As a tour guide specializing in private, customizable tours of Brooklyn neighborhoods (plus a few in Queens and Manhattan), I meet many visitors who've already been to New York City--well, mostly Manhattan--multiple times.

But some don’t fully grasp a question in my client questionnaire: “On the day of the tour, where (address, or cross streets, or hotel) will you be leaving from, if you know?”

Despite an addendum urging them to be as specific as possible (though I don't want their apartment number!), I still get responses like “Midtown,” “Times Square,” or “Upper East Side.”

Then I ask them to be more specific. After all, given the multiple subway lines and transit options, only a specific location can help me estimate travel time and offer the best advice on where to meet me.

Where's "Times Square"?

For example, I often meet visitors near the York Street stop on the F train in DUMBO. If they’re in “Times Square” east of Seventh Avenue, I’ll advise them to get the F train along Sixth Avenue at either 42nd Street or 47-50th Street, depending on their specific location. (Yes, I know we locals would take the D or the B express if it comes first, then switch at West Fourth Street.)

But if they’re west of Seventh Avenue, I’ll advise taking the A, C, or E train along Eighth Avenue to West Fourth Street and then transferring downstairs to the F. See the screenshot at right, from this map.

Some clients, trying to be cooperative, say, “I’ll meet you wherever you want in Brooklyn” or “I’ll just Uber to meet you.”

I appreciate the sentiment, but I'd still like specifics! First, I’d like to be able to estimate their travel time, so I can better anticipate our meeting time.

More importantly, if I know where they’re starting, I might adjust the meeting spot, or the tour route, to take advantage of their travel options, whether by subway, bus, taxi/Uber, or even ferry.

I aim to help visitors make the most of their experience, and justify the premium paid for personal service. To do that, I need more information.

"It was only after World War II that Bed-Stuy became mostly black," according to Mapping the African-American Past, a project from Columbia University to bolster the New York State social studies curriculum. "This enabled the community to go to the polls in 1960 and elect Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to serve in the U.S. Congress." (See screenshot below.)

Hold on. It's a lot more complicated, as I've learned during my research for my Bedford-Stuyvesant tour.

The sad fact is that a Black majority in Central Brooklyn, including adjacent Crown Heights, did not enable voters to elect Shirley Chisholm in 1960. At that point, Central Brooklyn was glaringly gerrymandered, allowing the perpetuation of five white incumbents, who each included a slice, but hardly made the locals' interests a priority.

Rather, Chisholm was elected in 1968, and only after a lawsuit under the federal Voting Rights Act, passed in 1965, forced a reapportionment to create the new 12th Congressional District. We should see her in two murals as we walk around the neighborhood.

Periodically I get clients who ask me for advice on choosing a hotel in Brooklyn (or for a visit to Brooklyn), or ask me what I think of their hotel choice. I respond with my candid opinion. (I don't get kickbacks!)

Obviously, you pay more for a nicer room in a better equipped hotel. Or you might have hotel points you want to deploy.

My main advice regards location, and access to nearby public transportation and proximity to shopping/restaurants, as well as access to other attractions in Brooklyn.

Sure, if you want to spend money on taxis/Ubers, that's fine, but New Yorkers typically rely on the subway or bus, and like to be able to walk to at least some restaurants and stores.

My advice can't guarantee you a great room or a true bargain. Please read reviews of any hotel to recognize what previous visitors liked and disliked.​ But I can help you plan to make the best use of your location.

Please recognize that simply lodging in Brooklyn does not position you to reach every attraction in Brooklyn. I once had clients who chose a nice hotel in Williamsburg, and planned to visit the Brooklyn Museum, twice. They had to take costly, and slow, Ubers, because there's no easy connection via public transportation.

Had they stayed in Downtown Brooklyn or Gowanus, it would have been much easier. A lot of places in Brooklyn are also easily accessible from hotels in Lower Manhattan, in the Financial District, given good subway access. Those may be relative bargains.

​

​The screenshot above is from this map I've created of hotels in Brooklyn. I think of hotels as located in three main clusters: Downtown Brooklyn (blue); Gowanus (dark maroon); and Williamsburg (green).

Downtown Brooklyn gives you access to transportation--both to Manhattan and deeper in Brooklyn (like Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Museum).

Some hotels are better located than others. I often recommend the Nu Hotel, the southernmost, because it has the quickest access to charming tree-lined streets and good shopping/dining in the adjacent neighborhoods of Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens.

The New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge does offers good access to walk the bridge, but it's farther from neighborhood Brooklyn. Still, as the borough's largest hotel, it's always easy to get a ride from there.

Note: DUMBO has Brooklyn's most luxurious and expensive hotel, the One Hotel Brooklyn Bridge (orange). It offers great access to the waterfront (including the ferry to Williamsburg and Greenpoint), but may not be well positioned for a long visit if you want to see other parts of Brooklyn, since it's not near the subway.

Gowanus is an industrial/commercial area with lower-cost and more basic hotels, but it offers fairly quick access, by foot, to the residential neighborhood of Park Slope, with good shopping and dining, and, ultimately, Prospect Park. The R train is nearby.

Note that some hotels in Gowanus, and in Sunset Park (not listed here) and Long Island City in Queens (ditto), have been converted, at least temporarily to shelters. So the Holiday Inn Express in Gowanus is not at this moment accepting guests.

Williamsburg is Brooklyn's hipster zone, with a cluster of hotels in the north, near McCarren Park and a nightlife zone, a few hotels near the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (check reviews for noise), and one new hotel (the Moxy), along Bedford Avenue in the Southside.

Williamsburg, along with adjacent neighborhood Greenpoint, offer lots of things to do/see/eat, and Williamsburg, thanks to the L train, offers good access to neighborhoods in Manhattan along 14th Street (Union Square, East Village, West Village). 

Note the hotels I've marked in gray. The two close to Flushing Avenue are far from hipster Williamsburg but close to the Hasidic (Orthodox Jewish) section. The one on Broadway is not as remote, but still a long walk to most places visitors might want to see.

Also note three Greenpoint hotels in yellow. Greenpoint's a great neighborhood where I enjoy leading tours, but it's at the northern tip of Brooklyn. If you're focused on Greenpoint, fine, but the two main hotels (not the Franklin Guesthouse) are a good walk from the subway and the prime shopping and restaurants.

Also note three Bedford-Stuyvesant hotels in the center of the map. Two, marked in gray, are along busy, noisy Atlantic Avenue, and are less expensive hotels. Bed-Stuy shopping, restaurants and tree-lined streets are within walking distance, but not immediately nearby. The Akwaaba Mansion, on the other hand, is a lovely real bed-and-breakfast on a prime block, so a good location for visitors focused on Bed-Stuy.

I've marked, in black, two hotels worth a cautious assessment. I'm not saying they're bad hotels, but their location is remote, so they're best for people who have reasons to be nearby.

Of course, different budgets mean different choices. The Holiday Inn in Downtown Brooklyn will be more expensive, and offer more amenities, than the Holiday Inn Express in Gowanus (labeled, confusingly, New York-Brooklyn) or the Holiday Inn Express in Sunset Park. The Gowanus location, if/when it's no longer serving as a shelter, is a far better location than Sunset Park.

A note on AirBnB: there are fewer such locations available, but, beyond obvious questions about price and quality, they come with the same significant questions about location, including proximity to transit and shopping, as well as--unlike with most hotels--sometimes issues of safety.

The map below is a screenshot from a larger interactive map from The CITY, a nonprofit news website. Most of Brooklyn, as with New York City, is blue (Democratic), but a not insignificant, and growing share is red (Republican), or at least redder.

What areas vote Republican? Well, notably enclaves of Orthodox Jews, including three Hasidic neighborhoods and a large Modern Orthodox area, which are culturally conservative.

Also, Brooklyn's Chinese communities and "Russian" (former Soviet Union) communities, as well as some of what would be called "white ethnic" (notably Italian-American) areas.

Many neighborhoods, including ones that voted for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, appear somewhat less blue, as shown in this map suggesting a shift toward Republican candidate, and now President-elect, Donald Trump. Some of that was less an increase in Republican votes than Democratic voters staying home, as this NY Focus article explains.

People moving to Brooklyn often want advice on safety: which neighborhoods, or parts of neighborhoods, are safer()?

The answer: it's tricky, because gun violence, for example, is more prevalent late at night, and among people--notably gang members or wannabes--who know each other. And it's also somewhat more prevalent near public housing complexes, though most residents try to live decent lives on limited incomes and 42% of households work.
 
That said, a May 2024 New York Times interactive feature on gun violence shows some sharply divergent results for Brooklyn, including clusters of violence and areas with few shootings.

Those clusters include, on my annotated map below, public housing complexes in Fort Greene/Downtown Brooklyn (pink--purple arrow) and in Red Hook (light blue arrow), in the western part of the borough.

Turning toward Central Brooklyn, the south central part of Bedford-Stuyvesant (dark blue arrow) and the western part of Crown Heights (dark purple arrow), also have a somewhat elevated record of shootings, even as those neighborhood gentrify steadily.

Finally, the darker-red highlights on the map indicate neighborhoods with concentrations of poverty and violence, notably southeast Crown Heights and Brownsville. There's a deeper story here about the lingering effects of inequitable development in Brooklyn, told notably in Craig Steven Wilder's A Covenant with Color: Race and Social Power in Brooklyn.​

You might be wondering what I think of the recent "36 Hours in Brooklyn" travel section feature, which the New York Times published June 6, or its two predecessors, published in 2011 and 2017.

The answer: they're all useful, but need to be seen as guidelines rather than prescriptions. In 2017, I critiqued that year's incarnation for unwise broad generalizations  but my biggest quibble concerned the pursuit of breadth over depth. If you followed the 2017 advice, you'd traipse through DUMBO and go to the Brooklyn Roasting Company but not the chocolate shop Jacques Torres, which is a neighborhood gem and does have coffee.

I recommended a more concentrated effort to get more out of your surroundings.

This year's version
The most recent feature is somewhat better, but still suffers from trying to do too much. The article scants the amount of time, effort, and money--public transit, bike, car service--it takes to get between neighborhoods and in some cases offers unwise sequences.

Let's take a closer look. "This itinerary skips the most touristy and overdeveloped areas, including Williamsburg and Dumbo, and requires no restaurant reservations or advance planning," writes Ingrid K. Williams.

OK, but one of the restaurants recommended, Untable in Carroll Gardens, is tiny and already very hard to get into. (I've only been for lunch.) Why not offer an alternative?

If you're new to Brooklyn, it's still worth visiting Williamsburg--not every part is touristy--especially if, as the article suggests, you should start your Saturday in Greenpoint. The neighborhoods are adjacent. I always recommend tackling Brooklyn neighborhoods in clusters. You could easily spend the whole day in Greenpoint and Williamsburg.

Why just visit a bakery, a coffee shop, and Transmitter Park in Greenpoint? I lead walking tours of 2.5 hours--sometimes far longer--in Greenpoint, because there's so much more to see.

Logistics, logistics

Wait a sec, though: if you're doing this itinerary on a Saturday, as recommended, the G train--the only subway to Greenpoint--won't stop there from June 28 through Aug. 12. If your next stop is Fort Greene, as recommended, after Greenpoint, the G train won't be stopping there between Aug. 12 and Sept. 3.

Let's pretend the G train is working. Rather than take the recommended route--Greenpoint to Fort Greene to Clinton Hill to Bedford-Stuyvesant, before going to the Brooklyn Museum--someone attempting this unwise breakneck pace should rather get out first in Bed-Stuy, which is the closest to Greenpoint, then Clinton Hill, then Fort Greene.

Bed-Stuy's a huge neighborhood. The article suggests a first stop at the bookstore Word is Change, then the nearby boutique Byas & Leon. OK. Then "refuel a few blocks away at A&A Bake Doubles and Roti," which, unmentioned, is a 9-minute walk. Then it's a 13-minute walk (unmentioned) to BLK MKT Vintage, and an 8-minute walk to Black Star Vinyl. The final stop, Fan-Fan Doughnuts, is--unmentioned--a 27-minute walk! 

But there's so much more to see in Bed-Stuy. Fan Fan is relatively close to the Pratt Institute in Clinton Hill: a 12-minute walk. Then there's far more to see in Clinton Hill--wide streets and mansions--before exploring eclectic Fort Greene.

Whether you take the Times's advice or mine, it's still a ridiculous plan. Carve out more time for the Brooklyn Museum, the adjacent Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and the adjacent neighborhoods of Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, and Flatbush.

Stick around the area for dinner instead of trying to get to Bushwick for dinner, which Google suggests is a 37-minute trip from the museum, at least if you catch the 3 train--which comes every 12 minutes--in a timely manner. Hey, the best way to Bushwick, on the L train, is from... Williamsburg.

The bottom line

Brooklyn needs more than 36 hours and bears repeat visits. If you only have a little time, think adjacencies.

​I just checked the reader comments on the article, and the second-most popular one--after a nice anecdote--stated, "Lots of great spots featured but this itinerary is a bit ridiculous and has you hopping around in all kinds of directions and doubling back and forth between general sections of BK."

Amen.

The Brooklyn Bridge is pretty glorious, right? It's a marvel and an icon.

Truth be told, I never loved leading a "Brooklyn Bridge tour" because, given crowds, walking the bridge can be a frustrating experience for all but small groups.

Recently, though, I've concluded that it's not enough to walk the bridge and tell the story of the bridge.

It's crucial to see the bridge from various angles in both Manhattan (photo below) and Brooklyn, and to look at the art and photography it has inspired. So I've revised and renamed my tour as Viewing (and Walking) Brooklyn Bridge, and More in Brooklyn and Manhattan. It's particularly nice at sunset, or at dawn, as seen in the photos below.

People sometimes ask me: what books are good preparation for a trip to Brooklyn?

The answer: there's no single definitive volume of non-fiction, much less fiction. And some books are centered in particular neighborhoods.

Here's are a couple of preliminary lists, which I will update.

NON-FICTION
Fodor's Brooklyn. Dated but somewhat useful neighborhood guidebook. Out of print; available used.
Brooklyn: The Once and Future City, Thomas Campanella. Great tales of less-heralded Brooklyn, but ends before the present day.
The Great Bridge, David McCullough. The definitive history of the Brooklyn Bridge.
A Covenant with Color: Race and Social Power in Brooklyn, Craig Steven Wilder. A definitive--as of its 2001 publication date--study of inequitable development. Could use an update.
The Boys of Summer, Roger Kahn. On the Brooklyn Dodgers.
When Brooklyn Was the World, 1920-1957, Elliot Willensky. The best on nostalgia.
An Architectural Guidebook to Brooklyn, Francis Morrone. Great on neighborhoods, but 2001 publication date means it could use an update, especially regarding Downtown Brooklyn.
The New Brooklyn: What It Takes to Bring a City Back, Kay Hymowitz. A useful but incomplete (and sometimes contestable) account of Brooklyn's recent fate and future.
Coney Island Lost and Found, by Charles Denson. The best history of Coney.
A Walker in the City, Alfred Kazin. Working-class Jewish striving, from Brownsville.

FICTION (past)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith. An unlucky but plucky girl in Williamsburg, early 1900s.
The Chosen, Chaim Potok. 1940s Williamsburg, Modern Orthodox and Hasidic Jews.
Brown Girl, Brownstones, Paule Marshall. Barbadian family in Bed-Stuy, in the 1950s.

FICTION (more recent)
The Fortress of Solitude, Jonathan Lethem. Gentrification's early days, when Gowanus became Boerum Hill.
Pineapple Street, Jenny Jackson. Rich people problems in Brooklyn Heights.
Brooklyn, Colm Toibin. An Irish immigrant young woman in the 1950s.
Another Brooklyn, Jacqueline Woodson. Black Bushwick in the 1970s.
Dreamland, Kevin Baker. Old Coney Island, a very unusual place.
Prospect Park West, Amy Sohn. Not-quite-rich people problems in Park Slope.

What’s right, and wrong, with those “Top Ten” or “Top 20” lists of things to do or visit in Brooklyn?

Quick here’s one from TripAdvisor, another from Time Out New York, another from U.S. News and from two other websites.

Well, for people new to Brooklyn, they can be helpful summaries that clarify what many think are worthwhile activities.

(There are also some oddballs in there. The Royal Palms Shuffleboard Bar & Club is a fine—and unique—place to visit, but I wouldn’t put in a Top 20 list. But I'm no longer young. Similarly,  Brooklyn Crab in Red Hook is worth a visit, but it shouldn’t be the only thing on your Red Hook list. Yes, I lead tours there.)

DIY or with a guide?

All these attractions indeed can be visited on your own, without a tour guide. However, a tour can add far more context, historical photos, and fine-grained insight to neighborhoods like DUMBO, Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope, and Williamsburg.

A tour guide can help on the Brooklyn Bridge, but it’s so crowded it may not be worth it, so I don't push my services.

Even a place like Coney Island, where the iconic boardwalk is free, with views of (in-season) rollercoasters like the Cyclone and Thunderbolt, plus the Wonder Wheel, deserves a deeper understanding.

Fitting things in

The lists also include locations of vastly different sizes. The Brooklyn Heights Promenade (on my Brooklyn 101/202 tours, as well as Brooklyn Heights & DUMBO), is smaller than Brooklyn Bridge Park, which is far smaller than Prospect Park.

Moreover, any list is not geographically conceived, so people new to Brooklyn don’t know how different attractions related to each other.

I always recommend that people aim to visit neighborhoods that are adjacent or—sometimes more complicated to newbies—within easy connection by subway or bus. If you book me for a tour, I can make recommendations, but here's a start.

Clusters of culture

So if you’re visiting Prospect Park, that’s when to also consider the Brooklyn Museum, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and the Brooklyn Public Library’s Central Library, all clustered around Grand Army Plaza, which is the park’s northwest gateway.

For those choosing my Brooklyn 101 or Brooklyn 202 tours, which include a stop at the library (if it’s open), we can start or end near the museum, so it’s possible to visit the museum and the garden. (Note: my tours go into the park, but I leave others to lead comprehensive tours of the park.)

The New York Transit Museum, which is not near Prospect Park, is a less-known gem, so I’m glad it’s on some lists. It’s close to Brooklyn Heights, Downtown Brooklyn, and Cobble Hill/Carroll Gardens, so it can be a springboard to my tours. 

The Brooklyn Academy of Music is central to another cultural cluster in Fort Greene, including three BAM buildings, a theater, and smaller cultural spaces. We can easily start or end near there.

Food and drink

The Brooklyn Brewery and Kings County Distillery are fine places to visit, but there are so many microbreweries in Brooklyn that it’s a shame to limit yourself. In fact, it would make sense to organize a geographic “crawl,” given clusters of breweries in Gowanus, Red Hook, and Bushwick. (Williamsburg, home to the Brooklyn Brewery, does have another craft brewery, Ebbs, in walking distance.)

Many sources recommend the weekend food fest Smorgasburg, which is indeed worth a visit (in Williamsburg and Prospect Park, in-season) for convenience and creativity, though don’t expect great bargains.

Two indoor food halls, Time Out NY Market (in DUMBO) and DeKalb Market (in Downtown Brooklyn), are also worth visiting and can be incorporated into my tours, either within the tour, or at the end.

Some lists recommend organized food tours. If food and convenience are your priority, fine, but if you want to see more things, it’s typically possible to incorporate food into a more comprehensive neighborhood tour.

Taking the ferry

The East River Ferry indeed is a top attraction, given the views of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, but I’d recommend it most as a connection between DUMBO and Williamsburg, Greenpoint, or (in Queens) Long Island City, all worth significant exploration.

Shopping

Some recommend the Brooklyn Flea, which is in DUMBO in season and spawned the even-more-popular Smorgasburg. It’s worth visiting—and can be incorporated into a tour—but is hardly the only source for shopping.

Similarly, L Train Vintage in Bushwick is fine, but, honestly, if you want to thrift, it’s probably wiser to walk the East Village.

Larger contexts

Industry City, recommended for both shopping and eating, is a worthwhile destination, but is best seen in the larger context of the nearby Sunset Park neighborhood.

Similarly, if you just want to see street art, go to the Bushwick Collective (and/or take someone else's tour), but if you want to see some of the art in the larger neighborhood context, take my Bushwick tour.

Sure, Domino Park in Williamsburg is worth a visit, but again I'd suggest within the larger context of the neighborhood.

I recently got a tour request from a couple of seniors (from a Midwestern state in the USA) who are contemplating their first visit to New York City, bringing their 12-year-old granddaughter. They're thinking about hiring a guide for two to four hours a day over three to four days to introduce them to NYC.

That's not actually in my wheelhouse--blame the name of my company!--but it's fine that they contacted me.

Below is a modified version of my response. 

If you look at my website, I actually do not specialize in introductory NYC highlights (Financial District, Times Square, Central Park, etc.) but rather on more focused walks around various neighborhoods, mostly in Brooklyn, and a few in Manhattan and Queens.

In other words, they're generally for people who've already seen those highlights and want to go beyond. I suspect you'd probably want to spend at least two, maybe three (maybe all?) days in Manhattan.

Please keep in mind that NYC is large—you can't see a lot in two hours, even if you're limited to Manhattan.

There are numerous guides who could help you in Manhattan, as well as scheduled group tours.

(I can​ lead tours in Manhattan—I did a 9-hour tour a few weeks ago that included pieces of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens—but others specialize in Manhattan.)

Some DIY research

I'd encourage you to first buy (or borrow from the library) a guidebook, so you can figure out your priorities. In other words, you generally don't need a guide to take you around a museum.

I'd also encourage you to join the Facebook group What to Do in NY and search​ for people reporting on what they did with a 12-year-old.

Two helpful Facebook groups for visitors include New York City Tourist Help and New York City Tourist Tips.

Also think about how much walking you can do, and whether you'd want to cut down on distance by taking public transit (buses or subway) or taxis.

Finding and paying a guide

Think about your budget for a private guide: it will cost you minimum $60-$75/hour, and some guides do charge $100+/hour.

If you can't find a guide recommended in Facebook or other web searches, you can always search on the Guides Association of NYC website. Or post a request for a guide (the more focused the better).

What about Brooklyn?

Finally, if you would​ like a tour of Brooklyn with me after you do the highlights in Manhattan, we could do an introductory tour: Brooklyn Bridge, DUMBO, Brooklyn Heights, etc. My fees are here (but will go up slightly in 2024),

Why specialize?

As noted above, I can lead introductory tours in Manhattan and did combine part of one with a larger tour that included Brooklyn and Queens. That was for a recurring client--a leader who brings 5-6 different people to New York once a year for a full day of touring!

But I don't market myself for those tours because I don't specialize in those highlights. Sure, I can show you Times Square and Rockefeller Center and part of Central Park, and it will be "good enough" for new visitors. But I know some other guides are there all the time and know all the nuances.

I spend a lot of time trying to keep with the complexities of all the neighborhoods (mostly Brooklyn, plus two in Manhattan and three in Queens) where I do lead tours.

That said, if anyone does want a tour that combines boroughs with Manhattan, that could work. I'm happy to lead more long tours!

You might be surprised to learn that New York City does not have official neighborhood boundaries, and some new names have emerged as the product of re-branding by neighborhood boosters and/or real-estate agents. Here an interesting article in the New York Times about the contested boundaries.

Note, in the screenshot at left, the boundary zones where the colors aren't solid.

History lessons
​
For example, once upon a time there was an undifferentiated area of "South Brooklyn," which referred not to the southern sections of today's Brooklyn, like Coney Island or Bay Ridge, but to the southern part of the old City of Brooklyn, established in 1834, while the rest of Kings County--today co-terminous with Brooklyn--was unincorporated.

By the 1960s or so, in an effort to distinguish row-house sections of South Brooklyn from nearby--but separated by a highway--Red Hook, a maritime industrial neighborhood with a massive public housing complex, those boosters conceived of Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill. There are unusually deep front gardens in Carroll Gardens, though the only hill in Cobble Hill is historical. But it sounds more posh.

New questions

Today, the debates more concern the effort to expand, or contract, a border. Consider: the border of Prospect Heights, long thought of as Washington Avenue, is no longer fixed, as real estate listings a block or two east of Washington now claim Prospect Heights rather than Crown Heights. See the yellow-to-green section in the bottom right of the screenshot.

The logic is that these more upscale apartments have more in common with most of Prospect Heights than much of Crown Heights, which has more working-class blocks, many with rent-stabilized units, to the east. Then again, Crown Heights also has its own historic blocks.

You want to understand Brooklyn?

Well, consider this quote from a store owner, relayed by photographers James & Karla Murray, who have been on a mission to capture disappearing storefronts in the city. Katy's Candy Store was at 125 Tompkins Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant. That's hardly the gentrified section of Bed-Stuy, but rent for that space is now much higher.

Note: I tend to speak that third language when I cross the street and encounter dangerous drivers and ebike riders.

I haven't yet gotten to visit the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (and we're members!) in recent weeks, but Green-Wood Cemetery, which is within walking distance for me and where I just led a tour yesterday, offers some glorious spring flora, including azaleas, tulips, dogwoods, cherry blossoms (not shown--too late), and even a weeping beech tunnel. 

So the flora are a bonus, on top of the cemetery's fascinating history, rolling hills, impressive statuary, great views, and feeling of repose--achieved within a not-long walk from the busy city. 

The screenshot below, from an interactive map produced by The Trace regarding gun violence in America since 2014, is pretty stunning.

The red dots indicate fatal shootings; the yellow dots non-fatal ones. The shootings are disproportionately clustered in certain neighborhoods, including Brownsville, East New York, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights, and Flatbush.

A closer look shows that specific blocks--in many cases near public housing projects--are more dangerous than others. But what the map doesn't show, at least as of now, is the time of shootings. A good number are surely late at night.

Little more than three years after its April 2009 founding, the crowdfunding site Kickstarter, basking in rapid growth and a $10 million boost from venture capital investors, agreed to spend $7.5 million to buy and renovate part of the landmarked Eberhard Faber pencil factory complex in Greenpoint.
 
“We are hoping to stay at 58 Kent [Street] forever — to be our permanent headquarters,” Kickstarter CEO Perry Chen told Community Board 1, according to the New York Post. (Image at right, pre-renovation, from 2007 NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission report.)
 
The Landmarks Preservation Commission hailed the adaptive re-use design by architect Ole Sondresen, with Scott Henson, which remodeled the remains of three connected 19th century factory buildings, which had been demolished above the second floor in the 20th century, and combined three facades, which had two truck bays installed.
 
Upon the revamped building’s opening, Kickstarter and its then-80 employees held a block party, closing off Kent Street to demonstrate some projects supported by the platform, and offering tours of their workspace. (Below image from current B6 listing.)

“Kickstarter's New Office Is Incredible,” pronounced Business Insider in May 2014, citing the building’s inner courtyard, garden, and library. 
 
Indeed, the adaptation included a new one-story rooftop addition, an interior glass courtyard, and new windows, with Corten steel perimeter framing, which replaced a bricked-up facade.  The building offered not just office space but also a library, kitchen, gallery, and theater, using significant amounts of reclaimed wood.
​
Just before the pandemic hit, in February 2020, Kickstarter employees voted to form a union, after a history of contention. (Below image from current B6 listing.)

Layoffs and closing
 
Three months later, Kickstarter announced that the COVID downturn in fundraising forced it to lay off 25 workers. The Verge reported that the total, including buyouts, was 30 people, out of nearly 140 staff; the union cited the severance package it negotiated.
 
As work-from-home became the norm, and 58 Kent was mercilessly tagged by graffiti vandals, Kickstarter in 2021 decided to become a fully remote company. 

​Last April, Kickstarter, then with nearly 100 employees, announced it was joining several other firms testing a 32-hour, four-day workweek and this January said it was making the Monday-through-Thursday schedule permanent. (Below photo Dec. 2, 2021, by Norman Oder)​

Chief Strategy Officer Jon Leland told Benefit News that the policy was helping with recruitment and retention. That pivot supplants the old strategy—offering a purpose-built headquarters in an atmospheric North Brooklyn neighborhood.

Building for sale

​Today, 58 Kent is being marketed by B6 Real Estate Advisors as a “custom-built flagship office building,” containing 30,000 square feet of space, half a block from Franklin Street, “one of Greenpoint's most desirable retail corridors.”

Citing the “exceptional natural light provided by a central, glassed-in courtyard garden,” B6 says the “property redefines the concept of going to the office, with open-air worktables, private offices, glass meeting rooms, a 2,500 square foot library, a 74-seat theater, an open-air commercial kitchen, diner-style kitchen seating, tiered wooden bleachers, and a glass penthouse” that leads to a “lushly landscaped” rooftop garden.

Still, Brooklyn office space had a 17.8% vacancy rate, as of the fourth quarter of 2022, according to Newmark, and the landmarked Domino Sugar building in Williamsburg is being transformed into a 460,000 square foot office building, without an anchor tenant.

So, mindful of that challenging market, B6 notes that “the property and zoning would permit conversion to an event venue, retail, gallery, or showroom, or virtually any other commercial use."

And if the building sells anywhere near the asking price, it might represent a tidy profit for Kickstarter (even if the renovation costs exceeded the original budget), little more than a decade—and a world-changing pandemic—after the company’s stated aspiration of “forever.”

In posts like How Not to Write a "Neighborhood Guide to Brooklyn," I've noted misguided efforts, in travel publications, to somehow propose a one-day visit to disparate parts of a vast, city-like borough.

Well, it gets worse. I just saw A Stroll Through Brooklyn: The Ultimate Guide for a Memorable Trip, which somehow describes Brooklyn as "an ever-evolving neighborhood with plenty to see and do" and then lists the following highlights: the Brooklyn Bridge, Prospect Park, the Brooklyn Museum, the Brooklyn Flea (seasonally closed, actually), and "some local cuisine."

The latter two examples are DiFara Pizza, which is not located near any of the above, and Miss Lily's, which is in Manhattan.

Oh well. The site, upon further inspection is called StupidDope, and it's apparently a content mill to draw eyeballs to a (not legal, though not prosecuted) cannabis delivery service.

Unlike some in the world of guiding, I try to fairly transparent about pricing.

For my "off-the-shelf" tours, which are in my repertoire, my fees are based on the time (min. 2.5 hours, except for Brooklyn 101, which really needs at least 3 hours) , plus the number of people. They're not the highest fees, but they're not the lowest--I think they're fair. 

Custom tours require a surcharge. For a relatively simple tour--like mapping out the turns for a last-minute driving tour--I don't add much of a surcharge. (Why don't I simply wing it? Because my goal is to make the best use of visitors' time.)

But complicated tours require more time. That's why I can't offer a price quote until I know the complexity of the route: for example, family reunion tours often involve several disparate addresses--homes, schools, etc.--of importance.

I need to learn about those places and, yes, I need to visit them, ideally on the same day/time of the week as the tour itself. (That said, if I know the location well already, maybe I don't need to visit.)

And, guess what, people's plans change regarding locations of importance, restaurants, or final destination--all of which is understandable, but can require more time from me. Or sometimes I realize that I need to put in more time than initially anticipated to do a solid job.

Bottom line: in some cases, I've begun offering fee estimates in a range, with a minimum and a maximum. In other words, I'd like to charge the minimum, but might have to charge the maximum. That, I think, is a fairer process, and avoids the incentive to cut corners if/when more time is needed.

For a long time, visitors to New York City had to buy a separate MetroCard at a machine and swipe it to use the subway or bus. (You can also use cash to pay for a bus.) MetroCards come in two types: stored value (pay $2.75/ride, with free transfers within two hours) or unlimited rides for a week ($33) or 30 days ($127).

You can still do all that.

But you don't have to, which means you can save time.

Thanks to the new OMNY reader system, you can simply use a credit card (or smartphone/smartwatch) to pay for rides; please see instructions here. And while OMNY does not (yet) offer the equivalent of a 30-day MetroCard, it does have a (limited) weekly fare-capping system.

The fare cap is aimed at commuters, so it runs Monday through Sunday; that means that after 12 rides, all future rides are free. Unlike the weekly MetroCard, which you can start on any day and will run seven days, the OMNY weekly cap runs from Monday through Sunday.

That means that if, for example, you start on a Friday, it will not last seven days. In that case, you'd be much better off buying a weekly MetroCard.

Jane's Walk, the annual weekend of free tours (#janeswalknyc) inspired by the urbanist and author Jane Jacobs, has returned for in-person tours on the first weekend in May, so I am again offering a tour of Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park & Barclays Center, at 6 pm on Friday, May 6.  Details and link for RSVP are here. Jane's Walk listings are here.

It should last 90 minutes to two hours.

Unlike in previous years, you can't just show up--an RSVP to the organizer, the Municipal Art Society, is required and capacity is limited. Meeting location, ending location, and directions will be provided via email before walk date. (By the way, if any groups/classes ever want to hire me for a separate tour, I'm available.)

From the blurb:
Hugely controversial when proposed (in 2003) and approved, the megaproject Atlantic Yards (in 2014 renamed Pacific Park Brooklyn), still deserves attention.
See what’s been built (the Barclays Center, home to the Brooklyn Nets; plus 6 of 15 towers), what’s coming (2 more towers), and what’s left (decking the railyard for 6 towers? a two-tower project?) at this crucial crossroads.
Learn Atlantic Yards’ tangled history, uncertain timetable, changing designs (and ownership), and ongoing questions. Topics include public accountability, affordable housing, arena design/operations, and the changing neighborhood/Brooklyn context.
We will walk around much of the perimeter of the 22-acre site, plus some adjacent blocks.

Those of us living in New York City through the pandemic know that, while the subway is much safer than it was decades ago, it's less safe than it was a few years ago.

To quote one recent report, the New York Police Department counted 461 underground assaults across the city in 2021, 102 more than in 2020, and the most since 1997. For perspective, a typical week has a ridership of some 20 million, or more than 3 million rides per weekday--in a huge city where the system operates 24/7.

ABC reported that, according to NYPD crime numbers, the chance of being a victim of any subway crime is 1 in about 408,000. "These are very random events," said one expert, who likened the chance to being hit by a bus.

So the subway is still generally safe, and most trips are uneventful. (I wrote this before the extremely rare, though of course unsettling, shooting on a train in Sunset Park, which brought more police to the subway system. And the suspect was quickly caught.) The mayor has increased the number of police patrols as well as social work teams to assist homeless people who choose the subways over the not-so-safe shelter system.

But please recognize that the subway system is not the equivalent of a suburban train ride, or even the generally calm subways of many other world systems.

So, over the course of a week of riding the subway, there may be panhandlers (sometimes aggressive); there may be people lying down on the seats (sometimes messy); there may be people acting out by ranting or smoking.

Does that mean we don't use the subway? No, but we're more careful, and maintain street smarts. I haven't been on the subway after 11 pm in a while. My girlfriend, with a greater degree of vulnerability, doesn't take the subway alone after 9 pm between Manhattan and Queens.

On the platform, experts advise that you should never wait near the yellow line or be distracted by your phone. Back up to a pillar or wall, or stand firmly in the middle of a platform. Stay around others; don't isolate yourself at the end of a platform. Don't look fearful and make yourself a target.

Keep your wallet/phone in a front pocket, not a back one; don't leave your wallet or purse visible in an open bag. Don't flash cash. Stay aware of your surroundings; don't isolate yourself with earbuds. Avoid bumping into people.

In off-hours especially, consider riding in the first car, or the middle car, which has the conductor. 

When faced with a less than pleasant situation, often we just endure it, with the rest of the straphangers just trying to get to their destination. Sometimes we switch to the next car. Every now and then, I get out at the next stop and wait for the next train.

Does that mean you should, or shouldn't, take the subway? It's a personal assessment of whether the marginal risk/annoyance is worth it in terms of convenience, speed, and cost. I'm a big fan of the subway. (I buy a 30-day card for unlimited subway and bus rides.) But if you stay aware, you lessen the risk.

Below, more from the NYPD.​

From the New York Times: "people will not have to show vaccination proof to visit restaurants, gyms and venues like movie theaters. Masks will still be required on public transit, and at Broadway theaters and some other places."

So masks/vaccination will not be required to enter many places, but please recognize that some locations/venues may have their own standards. 

I have been leading tours outside without a mask, mostly, though I can wear one on request, if the group is small enough and I can project. Some tour clients wear a mask even if they don't require me to wear one outdoors.

(Personally, I may still be masking indoors and eating only outdoors.)

Updated Dec. 26, 2021 with new CDC guidelines. 
I am vaccinated (and boosted) and have been leading tours outside w/o masking, though I can of course wear a mask if preferred.

According to the CDC's advice (pre-Delta variant), as per the New York Times, federal health officials have "advised that Americans who are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus may stop wearing masks or maintaining social distance in most indoor and outdoor settings, regardless of size."

However, masks are still required in NYC on public transit and in stores. We can discuss.

Regarding the Omicron variant, the CDC "continues to recommend wearing a mask in public indoor settings in areas of substantial or high community transmission, regardless of vaccination status."