Andre Bellinger, Brownsville resident and longtime friend of Greg "Jocko" Jackson (Khadijah Carter / The Brooklyn Ink)

Greg “Jocko” Jackson, who died of an apparent heart attack earlier this week, was a towering figure in Brownsville and not just because of his stature.   The 6-foot-tall former basketball player, who managed the Brownsville Recreation Center, made such an impact on this community that some considered him the unofficial mayor of Brownsville.

Since 1997, Jackson helped to turn around this once battered low-cost facility into a beacon of light in the midst of one of New York City’s most crime-infested areas.

Jackson, 60, played for the Phoenix Suns and the NY Knicks from 1974-1975, but soon realized that his true passion was to help people back on his home-court in Brownsville. “I actually quit,” he told The Brooklyn Ink last March. “I was built for what I do now, to help.”

Wall of Remembrance for Greg Jackson outside the Brownsville Recreational Center (Khadijah Carter / The Brooklyn Ink)

And from the reaction of the community to his sudden death, it’s clear that he did just that. Mourners throughout the day on Thursday left their condolences and remembrances under a smiling photograph of Jackson on a large sheet of paper that covered one of the center’s brick walls.

“He was just one of the best, pure-hearted human beings I ever met in my life,” said Andre Bellinger, 51, a senior volunteer at the center, who has known Jackson for over 30 years.  He credits Jackson with helping him to become a better person.

“He taught me how to be a professional with everything. He taught me how to get along with people. He taught me how to be family-oriented,” he said, still shaken by the news of his mentor’s death.  He had just seen Jackson the night before, he said, and they’d been laughing and talking.

Since Jackson grew up in Brownsville surrounded by drugs and crime, he understood why its image was so troubled.  But he was determined to use his center as a catalyst for change. He helped to instill pride throughout the center by sprucing up the grim décor with vibrant colored murals painted on the walls and displaying posters of influential figures throughout the facility. And the center soon became a haven for many in the community, because it offered various sports activities, afterschool programs, and a workout facility.

Jackson, was soft-spoken and had a calm demeanor, but he demanded that anyone who attended the center would have to demonstrate respect for themselves and for others.  “All that cursing, all that arguing. In here, you can’t do that stuff,” he told The Brooklyn Ink in March, shaking his head.

The center—and Jackson— became such a positive influence on the community that Jackson became a prominent figure with connections to many of the area’s politicians, including Congressman Ed Towns (D-10^th District).

Jackson often said that he owed his second chance in life to Congressman Towns, his basketball coach when he was in high school. Senator Towns, Jackson told The Brooklyn Ink, was appalled that the school’s guidance counselor advised Jackson to drop out of school in 1967.   The congressman interceded, Jackson said in March, reviewed Jackson’s grades and with the permission of Jackson’s mother sent the teen to live with his parents in Chadburn, North Carolina to finish high school.  Jackson excelled academically and went on to Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C. and then was drafted to the NBA in 1974.  In March, Jackson said he owed Towns for saving his life and encouraging him to help others.

Congressman Towns spoke fondly of Jackson and says that he was truly a member of his family.  “My mother adored him,” Towns said in a phone interview.  “His death was a big loss for our family.”

Congressman Towns said that Jackson’s death will create a void in the entire borough of Brooklyn because he helped so many people by inspiring them to go to college and helping them find the resources they needed.  “ He will be greatly missed because of his way of encouraging people,” he said.

Those he helped, like Andre Bellinger, are still in shock and in mourning about the loss of their beloved leader.  But they are determined to continue his legacy.

“Everything is going to go on like he was out there right now. Basically, it’s like he’s on vacation.  We’re still going to carry on,” said Bellinger.

Greg Jackson leaves behind his wife, Carmen, and his nine children.

A public memorial will be held on Monday, May 7 – Tabernacle Baptist Church, 580 Sackman Avenue, 3-8 p.m.; The public funeral will take place on Tuesday, May 8 – Christian Cultural Center, 12020 Flatlands Avenue, 9 a.m. to noon

Another story about Jackson by the Brooklyn Ink: “Jocko” Keeps a Hoops Tradition Going in Brownsville (August 2011)

The only thing that’s changed about the 54-year-old steel tug Thornton Bros. is the crew that guides her through the choppy waters of New York Harbor.

The Old Tugboat That Still Can from The Brooklyn Ink on Vimeo.

The parents of a girl who was molested in elementary school by her band teacher hold a portrait of their daughter. PHOTO: AP

Sitting on bench near the entrance to P.S. 262 in Brooklyn on Thursday afternoon, Maddy Cruz patiently awaits for her daughters to come out of the doors.  “I always tell my kids, ‘Don’t talk to any adult.’  I don’t care who it it is,” she says, shaking her head.

Cruz’s warnings to her children could not ring louder. Last year, 13 teachers were arrested for sexual misconduct, forcible touching and sex abuse across the country. But so far this year, over seven teachers and teachers’ aides in New York City have faced similar accusations.  The latest incident occurred on April 3 with the arrest of an assistant principal from P.S. 106 in the Bronx.

“Most parents do not talk to their kids about this,” Cruz says. As a survivor of sexual abuse by a family member, the mother of three is fully aware of the psychological and physical impact these incidents can have on a young life – and she makes sure that her two daughters, Skye, 12 and Jaylin, 5, know it too.

Since 1983, April has been designated Child Abuse Prevention Month—by presidential proclamation in 1983, according to The National Child Traumatic Stress Network. April is also National Sexual Assault Awareness Month. The aim of both programs: to help communities prevent child and sexual abuse. With new cases of misconduct surfacing almost every day, this year April’s awareness events seem more important than ever, especially for the parents of New York City school children.

The latest two cases in New York City involve an assistant principal, Joseph Ponzo, 59, from PS 106 school in Bronx – arrested just this Tuesday for allegedly cornering and touching two female students in the school corridor- and Esran Boothe, 49, a teacher at the Brooklyn Academy of Science and the Environment in Crown Heights, who has been accused of grabbing the buttocks of a 16-year-old female student just last week. Ponzo is said to have turned himself in to the police late Tuesday evening, but no other information on his case is available at this time.

According to the Department of Education, Booth has officially been transferred out of his teaching position and into a “desk job” pending legal proceedings. Parents were assured via public communication by school Chancellor  Dennis Walcott that the DOE is working hard to protect its students. Calls for comment about how the department is doing that were not returned.

The incidents have raised parental concerns. Cruz claims to be especially worried  because she says her two girls are “nice” and come from a loving home that has brought them up to be confident and trusting.

“I have always been aware and I have always told my kids to watch out for the signs, because I am a survivor myself,” she says. But, “Teachers touching kids is a surprise to me. [Children] are supposed to trust teachers to take care of them.”

Cruz seems to have trained her youngsters to be alert. “If the bad person tries to touch your cookies, what do you say?” Cruz asks her youngest, Jaylin. Little Jaylin doesn’t respond, but Skye is quick,  “I would tell my mom, or a teacher, or maybe my counselor,” she says.

Government assistance and resource guides are important to help fight the problem once it happens, but preventing it from happening at all should be more of a priority, experts say.

Indeed, this year’s awareness program is geared towards early prevention, both at home and in schools, writes Bryan Summers, Commissioner of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families on the organization’s website. An extensive resource guide published by the The National Child Traumatic Stress Network is available for free online and also takes parents through the dangers and the signs of abuse as well as offering prevention techniques, both inside and outside of the home.

“It has been proven that effective early prevention efforts are less costly to our nation and to individuals than trying to fix things later,” Summers wrote.

A key aspect of prevention is communication between parents and their children. Too often, children are afraid to speak out against authority figures—such as teachers—and that can contribute to the repression of sexual assault incidents.  And the longer that trauma is allowed to go on without parental or psychological support, the higher the chances are that children will develop long-term post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety, the NCTSN warns. Parents have to play an active role.

“I have been honest with my kids since they were old enough to know, that no one is allowed to touch them inappropriately,” Cruz says. “Secrets are not allowed [in our home]. If someone ever touches them inappropriately, I want to know. It can be the father, the brother, the uncle [or] the teachers especially because these kids trust and confide in teachers.”

Click here to listen to the interview: Sexual Abuse Survivor: Maddy Cruz

Besides encouraging their children to communicate, many New York City parents, like Cruz, have started demanding more scrutiny and safety in their children’s schools. The public’s backlash to the latest incidents has resulted in tighter supervision of student-teacher relationships, according to the Department of Education.  The education department has begun reviewing older cases of alleged misconduct and it is also developing measures to control teacher-student interactions both inside and outside the classroom. According to an official statement released in February, Chancellor Walcott and the DOE are looking to constrict interaction between students and teachers on social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter to avoid personal communication of any kind.

At this time, a total of four teachers aides have been fired, and two tenured teachers has been placed on temporary leave, as a result of the DOE’s increased investigation and review of over 230 cases of possible abuse dating back to 2000.

“We have been crystal clear about the consequences for this kind of behavior,” said Chancellor Walcott in a statement to the New York Times. “A staff member who violates the trust of our students and families does not deserve to work in our schools — period. Anyone who does will be removed, and we will do everything in our power to make sure they never work here again.”

Attempts to reach the United Federation of Teachers for its comments on new measures of teacher scrutiny were unsuccessful.

Parents like Cruz appreciates the system’s efforts, but Cruz adds that she does not believe that the department’s probing has gone far enough. “They [protection agencies] should make a big deal about it. And they should interview teachers and go beyond, go to their past, because the signs are all there,” she says.

“I do research,” Cruz adds, pointing to her youngest daughter. “I know her teacher’s name. I do research on the school.”

Cruz’s best advice to other concerned parents, however, is to “Listen, Listen, Listen.”

“If you know your child and you take time with your child, you will know the difference,” she says. “Just talk to your child every day, even if there are no signs, let your kids know that it is ok to talk to you.”

Cruz said specific signs do exist, however, including uncontrolled urination and the expression of constant fear for no apparent reason. Unusual new behaviors are a signal too.

“If you see that your child has become aggressive and angry and there is no aggression in the house, that’s a sign,” Cruz warns.

For aditional information on some tell-tale signs of abuse, read the accompanying “Tip Sheet – Sex Abuse: How to Spot the Signs” -with insight from former District Attorney, Ama Dwimoh.

Trayvon Martin was killed in Florida by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer. (AP Photo/Martin Family Photos, File)

Neighborhood watch groups across the United States, including in Brooklyn, are facing increased scrutiny following the death of an unarmed black teenager shot by a member of a Florida group.

“We’re not trying to apprehend, or chase, or follow. Crime is a police job,” said Terence Joseph, one of the founders of the Community Observation Patrol program in Brooklyn.

“We’ll just be the eyes and ears for the community.”

George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer in Florida, appeared to take a different tactic. About a month ago, Trayvon Martin, 17, was walking back from a local store in Sanford, Fla., wearing a hoodie and carrying an iced tea in one hand and a pack of Skittles in the other, when Zimmerman shot him after a brief altercation.

Zimmerman said that he was acting in self-defense and that Martin was acting suspiciously.

The case – and the hoodie – has gained tremendous notoriety with many calling for Zimmerman’s arrest.

“A simple article of clothing has been transformed to a powerful symbol of protest for justice,” said Letitia James, a New York City councilwoman for Brooklyn’s 35^th Council District, in an email.

The Florida incident has also shed light on neighborhood crime watch groups: Who are they and how are they organized and trained? And why was an armed man with no association to the police walking around his neighborhood to protect it?

“He [Zimmerman] wasn’t supposed to be chasing anybody. He had no business coming out of that car and chasing him,” said Joseph, the Brooklyn patrol group co-founder.

Joseph and fellow Brooklynite Terry Heinds have formed Community Observation Patrol, a neighborhood watch group of volunteers who live in the 67^th precinct, which covers the Flatbush area. Heinds and Joseph said that an increase in neighborhood crime led them to start the group with 15 other neighbors.

A neighborhood watch sign displayed on a lawn. (AP Photo/L.M. Otero)

“We won’t be armed. We’ll drive around in a car, and if we see something suspicious, we’ll call the police,” said Joseph.

They were, in part, inspired by Shomrim, a licensed organization of volunteer Jewish civilian patrols, which have been set up in Hasidic neighborhoods in the U.S. to combat crimes and anti-Semitic attacks. Shomrim in Hebrew means watchers or guards.

The New York Police Department will start training the 15 volunteers of Community Observation Patrol on April 4th, and they will start their patrols soon after.

“You see it [a crime], and you report it, and you maintain a safe distance,” Heinds said.

Some organizations have also started up online crime watching tools.

Jay Ruiz is another Brooklynite, who decided to tackle crime in his neighborhood of Park Slope. Ruiz founded the Brooklyn Bike Patrol, a group of men who accompany women home from subway stops.

“All my guys have vowed to protect women we walk like if we’re walking home our mother or our wives,” he explained.  All the group’s volunteers have been vetted by the NYPD.

“In no way shape or form are we like what happened in Florida. We don’t carry guns, we don’t carry weapons at all,” said Ruiz.

Still, the story of Trayvon Martin rang a bell with Ruiz.

“When I first heard this story, I thought, ‘Oh my god,’ because I’m pretty gung-ho when I protect someone,’” said Ruiz. “It really made me think what would happen if I was walking home and someone attacked us… no one can answer that until something like that happens.”

Additonal reporting by Maru Opabola and Frank Runyeon.

]]> http://thebrooklynink.com/2012/03/30/43771-brooklyn-watch-groupds-under-scrutiny-after-trayvon-martin-killing/feed/ 1 http://thebrooklynink.com/2012/03/18/43116-chester-and-the-chocolate-factory/ http://thebrooklynink.com/2012/03/18/43116-chester-and-the-chocolate-factory/#comments Sun, 18 Mar 2012 18:17:18 +0000 Jessica Hartogs http://thebrooklynink.com/?p=43116

Tumbador Chocolates ready for the Easter holidays. (Jessica Hartogs/The Brooklyn Ink.)

 

It’s nearing the end of the day at Tumbador Chocolates, and most of the workers have gone home. Only a couple employees remain to wash up the chocolate covered pots and pans; the scent of chocolate wafts through the air as you walk up the four steep flights of stairs of 34, 34th Street in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Inside, rows and rows of little chocolate bunnies and chickens solidify in the cooling room, ready for Easter.

“I was a 100 pounds lighter when I started here,” laughs Chester Almonor, a sales associate at Tumbador Chocolate, as he gives a tour of the factory.

The 26-employee company makes those fancy handcrafted chocolates you find on pillows at the Pierre, Setai, Mark, Mandarin Oriental and Trump International hotels, to name but a few.

But this isn’t just a typical chocolate factory. Since Michael Altman and Jean-Francois Bonnet, a former pastry chef at the three Michelin-star restaurant, Daniel, opened Tumbador in 2005, they have hired about 60 employees through programs that rehabilitate ex-convicts into society.

And Bonnet admits, although the two partners are committed to giving back something to society, sometimes the process has not been easy.

“You would send someone on delivery, and because they have the freedom of having a car, they would slip up and go hang out with friends,” said Bonnet, “We had one guy who was threatening the other one he was working with, saying, ‘I want to see my friends in the Bronx and if you say anything, I’ll kick your butt.’”

However, Bonnet and his partner stuck with the idea. “Just because you were 14, you killed someone, it doesn’t mean you are a rotten apple,” Bonnet said.  “You were bad at that time and now you’ve learned.”

Chester Almonor in his office at Tumbador Chocolates. (Jessica Hartogs/The Brooklyn Ink.)

That’s the philosophy of both men: giving people like Chester Almonor a second chance.

And Almonor is grateful for this opportunity, after spending 16-and-a-half years in prison. Asked what he was incarcerated for, he says, matter of factly, “Murder.”

Almonor started working for Tumbador as a driver making $8 an hour, earning less than $20,000 for the year. He was quickly promoted to maintenance manager and then as the assistant to the vice-president of marketing.

He’s now a sales associate, a position that requires he reaches out to new clients and confirms existing ones. He makes above $60,000 a year.

“Not bad for someone who was in jail five – six years ago,” said Bonnet.

Brooklyn-born Almonor was released from jail in 2008. Upon his release, Almonor approached the Fortune Society, an organization that helps people integrate with society, who told him about a driver position at Tumbador Chocolate.

“The next day [that] I was released, I went to get a license back,” said Almonor. “Lots of people try to get rich quick, and it puts them into a cycle, and they keep going back [to jail]. They don’t know that it’s better to get a job.”

Not that it was easy for him however.

“It was a little difficult, re-adjusting to a 9-5, but for me, prior to being incarcerated, I was working, and paying taxes, and voting, so I had a structure,” he said.

“It was just [about] re-adjusting to how times have changed and not trying to play catch-up with what I missed. It was just taking it from that day forward,” added Almonor.

]]> http://thebrooklynink.com/2012/03/18/43116-chester-and-the-chocolate-factory/feed/ 0 http://thebrooklynink.com/2012/03/08/42650-a-stripper-story/ http://thebrooklynink.com/2012/03/08/42650-a-stripper-story/#comments Thu, 08 Mar 2012 20:17:43 +0000 Frank Runyeon http://thebrooklynink.com/?p=42650

Kimberly Smith worked in night clubs starting when she was 18. Six years ago, the Brooklyn resident finally found her way out of that “horrible business” and started her own company–using her unique skill set.

Produced by Carolina Küng and Frank Runyeon

Online poll from GoPollGo

]]> http://thebrooklynink.com/2012/03/08/42650-a-stripper-story/feed/ 0 http://thebrooklynink.com/2012/02/29/42142-video-saving-the-youth-one-push-up-at-a-time/ http://thebrooklynink.com/2012/02/29/42142-video-saving-the-youth-one-push-up-at-a-time/#comments Wed, 29 Feb 2012 22:29:03 +0000 Jessica Hartogs http://thebrooklynink.com/?p=42142

Will Crandall is an ex-convict who runs a fitness program for young men and women in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Through his rigorous training, he hopes to reform teenagers and keep them from making the same mistakes he did.

Produced by Jessica Hartogs and Sarah Munir.

]]> http://thebrooklynink.com/2012/02/29/42142-video-saving-the-youth-one-push-up-at-a-time/feed/ 0 http://thebrooklynink.com/2012/02/18/41590-brooklyn-jail-reopens-neighborhood-not-as-worried-as-youd-think/ http://thebrooklynink.com/2012/02/18/41590-brooklyn-jail-reopens-neighborhood-not-as-worried-as-youd-think/#comments Sat, 18 Feb 2012 19:41:42 +0000 Jessica Hartogs http://thebrooklynink.com/?p=41590

The Brooklyn Detention Complex is located in a residential area of Boerum Hill. (Jessica Hartogs/The Brooklyn Ink)

When the Brooklyn Detention Complex reopened last week, articles sprung up in many New York publications quoting residents expressing their fears of having men who broke the law housed so close to their doorstep.

However, it seems that the biggest concern for many residents of Boerum Hill are not the men being housed at 275 Atlantic Avenue, but rather, where will the Department of Corrections employees park their cars and correction vans?

“Mostly when you talk to people, they go, ‘Oh my God, it’s another, how many people working, bringing their cars to downtown?’” said Howard Kolins, President of the Boerum Hill Association. “The big concern is traffic.”

The Brooklyn Detention Complex opened its doors in 1957 as the Brooklyn House of Detention. The facility was closed in June 2003 with plans to double its capacity.

Approximately 500 employees will staff the jail, seven days a week. That’s an average 50 to 100 correction officers per shift. The single-cell jailhouse at full capacity will house 759 men, most awaiting trial in Brooklyn and Staten Island courts.

“We are committed to ease residents parking fears. Our staff have been asked to take public transportation to and from the facility,” said Sharman Stein, Deputy Commissioner for Public Information of the NYC Department of Correction. But just in case they do drive, the department spokesman says, the facility has it covered.

“We have a corrections officer who will be patrolling the building 24/7 to deal with any parking violations,” added Stein.

Residents aren’t only worried about more cars parked in the area, some fear visitors might smuggle illegal goods into the facility.

“People have some concern about visitors coming through the jail with some contrabands; again that’s something we think both the police and the DOC will keep an eye on,” said Kolins.

Some nearby businesses expect to profit from the jail reopening. Fast-food spots including a Burger King and Dunkin’ Donuts, are located in the area, as well as several bond shops.

“I look at it in the same way as if a hospital had opened. It expands more business, with people being there 24 hours long. People need to get coffee, go on coffee breaks, get dry-cleaning done,” said Adero Gaudin, who works at the Bail Shop directly across from the facility. “It’s helped everyone in this little community.”

“Traffic is not a problem yet,” added Gaudin, who fears that once the Barclays Center at Atlantic Yards opens in September 2012, congestion will increase.

“The stadium is going to be ten times worse in terms of traffic,” she said.

So far, approximately 150 inmates have been brought over from Rikers Island, which will shut down parts of the institution for refurbishment over the summer.

“We are moving them gradually over the next couple of weeks,” said Stein, adding that the move is expected to be completed by the end of March.

Residents who remember the detention center before it shuttered its doors in 2006, barely blinked this week when inmates began to arrive.

“Longtime residents were always aware that the jail would reopen, “ said Kolins. “So it doesn’t come as a shock. What is of some concern is that the area immediately adjacent is very residential.”

However, newly arrived residents who paid a pretty penny for the properties are said to be upset. A house on nearby Slate Street was sold for $3.4 million in July 2011.

“Most residents are not thrilled about the jail, but it makes sense that it services the [nearby] court house. And for the prisoners, it lessens the burden for anyone going through that,” added neighborhood association president Kolins.

“We’re all human-beings at the end of the day,” said bail shop owner Gaudin.

]]> http://thebrooklynink.com/2012/02/18/41590-brooklyn-jail-reopens-neighborhood-not-as-worried-as-youd-think/feed/ 1 http://thebrooklynink.com/2012/02/15/41458-while-syria-bleeds-video/ http://thebrooklynink.com/2012/02/15/41458-while-syria-bleeds-video/#comments Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:59:39 +0000 Purvi Thacker http://thebrooklynink.com/?p=41458

As the uprising in Syria worsens, the Syrian community in Bay Ridge reflects on the situation with feelings of grief, hope and anger (photos by AP and video footage by AP and YouTube)

Produced by Sarah Munir and Purvi Thacker

]]> http://thebrooklynink.com/2012/02/15/41458-while-syria-bleeds-video/feed/ 0 http://thebrooklynink.com/2012/01/08/39965-five-stories-one-williamsburg/ http://thebrooklynink.com/2012/01/08/39965-five-stories-one-williamsburg/#comments Mon, 09 Jan 2012 04:00:56 +0000 Alexander Abnos http://thebrooklynink.com/?p=39965 Inside Brooklyn’s Creative Hub, and the Passions it Supports

Steven Thompson and his studio's color (Alexander Abnos / The Brooklyn Ink)

I | Art, To Start

Locust Hill, South Carolina is not a town. The small community on the outskirts of Greenville has a population barely large enough to register on a Google map. There are two roads and one lake. There are houses, but not many of them. Steven Thompson spent his first 18 years along these winding narrow roads, where everybody knew everybody, and nothing seemed to change.

Then one day he opened his front door and walked out. Destination: Clemson University. There were massive libraries there – appropriate, for someone intent on majoring in literature. They had a football team – Thompson was a huge fan. But one month in, still fresh in his dorm, his journey began to slow. Feelings obscured. Anxiety set in. On his own for the first time, Thompson broke down.

“Everything just became so bizarre to me…things were fundamentally without understanding,” he says today, fiddling with the wheels of a toy skateboard in his cluttered Williamsburg studio. “I don’t think I’m an artist BECAUSE of the nervous breakdown, but it definitely helped.”

Indeed, it took Thompson five years (and a transfer to the College of Charleston) before he took his first studio art class – a one-month short course on printmaking. He spent those five years as a pendulum. Sometimes a recluse, sometimes gregarious. Always, though, with a deep, unabiding, and simply unexplainable internal pain.

Slowly, tentatively, Thompson applied oil paint to plexiglass for his first project. His inner dialogue, still turbulent years after his Clemson episode, began to calm. Each brush stroke brought Thompson closer to secret places in the deep recesses of his person. Each color sang to him. In art, he could get lost in discovery. Thompson took a deep breath.

“You could say ‘I’m going to walk out this door and go into the city. I plan to go to a bar. I hope to meet my friend.’ But when the day comes around, you never know,” he says. “You could walk out the door and get smacked down by a car, and you’re gone forever.”

“When I sit down to make a work of art, it’s kind of like I’m stepping out of my door. I don’t really know what is going to happen. I have an idea of where I want to go, but I don’t know exactly where I’m going to end up.”

20 years after his first class, and it’s others who discover Thompson. They see him at galleries in New York City. In Georgia. In North Carolina. And on a cold December day, a former exotic dancer from Austin, Texas will walk into Oslo Coffee Roasters in Brooklyn and discover Thompson herself.

Merget, Ben, and the bean machine (Alexander Abnos/The Brooklyn Ink)

II | Brooklyn’s Roaster

Downtown Williamsburg may be a brick-and-mortar neighborhood, but glass and metal are beginning to loom large. Their smooth, silvery surfaces provide the facade for many an upscale condo building popping up in the area, monuments to gentrification for a community in flux.

Things begin to change to the north and west of McCarren Park. Here, glass shards powder the streets, lined with nothing but warehouses. A faint rumble emerges from one building on the corner, with chipping grey paint and a creaking front door. Motorcycle logos plaster the outer wall, appearing faded in the afternoon sun. Inside, mountains of dead metal and tools lie scattershot throughout the concrete floors. The rumble loudens. It smells like morning. In a side room, a door slides open, and within a single step you find yourself at the epicenter of one of Brooklyn’s most successful independent coffeehouses.

“Coffee always changes. It’s never the same,” says J.D. Merget, the founder and owner of Oslo Coffee Roasters. He has to raise his voice to be heard above the din of the roaster, currently cooking beans from a far away land. “It has a life at each stage. It has a life when it comes to us, it has a life when it’s roasted, and it has a life when it’s been brewed. It’s constantly evolving…or devolving, as the case may be.”

One thing that hasn’t changed is the roaster itself. The model in Oslo’s partition of this warehouse was made in the early 1980s, but the design has not been fundamentally altered since the early 20th century. Encased in dark red metal, a giant barrel rhythmically revolves. The coffee beans inside tumble like laundry, visible only through a tiny porthole on the front of the machine. Temperature and timing are paramount here. Cook the beans one second too long, one degree too hot, and the taste will suffer. Merget periodically removes a small metal bar from the front of the machine. It contains a sample of the beans within. Placing it near his nose, he inhales deeply. Not quite time yet.

Merget tuned in to this process some time ago. Formerly head of quality control and roasting at Kobricks Coffee in New Jersey, he started Oslo in 2003 at the insistence of his wife Kathy. The rationale for their shops location – on Roebling and Metropolitan in Williasmburg – was simple. It was cheap. Soon they found other advantages.

“It used to be you couldn’t get me to cross the bridge and visit my friends in Williamsburg. Now you can’t get me to cross the opposite way and go to Manhattan,” he says. “That happened pretty quick. Once we opened the store it was just like ‘What were we doing? This is such a great neighborhood.’”

Merget takes a sip of a new brew. This time, from the tiny African country of Burundi. Placing his nose inside the small glass tester cup, he inhales a sweet, floral bouquet. Taking a sip, the sensation turns to tart grapefruits, a short pause, and a finish of burnt sugar and tobacco. He nods approvingly, sets the cup down, and waits. In five minutes, he says, this same cup of coffee will taste noticeably different.

“The neighborhood is constantly changing, too,” he says. “It’s not what it was 10 years ago. It went from a sleepy little town that swelled on the weekends with visitors to the hustle and bustle of New York City.”

What has always remained, though, are the residents and their stories. When he started Oslo, Merget worked behind the counter all day, six days a week. He met customers from all walks of life, all pursuing their passions just like him. He got to know them. What they do. How they think. Where they’re going, and where they’ve been.

“At some point,” he says, “Brooklyn became this machine that attracts more and more and more creative people.”

The time has come. In one fell swoop, Ben (Oslo’s roaster operator) opens the door to the machine’s barrel, allowing an avalanche of steaming hot coffee beans to land on the platform below. Through air holes on the surface of the sifter, steam is sucked out while mechanical arms stir and jostle wave after wave of beans.

Merget observes this and takes another sip of the now-lukewarm Burundi coffee. The grapefruit is still there, but less pronounced. The pause between start and finish extends at least twice as long as it did previously. The taste experience ends with a new, flowery finish. In short, it tastes like a completely different cup of coffee.

“Ultimately, [the community] is simple,” he says. “It’s like-minded people coming together because we have passions and Brooklyn has the facilities for us to do what we want to do.”

A lever is pulled, and the now-cooled beans fall through a trap door in the roaster and into a grey plastic trash can. Another machine will sift through the beans to remove any rocks or debris that could ruin the grinders. Within a day, they’ll be up for sale in brown paper bags.

Brown bags and business (Alexander Abnos / The Brooklyn Ink)

III | Fashion and Function

The acid-washed denim vest needed some spicing up. That’s all Nayantara Banerjee knew. It needed flash. Pizazz. Style. Something feminine and eye-catching. Something fit for a Barbie doll. Because that’s exactly what the vest was.

“It was basically just a tube of fabric,” Banerjee says of the doll’s garment, the subject of the first sewing project she ever completed. Using a needle, thread, and advice from her mother, Banerjee added lime green lace trim to the collar and arm holes. She was six years old.

“I was not a prim and proper type of kid,” she says now, at 27. “My little brother, a little boy, thought I was disgusting.” She places special emphasis on “I,” as if her brother had no room to talk.

“He used to make me wash my hands before I played his Nintendo.”

So Banerjee’s hands turned to sewing instead. Her personal wardrobe expanded to include custom creations – constructed by herself, still with the help of her mother. Even with a bigger canvas, the Barbie doll aesthetic remained.

“I started getting really particular about what I wanted,” she says.” I wanted really girly things like huge full skirts and puffy sleeves.”

She wore them all with sneakers, to run around in.

Banerjee says this seated on a chair in the middle of her studio apartment in East Williamsburg. She sips at a cup of Oslo coffee. Banerjee glances around and apologizes for the haphazard look of her front room. “I used to live across the street…I only moved in here a month ago,” she says. There is nothing to apologize for. Her apartment is well-kept, outside of the pins, needles, thread spools, and scissors that smatter the surface of a wide wood table pressed against the wall.

But those things are to be expected in the home of a door-to-door seamstress.

“As friends started to be bridesmaids, they would ask me for alterations, then friends of friends started asking and I got requests for custom made things. Then one day on a whim I was just like ‘I’m gonna quit my job and see if I can make this work.”

Her job at the time involved posting instructional sewing videos and managing the web site of a fashion design start-up. Before that, with the ink still drying on her degree in fashion design (Syracuse), she worked for a company making women’s suits. In both jobs, marketing and trends directed the work. Banerjee’s mailbox became stuffed with magazines, their smooth pages dominated by advertisements and the smell of various perfume samples. Her Twitter feed became a tangled web of “what’s hot now” and “the next big thing.” It became too much to handle. Banerjee cancelled her subscriptions, and embarked on a simpler path.

“I get fed up with the branding and marketing of clothing sometimes,” she says. “We live in a world where people want something new, something more, and somebody’s going to give it to them. But a lot of times they’re just expressing that they want to look a certain way, not that they are a certain way.”

Today she trades under the title “The Williamsburg Seamster” – a play on the “scenester” title bestowed on so many of North Brooklyn’s more fashionable, event-attending types. When she started the business six years ago, Banerjee was a bartender, too. Now, she is the same as when she was six. She sews garments, and runs around.

“I don’t know that I could do it in another neighborhood,” she says. “There’s something about this North Brooklyn area. People are open with their homes, I offer a unique service…it just fits in with everything this neighborhood is about right now.”

Banerjee hasn’t left the design game completely. But now she plays it on her own terms. Just after quitting her job and before The Williamsburg Seamster matured, Banerjee began custom-making garments again. This time, for her friends. This time, it needed to be simple. Functional. The antithesis of everything the fashion and design industry was marketing towards.

Within a year, she nearly sold out her batch of customized aprons.

“They’re like giant pockets,” she says.

Banerjee and the tools of her trade (Alexander Abnos / The Brooklyn Ink)

The Ehlers adjustment (Alexander Abnos / The Brooklyn Ink)

IV | To Learn To Turn

At one point, Barb Ehlers greeted her clients in full rock climbing gear. Rugged boots, thick pants, and, sometimes, jackets with untold amounts of pockets. Ehlers, 5 foot 11 inches with fiery red hair and relentlessly focused expressions, had climbed Mount Everest on a whim. People paid her to get them in top shape now, and with no company dress code to follow, she would wear whatever she damn well pleased.

Today, in a studio on the 16th floor of a Manhattan high-rise, Ehlers dons a light blue tank top and black tights that cling to her slim, toned frame. Hair up, her expressions remain focused, even while laughing at the scene she finds herself in. She stands well over 6 feet now, the extra inches courtesy of a pair of black patent leather platform heels that lace up nearly to the top of her knees. It’s Wednesday night – time for her stripper class.

“I’ve been a jock all my life,” she says. “I know how to use my body. I know the muscles. But there’s this sexiness to using your body that I was never taught.  I can do push ups and pulls ups with a guy. I can dead-lift 205lbs, but to do a little sexy turn? That’s work for me!”

Ehlers, a personal trainer living in Williamsburg, takes this class each week with seven other women. Their instructor, Kimberly Smith, leads them through an array of moves that involve gyrating hips, slow leans forward, and dipping tooshes. Ehlers’ partner sits on a low-lying wicker chair while Ehlers uses the back of it to lift her body up with her arms. Carefully, Ehlers places her knees across her partners lap and shifts the weight from hand to hand. The goal here is to bob enticingly over the subject, lift up with the arms, extend legs, place toes on the ground, and slide the torso down slowly. Very slowly. And very, very close.

This is a bicycle, into a James Brown, into a full body slide.

“It’s just like a mountain climber!” Smith says as she demonstrates for the class.

“Yeah, I know,” says Ehlers. “That’s what I’m good at!”

Born in Bremen, Germany, Ehlers came up in a family where even her grandmother biked from place to place. Time passed by with roughhousing sessions from her sister. Eating took place at regular intervals, in controlled amounts. Breakfast. Big lunch. Something small in the evening.

At six, she moved to Queens. The transition was easy, but the kids seemed…different.

“It was like ‘Why aren’t you rolling around in the mud? Why aren’t you riding your bike around like a race car?’,” she says. “I felt tomboyish. There’s more of a gender difference here than there was there.”

There’s an atmosphere difference as well. In Queens, the Ehlers lived close by JFK airport, where the roar of passing jets (and their resulting pollutants) imbued the air. Just after moving to a new country, Barb developed a severe case of asthma.

“It hit me like a truck,” she says. “I couldn’t play, and I loved playing. I loved being outside, and I couldn’t do it. It takes your childhood life away.”

Soon, regularly scheduled pills went along with her regularly scheduled meals. A new character – an inhaler – added itself to the cast in her pockets. By 12, Ehlers had enough. She would breathe when she damn well pleased. She became a vegetarian, and her mother enrolled her in a karate class. At the beginning, she couldn’t make it through without reaching for her inhaler.

“I just couldn’t breathe,” she says. “Every time I got active, it got worse.”

Her sensei, an imposing man named Lee Ireland, would have none of it. Even as Barb gasped for air on his mat, the message rang firm.

“Breathe it out,” he commanded steadily, regularly.

“Just breathe it out.”

She did. Ehlers has not touched an inhaler since.

“A good teacher can show you a vision of yourself that you didn’t know was possible,” she says. “That’s something that I try to do with my clients, too, as a personal trainer. It’s the gift that [Ireland] gave me.”

Today, Ehlers trains so much, so vigorously, and in so many different ways that she needs to have clothes adjusted twice a year to account for her constantly changing body shape. TRX training, for example, has taken in her abdomen a couple inches. This is good. But now her little black dress poofs out at the sides. This is not good.

So at 10 a.m. the morning after her stripper class, Nayantara Banerjee pays a visit to Ehlers’ cozy one bedroom apartment in one of the last-remaining old style walk-ups by McCarren. Standing in front of a mirror in her living room, Ehlers lifts her arms up over her head as Banerjee carefully marks her body’s outline with safety pins.

A series of dead weights lie neatly on the floor next to the mirror, ordered according to size.

Kimberly Smith at work (photo by Halston Bruce / courtesy StripXpertease) and Thompson's work at rest (Alexander Abnos / The Brooklyn Ink)

V | The Cycle

The man carried stacks of money. Each stack contained one hundred dollars. All in ones. He sat in a low-lying chair in dim light, throwing bills on the strip club’s stage for whichever dancers he liked the most. Swigging vodka, the man leaned back in his seat. It creaked under his considerable girth. He liked Kimberly Smith. So when she came around to collect her tip, he told her a few things.

Smith looked at the man with wide brown eyes. She smiled with disarming grace. Then she walked away toward the manager of the club, demanding that the man be thrown out immediately. The manager remembered the stacks of money, and where his customer was currently spending it. He declined. The man would stay right where he was.

“Every single night there’s so much – you’re groped, you’re touched, you’re talked dirty to – there’s too much happening in one night to remember one situation,” Smith says, struggling to recall exactly what it was the man said that drove her to quit after 10 years of being a stripper. “That’s when I felt like I should move on. Nobody was on my side.”

Smith went home early, and angry. Sleep evaded her. At 3 a.m., she called the club, and told them to find a new dancer. Five years later, with StripXpertease, she teaches women from all walks of life the moves she learned.

There is an important caveat, though. Nobody is ever, in any way, encouraged to strip professionally.

“I get calls all the time from people saying ‘I want to be a stripper’ and my response is ‘Well, we can’t help you,’” she says. “I’m turning away money, but I just can’t justify helping some naive girl get into that industry, and then lord knows what happens to her. I don’t want that on my conscience.”

She knows all too well the cyclical, absorbing nature of the profession. Smith was in 6th grade in Austin when her drug-abusing mother moved them into a halfway house. Both of their housemates worked as strippers. One was still using. Both frequently strutted the hallways fully topless, as if it was the most normal, natural thing in the world. After all, they were just breasts.

“Looking back, it was bizarre to be living in that situation,” Smith says, emphasizing that she suffered no abuse or wrongdoing during her stay there. “I mean, they were strippers. It just wasn’t an ideal situation for a child to be in.”

But even as the women around her toiled in search of a better life, Smith couldn’t help but admire them a bit. These women were confident. They were in control. They had amazing bodies and exuded potent sexuality. In the comfort of the gaze of others, they could be the stars of their own intimate stage. For Smith, who long aspired to be an actress, these were significant qualities.

At the age of 18, she got a job as a dancer at a local club. Her 10-year journey through the seedy underbelly of strip clubs began.

“Girls are constantly getting evicted, getting their phones turned off, not being able to pay their bills, and they’re in this constant cycle,” she says. “That’s why girls dance to really sad music or really hard music. They’re angry. It’s just a horrible job. You’re getting paid to rub your crotch, your butt, your boobs on his penis. Nobody really wants to do that.”

Smith’s StripXpertease lesson plan simply removes money from the equation. Women, she says, want to know how to move, feel, be sexier. Victoria’s Secret rakes in countless millions based on that very concept. So do make-up companies. And hair salons. Buy this bra. Apply this mascara. Take on this expensive style. Even pole dancing classes, popularized by actress Sheila Kelley, market themselves as a physical fitness regime. There are tangible, physical results.

Smith’s aim is entirely mental. In the eyes of many, this makes it all the more dangerous. StripXpertease has been kicked out of multiple studios and received negative press, while pole dancing flourishes (despite the fact that most women do not have a pole in their homes). A YouTube video of Smith performing a routine with annotations explaining how she was moving and why was taken down by site administrators. Meanwhile the exact same video, without annotations, remained live.

“Apparently it’s more offensive to teach people how to do this nasty stuff than just doing the nasty stuff,” she says.

The solution would seem to be to open her own studio, but it’s easier said than done. The two main ingredients – money and time – are in short supply for Smith at the moment. In Williamsburg, though, she has a liberal, open neighborhood more likely to accept her enterprise with open arms.

“When I first moved out here I didn’t like it at all,” she says. “It’s like…everyone’s white. Everyone has a decent amount of money. Everyone’s ‘cool.’ It just seemed so pretentious. I said ‘If I’m going to live in the white suburbs, I’m going to go back to Texas where it doesn’t snow.’”

“It’s grown on me, though. I like the small, mom and pop feel here. I think a studio would do really great.”

Smith lives with her boyfriend in an apartment just off the hustle and bustle of Bedford Avenue. On a cold December day, she walks through the light drizzle into Oslo Coffee Roasters. The barista greets everyone who enters, including Smith, with a pleasant, familiar “hello.” Several pieces of art hang on the walls of the cafe, including one large web of wood and plastic suspended across from the front counter.

Smith’s eyes squint as she examines the sculpture. At first, it looks like little more than a series of translucent plastic bags suspended by planks. She inches closer.

“Oh!” She exclaims. It has become clear that inside the plastics are countless small woodcut figures, with intricate swooping patterns drawn in pen on top of them. Smith’s eyes settle back into their wide gaze. Her raised cheeks begin to relax with understanding.

“That’s a lot of work right there,” she says. “That’s so cool.”

There is a pause.

“What’s the artist’s name?”

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