You are currently browsing the stories about the Sunset Park neighborhood

The Night I Became Serious About Photography

by 06/24/2023
Neighborhood: Sunset Park

It was raining, and I was tired and drunk, well let’s say high, walking home at 3 AM from a party in Sunset Park when I saw a blown-out umbrella between two parked cars on 5th Avenue. I was about two blocks from my parents’ apartment on 40th Street. I was 23 years old and […]

Dust to Dust

by 03/15/2020
Neighborhood: Middle Village, Sunset Park

I blame Basquiat. He’s where my whole Trump grave fixation started, unlikely as that sounds. It was right after the holidays—January 2, 2018, to be exact (It’s nice of iPhones to keep track of photo dates isn’t it?)—that Carolyn and I first went to Green-Wood Cemetery. Generally we were there to explore: ostentatious tombs, towering […]

My View of Sunset Park

by 10/14/2018
Neighborhood: Papua New Guinea, Sunset Park

Fifth Avenue entrance to Sunset Park My five-year-old daughter Claudia loves to go up and down the hills of Sunset Park on her scooter. We put her little crash helmet on and push her up the park hills, but she loves to go down them herself, having become an expert braker and master of turns. […]

The Tape

by 04/26/2016
Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Chelsea, Jackson Heights, Manhattan, Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Sunset Park

-1- Once upon a time, there existed a New York City economy where a young person fresh out of college could, with a straight face, think in terms of “building a career.” Imagine such optimism. The notion of “career” seems so trite now, forty-plus years on, so immaterial, in this age of downsizing, outsourcing, off-shoring. […]

Of Landlords and Cousins

by 03/03/2013
Neighborhood: Sunset Park

Of Landlords and Cousins My landlord visits our brownstone apartment in Sunset Park, Brooklyn at least three times a week to “fix” something. He is a saxophone player from the city of Odessa on the Black Sea in the Ukraine—a city I have never visited but feel a connection to because my grandparents were born […]

Barred from Proselytizing in China, Mormons Try a Chinatown

by 04/08/2009
Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Sunset Park

Mormon Church in Sunset Park (Photo by Patty Lee) As people rush in and out of butcher shops and bakeries on Brooklyn’s Eighth Avenue, He Zhanglao tries to get their attention. He speaks in clear Mandarin, and listens carefully to their replies. But he’s tall and blond, and sticks out in this part of Sunset […]

Chemical Fire

by 12/01/2002
Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Sunset Park

The building, Morgan described, was a monolith of brick with a flat, black hole blasted out of the side. Standing at the edge of the entrance, he peered inside and swore that he saw someone moving. He shivered and stumbled to the curb, then quickly retraced his footsteps back up First Avenue, skirting the fringe […]