You are currently browsing the stories about the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood
To The Basketball Playing Men and Women of Letters
by Thomas Beller 03/14/2012Neighborhood: All Over, Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights, Caroll Gardens, Carroll Gardens, Manhattan, Upper West Side, West Village
I recently read a fanciful article in which a literary East/West all-star basketball game is imagined and scouted. Dave Eggers and Stephen Elliott are the starting back court for the West. Ben Marcus is cast as the starting center for the East not on the grounds of basketball skill but because, according to the writer, […]
King of Handball
by Raanan Geberer 01/24/2012Neighborhood: Brooklyn Heights
By any standards, Mark Margolies, who is now in his late sixties, lived an uneventful life. He was modest and soft-spoken. Even after he graduated from Brooklyn College, he lived with his parents until he was 30, mainly staying in his room, working only sporadically, and reading philosophy books. Then, on a weekend hiking trip, […]
Primary Day
by Sam Roseme 09/13/2011Neighborhood: Brooklyn Heights, Lower East Side, World Trade Center
I stumbled bleary-eyed out of my building still hours before the sun would rise over the East River. Allen Street was black and still. The bars were closed and the morning rush hadn’t yet begun. The homeless slept soundly in the street-median park. Waiting in her car in front of my building was Maggie, 40ish […]
My Mother’s Garden
by Dorothy Spears 05/08/2009Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights
The author’s childhood home in Greenwich. (Photo by Alexis Rockman) Even after we all were married, with children of our own, my siblings and I would celebrate Mother’s Day in Greenwich. If the weather was good, we ate sandwiches with our mother and father on the porch, watching our children run together, and split apart, […]
Floating on Air at the St. George Hotel
by Rachel Cline 01/27/2008Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights
The visible landscape of Brooklyn Heights is much the same as it was in my childhood, which is a large part of why I moved back to the neighborhood after almost twenty years. Every so often, someone stops me on Clark Street to ask directions to the subway station. It always takes me a second […]
Racing to Teach in Brooklyn
by Emily Horowitz 03/10/2006Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights
I teach race and ethnic relations at a college to a genuinely diverse (racially, ethnically, economically) student body in Brooklyn. I am particularly fortunate because the students I teach are more than comfortable about speaking out and sharing their own experiences. I enjoy seeing the dynamics between the different groups in the class; they self-divide […]
Cleanup in Aisle Five
by Chris Sullivan 08/05/2005Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights
I wanted to buy a book the other night. I had read an old review of “The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break” and wanted to pick up a copy. So on my way home, I decided to stop at the Court Street Barnes & Noble. Things were fine when I got off the subway. I […]
The Joys of Picking Trash
by Aaron Wolfe 01/24/2005Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights
I imagine that grass-roots recycling for reuse and income must happen in every big city, but I’d never been aware of it at the constant and hyper-efficient level I’ve seen here in New York. In the university town where I used to live, students would discard their unwanted couches, lamps, microwaves and short-lived artifacts of […]
The Hubris of Youth
by Joe Rein 07/22/2003Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights
When I was about fifteen, I was really full of myself and thought I could dive. So, I invited this girl to go to the St. George Pool in Brooklyn, which then was the Mecca for all the Olympic divers and swimmers. I was going to impress the hell out her when she saw what […]
Saying Goodbye to Myself
by Eugenia Klopsis 05/07/2003Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights
I met her on the Brooklyn Heights promenade the day I turned thirty. “Pardon me, but would’ja help me up?” she said, holding out a gloved hand. The stains on the polyester were yellow, the rest of the glove so white it was vein-blue, the color of cheap wedding dresses. I rose from the bench […]
The Man Who Ran Me Over with His Car is Dying
by Elizabeth Grove 02/18/2003Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights
In 1971 the man who ran me over with his car moved to Brooklyn Heights. My family had moved there earlier–in 1966–and so I spent my first birthday and the subsequent seventeen ones on Grace Court. My father, Brooklyn born and raised, had decided, not unreasonably, that a one-bedroom on West 10th Street was cramped […]
My Mortal Enemy
by Jim Merlis 07/27/2002Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights
Illustrations by Elisha Cooper We all need a mortal enemy the way that we need true love. True love is love that will sweep us off our feet. We’ll live our life happily ever after if we find it: we won’t need to pay bills, we won’t have a cold or any illness, we’ll never […]