My Brooklyn: Beard Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn by Nathan Kensinger

One day at sunset I slipped into an abandoned building in Red Hook, disturbing no one but a family of pigeons. As I watched the light fade through the four panes of an old factory window, I looked out onto an empty lot and up along Beard Street, my favorite street in Brooklyn. The quiet of the street, the emptiness of the factory and the dying light brought me to ruminate on the nature of change in Brooklyn.

When I walk these few blocks along the southern edge of Red Hook I often think of the history that has preceded me. Sixty years ago, the view from this factory window would have been entirely different. Stevedores and boat builders, dockhands and dry dock workers, saloons overflowing with noon time workers out for a nickel beer and free lunch. From stories told to me by the few remaining old timers still in the neighborhood, I feel connected to a Red Hook that was a lively place to grow up, a working waterfront, full of tight-knit families, kids in the streets, with shops and restaurants on every corner.

For decades Red Hook has been an isolated outpost of Brooklyn's waterfront, cut off by Robert Moses and his BQE, without a proper subway station. The community changed from its industrial waterfront days, its core replaced by massive housing projects and their new way of life. Along the edges, a few artists found perches in converted factories and warehouses. This is the Red Hook I have seen, a fascinating mix of decrepit old Brooklyn, newly emerging artists and housing project families.

Beard Street, only a few blocks long, is paved in rough cobblestones so uneven that the constant flow of heavy orange school busses bounce almost out of control. Beard Street can feel like the edge of the world, a series of empty lots and building waiting for something to come along. But beneath the surface solitude, there is a secret vibrancy to the street. Anything can happen here. Along Beard Street I have been confronted by a pack of wild dogs and met the Queen of Rockabilly. Every week a new wave of street art and stencils cover the walls of the civil-war era shipping warehouses, delicate depictions of moths and birds flying from red brick confines; solitary life-size paper figures trudging along wooden walls. Anything might appear on the street -- one day a smoldering burnt out car arrives, destroyed for some sordid purpose, soon vanishing. Another day a pink toilet sits in the snow near hundreds of losing lottery tickets.

Further along the street, an abandoned sugar refinery is slowly falling into gray water. Nearby, the sunken mast of an old boat protrudes from the swells. Some of the old buildings are filled with massive graffiti pieces, illuminated by raw lights streaming through window frames without glass. Other buildings, like those on the Beard Street Pier are filled with artists, glassblowers. At night a nondescript metal shutter raises to reveal Lillie's Bar -- the last business on the street -- and the cobblestones bark with drunken footsteps.

This is the only street in Brooklyn I am compelled to visit again and again. I have walked along these ragged sidewalks countless times. I have taken hundreds of photographs here. There is a rare visual poetry to absorb.

In a few years the view from an abandoned factory onto this street will be completely different, if a window even continues to exist. All things must change in a city and Beard Street is no exception. A sea of parking lots, a new big-box store and crowds of shoppers are soon scheduled to replace the old factories and warehouses. Already buildings are being sold and torn down. Much as I would like the isolation and the element of urban surprise to remain, this will no longer be. Will the cobblestones remain?

I find the dynamic between history, present-day and future in Brooklyn especially captivating. A view of Beard Street speaks to me of one kind of neighborhood fading into the past as a new one develops a future. It compels me to seek out those in-between places yet to be rebuilt that have a secret life to spark the imagination.