Near the end of the tour, we encountered an artist working on the beautiful murals which decorate the Coney Island USA building. She was decked out in an old paint-splattered Mermaid Parade t-shirt and dock shoes, busy putting the finishing touches on a vignette on the east side of the building. I learned that this was none other than Prof. Marie Roberts, the Coney Island artist in residence who has been largely responsible for last 10+ years of iconic Coney Island imagery.

Of course, I asked her for a portrait. She graciously obliged and smiled.

Born and raised in Coney Island, Marie’s family has had strong ties to the community for several generations and her art reflects this deep bond with the landscape. She says that her “father’s family was involved in Coney Island at the turn of the 20th century; my grandfather was acting battalion chief of the Coney Island District until his death in 1924. My Uncles Harry and Guy were at Dreamland the night of the fire. I have an uncle buried in the Gravesend Cemetery. My father claimed he never got out of the 6th grade because he was too busy watching the horses cross the finish line at the Gravesend track. My Uncle Lester was the talker for the Dreamland Circus Sideshow in the 1920’s.”

I also hear she has loads of legendary stories about growing up in a sideshow family, many of which surface as inspiration in her beautiful sideshow banner work. Be sure to check it out on the web here or in person at Surf Avenue and 12th Street!

Born during the depression and reign of Mussolini in Castelvetrano, Sicily; Jack immigrated with his brother Frank to America just after World War II and settled in Bushwick, Brooklyn working as a dishwasher in a Knickerbocker Avenue Italian eatery. A decade later, Jack and his brother Frank settled in Canarsie and opened a barber shop on Avenue L. Although Frank passed away in the mid-1990′s, the shop continues to carry both their names.

This little shop continues to thrive as Jack works alone in a much changed neighborhood. Where his customers were once mainly Italian and German Americans, he now has customers of Hispanic, Arab, Chinese, Filipino and Caribbean backgrounds, to name but a few, as well as the small but persistent local white population and those who moved away but come back for a cut and hot shave. Jack is a jovial and very chatty individual with a million and one stories – a true Brooklynite.

For even more photos, stroll on over to Jack and Frank’s Facebook page!

Check out some of my warm-up shots below from the South Slope, Gowanus, and DUMBO! And make sure to contribute your own to our Flickr pool!

One of my New Year’s resolutions for 2010 is to become a bolder photographer, especially when it comes to street portraiture. It’s not always easy to capture the unwitting (and sometimes unwilling!) on film, but fortunately there are zoom lenses until I get up enough nerve. Thanks to my fellow Love of Brooklynite Kruger for letting me borrow this crisp, vintage 135mm lens — it’s the perfect solution to shyness on the street!

On da Road (Brooklyn Style)

Brooklyn is an enigma. Situated on the westernmost location of Long Island, it forms the entrance to New York Harbor with Staten Island in the geological scheme. When it comes to human emotion, just the mere mention of the word Brooklyn is enough. We know you are not talking about Brooklyn, Ohio or Brooklyn Park, Minnesota but the Brooklyn located in Kings County, New York — the one made famous the world over through literature and media. The place whose greatest resource is the people who call it home.

Once one of six towns making up Kings County itself encompassed what is now the downtown area from Brooklyn Heights down to Red Hook and just into Sunset Park. The other towns were Flatlands, Flatbush, Bushwick, New Utrecht and Gravesend. Williamsburg was a growing village within the township of Bushwick that was granted its own charter and became a city. Within a decade before the Civil War, both Williamsburg and Bushwick were annexed by the city of Brooklyn. The other towns remained agricultural well into the 20th century, yet they were all incorporated to Brooklyn between 1894-1896.

In 1898, Brooklyn itself was annexed to the City of New York. All towns were Dutch except Gravesend, which was founded by a woman, Lady Deborah Moody, who left England in persecution of her beliefs, and came to Brooklyn via a radical Anabaptist sect from Massachusetts. The name Brooklyn itself means Broken Land in the Dutch language.

From the times of the Algonquins, whose place and tribe names still grace many community and place names here, to the European settlement and subsequent annexation into the greatest city in the world, we may live on Broken Land (Breuckelen) in what is arguably the finest collection of residential architecture in a single county in the United States. The past here may not have always been pleasant or fair, but yet in this small county we have not only created a world class image but the image of America itself or what it hopes to be some day. This is why I LOVE Brooklyn.

This past weekend, I cracked open a new book I got called Walking Brooklyn which is a compilation of 30 neighborhood tours throughout the far reaches of Brooklyn. The talented (and engaging) Adrienne Onofri really does a bang-up job taking you through 3 to 5-mile walks and dishing some great historical facts and super-local sites.

I rode my bike down to Bay Ridge, a neighborhood I loved living in and one which I thought I’d explored quite thoroughly, to try out my first tour from the book. It was fantastic. I learned so much.

The tour started at the 69th Street pier, where I found this quintessential Bay Ridge gentleman attacking his Saturday afternoon newspaper by the bay. His yachting cap was amazing.