Here is my first entry on the Chapter 5 Blog. It is actually a reminiscence that I published on the site AskANewYorker in 2005. It is entitled, “Crown Heights Chronicles”. It is not business related, but it does give an insight into the Brooklyn neighborhood on my childhood.
Crown Heights Chronicles
(c) 2005 By Howard R. Roberts
All rights reserved.
Brooklyn, around noon, on a summer day.
At first I felt sorry for the man who was hit by the subway train. Then annoyed. The police hoisted the bloodied fellow out of the station on a stretcher up to street level and into an ambulance. The requisite police investigation meant I couldn’t get into the station to take the train back to my apartment in Chelsea, and the nearest station was on Eastern Parkway, a healthy distance away. What the hell, I’ll walk.
I hoofed it up Nostrand Avenue and began to notice that what used to be a white, mostly Jewish neighborhood had morphed into Caribbean turf. Now, there were signs in the windows of fast food joints advertising Goat Roti in place of the pastrami sandwiches of my youth. The food always changes with the neighborhood. I was in strange territory, but I was unaware of how strange things were about to become. (more…)