The summer is fading, and Brooklyn has some concerns
August, die she must/ The autumn winds blow chilly and cold.
—Paul Simon
Though chilly autumn winds are nowhere to be found right now, New Yorkers know that August is on her way out and fall is around the corner. So The Ink went to several Brooklyn neighborhoods to ask people what concerns them as autumn approaches, what they worry about as the summer wanes? Here’s some of what they told us:
Rising Rents
Duayne Gordon of Williamsburg appreciates the trendy and comfortable lifestyle that the neighborhood has to offer, even if he spends most of his time on the Lower East Side where he works at a local bar. The only thing that really worries Gordon about the approaching fall is rising rents. “Rent doesn’t go down!,” he said. “It just doesn’t go down!”
— Ashley Chappo
The Annual Fashion Crisis
In Downtown Brooklyn, colorfully dressed Kristina Pinto, 26, who is from Jamaica, loves summer and hates winter. “Fall only reminds me that winter is near,” she said. “My concern is that you have to buy clothes for winter. For guys it’s easy because they can always buy two pair of pants and two shirts and wear them for the winter. But for us, it’s always a fashion crisis.”
— Scott Selmer
Leaving the City
Camilo Gallardo, originally from Florida, worked in Williamsburg the past five years at Glasslands, a music and art venue. But in January Glasslands closed and Gallardo is planning to move back to Florida to reconnect with his family. He enjoyed his time in New York, but is worried about packing his bags and leaving the place he loved. “It’s tough living in New York, you know?” he said. “Tiny apartments, high rent.”
— Chris Cirillo
Letting Go
Lauren Muto is a barista at Café Pedlar, a popular coffee shop in Cobble Hill. She says that she could not let go of a loved one. “I haven’t developed the integrity to let someone go,” she says. “At 24, I should be old enough to have an intellectual honesty with myself. That’s what worries me in the fall.”
— Grete Suarez
The Next Inspiration
In Red Hook, Amelia Robinson, 32, is a piano player. She writes her own songs and makes music, she says, for people of all ages. But like a lot of artists, she is worried about “what the next step is,” she said. “Where my next creative inspiration will come from.”
— Saher Khan
A Little Romance?
Fransisco Antony, who lives above a shop on 18th Ave in Bensonhurt, is an optimist. “I’m not worried about much of anything,” he said. “I’m just trying to enjoy the moment.” But one thing would make the fall a little better, he conceded: “A girlfriend.” That, he said, would keep him content even as the weather cools down.
— Katie Shepherd
Losing a Friend
On Friday, August 21st, Lonnie Green returned to Williamsburg after more than 20 years in Virginia. The neighborhood has changed from when she was just 9, she said, but many of her old friends and neighbors from back in the day still live in the Flushing Ave. apartment complex. But Green returned to learn that she had just lost a childhood friend in Williamsburg to heart problems. She was getting ready to bid him farewell, in fact, at the white-steepled church just a few steps away from where we spoke. “We grew up together and knew each other for a long, long time,” Green said. “He was one of the guys from the building.”
— Ashley Chappo
Gun Violence
Carmen Hernandez worries that the gun violence in Bed-Stuy will escalate this fall. She would like to leave and move into a safer environment, and she advises others to do the same. “”I really would move out of here,” she said. “This place is really bad.”
— Ozzie Gooding
Bring Him More Business
Mohamed, manager of the El Zahra Halal Meat store in Bay Ridge, could use a little more business. “Right now, it is too slow,” he says. “When the school starts, it will become good.”
— Sanaz Rizlenjani
Back to School, at 30
In Cobble Hill, Melissa Shelton was nervous as she was on her way to an interview. She confided that she is worried about starting a new course in graphics design at Parsons, at age 30. “I’ve been out of school for eight years,” she said. “I’m worried about change.”
— Grete Suarez
The Birds and the Bugs
In Greepoint, Louis Acarko worries that he will lose that Sesame Street feeling. “I will miss not being able to sit in the sun,” he says. “Where I am reminded of a little song that was on a TV show that I used to watch as a child, Sesame Street: “Sunny day, chasing the clouds away…” Acarko worries that that birds and bugs are no longer going to keep him company. “When fall comes there are no birds, no noise of the bugs; they sleep away 22 years. Then they wake up, have babies, and then they go back to sleep. And then they die in their sleep.”
— Kajsa Lundman
Hurricanes
In Downtown Brooklyn, Daniel Rivera, 34, thinks about Hurricane Sandy and worries about a repeat. “I worry how long it would take us to recover from it,” he said. “That’s my main concern. I lived in Red Hook when Sandy happened. I was out of my home for two weeks. There was water in our house. The basement was flooded. There were no lights on our block. The whole street where we loved was under three feet of water. The streets were dark for two weeks. I went to the Bronx.”
— Scott Selmer
Will Cancer Come Back?
In Bay Ridge, Armand Crandall, 64, who runs a card store there, has a specific—and haunting—worry: “I fought cancer four years ago, and every time fall approaches, sad thoughts come to mind. What worries me is that the cancer might come back,” he said. “But in the summer I do not think about it because it’s always sunny.”
— Stefania D’Ignoti
Finding Work
Diane Sobel, 56, of Greenpoint hopes that she can “go forward and get a new job, but I worry that I might go into the New Year without begin financially secure.”
— Kajsa Lundman
Junior Year
Margaret Atu is a summer employee at Paul’s Daughter, a historic Coney Island boardwalk restaurant, where she works with Mike Georgoulakos, the manager. Soon she will take the Q train 40 minutes to Abraham Lincoln High School, also in Coney Island, where she’s a rising junior. Her last day at Paul’s Daughter will be bittersweet. “I’m going to miss all the people—and the money” she says, gesturing at Mike and the other longtime employees. “But it is what it is.” While Atu is excited for school to start—especially the chance to see her friends and take an acting class—she feels added pressure to focus on her grades, which she says are important for college transcripts. It’s going to be a lot more work, she says, “because this year really matters.”
— Zara Lockshin
Rapping Right
In Bedford-Stuyvesant, Stefani “Young Swiper” Hines, 20, aspires to be a rapper and has been hard at work in the studio. But he’s still worried about his status when the weather breaks: “I won’t be a rapper yet,” he says. “That’s one of my worries because I’m trying to be signed before fall.”
— Meagan Jordan
That Snow
Antonio Valencia is a cook at a trendy café in Ditmas Park, where he also enjoys engaging in conversation with customers. His only worry about the coming of fall is that winter will follow, and with it, snow will cover the city. Antonio hates snow. “I can tolerate winter, but I can’t stand snow,” he says. “I can’t move and I certainly can’t go anywhere. It makes my life impossible.”
— Taeko Itabashi
That Snow II
Mary Martucci, who works at soup kitchen in Sunset Park, prefers summer to winter, and not surprisingly so: she recently broke her right arm near a local grocery store, and the after-effects still linger. She had to wear a cast for six weeks. “I don’t like the snow,” she says.
— Natasa Bansagi
Unstable Income
Taiseer Mahmood, 39, is hoping for more business at his Bay Ridge sweets shop. “This summer was not great,” he said. “We did not sell many sweets. So I hope the fall will be better. But my main concern is that this might not happen.”
— Stefania D’Ignoti
Gentrification I
With gentrification on the rise in Bed-Stuy, one of Brooklyn’s historically black communities, Charles Edward, 49, is concerned that with the large number of blacks moving out the neighborhood, and that the culture will change. “The rent is going up,” he said, “and a lot of people can’t afford it.”
— Meagan Jordan
Gentrification II
In Bedford-Stuyvesant, Andrea Barley is terrified of being pushed out of her neighborhood and into the unknown. “The question is, will I be living here, will I be working here, am I going to be having fun in this area of Brooklyn in the fall,” Barley said.
— Ozzie Gooding
The Kids’ New Schools
Sitting in Sunset Park’s Industry City, Sabina Hahn says her children, 6 and 9, will not only be attending a new school, but two separate schools. To boot, the classes will be about three times the size the children were used to in private school.
— Natasa Bansagi
No Hot Water
Chelo Betancourt, 42, a professional boxing trainer in Red Hook, worries about heat and hot water. “We have a slum lord who doesn’t take care of the building. Actually, we haven’t had hot water for weeks now and I’ve got three little ones. I live in a nice place but the landlord doesn’t take care of it.”
— Rosa O’Hara
A Slower Subway
In Flatbush, Naomi Piens, a 22-year-old student at Brooklyn College, is worried about the subway. ‘The subway is worse in fall,” she says. “It never shows up on time. I never know when there’s a delay. I’m always late for classes.” Naomi is of Sri Lankan origin. Her favorite subject is geography, and she hopes to return to Sri Lanka when she finishes her degree to work for an NGO addressing women’s rights.
— Charlie Northcott
Monsters and Friends
In Crown Heights, two twin sisters, Akailah and Akaijah Evelyn, are headed to kindergarten next month. Walking with their father outside of the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, the girls expressed excitement about the new school year, but said the change doesn’t come without worries. “I’m scared about the new kids in kindergarten. And monsters,” said Akailah. Her sister, Akaijah, is also concerned about the new classmates, “I’m worried about learning how to be a better friend.”
— Pete Vernon
Weak Schools
After some jokes about the weather and the weatherman, John Fuller, 57, turned serious and said the approach of fall causes him to worry about the children who are heading back to classes. He doesn’t think the schools are doing a good enough job. “We lost two generations already,” he said. “When you got ten-year-old kids out here robbing ladies something’s wrong.”
— Pete Vernon
Cold Vegetables
Northeast Kingdom is a farm-to-table restaurant in Bushwick that has an adjacent pop-up fresh produce stand where you’ll find Adam Brown. With the seasons set to change, the pending cold weather poses a threat to business. Brown plans to stick it out, but “I’m worried that in the fall there will be rain or snow and it will be tougher to sell vegetables.”
— Susmita Baral
Health
In Red Hook, Jean Bleasdell, who is in her seventies, worries about “getting better.” She says she has been sick “for two or three weeks now.”
— Saher Khan
No Worries
While most of the world has its worries, Te’DeVan Kurzweil of Bushwick steers clear of all that. A self-proclaimed “nomad for hire,” you can see him roaming the streets, holding a sign offering to rap for money. “I try not to worry—it does not benefit me,” he says. “Like, nobody ever says, ‘You know what? I have this issue and I worried about it and shit got a lot better.’ So, ultimately, I try not to have worries.”
— Susmita Baral
His Favorite Spot
Olbita Baptista, 79, who lives on Harden Street, likes to sit on a chair in the street in front of the well-tended local community garden there. His concern? “In the winter I cannot sit outside,” he said, in Spanish. “Today it is beautiful.”
— Charlie Northcott