“Wiffle Ball and sewer-to-sewer football, baby. Hit me by the hood of the white car. That’s what I remember growing up here. All of New York has that history but for some reason Brooklyn is just a serious melting pot. I grew up loving the Brooklyn Dodgers—even though they were long gone by the time I was born—because that’s all my father used to talk about. He grew up right outside Ebbets Field. My mother grew up in the Jewish projects in East New York. I was born in Brownsville. There is always something to do here. Once you step outside your door, you can have fun with a garbage can if you’re with the right people. I also like the fact that you had to work at having fun—you didn’t have video games. Your mother told you to “Go the fuck outside and go find somebody to play with. Look both ways before you cross, but don’t come back for at least an hour.”

“I grew up in Prospect Heights when it was the ghetto. I loved being exposed to all the wonderful social deviants at such a young age. Understanding classism and having that kind of exposure to all the ethnicities of this place. Learning about them and eventually learning how to respect them. It’s the largest borough and we speak over 75 different languages. We are everybody. We’re a planet. MC Lyte said it first, right? ‘Brooklyn the Planet.’ Owning this place—Southpaw—it’s what I’ve wanted to do since I was a baby boy. I’ve been a music lover since I was very young. This is my dream. This is my clubhouse during the day and a center for the arts in Brooklyn at night. I appreciate the bar business, but I appreciate the venue business much more because it brings fresh faces and talent that hasn’t been seen in this neck of the woods in years. A lot of people feel like Rock and Roll started in Brooklyn years ago down on Flatbush Avenue at the Paramount. We are just continuing that musical tradition.”

“You have so much variety in this place. You go two blocks and you can eat Chinese food. You go three blocks the other way and you can have Italian food. 2 blocks North and you can eat Latin food. What more could you want?”

“Brooklyn is home to me. You have your local baker who knows how many sugars you have in your coffee. You have your local tailor who knows your measurements. You actually talk to your neighbors. I’ll never leave here.”

“I grew up in Brooklyn Heights. I loved growing up there. I ended up going to Hunter in Manhattan and made friends there and certain friends were not allowed to come to Brooklyn to visit me. Which bewildered me because if you got off the subway and looked around Brooklyn Heights, you would see it was a pretty nice place to be. But that just goes to show you what the climate was like in the mid 1980’s—their were kids who weren’t even allowed to ride the subway with their parents. I grew up going to Pierpont playground and hanging out in Cadman Plaza Park and there were a ton of kids.

After college I lived with my parents for a few months before moving to Carrol Gardens and then back to Hicks street in Brooklyn Heights. That really wasn’t a good idea because I was around the corner from where my parents lived. And I lived in a street level apartment so my biggest fear was that they would walk by and see me in the window—so I would always hide and keep the blinds down. Now I live in Park Slope.

At first I stayed in Brooklyn because it was so much cheaper. And then after that, I had so many friends from college and Manhattan who moved to Brooklyn. It seemed like everyone I knew lived here. I also always hated the noise of Manhattan—that feeling that if you got off the subway at 11 o’clock at night that it could be loud around you whereas in Brooklyn – where I lived—you got off the train and it’s quite. And that’s the first thing you notice. And I always liked the feeling of hominess.

When I moved to Cobble Hill it was when that whole Smith Street thing was really getting crazy and I thought that it was a good place to be a single person. Again—it was always hard dragging the Manhattan friends in, but then they would come and say ‘This is really cool!’ They couldn’t believe that you could get the same things in the bars and that it had atmosphere.

I also love the great history of Brooklyn writers—that helps inspire me. I’ve written two novels and both of them are set—at least in part—in Brooklyn. So it’s definitely effected me as a creative person. My second novel started out as my response to the yuppie culture and the parent culture and living in Cobble Hill and wanting to set something in that world. Because it was also a book about someone who was having a little bit of trouble separating from her parents, so I need her to be living in the same neighborhood she grew up in. And that’s what I love about Brooklyn and I hate—you are always running into people that you know. Especially having grown up here. That multiplies the number of people—you are drawing on childhood, high school, college. I was really into Jewish Youth groups. And everyone seems to move back to where they grew up—especially here. But the downside of that is you have very limited privacy. You can be having a fight with a boyfriend in the street and your parent’s friends are walking by. Always embarrassing.

Park Slope is a little crazy to raise a kid—I mean you walk down 7th avenue on a Sunday afternoon and there’s 100 strollers per block warring for sidewalk space—it can be a little bit much. But you know once I’m one of those people I’ll appreciate having the community—and not feeling like an outsider. You know—you can breastfeed anywhere in this neighborhood, you have a million pre-schools, some good public schools, so I’m looking forward to having my child here. And I really wanna raise a city kid. I grew up riding my bike across the Brooklyn Bridge with my Dad and going to Manhattan and going to public libraries and eating Italian ices, and pickles from the barrel, and knishes—I want my kid to have the same experience. I want them to have a really open mind—something that growing up in Brooklyn gives you.”

“I grew up in Queens but I came to Brooklyn in my early 30s because Brooklyn was the hippest place in New York. Why travel all the way from Queens when Brooklyn was the place I was always hanging out in?

I came to Fort Greene for the space. I started looking all over here in Fort Greene because I knew the area—a lot of artists were living in Fort Greene. I just happened upon this building—and I’ve been here for 10 years now. I like this neighborhood because it is a neighborhood. People know each other, people speak to each other, you know your neighbors, you know the kids on the block, the kids know you—they all call me Mr. Danny.

I opened this gallery because I am an artist and because I like to present art. I think this gallery has become a focal point for people in and around Clinton Hill and Fort Greene for arts and culture. It has helped to bring people together. It is one of the things that have brought black artists and white artists into the same space where they get to meet each other. It has added another dimension to the neighborhood that makes it kind of cool. I’ve also been accused of being the first gentrifier—because when you bring in art galleries, that happens. But a gentrifier in a good way.

Brooklyn has given me an artistic community to be a part of—we know each other, we collaborate on many different projects, many arts organizations have grown up in and around this neighborhood, galleries have sprung up and we are all sort of in on the beginning of things happening. So it has given me hope that the arts can be more than just white walls and things on them. That it’s really a community. A place where people fight for change and diversity at all levels. I think this neighborhood has helped sustain my feeling of hopefulness for humanity.”

“It’s the borough that makes this city great. The people here are fighters—you can’t diminish their will power. Especially mine.”

“Where am I going? I was born two blocks from here. Why do I need to leave? I don’t need to go anywhere. I was born here and I will die here.”

“People from Brooklyn—if you don’t know them they can be the coldest people out there. But if you get to know them they are the best people on earth. The best. You know what I mean? Raising my sons here—at first it was really tough. We moved around some bad neighborhoods and they would be getting into fights with rocks and bottles…gang fights with 15 other kids. I had to teach them how to fight and box and make something of themselves.”

“When the Brooklyn Dodgers won the World Series in 1955, it was like Christmas, Chanukah, New Year’s and the Fourth of July all rolled into one. We all ran outside and started banging my mother’s pots and pans. Brooklyn has a history that no other borough can really compare with—and one in every seven Americans are in some way connected to Brooklyn.”