area of Brooklyn. We had bought our first home: a tiny but heavenly (to us) two-story frame house built around 1900, with “good bones” but in need of a gut renovation.
Bike Messengers: Beta Still Rules on the Street
By David VarnoRecall the character of Wizard in Taxi Driver, played by Peter Boyle. When DeNiro’s brooding beginner cabbie comes to him for advice, he’s met with a semi-coherent ramble, in which the following remark is stated: “A man takes a job. And the job, it becomes the man.” Such is the way with bike messengers, young and old (who of course find both allies and fierce enemies among taxi drivers).
Bloomberg Says His Prayers
By Kate GreerWhile Fernando Ferrer is getting a lift from Bill Clinton, Mike Bloomberg is getting his from the Lord. On a recent Sunday in Bed-Stuy, Bloomberg sits among the congregation at Cornerstone Baptist Church alongside Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz. In a crowd of myriad browns, the two undersized Jewish men absorb the sermon of Reverend Lawrence E. Aker, III.
Kit Kaplan: Capturing Brooklyn on Film
By Eleanor J. BaderPhotographer Kit Kaplan’s mission is to capture Brooklyn neighborhoods on film. From abandoned buildings to a man in pink alligator shoes resting on a stoop, her work documents lives and places that make Brooklyn Brooklyn.
