Country, Part II (and some Turkey Day thoughts)

In thinking about writing about Crown Heights, my mind returns again and again to the people that surround me here. So, I'm dedicating three posts to telling the story of one man named Country who has been hugely influential on my experience here. If you haven't already, it might be helpful to read Part I before you read this one.



Country reminds me of a man I knew growing up. His name was Turkey because he was born on Thanksgiving Day. He lived with his family near the farmland my grandfather owned in Selma, Alabama, and he would help my dad prepare the land for hunting season. Every Thanksgiving, he'd drive up to the house wearing a pastel yellow suit, with a decorative cane and sunglasses, and we'd tell him happy birthday and invite him to stay for lunch. But my dad was the only person capable of understanding his dialect: it was unlike anything I've ever heard anywhere else. He'd come by and ask my dad to lend him money for future work, and they'd stand out with a plate of food talking for hours about the weather and the land and family. They told jokes together and laughed hard.

Country doesn't remind me of Turkey because he's a black man or because he's an old man or because he's a poor man or even because of their names. But because both men repeatedly defied expectations that many people maintain of old, black men that live in poverty in rural Alabama or in Central Brooklyn.  

People warned my dad about trusting Turkey too much--they said he might steal from us if we made it easy for him or if he realized how often no one was at the farm. But our relationship with him proved the exact opposite. He knew the hidden driveway to our farm, the one that didn't have a gate and a locked chain, and he knew that our primary residence was in Birmingham. He knew where we kept our equipment--things that he could have really used for getting more work, like chainsaws and lawnmowers and other tools he couldn't afford. But in the 20+ years we knew him, nothing ever went missing. And even when Turkey had gotten too old to work, my dad maintained their friendship and we saw him every Thanksgiving until he passed away.

People warned me about talking to Country too much--they warned me that he would take advantage of me and my generosity and that people in the neighborhood would think less of me if they saw me interacting with him. Just a month ago, I watched him reach over to a guy in the deli we frequent and tell him to stick his wad of cash back in his pocket. You should know better than that in this neighborhood, he said. The guy should know better, and if he had noticed it for himself, he probably would have looked around and seen Country and felt elated that he had caught his mistake before Country had the chance to seize the day.

And last week, Country asked me if I knew a woman a few doors down from me, a woman about my age with long dark hair. I didn't, but he was asking because the night before he had seen her stumbling home drunk at about 4:30 in the morning. He was out about to start organizing the recycling for the landlords he works for, and he heard two young guys trying to take her to their apartment to "help her out." Country ran up and punched one of the guys in the nose and then walked the girl to her address, the opposite direction from where the two guys had been leading her. Again, if the woman had been more aware and seen Country that night, she might have straightened up her coat and crossed to the other side of the street, thankful that she was almost home.

When I buy him food, he shares with the rest of the people that hang out on our block. He'll call out and invite people to his "picnic." When an apartment in my building was broken into last year, he started sleeping on our stoop for a few days to make sure it didn't happen again.

I am steadily refreshed by his joy and optimism and gratitude and generosity and love. These things don't come out in this photograph--what does our current culture tell us to assume about the man in that chair, if we're really, really honest with ourselves and really, really aware of our subconscious minds?

There's a part of me that wants to end this post with some general statement about how we can't generalize about the homeless people we see begging in the streets of urban places--we can't assume that they're all ungrateful and rude like that one guy in Midtown that we bought a halal kabob for who just barked I'M VEGETARIAN! back at us when we offered it to him on a cold night. I think that's a point that needs to be made, and a point I'll most likely return to in Part III.

But another point is this, and, I'll warn you, it's even more clichéd than the first: there are really surprisingly marvelous people in these little corners of the world. There are people in Selma and Brooklyn and Nigeria and Syria doing really terrible things right now that will be on the news at some point in our near future, and then there are other people in those places that are doing small, good things that will never be in the news in all of their life.

I'm really thankful for these people. I'm really thankful for their ability to surprise the people around them with the things they do and don't do. I'm really thankful to know them and to have the opportunity to tell their stories. 

Country, Part I

There's a group of people that sit on my stoop everyday it doesn't rain. Stoop-culture is huge in Crown Heights, and my stoop just so happens to be close to a cheap liquor store. So every day--sometimes before 9am--people convene with little bottles of liquor in their brown-bag concealers and tell jokes to one another and passersby. They send me off to school and welcome me when I get home. I say good morning and good night to these people almost every single day.

My closest friend, Mary English, is a resident of Georgia's Place, a home for formerly homeless people with mental disabilities. She's from Virginia, but has lived in Crown Heights since her teenage years. She served in the US army, and has three children with the man she still loves. Two of her children died by gunshot before the age of 25, the third lives not far in a different part of Brooklyn. James is from South Carolina, and he has eyeglasses that have little black writing in the middle of the lenses. He and his wife live about four blocks from me, and he has one daughter. He's lived in Crown Heights since he was a teenager as well and is now retired. When he found out I had an interest in making clothes, he immediately called his wife and told her I was going to call and come by for some sewing lessons.

Jerry is from Southern Georgia, but raised her 45-year-old son in Crown Heights. She is always kind and lives across the street from me. Mrs. Edna lives next door to me and brings a lawn chair on the stoop when she sits out. Jerome and Donna live in a  homeless shelter about two miles away. They take a bus to my stoop everyday to spend time with their friends, from early in the morning until late at night. Yuna is originally from Guyana, and she moved to Brooklyn with her twin sister at age 18. Her twin has since died from cancer, and she and her boyfriend live in a building across the street from me. I have never seen her once without hearing the words I'm too blessed to be stressed come out of her mouth.

But the member of the stoop welcome committee most influential for me is a man from Tallahassee, Florida. He is the oldest of the group--he marched from Selma to Montgomery in the sixties, where he met his wife whom he had eleven children with. He has been homeless for about ten years. He often sleeps in the sheltered space beneath the stairs of Mrs. Edna's building. He works for the supers and landlords in the area, organizing their recycling and garbage, and repairing buildings as they need it. Most afternoons leave him covered in paint or black ash from welding and walking back towards the corner I live near to buy food from the deli on the corner or sit with the rest of the group.

He often calls out to passersby--"Hey, you dropped something!" only to laugh at his own old joke as they either fall for it or ignore him.

When he moved to Brooklyn from Florida, he was given the name Country. I met him through a series of you-dropped-something-esque jokes, after seeing him nearly everyday during my first month on the block. He never once asked me for money before I got to know him, and even then, he only asked that I pick up the makings for ham-and-cheese sandwiches when I went to the grocery store. Our friendship went like that for a long time--every two or three weeks, he pulled me aside and softly asked that I help him get something to eat, normally on a Tuesday before his payday on Thursday.

But one day I mentioned a news headline I had just seen--a woman had been mugged and robbed on Franklin Avenue. Franklin Avenue, the most gentrified strait of the whole area, is the last place I would have expected something like this to happen. The girl's face was badly bruised, and the entire incident was caught on a storefront's surveillance camera.

From the night I mentioned the mugging to him--something statistically common in Crown Heights, though never acceptable--Country began to meet me blocks away from my apartment when I came home from school or work. He began to walk me to my door, and watch me until I made it all the way inside. At first, I was annoyed--afraid he might have thought my kindness meant something that it didn't. But about a week after he started, he explained himself--After that girl on Franklin Avenue you told me about, I'm just trying to make sure you get in the door okay. 

I will say, when I read the headline myself, my old boss's question echoed in the back of my mind, the question she asked me when I told her I was moving to Brooklyn--Are you sure you want to do that? Living in my neighborhood suddenly seemed like a physical risk. But the detail that statistics and caution leave out of the picture is that of the cohesive community that comes together to support each member in whatever way they can.


This is a photo of Country and his fiancee, Jerry. Country was telling me that he was going to run me down if I took his picture, and Jerry was saying, Oh, no you're not, turn around for her and help her with her school project.

A creative tip jar or a not-so-subtle commentary?

Noticed this in a local donut shop yesterday. What do you think--gentrificationally motivated or nah?

on a more positive note--5 local businesses I both love and fully support

As I've thought about the content of this blog--the story I want to tell about Crown Heights--I decided  early on to diligently situate each detail I portray within the narrative of gentrification, a narrative that people often don't like to talk about. The conversation is kind of depressing--when I think about what my presence means for people, I can't help but mourn with them the loss of the familiar.

I grew up in a neighborhood in Birmingham that's situated around a small man-made lake. My mom grew up on the same lake, and my grandparents lived in the house a mile down the road from me until they passed away. My parents still live there, about half a mile from the barn that my mom and I both kept horses in as teenagers--she, in the 70's and I, only a few years ago. Since I moved to New York, half of the horse pastures have been sold for housing developments and another third has been turned into a parking lot. I turn into my neighborhood when I visit and drive through two huge construction sites instead of two green pastures. The housing development will be a neighborhood of townhouses, with hundreds of new people. The barn is now run by a man who's method of horse training is a few very small steps away from animal abuse--enough to cringe at and cry over, but not enough to report to authorities.

When I go home I ache for my familiar home--the one that I grew up with that stayed the same until about three years ago. I mourn the loss of what I knew, and I don't even have to see it everyday. So when I see a new bar pop up across the street from me or a coffee shop open under my first Crown Heights apartment building, I am simultaneously excited, for my own experience, and saddened, for the experience of hundreds of my neighbors.

There are three different kinds of Crown Heights businesses--the ungentrified, the gentrified and the ones that sit somewhere in between. The ones that sit somewhere in between are most interesting and my favorite. They are on neither side because they are open to patrons from both sides. They maintain their culture--be it Black American, West African, Brooklynite or Jamaican--but they invite the newcomers to take part in their community.

For this post, I want to highlight some of the businesses and institutions that are powerful community builders here--the places that are doing something great, but are also fostering multi-cultural relationships and community, in a way that's vital to maintaining healthy community in a changing neighborhood.

1. UrbanAsanas
A yoga studio on Nostrand Avenue owned by long-time Crown Heights resident, Jyll Hubbard. Jyll is open about her views on gentrification and her mixed disdain for the changes in the neighborhood--she hashtags things like "Support Black Business" on Instagram and is not afraid to celebrate peoples'  to Crown Heights--yet she welcomes all of her students with love and openness. An us-versus-them mentality does not trickle down to an interpersonal level, despite the blatant us-versus-them situation.

2. Meme's Healthy Nibbles
A cafe with open doors, Meme's stands as a mainstay meeting space for all types of people living in the neighborhood. Not only do they offer some of the freshest ingredients and food, Meme's is owned by Mery Gueye, a woman who formerly owned a frame shop in Flatbush before expanding into the food business. Regularly I see people here spending time in conversation with one another, rather than sitting silently on their laptops. The open space has become a place of community building and comfort, rather than another cafe-style workspace.

3. Martine's Dream
Officially a clothing store, Martines Dream is also a space of cultural celebration and exchange. Debbie, a Jamaica native, started the shop with the intent of following her passion for exploring the world and bringing the beautiful things she finds--jewelry, fabric and clothing from all of the world--back to her home in Brooklyn. In addition to her beautiful designs and textiles, Debbie hosts events open to the neighborhood. But even when not selling or hosting, her warmth and kindness extends to every person who stumbles into the store.

4. Georgia's Place
Georgia's Place is a home for formerly homeless people with mental disabilities on Prospect Place. I first found out about them through a resident and friend who brought tomatoes to me from their rooftop garden. Georgia's Place runs a CSA from their rooftop produce, as well as feeding the residents themselves. They have a building library open to residents and host classes throughout the week for skills like sewing and gardening. In addition to providing a CSA option for Crown Heights residents, they have volunteer opportunities for the garden and their other operations.

5. Trinity Grace Church, Crown Heights
One parish of John Tyson's Trinity Grace Church, TGC Crown Heights was spearheaded and is still run by Crown Heights residents familiar with and dedicated to the neighborhood. The people, members and leaders alike, openly pursuing a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural church body, seeing it as necessary for having a church successful in serving the community. Through hosting weekly groups in members' homes and film series to purposefully raise questions about race and class tension, they have fostered a church-wide dialogue about what it means to be a Christian in a community rife with disparity and discrimination.

the move

When I moved to Crown Heights, I had been living in a tiny, un-air-conditioned, miserable little closet in the Upper West Side. But, it was in the Upper West (re: Best/Blessed) Side. Right?

 When I told the woman I worked for at the time where I was moving--she gasped. She actually gasped. She said, Are you sure you want to do that? 

She had lived in Brooklyn before. (Before she got some sense and a higher paying job and moved to the Upper East Side, I mean.) She had lived in Park Slope, before it was Park Slope, and had gone for a run one night and had her headphones stolen right off her head, mid-stride. They had been nice headphones, and it wasn't even after sundown.

 So, she warned me. She asked me if I needed a raise, if it would help me afford a better place.

Are you sure you want to do this? she gasped.

I moved to Brooklyn. To Crown Heights, though initially more towards the side of the neighborhood that already looks a lot like Park Slope Park Slope. And the day I moved in, a couple in their sixties came up my stoop stairs off the street to help me hoist a couch into my apartment, laughing at the fact that two uncoordinated girls were trying to do it alone.

The warmth of the street community in Crown Heights is unlike anything I encountered living in Midtown or the Upper West Side, or in the homes of families I've nannied for in the Upper East Side and Lower Manhattan. By street community I mean the people you pass everyday: the same traffic director by the elementary school across the street, the same neighbor named Edna in a foldable lawn chair on her stoop next door to mine, the same sha-sha boutique owners rolling up their metal door covers and yawning a Good morning. I also mean the strangers you never see again: the ones that pick up the things you drop or hold open a subway door or help you hoist a couch up a flight of stairs.

As the couple that helped me with the couch waved and walk away they said, Welcome to the neighborhood! We'll see you soon.

I never have seen them again, but their phrase rings in my ears, even now, as I walk from place to place, passing familiar and unfamiliar faces.

 Welcome to the neighborhood, instead of, Welcome to the city.
We'll see you soon, instead of, Enjoy your stay, or, even worse, Good luck with everything.