For brunch this weekend, hop on your bike and head to Home/Made in Red Hook. With long wooden tables, benches topped with pastel colored pillows, potted plants abound, and just-picked-fresh food, dining in the back garden feels like a picnic at a country cottage.
On this particular Thursday in April, 1948, City editor Ed Bartnett read a report of an incident in northern Manhattan from that morning that he thought echoed a similar crime related to the waterfront in the West Village the year before. If handled by the right reporter, an investigation might get at the possible links and wider causes of these dock wars. Mike Johnson got his hat.
Take a stay-cation in Red Hook. Once the city’s busiest shipping port, Red Hook is now a quiet neighborhood that feels like a small town in the city’s biggest borough. With good food, free art, and waterfront access, Red Hook offers the perfect place to get away in the city.
In those days, the best place to drink for free in Brooklyn was in Red Hook at one very specific little art gallery on the night of an opening. It was (and still is) a little shack located at the end of the Van Brunt Street right off the water in the shadow of those big cranes that loom like prehistoric monsters in the mist. Called WORK Gallery, it was painted a deep red either as a reference to its neighborhood, or the result of mild insanity on the part of its owner. In any case, the party was always there.
At Brooklyn’s celebration of Michael Jackson’s 51st birthday in Prospect Park today, Borough President Marty Markowitz stood with director Spike Lee to proclaim August 29 Michael ‘King of Pop’ Jackson Memorial Day in the borough.
The Red Hook Community Justice Center is housed in an old parochial school at 88 Visitation Place and at its core, is a courthouse with Judge Alex Calabrese presiding over cases involving civil, criminal and family law issues. It offers a holistic approach to criminal justice by attempting to redress the underlying cause of the crime and prevent recidivism through social services such as education workshops and mental health counseling. After ten years, why are the Justice Center’s successes still unique in the Borough?
At first sight it’s obvious that the Gowanus Canal is filthy. Yet, residents continue to congregate around it, canoe across it, build vessels to tour it, and wonder if its beauty will ever again surpass its usefulness as an industrial center. Efforts to revitalize expansive industrial lots in the area have advanced, with bars, restaurants and music venues opening along Second and Third Avenues. Artists work in nearby studios, and the BKLYN Yard, a venue alongside the canal, draws young people from all over the city to afternoon dance parties, barbecues and swap meets on summer weekends. However, over 150 years of heavy industrial activity combined with sewage and storm water run-off, and its proximity to factories and gas refineries have made the canal a site of controversy since the Environmental Protection Agency announced in April that the waterway is a candidate for the Superfund National Priorities List.
