All Brooklyn news
Neighborhood Map
Bay Ridge
  • Bensonhurst, Dyker Heights
Brooklyn Heights
  • Downtown, DUMBO
Carroll Gardens
  • Cobble Hill, Red Hook, Boerum Hill
Fort Greene
  • Clinton Hill, Crown Heights
North Brooklyn
  • Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Bushwick
Park Slope
  • Prospect Heights, Windsor Terrace, Greenwood Heights
GO Brooklyn
Dining Guide
Where to GO
Events calendar
Classifieds
The Brooklyn Wire
Not Just Nets
Police Blotter
Perspective
Parenting
Politics
Transit
Podcasts
Brooklyn Cyclones
Special sections
About The Paper
Mobile site
Twitter
Facebook
RSS Feeds

30 Years archive

2009: Vol. 32

30th Anniversary Special

November, 2009

30 years, 30 stories: Our biggest news stories

30 Years: Brooklyn has changed, and The Brooklyn Paper has been through it all the way. From urban renewal to the “brownstoners” to the young urban professionals, every newsmaker we covered had, in his or her small way, a role in creating “The New Brooklyn.” Comments (8).

Shots from the heart from our best photographer

By Sabrina Jaszi
The Brooklyn Paper / Tom Callan
30 Years: Our photographer Tom Callan has been shooting Brooklyn for longer than a mob henchman. And he’s got the scars to prove it. Whether getting beaten up by Mike Tyson in 1998 or by thugs at the notorious Club Wildfyre in the late 1980s, Callan has been getting in people’s faces for years. Comment.

Publisher looks back on ‘The Brooklyn Paper’ decades

By Ed Weintrob
30 Years: We’ve come a long way in 30 years. Comments (4).

From retail to residential

By Michael P. Ventura
Downtown: When we started covering Brooklyn, Downtown was holding on as a major hub for high-end retailers like the flagship location of Abraham & Strauss or the Martin’s on Fulton Street. Comments (2).

A long journey from warehouse to hothouse

By Michael P. Ventura
DUMBO: For 21 years, the St. Ann’s Warehouse performance space was in Brooklyn Heights before it moved to DUMBO in 2000. Comment.

Crime is gone and all are welcome

By Michael P. Ventura
Fort Greene: Danny Simmons used to hang out in the clubs on DeKalb Avenue back in the 1980s, before he moved to the neighborhood in 1992. Comments (1).

The epicenter of the brownstoners

By Michael P. Ventura
Park Slope: When Clem Labine, one of the first so-called “brownstoners,” moved to Park Slope, it was vastly different from the way that the neighborhood is commonly conceived these days. There was “nary a stroller to be seen,” he said, Comment.

Our first two editors roast some old chestnuts

30 Years: Our first editor, Beverly Cheuvront, and our first features editor, Laurie Sue Brockway, sat down with our founding pubisher, Ed Weintrob, to share some memories, a few laughs, and expense-account pizza. Comment.

Have a beer and hear a great story

By Michael P. Ventura
Williamsburg: Brooklyn Brewery beer is now a premier Friday night lubricant for hipsters and other young people who flood the bars and clubs that glut the major avenues of Greenpoint and Williamsburg. Comments (1).

The story of Brooklyn Heights? Stability

By Michael P. Ventura
Brooklyn Heights: To see Brooklyn Heights now is practically to see it as it was 30 years ago, if not more. Comment.

An enclave holds on

By Michael P. Ventura
Carroll Gardens: Buddy Scotto, a local funeral home director and community activist, once considered leaving Carroll Gardens and moving to Long Island. But his father didn’t want to move to the suburbs, as many New Yorkers did as the city was heading downhill in the 1960s. So Scotto stayed, too. Comments (8).

On the waterfront, but not ‘On the Waterfront’

By Michael P. Ventura
Red Hook: Red Hook was hit hard by the failed containerization plan of the 1960s. In many ways, it’s still struggling to recover. Comment.

Here’s the story of our first front page

By Ed Weintrob
30 Years: I spoke this week for the first time in 30 years with Tom Bongiorno. Unbeknownst to him, his family played important roles in The Brooklyn Paper’s conception. Comment.

The new ethnic mix

By Michael P. Ventura
Bay Ridge: Robert Moses executed a one-two punch on Bay Ridge. With a right, he crossed the Gowanus Expressway through the neighborhood, parting it from Sunset Park. With the left, he hit Bay Ridge with an uppercut in the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Comments (3).

Atlantic Yards nears its climax

By Michael P. Ventura
30 Years: If Bruce Ratner gets shovels in the ground by Dec. 31, this long-stalled project might actually happen. Comments (4).

At Brooklyn Bridge Park, lots of fits, but few starts

By Michael P. Ventura
30 Years: It’s taken nearly 30 years for a park to be built on the old Port Authority piers. Work is almost done on a tiny bit of a glorious, $350-million waterfront greenspace to rival Central Park. Will it ever be done? Find out in our 60th anniversary issue! Comments (1).

Still looking up Downtown

By Michael P. Ventura
30 Years: Downtown has come a long way since it was a high-end retail hub. It may get back there someday. Comment.

Along the Gowaus, a sense that past is prologue

By Michael P. Ventura
30 Years: Will the Canal ever be clean? Of course it will! Mayor Gaynor promised as much in 1911. Comments (4).

The rise and fall and rise of a great public pool

By Michael P. Ventura
30 Years: From swimming hole, to model of urban decay, to hipster hangout to...swimming hole. McCarren Park Pool is a great New York story. Comments (1).

At Coney, is the past prologue?

By Michael P. Ventura
30 Years: Not everything that looks bombed out is necessarily bad — particularly out on Coney Island. Comment.
Wedding Guide
Jaguar of Great Neck
Park Slope Fifth Avenue BID
Casa Pepe

Links