76-Second Travel Show: "Bed-Stuy, Do!"

Episode #020
F E A T U R I N G * 1 1 4 * B O N U S * S E C O N D S

"You're a photographer?"

I had just snapped a shot of New York's only living landmark, a four-floor-high magnolia tree that was moved to Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant in 1885 from North Carolina. I put away my camera and looked up. A guy leered across the street towards me, knit cap, gray eyebrows, and... a smile.

I told him I was, sorda.

"Do you know what this is?," he asked, pointing to the building hidden by the magnolia.

And so began a lengthy talk with the executive director Dan Durett of the Magnolia Tree Earth Center, the building beyond the tree. (The center hosts community events; email durett@optonline[dot]net for more info.)

Welcoming experiences like this happened to me all over "Bed-Stuy," a neighborhood still trying to shed its "Bed-Stuy, Do or Die" 1970s image as a crime zone of drugs and violence. It hasn't been that way in a while. And visitors can easily enjoy a day -- combing it with a couple sites in nearby Crown Heights (including the Brooklyn Children's Museum and the fascinating Weeksville).

At the cafe Bread Stuy, one of the handful of lively neighbor-run businesses on Lewis Ave, I met with TRUE, an artist who moved from LA to New York, and to Bed-Stuy's historic Stuvyvesant Heights in 1999. He told me there's so much creative energy, and too few places to put it, that "speakeasies" have been set up in basements -- for art, jazz trios, drinks, dance. "It's a great place to go, get drinks for $3, shake your ass a bit, then wobble home at 2am." (One example.)

In nearby Crown Heights (a short walk via Utica Ave), Weeksville is a fascinating site. An 1830s African-American community set up a decade after New York State abolished slavery. The term "Weeksville" fell out of use after the grid system of streets replaced it, trams and subways came. By the 1960s it was a mystery to professors at Clinton Hill's Pratt Institute, who flew over Crown Heights looking for it. Guide Kaitlyn Greenidge told me they saw the "pointed rooftops" in a lot behind Bergen St, and a long restoration project followed. You can visit the three original buildings Tuesday to Friday afternoons, and on July Saturdays the site hosts free concerts.

For food, Peaches on Lewis Ave is the local favorite -- good for shrimp and grits or po' boys.

Staying in Bed-Stuy is another option. Akwaaba Mansion is my favorite New York City B&B, an 1860s Italianate villa, with its own yard, and set back from a strip of brownstones by an iron fence. Another consideration -- and a deal from $175 per night -- is renting a fully contained brownstone apartment from the artist TRUE.