MUSIC IN THE SUBWAY

I moved to Brooklyn from Austin, Texas, where there are at least 150 live music venues not even including small coffee shops, cafe brunches, and live-music dancing at grocery stores on weekends. A lot of it is free with the meal (or the grocery shopping). I never saw anyone playing on the street. It just wasn't necessary.

New York isn't really a city with available music. There are famous clubs - Birdland, Cafe Wha?, Blue Note, Smoke - but they aren't cheap, not remotely. You have to buy your tickets in advance and

the shows are an hour long usually and then you are expected to leave to make room for the audience at the second show. There are a couple of accessible places in Brooklyn, but this blog is about subway music, which I consider the best New York City music venue.

I just finished reading Underground by Matthew Nichols about the five years he spent as a subway busker. Taken from diaries he kept, the book is a raw, passionate view of the life of an artist and an interior view of the mind of a musician. Anyone who's experienced the struggle of trying to make a living as a musician, painter, dancer, actor, writer, potter, can relate to Nichols' story. There's the passion for his art form which is what keeps him going amidst the frustrations of dealing with and competing with other musicians, the mood swings from elation to despair, the money shortage, and the hassles from the police (You aren't supposed to use an amp in the subway stations, but how else will anyone hear above the din of the trains and people?).

It's an amazing book because not only do you get a sense of Nichols' life, you get to see what the subway is like for the commuters, which is far different from the tourists who are only around for a week or so and miss a lot of the drama. Be prepared for strong emotion - particularly toward commuters who listen for a long time and don't put money in the hat - and strong language, which you're used to if you ride the trains, but might not be so common in other towns. And the book is not politically correct either.

The stations I most frequented in Manhattan were Canal Street and Union Square. There was an Asian man who used to play the ehru really well on the 4-5-6 platform (upstairs from the Q and N platform where I caught the train). Nichols lets you know he hates the sound of the ehru, but I like it for a couple of reasons. First, my acupuncturist used to play ehru music while I was zoning out, and second, a study of music and it's effects showed that ehru music is the most relaxing to the human body. Classical music is next - that's what Nichols plays on his guitar.

Union Square had a lot more variety. There's the main "stage" on the first level. Musicians have to be approved to play there and can use amps. I listened to Peruvian flutists there for an hour once. I also danced salsa in that station last Christmas to the music of some Spanish musicians. They clapped for us. I've heard country western, jazz and, somebody please explain why, a woman playing the saw. Perhaps if there was some accompaniment, some rhythm or even someone playing the kazoo. But a saw? It's like a weird smell.

Other musicians are on the lower (train) levels. They don't have to be approved, but they aren't allowed to amplify the music. There were people playing drums sometimes. They used overturned plastic tubs and if you tip them up a little they amplify quite a lot. These drummers were always great. There were folk guitarist/singers, steel drum player, and occasionally, doowop singers. I also found sax players at the Broadway-Lafayette Station on the B-train track in Manhattan and at the Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn.

Nichols writes about the musicians who played on the trains. This is against the law. You can't even play a radio on the trains. But it happens and as Nichols writes, some of the players knew one song and played that song badly. It was pathetic and annoying. Sometimes on the weekends, you'd get a 3-piece mariachi band on the train - usually good. And sometimes there were male pole dancers with  boomboxes. Crank up the music and they were tumbling down the aisles and swinging around the poles. Obviously, this was not at rush hour.

I was once invited to a private concert that would be performed by a very A-List musician. There was a sort of gathering before the concert and when I entered that, I recognized the room was filled with musicians. I can't say how I could tell, but it's something there in the body language, the appearance, something. These were the working studio musicians, the influencers in their field. The musicians who were invited to play, not begging to play. No more hat in hand for them. How they made it and not someone else is the book waiting to be written. Was that body language and appearance there before or after they became successful?

Matthew Nichols website here:  http://www.matthewnichols.com/

You can find Underground online, and Nichols has a YouTube video interview here:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=matthew+nichols%2C+underground&t=ffab&ia=videos&iai=gRZlec1ZNNo

RACE RELATIONS ON THE Q TRAIN

This is a true story that happened on a Saturday afternoon when I was taking the Q-train from Chinatown into Brooklyn  The seats on this particular train were 2-seaters at a 90-degree angle to the wall, then a 3-seat bench against the wall, another 2-seater, etc. 

I entered the car and took a seat at the end of a 3-seat bench and there were two white women in their 50s in the two-seater next to me.  For the sake of clarity, I name them Tara and Colleen   They look annoyed, especially Colleen.  Behind them in the same 2-seater were two black girls about 5 and 6 years old.  I name them Lily and Jasmine.  On the bench-seat next to those little girls was a very large black woman. I name her Sherry.

As I sat down, Sherry was making loud moaning sounds, “Ooooh.  Oooooh.  Ooooh.”

I’d lived in New York a while by this time and seen people dancing on the subway, groping themselves on the subway, sleeping (a lot) on the subway and puking on the subway.  I once approached an MTA worker in uniform who was standing in the train car, and told him I thought the man I’d been sitting next to might be dead.  He said, “I can’t get involved in that.  I’ll be late to work.”  I had been threatened with being punched by a man who wanted to read his newspaper, and therefore I should not take the only seat next to him.  I had literally been pushed off a seat by a deranged man talking to himself through his fingers who wanted to sit alone.  We all let him do that.  I’d sat next to a large man wearing a yarmulke and reading a Hebrew text who tried to push me off the seat with his hips and I almost fell, but I am not to be bullied and turned to sit with my back against him.  I’d been on trains that smelled massively of body odor.  I was used to being ignored by the people in the booths at train stations while they chatted with each other.  The subway has its own drama and you get used to it.

And so at first I paid no particular attention, but as I listened to Sherry moaning, I saw that Lily and Jasmine were looking confused and a little frightened.  I heard Colleen throw a remark over her shoulder, “You should teach them to behave,” which set Sherry to moaning even louder and rocking on the seat

Sherry said, “It’s not a racial thing.  It’s not about race.”  She looked at a man across the aisle and said, “It’s not about race is it?”  He shakes his head, no.  What else can he do?

I asked Colleen quietly, “What’s going on?”

Colleen told me that she and Tara were already in their seats when the little girls got on the train with their mother and took the seat behind Tara and Colleen.  The girls kneeled on the seat facing toward Tara and Colleen.  As the train was lurching at the next stop the girls’ arms banged over the seat into Colleen and Tara.  Colleen turned and told them to sit down and that got Sherry involved defending them.

Colleen had not been speaking quietly, because I’m pretty sure she wanted to continue to make her point to Sherry and everyone else that she had the right to a peaceful ride on the subway without being knocked, however gently, by another person’s children. 

Colleen said loudly, “I don’t suffer from white guilt and I’m not going to put up with rudeness.”

I understood now, why Sherry has been declaring that it’s not a race thing.

Sherry has heard Colleen talking to me, and she spoke up to say plaintively, “I’m just taking my nieces to Coney Island.”  Then, “Oooh, oooh.  It’s not a black white thing.”

My stop was next and I got up and went to the door.

Colleen said in a loud voice over her shoulder to Sherry, “See she is leaving because you are making a scene.”

Aw man. 

I looked at Sherry, a severely overweight woman who was just wrung out.  She was making a special trip with her nieces to the beach to show them a nice time and it’s gotten messed up.  This wasn’t just for today though.  This was at the end of a long line of Sherry trying to find out what the right thing is and doing it.  And now she’s failed again.  And will someone please tell her how to get it right.  Live right, do right so everybody around her is happy.  She was not even angry.  She was really sad.  And she just wanted this day to go well.  Just something to go right.  Some way to express the love and tenderness she felt for her nieces behind all her fears and stress.  . 

I looked at Colleen also overweight, but not so much.  Her intention wasn’t to trigger all this pain.  She has her own.  Just like Sherry, she’s wanted things that she didn’t know how to accomplish and now she’s lost her value in this culture – her youth.  Whatever little power she ever had in this world is slipping away and she is becoming invisible.  No one marches for her.  No one protests for her.  No one declares in the news that she is important and that her life matters.  She just wanted to ride the subway in peace and not have all her needs and sense of loss stirred up.

I said to Colleen, “Do not speak for me.”  And I left the train.

That’s the end of the scenario.  But still I think, that if they really looked at each other they would either have started laughing or crying and all that tension would dissipate.  They’d be right there on the subway in a little community of humanity until one of them had to get off at a stop. 

Be kind.  And don’t take someone else’s projection onto you so seriously.  Be kind.  Be helpful.  Be generous with your spirit.  Laugh and cry.

THE PEOPLE YOU MEET - JIMMY THE FISH

One of the greatest aspects of living in Brooklyn is that you get to meet a lot of native New Yorkers.  People for whom the City and all its noise, grime, frustration, danger, shabbiness, competition, union labor, cooperation, inventiveness, history, excitement, entertainment, and four complete seasons are just regular stuff that has been absorbed into their psyches to create their intriguing perspective.  Rich or poverty-stricken, educated or illiterate, old, young, and any ethnicity - no matter what – I find native New Yorkers to be interesting because they exude the City.  

I met Jimmy the Fish - not his real name, but similar  – one day on the boardwalk in Coney Island.  He was bald, muscular, Sicilian, and had a thick Brooklyn accent.  Jimmy was born, raised, and still resided in Bensonhurst which was mainly an Italian neighborhood in South Brooklyn, although transitioning, as it was being populated by Chinese and Russian immigrants.

Jimmy the Fish explained his 3-word name, telling me that when he was in high school, he and his friends aspired to get connected to a certain Italian-run organization.  Their dads weren’t capos or soldiers, so to get attention from the members of that organization, they created a nicknames for themselves.  Eddy the Fixer, Johnny Bats (not the animal, the weapon), Bobby the Shadow.  I’m not sure how connected Jimmy ever became. He didn’t wear a fedora or carry a violin case, but he told me that he made his income by loaning money a few weeks at a time and lived off the vig.

He shared a duplex with his mother which was not unusual for a native New Yorker, especially Italian, who was divorced.  Jimmy actually had lived in the same duplex when he was married.  Many people in Brooklyn married and lived in the same neighborhood or multi-family home with their parents.  Family ties were tight even if they fought all the time. 

I asked Jimmy if he would show me Bensonhurst and he agreed to do it.

On our first adventure, he took me to the Santa Rosalia Festival, an annual week-long festival that ends on Labor Day.  This is a celebration of Saint Rosalia who, for the love of God, went to live in a cave in Sicily and died there. During a time of plague, she appeared to a man in a vision and told him to fetch her bones from the cave, which he did.  He carried her bones around the town twice and the plague was cured and she was made a saint dear to the hearts of Sicilians. 

This festival, now dying out on account of parking and other problems, was a bit of a disappointment.  Mainly it was just about food – sausage and pepper sandwiches, funnel cakes – things you could pretty much get any time of the week at an Italian deli or donut shop.  I think there might have been ring toss and that game where you try to ring a bell by slamming a hammer on a circle.  But there were no men carrying a 2,000-pound statue down the street like they do for the Giglio Festival in Williamsburg that I wrote about earlier on the blog.  There were no stalls where I could buy bootleg mixes of old-time Italian crooners singing love ballads.  Jimmy and I didn’t stay long there because it was a hot, muggy August night, but long enough for Jimmy to ogle the teenage girls and tell me that he longed to be younger.

Next time, we went out to a diner.  I ate dinner.  He didn’t order anything for himself. .Jimmy told me this was a gathering spot, a hang out for him and his friends when he was in high school.  I’d heard about King’s Highway in Flatbush as a place where kids used to walk up and down on weekend nights.  I asked him if he ever went over there.  He said, “That wasn’t my neighborhood.”  Like it was a foreign country or something.  

That night, he taught me the Italian slang word. goumada which is what an Italian married man calls his girlfriend.  I’ve since looked it up.  Goumada derives from mumbling the Italian word comare which literally translates as godmother.  I guess it’s a joke, as in, “I’m going to see my godmother.”  I hope it’s a joke.

After the diner, we toured Bensonhurst in his car, driving past New Utrecht High School which he attended and which was the high school shown at the beginning of the Welcome Back Kotter series that brought John Travolta fame.   You can look at yearbooks of the high school online as far back as 1929 when Dr. Harry Potter was principal – maybe you'll see a

picture of Jimmy: 

http://www.classmates.com/places/school/New-Utrecht-High-School/586   

You can buy a yearbook, too.

After seeing the school, we drove under the elevated D-train tracks that run along New Utrecht Avenue.  He told me this was where they filmed the chase scene in The French Connection.  We turned onto 86^th Avenue where there were a lot of small specialty stores selling cheese, meat, and other foods designating an Italian neighborhood.  These stores are being replaced by chain stores that I won’t name.

Bensonhurst is not a high-rise kind of place.  Commercial buildings are generally no more than 3 or 4 stories tall.  There are plenty of residential streets with nothing but 2-story red brick duplexes or 2-story limestone row houses with the bay windows, or streets hosting detached houses with wood or aluminum siding – again 2 stories high.  Almost feeling suburban.

Reciprocally, a week later, I invited Jimmy to lunch at my apartment and made us a pot of tea.  I told him I pretty much only drank hot tea and water and asked if he wanted ice.  He did. 

When we went out for dinner one last time, when he arrived, Jimmy presented me with a crate of boxed teas.  All sorts of tea.  I asked him where it came from.  He laughed and said, “It fell off a truck.”  Who am I to judge God’s plan?  I accepted it.

We went to dinner at a restaurant in Sheepshead Bay, a nice little neighborhood of curvy streets and quaint little stores on the waterfront where you can pay boats to take you deep-sea fishing. Again, Jimmy didn’t order anything for himself.  It’s not all that comfortable to eat with someone who isn’t joining you, but then, he was so busy looking at the pretty women who walked by. 

I didn't see him again after that night and I hope Jimmy has found a nice Italian girlfriend over 18.  (PS Jimmy had just turned 40)

Post by Alana Cash

GOWANUS CANAL

"...when you get up in the morning, the sweet aroma of the old Golwanus Canal gets into your nostrils, into your mouth, into your lungs, into everything you do, or think or say!  It is...one gigantic Stink, a symphonic Smell...a vast organ-note of stupefying odor cunningly contribed, compacted, and composted of eighty-seven separate putrefactions..."  

 Thomas Wolfe, "No Door"

Having read that Thomas Wolfe description years ago, I wanted to visit the Gowanus Canal and smell it for myself.  I was a bit disappointed.  I tried to smell it.  I didn't smell it.  Of course, it could have been an unusual day for the canal.  And, I heard they plugged the hold in the sewer pipe that was leaking raw sewage into the cnal (does it flow directly to the harbor now?) and that may have explained the lack of olfactory sensation.

But still, I love a canal.  When I was a kid, I used to spend summer vacations at my grandparents home in Glasgow.  They lived on a hill and down below about half a mile was a canal.  Barges carried goods to and from the ships on the Clyde River.  In the afternoons, the canal glowed like a golden ribbon in the sunlight -- on days when it wasn't raining, of course, but who remembers those days at your grandparents' home.

The Gowanus Canal may not glow golden in the sunlight, but it has those oil patches that glow rainbow colors.

It also has five little bridges that cross it at different points in Brooklyn.  Four of them are bascule bridges

(they lift up) and the one at Carroll Street is a retractable bridge.  I don't know why I find those bridges fascinating and kind of beautiful.  Maybe because traffic has to stop and that makes the City feel a little smaller and kind of quaint.

There are little boats parked along the bank of the canal along with quite a few barges.  That is sort of like the Seine in Paris, but with a lot of junk added.

The best place to see the Gowanus Canal, if you don't want to get too close, is at Smith & 9th Street - for several reasons.  First of all, you can take the "F" train which will give you a really nice view of a lot of Brooklyn as you travel, and it will take you directly to the Smith & 9th station which is the highest subway station in the world.  From the platform, you'll get a low-flying birdseye view of the canal north and south.  And, there's a little bascule bridge at 9th Street where it crosses the canal.  I'm not sure how often that happens.  I only saw it once.

Construction of the canal was begun in 1849 with the purpose of expanding industry in Brooklyn.  Basically, the Gowanus Creek was widened and deepened to allow boats and barges to transport goods in and out of the manufacturing companies that began operating along the bank.  Manufacturing included lead paint, ink,

manufactured gas made from coal, and different types of refineries, including sugar.  For over 150 years, they've dumped - purposefully or accidentally - their leavings and residue into the canal.  Along with mercury, lead, dead bodies in suitcases, and other pollutants, there is now gonorrhea in the canal water.  I can imagine someone saying,  "Let me explain.  I fell into the Gowanus Canal."

On a map, you can find a neighborhood called Gowanus in the region of canal.  I have never heard anyone speak of that neighborhood or claim to live in it.  The Old Stone House (of baseball fame that I wrote about before) and so I was in Gowanus and didn't even know.  I sent no postcards.  That neighborhood is actually where the Dutch first settled in Brooklyn.  There is also a Gowanus Bay at the mouth of the canal in Red Hook.

Gowanus - it's an interesting word.

Post by Alana Cash

THE VIEW FROM MANHATTAN BRIDGE

The subway trains I took into Manhattan  - B & Q -   ran underground from Prospect Park (my station) the rest of the way through Brooklyn until they emerged at the Manhattan Bridge.  The designer of this bridge, Leon Moisseiff, wanted to build a bridge faster and cheaper than the Brooklyn Bridge.  He did, and you can tell.  The Brooklyn Bridge is a cathedral. The Manhattan Bridge is an engineering wonder, but not so pretty.  

Still it’s my favorite bridge in New York.

Why?

Because when the train emerged from the tunnel onto the Manhattan Bridge, it was breathtaking.  Always.  Night or day, I looked out the window, standing up at the subway door if there was room

First and foremost, to the south, right next to the Manhattan Bridge is the Brooklyn Bridge and visible further in the distance is Lady Liberty.  At night they are both lit up.

And then, there’s the water – acres and acres of water of the New York Harbor.  And water traffic – tankers, the Staten Island Ferry, the Circle Line, the Water Taxi, tugboats, sailboats, cruise ships.  In the air were helicopters and planes.  There were cars and trucks on the bridges and I could see the traffic on FDR Drive running along the East River

Straight ahead and to the north was the skyline of Manhattan.  Turning clockwise, I could see Manhattan, Roosevelt Island, Queens, Brooklyn, Governors Island, Staten Island, Ellis Island, and Liberty Island. 

As the train reached the other side side of the Manhattan Bridge – entering Chinatown – it passed through a channel of old brick buildings, the kind with fire escapes and wooden sash windows.  The kind of buildings that used to have laundry lines strung between them.  Some now had graffiti on them, others had little billboards advertising electronics, clothing, or public storage.  They all had stories, historic tales of people of all nationalities living there.

On the return from Manhattan, the trains passed through Dumbo (Down Under Manhattan Bridge), a neighborhood of converted warehouses and old freight offices, some on narrow cobble-stone streets.  

People barely making a living used to work here.  Now, millionaires lived here.  Some of the buildings are centuries old – small red brick two-story warehouses with arched doors for horse-drawn wagons.  Others are newer, taller, lighter, maybe only a hundred years old.  Still, full of history and now converted into lofts.

This is the view from Manhattan Bridge.  

At least if you’re looking.

Post by Alana Cash

HIGH ON THE SUBWAY TRAIN

A tourist rides the subway.  A New York resident takes the train.  If you live in New York you learn that the subway system runs underground in Manhattan, but predominantly above-ground in the boroughs.  

The trains are lettered A-B-C-D-F-G-L-J-M-N-Q-R-S-W and numbered 1-2-3-4-5-6-7.with no particular rhyme or reason, and MTA occasionally changes out the routes and letters – particularly the M and J trains.  There’s usually a subway map in every station so it’s difficult to get lost  Not so difficult to get confused..

The most famous train – the A train – runs from Rockaway Beach in Brooklyn to Harlem.  Billy Strayhorn wrote Take the A Train in the time it took for him to ride from Brooklyn to Duke Ellington’s home in Harlem (Ellington added his name to the composition). You take the A train to get to Kennedy Airport and Aqueduct Racetrack. 

The F train, the one you can see in the opening of a 1970’s sitcom called Welcome Back Kotter,  runs from Queens through Manhattan then crosses under the East River to run above-ground in Brooklyn to Coney Island.  It’s a great way to see Brooklyn by train, because the F train has the highest trestle of any train in the NYC Transit system.  From that vantage you can see the rusty jungle of Brooklyn with its dozens of church spires and the infamous Gawanus Canal. 

My favorite train is/was the B train which is an express train (meaning it doesn’t stop at every stop along its route) and it only runs Monday thru Friday.  Its route is from Brighton Beach in Brooklyn to the Upper West Side in Manhattan.  Usually the cars are older – instead of the yellow bucket seats facing forward/backward like the newer train cars, the cars of the B train have benches along the walls, leaving a lot more standing room in the middle.

For a while I used to meet friends in Manhattan for dinner on Thursdays.  I’d leave Brooklyn around 3 o’clock in the afternoon so I could get any errands and shopping done in Chinatown before dinner.  I always caught B train.

A few times I was on the B train at that hour on Thursday, a middle-aged, somewhat beefy, nicely-dressed couple boarded the train at the 7^th Avenue stop.  And they were high.  Very high.  So high that it took them until the next stop to get themselves from the train door to a bench where they stood weaving until reaching a further stop where they finally sat down with a bit of a thump.  Which I’m sure they didn’t feel.

One day I was fascinated as the woman began a slow-motion search of her purse.  Eventually, she pulled out a lipstick case.  It took a long while for her to open it and wind out the lipstick part with her eyes almost closed the entire time.  Then she brought the lipstick to her open mouth, missed her upper lip entirely, so that the lipstick came to rest on her tongue where it lay until I got off the train in Manhattan.

I was filled with the question:  Where in the world were they going in that state?   

I have to admit, I tried to find them every Thursday afternoon, but it was hit and miss.  They may have skipped some Thursdays, taken an earlier or later train, or gotten into a different car than I was riding.  Too bad.

Post by Alana Cash

NATHAN'S HOTDOGS - CONEY ISLAND

Congratulations to Joey “Jaws” Chestnut who proposed marriage to his girlfriend and then won his 8^th Mustard Belt title by eating 61 hotdogs in 10 minutes at the Nathan’s Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Championship. 

Nathan’s is a landmark on the southwest corner of Stillwell and Surf Avenues, a block from the beach, and right across the street from the Coney Island subway terminal [You can get to Coney Island on the B, D, F, Q, or R train]. The terminal is a little Coney Island museum -- the hallway is lined with giant photographs and artifacts of the history of the various amusement parks of Coney Island.  The train station was rebuilt in 2004-2005 and is probably the cleanest and nicest subway station in Brooklyn.

Nathan’s used to be just down the block from the carnival rides at Coney Island – the bumper cars, Tilt-a-Whirl – a whole feast of fun.  But New York realtors tore all that down to build condos on the beach.  Before they could get a permit for building, the local populace fought the development and stalled it.  So what used to be a fun-land is now an empty lot.

But Nathan’s is rarely empty.  In the summer the fold-back doors are opened to lines of people that stretch around the block.  They serve more than a variety of hot dogs – they serve a variety of smothered French fries as well as fried clams, chicken tenders, Philly cheesesteaks.  That sort of thing.

Nathan’s started out as a mom and pop hotdog cart in 1916 owned and operated by Nathan and Ida Handwerker.  Nathan worked as for restaurateur Charles Feltman [buried in Green-Wood Cemetery btw] who is credited with inventing the hot dog. When Nathan had fully  learned how to make hot dogs, he and Ida created their own recipe and went into business. They cut the price to a nickel.
 Feltman had charged a dime.

Nathan's was kept in the family for decades, but finally they sold out to a corporation, and sadly they’ve franchised, which tells you the food isn’t that good.

In the winter, the folding doors are kept closed and there are a handful of tables and chairs and few people. About mid-morning, you can usually find a few members of the Polar Bear Club drinking coffee before and after taking a dip in the frosty Atlantic Ocean.  

Post by Alana Cash

THE NEIGHBORHOOD CHURCH - 350 years old

After getting somewhat settled -- unpacking all the boxes -- I decided to explore my new neighborhood.  I walked around to Flatbush Avenue, the only street I had ever associated with Brookyn.  It was the first behind the house (across the subway ditch) and down a block.

I walked down Flatbush Avenue the length of two subway stops (about 3/4 of a mile from

the house to Church Avenue where I saw a banner advertising the anniversary of the Dutch Reform Church which was established in 1654.  I learned that this church was built by order of Peter Stuyvesant, first Director General of "New Amsterdam."  He even gave the dimensions for the church -- 60 feet by 28 feet. It was originally built of wood and rebuilt a few years later out of stone. 

The Dutch Reform Church on Flatbush Ave. is not the oldest church ever built in Brooklyn.  That honor goes to another Dutch Reform Church that has since been razed.  The building that houses Macy's in downtown Brooklyn was built over that church site and cemetery.

Original Dutch Reform Church in Flatbush Village

There was a graveyard in back of the Dutch Reform Church on Flatbush Ave.  It was surrounded by a chain-link fence, but since it was Sunday, the gate was unlocked and I went inside and wandered around.  The gravestones were very weathered from age, general pollution, and acid rain.  

The oldest grave that I could find belonged to Adam Peterse Brouwen who died in 1693.  Doing some research later, I found out that Brouwen had originally worked for the Dutch West India Company, as did many of the first immigrants to Brooklyn, and he built the first flour mill in North America called the "Old Gowanus Mill."  

Gravestone in Dutch Reform Church Cemetery

Another grave in the cemetery belonged to Hendrick Lefferts who gave his name to Lefferts Gardens, the section of Brooklyn I had traveled through to get to the church.  The old Lefferts house is still standing in Prospect Park and is an example of an old Dutch farmhouse. [They host tours and events there.]  

I never attended a service at the Dutch Reform Church, although I did attend services at the the Society of Friends (Quaker Church) in downtown Brooklyn. Their building was much more modern -- built in 1851.

Brooklyn is called the borough of churches because it has more churches than any other borough of New York City.  The "F" train (the one used in the opening of "Welcome Back Kotter") has the highest tressle of any of the subway trains and gives a great view of Brooklyn.  Looking out the train window you can see dozens of church spires.

Post by Alana Cash