Check out the film's trailer and support the film by kicking over some cash on Kickstarter. In the meantime, I asked Kelly some questions about the film and she answered...
Q: Your title is, in a quiet way, a provocative one. To say "my" Brooklyn implies ownership, just as many New Yorkers have a proprietary sense about the city, and the neighborhoods, in which they live. Today more than ever that sense bumps up against gentrification in the fiercest way. How have the past 10 years of major changes impacted your sense of "your" Brooklyn?
A: The easiest answer to your question is that the film is told through my eyes, and follows my particular journey to understand the dramatic changes I see happening to my neighborhoods and to New York City in general. But I think your question is actually more complex than that. It raises important questions that the film is trying to get at, like: Who owns a neighborhood? Does being there longer give someone more of a claim to it? Who gets to decide what's valuable and what retail and services a neighborhood should have?
A concrete example: to many newer arrivals (especially white ones, but not exclusively), Fulton Mall in Downtown Brooklyn is a "crappy space with B-grade stores that I wouldn't want to visit at night." To Brooklyn's longer-term residents who frequent the mall (mostly African American and Caribbean immigrants), the space is "home base," "exciting," a place to run into people you know and find products you can't find in other places, at affordable prices. My Brooklyn asks, “Whose values get reflected in city policy?” and “Why?”
Kelly and crew
So the title is kind of tongue-in-cheek, meant to raise exactly the question you are asking.
During the production of this film, we have repeatedly asked people of all economic backgrounds and races, "What's your Brooklyn?" Almost everybody mentions diversity as one of the things they love most about Brooklyn. The irony is that the city, and real estate developers, use the idea of Brooklyn as "happening," "interesting," and "artistic," yet at the same time they are using massive rezonings and developer subsidies to incentivize the construction of giant market-rate luxury housing towers that nobody but the wealthy can afford.
Q: Your subtitle is about battling for the city's soul. How would you describe that soul?
A: It's subjective, obviously. For me, being able to walk down a street and having the possibility of being surprised by what I encounter is really important. A place where I can only shop at the same 20 stores that are in every suburban mall is a place I can't imagine living. "Soul" resides in neighborhoods where people hang out, and talk with each other, and know each other, and look after one another's children--not a place where people are forced to move every few years because housing gets too expensive.
Soul is also about artistic expression--and we all know artists can't afford the Brooklyn neighborhoods that welcomed them two decades ago. And in our film particularly, "soul" refers to black culture like the early hip-hop that developed at Fulton Mall's Albee Square Mall, the kinds of spaces that are vanishing in New York City today. Things can't always stay the same, but our planning priorities should include open and affordable spaces where cultural experiments can be nurtured and find audiences.
barber shop
Q: You refer to yourself in the film's description as a gentrifier who moved to Brooklyn in 1988. How do you see yourself as similar to or different from the gentrifiers of today's Brooklyn?
A: I moved to Park Slope in 1988 looking for an activist, engaged, diverse, artistic environment that would be tolerant of difference (I was in a lesbian relationship at the time and wanted to be in a place where we would feel comfortable). As I have moved from neighborhood to neighborhood in Brooklyn (usually in search of more affordable housing), I have always been in that first (or second) wave of gentrifiers. Right now I'm in Sunset Park, and wondering how long it will take for my neighborhood to start to transform as other people like me are pushed out of the more central Brooklyn neighborhoods.
I don’t think I’m fundamentally any different than anybody else, except maybe I’ve become a little more obsessed with understanding the underlying dynamics of the change that’s happened. I would hope that everybody would be interested in understanding what we could do to make the planning process more democratic and more responsive to the needs of everybody, not just newcomers or folks who can afford to get their voices heard. I think we all need to get beyond feeling guilty or like “nothing can be done” and starting being aware of land use policy and getting involved to create a more just city.
Fulton Mall business owner
To me Brooklyn is a state of mind.
ReplyDeleteTo me, Brooklyn is not a state of mind, but where nine generations of my family were born, raised, and died. And I can guarantee that not a single goddamn one of us would have described it as "artistic."
ReplyDeleteThe Fulton Mall thing is a damn shame. By no means is it my "home base", but it's a place where I can buy a sweater or a pair of shoes or towels at a decent price, or shop at Macy's without having an anxiety attack. Soon it will be Soho junior.
ReplyDelete"A concrete example: to many newer arrivals (especially white ones, but not exclusively), Fulton Mall in Downtown Brooklyn is a 'crappy space with B-grade stores that I wouldn't want to visit at night.' To Brooklyn's longer-term residents who frequent the mall (mostly African American and Caribbean immigrants), the space is 'home base,' 'exciting,' a place to run into people you know and find products you can't find in other places, at affordable prices."
ReplyDeleteWow. The race card, a false dichotomy, AND a straw man in one answer. You can always depend on the white (supposed) anti-gentrifiers to try to pick up a little street cred with minorities and immigrants.
I'm white, I live in Brooklyn, and I visit Fulton St. at night all the time. It is a mall and it sucks, in my opinion, but has good deals. Gentrify the stores and it would still suck but with higher prices.
@Baha--you misunderstood me. I am an original Park Sloper with generations there too--to me personally-IT IS A STATE OF MIND!
ReplyDeleteThe Fulton Mall is not a treasure that should be preserved. Modell's and VIM are important? Cheap gold jewelry made without any consideration for taste or quality. Brooklyn is much better than it has ever been with the influx of people with better taste, sharper senses of style, and better values. It is also an improvement to be buying locally made goods instead of everything imported from China. That's pretty much what you will find on Fulton Street. Oh I was born and raised in Brooklyn and I have never been more proud to call myself a Brooklynite, but I don't have more rights or ownership since I was bred here.
ReplyDeleteI passed a new tattoo parlor on fifth avenue and 20th street today. Instead of keeping up the original beauty parlor sign of the storefront they took over, they plastered a cheap vinyl banner over it.
I feel that this speaks volumes about the people/person who opened the shop.
I know I am rambling here. Hopefully you can see through it and understand what I am trying to say.
A triumph motorcycle is cooler than a SUV with no fear stickers.
MY Brooklyn is Flatlands, where I grew up in the 1960"s.
ReplyDeleteHow come "Brooklyn" is a pseudonym for "Williamsburg"?
The filmmakers are obviously gentrifiers because they moved there in 1988 and were pioneers in the gentrification process. So I don't know what message they are trying to send when they themselves are contributors to the homogenization of the city.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the bottom message - why has Williamsburg become "brooklyn" there are tons of neighborhoods where hipsters, yupsters, hippies, and people like that will never go.basically people that want to move to new york to party every night of the week and dont have jobs.
Everyone wants to save northern Brooklyn. There are millions of landmarked brownstones. But in southern Brooklyn 19th century farm houses are demolished without a peep. Partly this is because a large number of the residents of a generation and a half ago left for other parts. They just couldn't find housing because nothing was for sale. Their parents owned everything. Eventually the parents wanted out because maintenance becomes a huge expense in older houses. Newcomers took advantage, or rather than repair, they demolished or transformed. And expatriate Brooklyn whine from a distance about how the old neighborhood has changed. They could have returned and restored the houses they grew up in.
ReplyDeleteMy Brooklyn..My maternal Grandmother grew up on a farm in The Flatlands. Her brothers were milkman. At times even then,Grandma R had to mind the farm aggressively especially when robbers were trying to rob it. The workers spoke many Eastern European languages which Grandma picked up. After many years, Grandma went into real estate. She was a great businesswoman and wished she had had the opportunity to teach. I love My Brooklyn, Jeremiah.
ReplyDelete