On Monday we met at school and started our journey around Brooklyn and was an entertaining learning experience for me. I have lived here for about 2 years but have never taken the time to go to that side of the city. We first went to the court house and was amazed how the giant building was once a movie theater but burned down. Then we took a trip to a nice little park were there were a few statues, one being Henry Ward Beecher and the other Christopher Columbus. I liked the stories Prof. Rosin shared about how Beecher preached against slavery and people would travel on boat just to hear this man speak. Beecher also freed a slave named Pinky and he was honored so much that they’d create a statue of them in the middle of the park. After the park we headed toward the edge of Brooklyn and stared at Manhattan but on the way what I thought was really cool was that Prof. Davis showed me and Chris a “boot scraper” on the side of a building, I found it amazing that this was still there. At our final stop we arrived at the Brooklyn Historical Society were we were given information about the men celebrated as busts on the sides of the building. We went inside and although our stay was short we learned a little about the history of the building, like the tiles inside and how it was built in the late 1800s. We were also given permission to use the buildings resources and archives and given rules on handling the delicate material.

I was born in New York but I left at the age of about 5-6 to Florida so I didn’t really remember anything. A few years later I came back to visit New York and was amazed by how different a place could look. I was not used to buildings being more than 3 floors high and when I came here there were no building less than 2 levels high, it was crazy to me that I’d have to turn my head to see one whole building. It wasn’t only the buildings,  I also remember a disticnt garbage smell that I have forever associated with this city, I feel like there is no fresh air anywhere due to all the cars and factories in such a tiny area. Also the atmosphere was weird, there was so much graffiti everywhere and nothing looked clean, and the people here looked so much meaner. The streets were 10 times smaller than what I was used to and we’d hit a traffic light every 100 feet or so. However the city felt so raw and it made me feel alive in a way because of the authentic vibe that seemed to be ringing through every corner.

In Fort Greene Dreams, Nelson George looks back on how his life played out. He begins his story by telling us he started living in an apartment located in Jamaica, Queens then moved to Fort Greene in 1985. He grew up around Fort Greene because of shopping with his mom and had heard about the bad areas and gangs that used to inhabit Fort Greene but he says it was easy to love. He gave a good amount of detail describing his apartment which he loved because he was tired of living in beatdown apartments. George was able to afford this because of a quick bio he wrote on the pop king Michael Jackson which became a best seller, one of his first real sucesses that gave him a great deal of money. In this apartment he wrote 5 books, including his breakthrough work, The Death of Rhythm and Blues. He also invested in movies including She’s Gotta Have It while writing and producing screenplays. Being in this new empty apartment it filled him with ambition due to all the inspiring talent that he could critique. He seemed to be living in an area surrounded by iconic people and this was all on his way to get something to eat. George worked in his apartment and dispite how bad of a reputation Fort Greene had he had never ran into any trouble except getting robbed which had been his own fault, this place had been a rebirth because he found himself in a new way. He learned what kind of writer, lover, and son he was and where mentoring, criticism, and producing overlapped in the process of living in Fort Greene.