Like the weather on a recent Thursday, the building at 542 St. Mark’s Avenue in Crown Heights couldn’t decide whether to be one thing or another.
Brooklyn The Borough Posts
At WNYC’s new Jerome L. Greene Performance Space today, on the ground level of their new headquarters on Varick Street, Rosie Perez moderated a panel called The Places that Bind: Examining Preservation and Culture in a Changing City.
“We’re just going to do it,” said Kris Graves, sitting on an ottoman in the center of Kris Graves Projects, his new eponymous Dumbo gallery. “Fuck it.”
It was a recent Sunday afternoon and Mr. Graves, 26, was explaining the sentiment he felt when he and his cousin Gravelle Pierre, 29, decided to open the gallery. It’s a sentiment that seems to have pervaded Brooklyn’s creative class as of late.
Self-admittedly, Scott Matthew has led a Jekyll and Hyde existence for some time now – famous on one continent and struggling in another.
The Brooklyn Brewery in Williamsburg hosted a meet and greet with WNYC’s Soterios Johnson. The popular local Morning Edition host evidently sports a cult following, notably inspiring a musical score entitled Dance, Soterios Johnson, Dance. Brooklyn The Borough asked Mr. Johnson about his Brooklyn listenership.
Around lunch time last Friday, 18-year-old Chad Wilkens was standing in China City, on the corner of Nostrand Avenue and Dean Street in Crown Heights, when he was shot. An ambulance arrived and took Mr. Wilkens to Kings County Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. The media was nowhere to be found.
On Thursday, I caught up with author, NYU professor and Brooklynite Clay Shirky after a talk he gave at the M Project Gallery in Tribeca. Shirky spoke on the opportunities and challenges presented by the revolution in online communication and social media tools. Afterwards, we talked about how technology has influenced the shifting demographics of Brooklyn.