Discovering Brooklyn, one footstep at a time
William Helmreich’s book paints portrait of evolving New York City borough
BROOKLYN, N.Y.— William Helmreich is not a man who likes to waste time.
Upon meeting him outside a Polish diner on a sweltering day in Greenpoint, we beeline for his car in order to traverse the neighbourhood with the relief of air conditioning. There had been thoughts of walking around on foot, but the exceedingly high temperature demands a different approach.
Helmreich is well known for his pedestrian crusades around New York City. He already won notoriety for his book The New York Nobody Knows, in which he recounts his experience of traversing all 9,600 kilometres of the city by foot.
In his latest endeavour, The Brooklyn Nobody Knows: An Urban Walking Guide, the sociology professor attempts a more in-depth, anecdotal travel guide to the most-hyped borough of them all. The book came out on Tuesday. He also decided he needed to walk all of Brooklyn again. Why? The answer, apparently, is simple. “The city is always changing.” His statement is emphasized as we drive through Greenpoint, passing 19th-century brownstones and bakeries with signs in Polish, onto streets with boxy, new condos, cafés and tattoo parlours.
“Gentrification proceeds in a parallel fashion. In fits and starts,” Helmreich says, referencing Greenpoint’s mishmash of old and new development.
We stop at the waterfront of Newtown Creek at the northern tip of Greenpoint, where kayakers can now traverse a waterway once far too polluted, accessed solely by industrial barges and the like. Was this neighbourhood ever dangerous?
“In the ’80s, everything was dicey. You’d get killed no matter where you walked,” Helmreich says. Now, however, he says the city has gone “from 2,290 murders in 1992 to less than 300 a year. That’s a tremendous evolution in a city.”
Evolution plays a large role here in Brooklyn. “Brooklyn is changing,” is a sentiment you often hear in day-today conversations with residents.
With its proximity to Manhattan, parts of the borough have become a developer haven for the upwardly mobile, sometimes forcing out longstanding, lower-income residents.
But Brooklyn, as Helmreich reminds us in his book, is made up of much more than just the cocktail bars and boutique lofts of Williamsburg.
Much of Brooklyn is about as diverse as it gets. And walking, Helmreich says, is the best way to understand such a complex place. So many ethnic and religious groups, immigrants and long-standing residents hold stake here and due to the proximity, they interact — and don’t — in interesting ways.
Helmreich’s anecdotal style of writing really works for this reason. As each chapter unfolds, focusing on a particular neighbourhood, we meet the people who live there and learn a little about the black communities of Bedford-Stuyvesant or the tradition of pigeon-breeding in Bushwick.
Admittedly, Helmreich is an affable guy. In his 70s, he’s chatty and has an audible New York lilt. He says people don’t usually see him as an outsider, even though he’s not from the neighbourhood — because he’s walking.
“I’m not bicycling, I’m not driving, I’m walking. Do you know that in 6,000 miles of walking, plus another 800 in Brooklyn last year, nobody ever refused to talk to me. You know why? People wanna talk,” he says.
“The New York style is to be open and as open as you are, that’s how open they will be.”
Towards the end of our drive, we pull over near an overpass and check out a place Helmreich has included in his book — Lentil Garden, a small plot of tended green that hugs the side of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
“In a city,” says Helmrecih, “every use is made of all available space.”
We say hello to Avital Katz through the garden’s gate. An NYU student studying environmental conservation, she tells us this is a pollinator garden she tends to three days a week.
With the cars roaring overhead, we mention how it’s in a pretty discreet location.
She says people have thrown all kinds of things over the overpass and into the garden — including half a pistol once — not knowing what was right below.
Perhaps that will change soon. Grace Lisa Scott is a Brooklyn writer.