The Heart of Brooklyn, the Heart of America
Its summertime in the city now. The air feels like a blanket, sticky heat sitting on your neck and shoulders. The people are out on their stoops or riding bikes cutting through the night air. I’m walking down the block to get a gyro at the halal place — even though I’m on a diet, a $5 dinner ain’t too bad.
Walking down Flatbush Avenue, I can tell how much my neighborhoods changed since I was a kid. Isn’t that what you say when you’re getting old?
What was originally an all Italian neighborhood brought in Caribbean-Americans from Jamaica & Barbados, and now there’s a mix of El Salvadorians, Guatemalans, Pakistani, and Indians. Every time I came home from college, I’d see a new sign or store in a different language.
Brooklyn has always been one of the biggest melting pots in America — go down another twenty blocks towards Coney Island and you’ll pass through Russian neighborhoods, signs in English and Cyrillic script. On the way there along Ocean Avenue, you’ll see Orthodox Jews making their way to temple. Turn a corner to find grills lined up along the sidewalk, the smell of jerk chicken wafting down Utica Avenue.
While I don’t see myself living in Brooklyn forever, I appreciate everything about it. How everyone arrives here trying to make a better life. My mother came up from a small town in Jamaica 30 years ago. She went on to become a CPA and work on Wall Street at two of the Big 4 accounting firms. It’s the American Dream —we won’t all make it, but at least we’ll have a chance. There’s no doubt it’s an uphill battle and we don’t start on the same level. But that’s the most beautiful thing. Even if every culture and person doesn’t accept you — somebody will.
At the halal spot, aptly named Gyro Palace, there’s life everywhere. Kids chasing each other, trying to scare their older brother working the cash register. An older man in the back rolling out dough for naan laughs to himself while an old iPod dock plays music from a different time and place. Two ladies sitting together drinking tea watch cars swim by in evening traffic.
I’m next in line: going with the classic, chicken on pita bread. As he dices up the meat and lays it on the stove I take a seat and look around. There’s wallpaper with arabic and fancy patterns wrapped around the walls, brown ceramic tiles lining the floor. A knock on the back door and there’s transporters bringing in shipments of food, gesturing to labels on cans of beans. Middle-schoolers sitting in the front playing Pokemon, older kids in the back FaceTiming girls. It’s funny — just a few years ago this was an empty bookstore, and now people call it home.
All of this had me thinking about what it means to be a Brooklynite, a New Yorker, and an American. I’m reading the biography of Benjamin Franklin, and it’s amazing — take away 200 years and he was describing a similar scene in Philadelphia. Immigrants come to America, and make something new mixed with the culture around them.
We’re growing closer than ever before as a species, and as communities that form society. Tech closes that gap every day. 20 years ago AIM was bold — instant communication with classmates or subnet chatrooms about ways to get free coins from vending machines. 10 years ago Twitter was crazy — did you think you’d ever be able to put Snoop Dogg on public blast for Reincarnated? Today we can see what our favorite celebrities are seeing right now through Snapchat & Facebook Live. I can connect with groups of people with specific interests on Reddit, and get instant feedback on my poor writing on Medium. And sure, there’s a lot of political insensitivity and garbage on the internet, but through all the noise we can create context for what we love.
In a world where ISIS lives to tear communities apart and build barriers across people, we should keep fighting for the opposite.
We don’t grow together with walls, or unite people through travel bans & registrations. If there’s one lesson history teaches us, our actions when we react to fear are the most dangerous.
But ok — back up. This isn’t an anti-Trump piece wrapped in hometown love, it’s a reminder for all of us. A reminder about what makes this melting pot called America great — we’re building something together. Maybe not me and you. But you and your neighbor. Your coworkers. Your Wednesday basketball group. Your friends at SoHo house. The NYC night-nurses Meetup. The Writers of East Bushwick coffee group. The Caribbean Domino Club. The yoga moms of L.E.S. The strangers you connect with on the subway, or around the world online. The differences amongst us are huge, but those similarities bring us home to each other. We can’t forget that.
And that echoes not just in the heart of Brooklyn, but in the heart of America.
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(And yes, the heart of the whole world too. But this title sounded trendier.)
About Me
I’m Alexander Green — a web developer & designer in Brooklyn, NY. I work at Count.It, where we do fitness challenges for companies. Check out my blog for my UX, design & photography work. Feel free to email me at adgreen93@gmail.com if you’d like to chat or get coffee!
