Bed-Stuy

Tonight is my last night in Brooklyn.

I stayed in four different neighborhoods in Brooklyn, and I think I know it pretty well now.  I stayed in some good neighborhoods and some bad ones, some young and some old, some safe and some you don't want to be in after dark.

The place I'm in right now is called Bed-Stuy.  It's kind of famous for some things you wouldn't want to be famous for if you were a neighborhood.  But there are awesome international restaurants, mostly Halal and West Indian and some African and Ethiopian, and there's a Muslim prayer announced from speakers some place from time to time.  I am the only white person wherever I go here.

I walked down Fulton St. Black people looked at me when I walked by.  A lot of them looked at my shoes for some reason.  I'm glad my shoes look old and scuffed and have a hole in their soles.

I went into a pizza place, and an older black man said there were no seats for him.  So I offered him the free seat at my table. The man ignored me. The owner of the shop said to the man he could sit with me.  And the man said, "I would rather sit alone than sit with a white---."  I am not sure what the last word was.

Down the other side of Fulton, there was a shop that said "save slave theater."  Slave Theater was next door, and it appeared to have been closed a long time.  The storefront had a television that played anti-white speeches to the street.  It said that blacks shouldn't buy things in white neighborhoods or watch white movies or read white books or have anything to do with integration.  It was weird to hear something saying that separate was better.

Up Bedford is a notoriously  horrible men's shelter that used to be an armory.  It looks like a castle and is nicknamed Grayskull.  There's a police van outside to take men to the police station where the cops will pay homeless men ten dollars to stand in a lineup.

All the buildings in Bed-Stuy are ancient, and many of them are beautiful.  I kind of like being the only white person on the street.  I think I would like to live here if I were to move to New York.