Census numbers show the dwindling numbers. In 1980, 307,044 (13.8 percent) of people in Brooklyn had Italian ancestry. By 2010, it was 168,420 (6.3 percent).

Though the Italian population is decreasing, its cultural imprint remains. Here are two businesses that are keeping the Italian alive in Brooklyn.

Serving Sicilian One Panelle at a Time

Ferdinando’s Focacceria, in Carroll Gardens, is a family business that has included three generations of the Buffa family. Today, Frank Buffa oversees the restaurant, and his sons, Christian and David, help manage it. The restaurant is popular with everyone from locals to celebrities who come to taste its Sicilian specialties. The most famous and popular item on the menu is the panelle special. Panelles are chickpea fritters, and they are put on a sandwich with ricotta and Pecorino Romano cheese. Here, Christian shows how to make them.

Parlate Italiano, Bambini?

Alberta Gulotta started Little Language Playhouse about eight years ago. It’s the only language school in Brooklyn to exclusively teach Italian to children. Classes start as young as 6-months-old and go up to 12-years-old. Located in Dyker Heights, around where Gulotta grew up with her Italian parents, she knew the school would do well in the neighborhood. Still, she says, for an Italian-American area, there should be more parents who sign their children up for her classes. She wishes more people of Italian decent would pass the language through the generations. Here’s a look at a class of five- to seven-year olds.

Beatrice Mobley holding her Brooklyn Navy Yard Hospital I.D. (Photo courtesy of Beatrice Mobley)

Beatrice Mobley, believed to be one of the oldest surviving workers of the Brooklyn Navy Yard Hospital, sits at her dining room table in the Vinegar Hill area of Brooklyn, surrounded by mementos from various stages of her life. She picks up of her 66-year-old Brooklyn Navy Yard Hospital I.D. badge with its sepia-colored distressed picture, looks at it and smiles.

“I feel like I’m the only one left,” she says, adding that she was only 19 when she worked at the hospital.

The 85-year old’s memories are now part of the Brooklyn Navy Yard Oral History Project, an effort put together by the Brooklyn Historical Society (BHS) and 2011 Pulitzer Prize author and Brooklyn resident, Jennifer Egan.  The oral history project is part of the newly established Brooklyn Navy Yard Center at BLDG 92, which is an exhibition and visitors center. Its mission: to capture the stories of women and others who filled trade positions at the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II.

“These women paved the way for all of us in skilled professional fields today, and their oral histories are important records of personal experience that will be preserved to inspire future generations of innovative young women,” said Daniella Romano, vice president of BLDG 92 Exhibits and Programs-Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corp.  Full-length oral history interviews are available at the BLDG 92 Resource Center and at the BHS Othmer Library by request.

Mobley, wearing a jade-colored jersey shirt and emerald green skirt and vest, is feisty, fashionable and full-of-faith. Her zest for life began in the rural enclaves of Savannah, Ga.  Although the climate of racism was strong in the 1940s, Mobley says she had a supportive family, great life and got along well with everyone.

“Some people came [to the north] from the south because they had it bad there,” she said. “But I didn’t come for that, because I had a job when I come from the south.  I always had good jobs.”

Mobley had been curious about Brooklyn, though, so in 1945 when she was 19-years-old, she left her 2-year-old son James, behind with her parents and abandoned her husband— whom she’d married when she was 15, but has never divorced, and headed north.  She immediately found work as a cook at the Brooklyn Navy Yard Hospital.

After more than six decades, despite her age, Mobley has vivid memories of that time. Since there were no buses then, she said she used to travel by trolley from her apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant to the Navy Yard to work the 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. shift.  She chuckles now as she recalls how inexpensive things were.

“Carfare was five cents. That’s right, five cents to ride the trollies and the train,” she said.  She enjoyed working with the diverse staff. “The naval hospital was very friendly, you would never know it was segregated,“ she added.

From a young age, Mobley learned how to cook from her mother and found the Navy Yard as a suitable spot to show off her skills. “There was a big dining room, big kitchen because all the navy boys come from the ship.” Mobley didn’t have a signature dish but she helped to prepare foods like potatoes, string beans and roast beef for the hundreds of people who ate in the cafeteria.

After working for the Navy Yard for a year, Mobley, however, felt the call of her southern roots, so she returned to Georgia and also spent time in Florida where she worked as a cook for a local judge and his family.  But after a while, she missed Brooklyn, so in 1948 she returned, this time with her son, and has lived there ever since.

Mobley has lived in Farragut public housing for over 50 years. Sparsely furnished and neat, her apartment is decorated with silk roses and lace curtains with floral embroidery.

A professed loner, Mobley doesn’t have a lot of visitors except for a church member who checks on her weekly. Her son, who lives in Maryland, and other family members from other states, visit her periodically.   But she says that she’s not lonely and despite the poverty and crime that is prevalent in her neighborhood, Mobley says she’s never had any problems.

“I don’t live in fear,” she said boldly.  She attributes her fearlessness to her unwavering Christian faith. “Knowing God is with you, you don’t have to worry about nothing.”

Religion was a core part of her upbringing and the morals that were instilled in her as child resonated even thousands of miles away.  “My mother told me the do’s and don’t’s: never drink, never smoke, never party,” she recalled. “It’s a shame I’d never been to the movies because I wasn’t that type. I just went to church, come home and go to my job.”

But she does watch a little bit of television and listens to the radio occasionally but she’s not a fan of either.  She prefers spending time sewing, praying and reading the Bible.

Mobley has been a member of St. John’s Holiness Church in Bedford-Stuyvesant since she moved to Brooklyn and has served as a deaconess for over 50 years.  She used to drive all over the country but today she only drives her 1970 mint green Impala to church on Sundays or when she visits a friend at a nursing home.

After she returned to Brooklyn, Mobley worked as a cook, chauffeur and hairdresser for her Pastor at St. John’s for over 20 years until she passed away.  She then worked as a cook for different schools within the New York City Department of Education for close to 40 years.

“I was very faithful on my job,” she said. It was difficult for her to retire in 2010, because of a heart condition, from P.S. 287 where she served at for 30 years; she was affectionately called “Grandma” by students. To keep them close to her heart, she occasionally reads the dozens of handmade cards that students sent when she became ill.  “I love them too. I love my babies.”

Mobley has 21 grandchildren of her own so opening her heart to others came naturally. She has a special wall adorned with photographs of her family and a box full of photo albums, which she eagerly pulls out for a visitor.

“All the things I’ve been through, I still have my joy,” she said.  “My life is beautiful. I’m happy and satisfied.”

The Palestinian bid for U.N. membership was put off by the Security Council, announced today the council president, Portugal’s U.N. ambassador Jose Filipe Moraes Cabral. The Palestinian authority will now have to decide whether to press for a vote it is widely suspected to loose.

 

Children at Beginning With Children Charter School (Gloria Dawson / The Brooklyn Ink)

The quest for statehood began on September 23 after Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian authority, appeared before the General Assembly.

Palestinian hopes were high last month, as Israel agreed to exchange more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for Staff Sgt. Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held for five years. On October 31, Unesco added Palestine to its members, a move that has cost the organization $60 million of its yearly American funding. However, with the United States expected to veto a Palestinian full U.N. membership, and other countries such as France and Britain saying they would abstain from voting, Palestine’s chances for statehood continue to appear slim.

Whatever happens, it is a historic moment in the Middle East. We wondered how the younger generation thinks about it. After decades of fighting, the Middle Eastern conflict is part of contemporary history and has been added to many school curriculums around the world. But in a multi-cultural and multi-faith borough, like Brooklyn, conversation about it is likely to reflect widely varying and passionate points of view. Rather than ask the teachers, we wanted the children’s thoughts.

We decided to ask sixth graders at schools from different faiths to take part in a candid conversation about the conflict. Unfortunately, due to security reasons, we weren’t given access to any 6^th grade class of the 4 Islamic schools we contacted in Brooklyn. We spoke to a Jewish day school, a Christian school, a secular school, and to Muslim students from Brooklyn College. What do they know? How do they know it? And how do they relate to it? Here are four audio slide shows that address some of our questions.

Slide shows produced by Omar Bilal Akhtar, Gloria Dawson, Tracy Jarrett, Emily Judem, Andrew Katz, Ravi Kumar, Xin Hui Lim, Joey Maestas and Hannah Olivennes.

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Tattoo artist Annie Lloyd describes the birth of a tattoo. Lloyd, 32, has worked at Three Kings Tattoo in Greenpoint for three years.

Leo De Le Cruz repairs watches in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He learned the skill from his father.

Every day people wake up and decide to get married. For some, that means a trip to Brooklyn’s City Clerk at Borough Hall.

By Amanda Massa and Mustafa Mehdi Vural

Marriage can bring a smile to many people’s faces, but sometimes it brings tears.  In the Turkish culture, the traditional henna night — which is performed just days before the wedding— does just that.

The henna night, or kina gecesi , is for women only. Friends and family surround the bride during the ceremony and sing the traditional henna song, high high mountain tops, or yuksek yuksek tepelere.

They shouldn’t build homes high up on the mountain tops

They shouldn’t give girls to faraway lands

They shouldn’t neglect the mother’s one and only

May the birds carry the message

I miss my mother

Both my mother and father

I miss my village

On henna night, women weep together as henna is placed in the bride’s palms and gold gifts are presented to her from her future mother-in-law as an invitation to join her family.

Take a look as The Brooklyn Ink documents this emotional day for Selda Altagul and her family.

It is only in a neighborhood like Williamsburg, in a borough like Brooklyn, that a group of creative young folks can open an Elvis-themed hair salon-cum-tattoo parlor without raising many eyebrows.

Graceland is housed in a renovated former three-car garage at the corner of Lorimer and Withers streets. Embedded in the smooth cement floor are a pair of styling scissors and a horseshoe, while a tuned guitar and upright piano, the latter covered in candles, rest in the center of the room. A portrait of Elvis hangs on the dark wood paneling to greet customers, and Elvis-themed books rest on open surfaces, including a bar-like front desk complete with red barstools bolted to the floor. On the right side of the room are vintage and antique barber chairs, benefitting from the natural sunlight of garage door-shaped windows, and on the left side are workstations and florescent lamps where Graceland’s tattoo artists work.

But more than a kitschy homage to the King, Graceland is a sort-of homecoming for this hodgepodge group of urban fringe kids—it’s the idealized workspace that they dreamt about back when they were still paying their dues and sharpening their styling skills.

Bethany Paul, a Graceland stylist and co-owner, arrived from Dallas seven years ago with a talent for hair and love of music and tattoos. Her first job in the city was at Mudhoney, a legendary downtown salon with no rules, an edgy, punk-inspired aesthetic and cutting-edge styling. Mudhoney brought together the talented folks that would eventually create Graceland. Paul’s upper body is covered in brightly colored references to music (including a massive Elvis visage on her back) and fauna of various kinds. “Just a couple of days after landing in New York,” Paul said, “I met a girl from Mudhoney, who gave me one look and told me I have to work there.”

A decade ago, Mudhoney owner Michael Matula and his partner, Alicia Trani, were well-known figures in New York’s mixed mega club and gay nightlife scenes of the ‘90s because of their uniquely fringe business with inspired, underground aesthetics. The popularity of Mudhoney landed them a New York Times profile in 1999, and now they boast three locations. Corvette Hunt, another Graceland stylist and a retired drag queen, also landed at Mudhoney approximately seven years ago. “I was shampoo girl,” he says, grinning and flexing a pair of scissors in his right hand.

Standing at around six foot two and sporting a thin beard and tattoos on his arms, Hunt’s entrance into hairstyling came from working his own wigs into sculpture, for himself and at the Pat Fields boutique (a talent that once got him a whirlwind job styling mohawks for Madonna dancers on a national tour). Upon his return to New York, Hunt went to styling school with one goal in mind.

“Mudhoney was the only I ever thought to work,” he said, remarking about its reputation among the clubgoers. Around the same time Graceland stylist Josh DeMatteo also arrived at the salon via the same nightlife scene as Hunt. All of three of Graceland’s stylists attribute their expert skills with hair to the guidance they received from Matula and Trani.

After work, DeMatteo, Hunt and Paul would grab drinks down the street at the Dove Parlour, a West Village bar. They befriended the owners, Henrietta Paris and Jennifer Armstrong, and became regulars alongside tattoo artists and future Graceland co-owners Josh Lord and Yadira Mendez-Firvida, who also own the East Side Ink, a well-known tattoo parlor. United by a love of aesthetics and visual culture, these downtown characters began getting together post-work at Mudhoney to drink, listen to music and “have these amazingly creative styling sessions,” said Hunt, emphatically. They often fantasized about the ideal space where they all could hang out, work and continue listening to music at the same time.

They found it. While scouting locations for a new Williamsburg restaurant, Paris and Armstrong found the space at Lorimer and Withers, and a lease that included an attached car garage with a leaky roof and a busted floor. Suddenly their collective dream of working shoulder-to-shoulder became a reality—tattoo artists and hairstylists decided that sharing a large room would be the best way to maximize the space.

Lord and Mendez-Firvida—who had business experience with East Side Ink—led the way. Along with Paul and Hunt, the four retrofitted the space to their liking, with every visual detail lovingly taken into account, from the garage-door windows to the bathroom sink. “At this point we’re more than just friends,” said Hunt. “It’s a family.” Graceland opened January 22.

Alex Stoler, a 21 year-old NYU student and resident of the Lower East Side, with a thick head of hair and a Burberry scarf, traveled to Williamsburg specifically for an appointment with DeMatteo, “Yeah, some of my friends were laughing at me for coming to Brooklyn just for a haircut,” he said, his chic outfit looking out of place in a neighborhood that worships vintage clothing. “But once I find someone I like, I stick with them. I don’t mess around with my hair.”

Gershow Recycling has owned the scrap yard on Pitkin Avenue in East New York for the past 10 years with more than 200-300 customers a day. Senior Facility Manager Eric Kugler took us on a tour of the facility.