Close to 9,000 people are believed to be living in the Red Hook Houses, legally and illegally. Photo courtesy of: Shelley Bernstein/Flickr

By Miranda Lin

When the first 1,408 units of the Red Hook Houses were opened in 1939, they boasted the best technology could provide: self-operating elevators, incinerators in every hallway, gas ranges, electric fridges and a laundry room under each building. In 1955, another apartment block called was added, making the Red Hook Houses the largest housing project in Brooklyn, second only in New York to the Queensbridge Houses in Long Island City, Queens. For the families of the Irish and Italian longshoremen that first moved into Red Hook, they were the embodiment of the American dream, the promise of a bright future.

Today, the Red Hook Houses remain a dream and a promise – but broken ones.  For decades, life in the Houses has been defined by violence, addiction, poverty, isolation and lost opportunity. According to the latest NYCHA data, nearly 15 percent of all families in the Houses are living on welfare and the average gross income is less than half the district average. Meanwhile, a 1999 community survey of 960 Red Hook residents showed that 35 percent of respondents carried a weapon for protection, while 18 percent said they knew victims of shootings, assaults and robberies.

Despite the bleak figures, new housing and employment opportunities are arriving; crime and drug rates are on the decline; and daily life goes on for the residents in the Red Hook Houses. These are stories of four of those lives.

8 a.m. The Rounds

When Dorothy’s husband died, she was left with no money, no job and six children. Within a month she had a nervous breakdown and thought she was going to die. But two of her neighbors came to her rescue and for three months nursed her back to health. When Dorothy asked how she could repay them for their kindness, they replied, “All we want you to do the rest of your life is do something good for somebody each day.”

In the 34 years that have followed, Dorothy has tried to do just that as the president of the Red Hook East Tenants’ Association. She wakes up at the crack of dawn every day, combs back her short white-streaked hair and sets off on her tour of the Houses.

First, Dorothy checks in on the  seniors. She makes sure they’ve all eaten and are feeling well; she knows exactly which ones have recently returned from the hospital and remembers who the last family member was to visit each of them

Next, she stops by the housing management office to take some phone calls and think up new ways to save the neighborhood. “I bring everything I can into this community to keep people out of trouble and to do the right thing,” she says in a slow southern drawl.

After two hours in the office, Dorothy is out the door again. She’s getting a group of kids from the Houses to help her clean up the trash in the courtyard. Nothing makes Dorothy happier than seeing everyone in the neighborhood put to work.

2 p.m The Climb

Eugene lives on the sixth floor of a 14-story high-rise, but the elevator to his floor often doesn’t work. “We got dope bangers on every floor who got keys to the elevator and turn ‘em on and off whenever they want,” he says. That means taking the stairs. But Eugene is diabetic, has a heart condition and uses a cane. Not to mention that the narrow stairwell is also used by drug dealers and addicts.

Red Hook’s history with drugs has been well documented. In 1988, LIFE Magazine ran a nine-page cover feature on the neighborhood, labeling it “the crack capital of America.” Some estimate that as much as $50 million of cocaine, heroin and marijuana travel through the Houses every year. After school principal Patrick F. Daly was killed in a shootout between two drug dealers in 1992, the police adopted a “zero tolerance” policy and setup a satellite police station on the ground floor of Eugene’s apartment.

However Eugene remains skeptical. “Nothin’s changed since the cops came,” he says. “What we need is cameras on every building and doors that can lock.” The magnetic lock on his building’s main door was torn out years ago and has not been replaced. Even if it was fixed, Eugene thinks it’d probably be ripped out again within a day.

6 p.m. The Fixer Upper

Eddie is well-known around the Houses for many things: “One is for being the white guy in the projects, two is being a bit of a hound dog and three is being a master handyman.” So when two young women asked if he’d help them fix their grocery cart, he happily obliged.

On the trip up to Eddie’s third-floor apartment, they pass a puddle of fresh vomit; a smashed hall window; and a paramedic guiding a sobbing woman out the door with a stone-faced man in sunglasses following closely behind. No one blinks twice.

“I’ve gotta get my power drill from my room,” he says as he shuffles through the piles of newspapers, tools and food cans stacked across his floor. There are two TVs in his bedroom. The first is switched to the harness races he’s betting on. The second is attached to a closed-circuit surveillance system Eddie has rigged up to his front door. “It helps me sleep,” he explains.

When Eddie first moved into his one-bedroom apartment in the Houses, everyone thought he was crazy. But he has a view of Coffey Park, pays $126.16 a month in income-adjusted rent and thinks the neighborhood is on the upswing – as long as people keep moving in. “People need to know that places like this exist and that they’re safe,” says Eddie, pointing to the Red Hook Co-op. The mixed-income development on Wolcott Street lotteried off two-thirds of its units to low-income residents two years ago after receiving 4,500 applications. The rest are now being sold at market value: $390,000 for a two-bedroom apartment and $510,000 for three bedrooms. Only two units have been sold.

“There ya go, baby, good as new,” says Eddie as he fastens the final rivet in the cart. The girls load up their bags from Fairway Market and hop into the elevator. It works, but Eddie refuses to ride it. “It’s like an outhouse in there.”

8 p.m. The Night Watch

Karen came to Red Hook 28 years ago as an 18-year-old single mother. “I didn’t know it when I came here, but Red Hook had a stigma as a place that family don’t come to visit,” she says. “So I had to make my own family.”

She learned to rely on herself and others in the Houses, but not outsiders, especially not the police. On April 28, 2006, her son Freddie was caught in a housing-wide drug raid, the memory of which still sends tears streaming down her cheeks. Federal policy has it that anyone convicted of a single crime is automatically evicted from public housing. “I didn’t know where my son was for four days,” she says.

Now Karen works as many nights as she can on tenant patrol. She sits and chats with one or two other tenants around a table in the hall. But as soon as someone enters, their eyes sharpen. Do you live here? Who are you visiting? What do you want? “Some people don’t like it because I’m too much in everybody’s face,” says Karen. “But it’s because I care enough.”

This is the fourth of our five-part “What’s for Dinner?” feature series about Brooklyn meals.

By Miranda Lin

The gloves came off before the dinner lids.

“This is none of your business, Ms. Byrd, so you can just shut up.”

A collective gasp rippled through the audience. Ms. Byrd sent a stung, bitter look back at her attacker, Ms. Blondel, but said nothing. A long silence followed.

“Okay, well, we can discuss this more in committee,” stammered the New York City Housing Authority official, his hands raised in appeasement. “I think that’s all I have for this evening,” he said and receded back into this chair.

The rest of the room shifted uneasily. A group of roughly 20 people had gathered for the monthly Red Hook West Tenants’ Association meeting, this time to discuss the apparently controversial topic of the local association’s upcoming presidential elections. “You screwed me over last time and you’re trying to do it again,” cried Ms. Blondel, a husky woman with a pitbull stare. “I’m not gonna take this anymore.”

But before she could continue, Ms. Marshall, the incumbent association president, stood up, stone-faced, eyes laser-pointed at Ms. Blondel, and said, “That’s all for tonight. Thank you for coming. We have some food for you in the kitchen before you go.”

For a moment no one moved, but glanced nervously back-and-forth between the three LADIES. At last, one portly elderly woman in a maroon cotton tracksuit and dangling gold earrings stood up and shuffled over to the kitchen. Others followed silently behind her. The meeting was adjourned. Grudges were suspended. Dinner had begun.

Along the kitchen counter was a row of large aluminum pans filled with homemade soul food. As the lids were pulled off, the room filled with a buttery aroma. Fried chicken bathed in sizzling oil. Pork ribs that were almost falling of the bone. Steaming white rice mixed with black-eyed peas and bacon. As each person filed by, they added heaping scoops of collard greens, candied yams and macaroni and cheese on to their Styrofoam plates until the dishes began to sag. Before long, the tense silence was replaced by the sound of clinking utensils, vigorous chewing and even laughter.

“You know what’s great about living around here and coming to these meetings?” asked Mr. Franco, his mouth still full with salad and lips rimmed with creamy dressing. “These people really know how to cook.” At every tenants’ meeting, Ms. Marshall tries to prepare something to eat and her Southern-style soul food is usually a hit with the mostly African-American crowd. The only restaurant in the neighborhood that sells soul food is U.S. Fried Chicken, a takeout joint on Dwight Street where you place your orders through bulletproof glass. “The pizza over there is pretty good,” said Mr. Franco in his Brooklyn-Italian accent. “But nobody beats her chicken.”

After brooding in her seat a while longer and exchanging fierce glares with her rivals, Ms. Blondel rose and joined the back of the food line, too. She didn’t take much – a few spoonfuls of potato, a chicken drumstick, some turnip greens and a cornbread biscuit – and didn’t stay long, wrapping her meal to go in a takeout box. But as she headed to the door, she murmured a quick word of thanks to Ms. Marshall and left carrying her dinner in a smiley face plastic bag that read, “Have a nice day!”

The hardest part of spending a night at the Market Hotel is finding its front door. Photo courtesy of: May Jeong

By Miranda Lin

The first time I went to the Market Hotel was in October. I was looking for a band. I didn’t know which band, only that it had to be a one from Brooklyn that people were talking about, that was on the verge of stardom and that somehow captured the underground indie spirit people associated with Brooklyn.

I found a lot of bands – Oneida, Mt. Eerie, North Highlands, to name a few – and while they each had a very different sound, what they all had in common was that they were playing at the Market Hotel. I Googled and Yelped and discovered that the Hotel was not a hotel but a concert venue. It sounded like some secret hideout because the first comments on every site were invariably about how difficult it was to find, followed by directions: look for the Mr. Kiwi bodega, look for the green awning, look for the little piece of paper on the door.

And so I went. I took the JMZ train to Myrtle-Broadway station. After going the wrong direction twice, I eventually found the crumpled up sign taped to the door that marked the entrance to the Market Hotel. The door was locked. There was a cosmic yoga event scheduled for that evening, arranged, I’d later learn, by one of the five people who live at the Market. But he’d forgotten to open the door.

A few nights later, I came back and this time there was a hooded man slumped by the door who I assumed to be homeless but whom I quickly learned was the bouncer. His chief responsibility was to limit the loitering and the drinking but not to keep people away.

I pulled open the metal door, walked in and slammed head first into a wall of sound. Fuzzy guitars, frenetic drumming and shrieking synthesizers filled the dark stairwell. As I clanked up the iron steps, I could actually feel my eardrums tingle, my heart beginning to race.

When I made it to the top, I found myself in a brightly lit room with high ceilings and mirrored walls. Two smiling young women were standing over a cashbox and shouted out to me over the blaring music, “Hey there, it’s seven bucks for the show tonight.” After I handed her some cash and flashed my ID, she took a green Sharpie marker to my hand: one stripe to show I’d paid, another to prove I could drink, legally.

There were a few band t-shirts strung up on the wall and a group of teenaged kids in tight denim and mixed plaid smoking in a circle. I headed straight past them and towards the adjoining room where the music was coming from. It was a triangle-shaped space, with the stage, bar and benches each occupying a corner and about 30 people idling around the middle. In the back, a psychedelic three-piece band was bobbing around on the stage, which itself looked like nothing more than a few sheets of plywood and a floral bed sheet as backdrop.

In between acts I sat on a shabby antique couch that looked like it had just been picked off the curb and chatted with a guy named Ted. Ted told me how he was taking the year off before going to college, liked wearing “vintage not thrift” and had been introduced to the Market over the summertime by some friends of friends. “I just like to come and chill,” he said, slowly drawing out each vowel.

The next band, a trio called Prince Rama of Ayodhya, began to play. Ted shot-gunned the rest of his Pabst Blue Ribbon and raced to the front of the crowd.  The lead singer, an elfin girl with a thick tangle of brown curls wrapped up in a braided headband, alternated between dancing barefoot on the floor, wailing on the mic and pounding on her guitar and synth. Midway through the set, the singer and her bandmates pulled out a bag of homemade noisemakers and began handing them out to the audience. Painted tin cans filled with rice. Feathered tambourines. Makeshift maracas. I felt like I was back at Camp. But without prompting, we all took up our instruments and began to play. Loose wires were hanging from the ceiling. The air was suffocating from the sweat and smoke. The music was so loud you could feel it against your skin. But neither Ted nor I nor anyone else in the room seemed to mind. We swayed along together and rattled our cans.

Electro-clash trio Prince Rama of Ayodhya take center stage. Photo courtesy of: May Jeong

At this point it became clear that, in addition to not being a market or a hotel, the Market Hotel was not a conventional music club either. It was more like a rabbit hole into a different world. It was opened roughly three years ago by legendary concert promoter Todd P and members of the Brooklyn-based punk band The So So Glos who were frustrated by the lack of opportunities and recognition given to up-and-coming local bands. They bought a cheap loft space in Bushwick rumored to have once been a Dominican speakeasy (and where scenes from the movie Ghost were supposedly shot), outfitted it with a sound system and began inviting over friends.

Since then, it has hosted the likes of the Dirty Projectors, Japanther, Javelin, Teengirl Fantasy and Real Estate. Never heard of any of these bands? That’s somewhat the point. The Market Hotel is part of a tight-knit community of artists, promoters and fans that together form what has become known as Brooklyn’s “Do-It-Yourself” scene. The concept involves stripping down music and concerts to their bare essentials. Venues are often improvised and/or derelict and/or illegal. Audiences usually find out about shows through word-of-mouth. The music is raw and sincere, but even some of the biggest names in the DIY scene can only be described as well-known unknowns. In the words of Matt Mondanile, lead guitarist for the band Real Estate, “It’s just about having a place to drink, hang out and listen to good music.”

Lately there has been plenty of attention on the good music coming out of Brooklyn. New York Magazine ran a cover proclaiming the borough to be “America’s music capital.” Home-grown bands like Grizzly Bear, MGMT and TV On the Radio have all scored mainstream radio hits in the past year. But when you ask Ric Leichtung what he thinks of these local bands hitting it big, there is a moment of confused silence. “Oh yeah,” he suddenly replies. “I didn’t know who you were talking about for a second.”

Leichtung moved from San Francisco four years ago to study music technology at NYU’s Steinhardt School. While perfecting his scruffy college boy look – think black-framed glasses, beat-up Converse sneakers, lots of band t-shirts and a permanent five o’clock shadow – Leichtung also found himself getting sucked into the DIY scene. He started out interning for Todd P, but now lives and works at the Market Hotel along with four friends and a revolving door of artists who rent out storage and rehearsal space for $394 a month. Though the Warhol’s Factory aura of the Market is creatively appealing, Leichtung confesses, “Trying to go to bed before 4 a.m. around here can be a problem.”

In addition to sharing living quarters, all of the Market’s tenants split management and concert booking duties. And rather than looking for the biggest stars they can find, Leichtung and his housemates have kept their ears to the ground trying to find young experimental artists who can’t find a stage anywhere else. “We decided at the beginning,” said Leichtung, “that we were going to help bring out potential rather than have bands who’d already made it.”

The Market hosts anywhere from two to four shows a week and every member of the house takes a curatorial role in deciding which artists play each night. The line-ups are famously eclectic. After doors open at 8 p.m., a new band and different sound hit the stage every hour. It’s not uncommon to hear shoegazing electronica, thrashing black metal and up-tempo surf pop all on the same bill. “We don’t really look for any sound in particular,” Leichtung said. “We just try to foster talent that we’re enthusiastic about.”

The Market prides itself on making every show an all-ages event. Lin/Brooklyn Ink

And winning the Market’s support can be a huge boon for aspiring young bands. “If you think about it, what we did with the Vivian Girls was a dumb move,” said Leichtung, referring to the all-girl trio that won their place in the indie soundscape practically by sheer will on the part of the Market’s promoters. “When they first started, we didn’t know how they were going to perform, we didn’t know if anyone was going to like them, but we took a chance. We kept putting them on the bill until other people got it, too.” Since then, the Vivian Girls have been signed by In the Red record label and released two studio albums, both to strong reviews by Pitchfork.com, an online music site that has become the de facto arbiter of indie cool.

While Leichtung recognizes the risk of pushing a band that might never catch on, he also sees it as a responsibility. “A lot of DIYs are flaky. They book a band and then don’t do anything about it. But we use our Facebook page, we have a Twitter account (we don’t use it, but we have it), we have a production assistant, we have a sound system, we pay the bands properly – which are all good things,” he said, clutching at the air to emphasize each word. “We work hard to make sure people have a chance in the DIY scene.”

At the end of their set, the members of Prince Rama began cleaning up their own gear, gathering back their noisemakers and putting on their shoes. A few people in the crowd stayed to chat with the band and offer a word of praise. Others headed to the bar or returned to the couches in the back. Once their equipment was packed and pushed to the side, the next band took to the stage and Prince Rama – now known just as Michael, Taraka and Mimai – joined the rest of the audience. They danced and shimmied and stomped their feet just as their fans had done for them a few moments earlier.

Syms with his wife Lynn at an AFIPO benefit reception hosted by Mona Ackerman at her residence, 3/17/09. Photo courtesy of the Syms Company, photo by Chris Lee.

Rabinoff and Syms were both students at Midwood High School in the 1940s, back when Syms was still known by his birth name, Seymour Merinsky. After he graduated in 1943, Syms left Brooklyn to join the US Army and pursue his dream of being a radio broadcaster. After stints as a sports announcer in Maryland and West Virginia, though, Syms returned to New York where his father and older brother George had changed their surnames to Merns and opened up a clothing shop on Vesey Street in Lower Manhattan.

For six years, Syms saved up so that he could buy his own stake in the family business. But when he finally came up with the $6,000 needed for a 20 percent share of the company, his brother refused, claiming that it was now worth much more. In 1959, Syms left the family company and started his own store around the corner: a 2,000-square-foot building on Cortlandt St. he named “Sy Merns.” A lawsuit from his brother forced him to change the store’s name to SYMS, a combination of his first and last names, but he continued to expand his brand.  Today, there are 30 SYMS stores across 13 states.

“My father was a really passionate person and someone who was a bit of a visionary,” said his daughter Marcy Syms in a statement. “Once he believed something could happen, he pulled out all the stops to make it so.” SYMS became one of the first off-price clothing stores in the country that targeted shoppers who were both price-conscious and brand-savvy. Syms’s motto was “An educated consumer is our best customer” – a phrase he often delivered himself in his commercials in the distinctive radio voice he had cultivated many years earlier in Brooklyn.

In 1985, Forbes claimed that SYMS Corp. had among the highest profit margins in the entire retailing industry. Syms donated his fortune to a variety of causes, including the American Heart Foundation, Boys Town of Jerusalem, Public Broadcasting and the Fashion Institute of Technology, but also never forgot to give back to his Midwood roots. “Whenever we called on him, he was always ready, willing and able to help,” said Rabinoff. The school honored him with a Lifetime Achievement award in 1999.

Syms had four children with his first wife, Ruth Glickman Merns, before the marriage ended in divorce. He is survived by his second wife of 25 years, Lynn Tamarkin Syms. He was predeceased by his son, Stephen and his daughter, Adrienne. He is survived by his children Marcy, Robert, Richard, and Laura, two stepchildren, ten grandchildren and three sisters.

-by Miranda Lin

By Miranda Lin

The Queen Mary 2. Photo courtesy of Flickr.

There must be a manual for how to dress on a cruise because as the passengers of the Queen Mary 2 arrived at Pier 12 of the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, they seemed to all be in uniform: navy double-breasted blazers for the gentlemen, silk animal-print scarves for the ladies and dainty leather hand luggage for all.

The Queen Mary itself is unsurprisingly regal. She dominates the New York skyline, dwarfing all the surrounding warehouse buildings and reducing even the Statue of Liberty to mere backdrop. Guests lounging on the balconies looked like tiny freckles on the Queen’s otherwise pristine red-white-and-black exterior.

The ship was scheduled to leave at 2 in the afternoon, but by noon there was already a clamor of cars in front of the terminal. Three men clutching walkie-talkies were stationed along the road to direct traffic. They managed to stave off any impatient honking, but the line continued to grow longer and longer.

When guests finally arrived at the curb, they were greeted by a team of burly but cheerful porters. “Good afternoon, let me take your luggage,” cried one porter in a neon yellow vest. ”You just head straight over to the check-in table to your left. Tipping is optional.” A man sporting freshly creased khakis and a carefully groomed goatee stepped out from his limousine.

“You’ll take good care of this won’t you?” he said, patting a large leather trunk plastered with stickers from other exotic destinations.

“Oh yessir,” cooed the porter in a lilting tone that almost hid his thick New York accent. “You don’t worry about a thing.” The passenger plucked a $20 bill from his coat pocket and strolled away. The porter turned to his younger colleague, “Tag the bag,” and hurried over to the next Lincoln town car that had pulled up.

Inside the terminal, the NYPD K-9 Unit had arrived and was roaming the passenger waiting area. A brown and white polka-dot dog weaved in between guests, nosing through a couple’s carry-on and pawing at a trolley stacked high with suitcases. Then the sniff dog spotted her: a shriveled old woman wearing a tangle of pearls and wrapped in a floor-length fur coat that seemed to crush her with its weight. The canine dashed towards her, seizing upon her oversized Louis Vuitton tote bag before she even had time to let out a gasp of horror. The attending officer rushed over and asked to inspect the lady’s baggage. Only a faint murmur of assent could escape her thinly painted lips. A bottle of Chanel No. 2. A pack of Davidoff cigarillos. Some silk animal-print scarves. A romance novel with a heavily worn spine.

“You’re all clear, ma’am. Thanks for your cooperation,” said the officer. “Have a safe trip.”

Beck and his dog (photo courtesy MySpace.com)

Several police officers stood guard in front of Grace Funeral Home in East New York on Wednesday afternoon as family and friends from the rap community wearing black t-shirts that read “RIP Mike Beck” gathered to pay their respects to 36-year-old artist Mike Becht, known as Mike Beck in the music industry. Even more visitors were expected to attend the late viewing.

Outside of the funeral home, close family members and other rappers who had worked with Beck waited for the wake to begin. Beck’s aunt, Vanessa, 52, wearing dark sunglasses and a black leather jacket, expressed her frustration over her nephew’s life cut short. Inside the mood was somber. One woman collapsed into her neighbor’s arms weeping. Beck’s son, Michael, was one of the first to arrive, dressed in a suit and tie. He was greeted by Beck’s sister, Tasha Shuler, who clutched her young nephew and said, “He lived for you.”

It has been almost a week since Beck was killed and there is still speculation about the shooting late Friday night. A close friend who has recorded several tracks with Beck, known as A.G., said he has heard several different accounts of the shooting. “Some say he was visiting a girl, others say he was going to settle some beef,” said A.G., who found out about his friend’s death over the Internet. Beck’s aunt, meanwhile, believes someone tried to rob him before he was shot on the corner of Logan Street and Belmont Avenue. He struggled one block back to his truck while the ambulance was called to the scene. “He was determined to live,” said Shuler.

Beck was killed as he was turning his life around. As a young man in East New York he had run afoul of the police. But after spending time in prison for his involvement in a homicide, he decided to focus on music, which had long been a passion. “He was rapping since age five,” his aunt said. With the encouragement of his close friend and hypeman Bill Blass, Beck began to establish his hip-hop career and distance himself from crime.

But Beck also used his years of experience and networking to help others along the way. “Mike was the bridge between artists trying to make it in the industry and artists who already had,” A.G. said while looking at a picture on his cell phone of him and Beck. “Just when everything was coming together, this happened.”

This is not the first time a death has shaken Brooklyn’s hip-hop community. Two years ago, Beck’s mentor Bill Blass died, and more recently, an artist who goes by Big Lou also passed away. “Rapping is just a whole different world,” said Beck’s uncle Mike, for whom he was named.

Since Friday, there have been nearly 100 comments posted on allhiphop.com in honor of Beck. The homepage of his website, heavybank.com, also pays tribute to his life and includes a link to make donations to Beck’s family. “There are no words to describe Mike Beck,” said Beck’s cousin as he entered the funeral home. “That’s all that needs to be said.”

The night before rapper Mike Beck was scheduled to perform a Halloween show in Boston, he was shot to death on the corner of Logan Street and Belmont Avenue in East New York. Details of the Friday night shooting are still unclear.

Late that evening, friend and fellow hip-hop musician Tydro Mazin, 30, waited at his apartment with his children for Beck to show up and finalize their plans for the next day’s performance. Mazin fell asleep before Beck arrived. Early Saturday morning Mazin called Beck wondering why he never showed. “I called him and it went right to voicemail, which was strange, but I didn’t think much of it,” Mazin said Monday afternoon. Five minutes later, Mazin’s phone rang. Beck was dead.

Beck was 36-years-old and in the midst of a budding hip-hop career. “He’s the most ambitious person I have ever known, as far as music is concerned,” Mazin said. “You would never catch him sleeping because he didn’t want to miss a minute of anything.” In a short time Beck rose through the hip-hop ranks, working with such stars as Fat Joe, Busta Rhymes, Bone Thugz-n-Harmony and Raekwon.

The police have reported very little about the details surrounding his death, though there is speculation among Beck’s followers that the shooting occurred during a botched robbery. Beck, Mazin said, was alone when he died and no witnesses have been reported, further complicating the investigation. Police say that after being shot in the upper leg, Beck struggled to Fountain Avenue where he was picked up by emergency crews and transported to Brookdale Hospital. He was pronounced dead on arrival at 11:20 p.m.

It it still unclear where, precisely, Beck was shot — on the street, or, as others speculate, in a truck.

Mazin described Beck as man with few enemies. “I heard a lot of conflicting stories,” he said, “so I don’t want to say anything definite about it. I was just devastated, for real.”

On his website, Beck describes a difficult childhood growing up in East New York. His mother, father and step-father all struggled with drug and alcohol addictions, leaving Beck, his brother and three half-sisters to be raised mostly by their grandmother. At the age of 13, Beck wrote, he turned to the streets and began committing crimes. At 17, he was sentenced to five years in prison for his role in a murder.

It was during his time in jail, acccording to Beck’s MySpace biography, that he was “awakened to a new skill that he found within himself.” After being released from prison, he was invited by Bill Blass, a man Beck had met during his time on the streets and was well-known for mentoring aspiring hip-hop artists, to join rapper Rakim on the 18th Letter Tour. Later in his career, Beck was a part of the group Kill All Rats, also known as K.A.R., where he enjoyed his first real success with the single “U Can Tell I’m From NY.” More recently, Beck separated from K.A.R. and created the media company, Heavy Bank Entertainment.

Mazin recalled that their friendship evolved because they were both looking to pursue a new musical direction and had both played the same roles in their former groups. “He literally got me out of a mental slump after I strayed away from my group.” Mazin said. “I was stagnant as far as music was concerned and he gave me the energy to keep moving and do my own thing. I owe him a lot.

“He was more than just an artist. He was an organizer. He dedicated his life to music and everything entertainment.”

Over the past six months, Beck and Mazin were developing what they referred to as a silent partnership. Not only did they work on a lot of songs and projects together, but they would introduce each other to new people.

“He was a networker to the nth degree,” Mazin said. During one of their last, the two discussed finishing up the last five or six songs on their mix tape after the show they were scheduled to perform in Boston the night after his death. “We was all hyped about it,” Mazin said.

In the wake of Beck’s death, his friends and family have been organizing a mural in his honor, recording a tribute song, and conducting video interviews from people he influenced during his career. His fans flooded Twitter, HeavyBank.com and his MySpace page with words of praise and grief. “I won’t let your legacy die,” wrote his younger sister Tasha. “We will make sure people buy and play your music because that’s what you were about, making hits and doing your shows.” Brooklyn rapper True Sun Ali added, “It’s hard to fight back the tears but we gotta stay strong and continue to represent for a leader that was taken too soon. You will truly be missed.”

In addition to his mourning friends and fans, Beck leaves behind a wife and son. His wake will be held tomorrow at Grace Funeral Parlor in East New York from 2-4 p.m. and 6-9 p.m.

Karaoke Night MC Dropsy Desmond is both the Hope & Anchor's Biggest Star and Biggest Fan. Lin/Brooklyn Ink

By Miranda Lin

It’s 9pm on Saturday night; do you know where your neighbor is?

If you’re a resident of Red Hook, chances are you’ll find them at Hope & Anchor Diner on 347 Van Brunt Street. During the daytime, this 1950s-styled diner happily plays the role of quaint family restaurant complete with a classic burgers-and-shakes menu and kitschy pin-up girl decor. But as the night sets in, the lights slowly dim, the music rises and before you know it, you’re watching a 6’8″ drag queen in 5-inch patent leather heels singing Boy George’s “The Crying Game” as soccer moms howl from their seats and hip twentysomethings pump their fists in the air. Welcome to Karaoke Night in Red Hook.

People are drawn to the diner for its breakfast, lunch, dinner, and karaoke. Lin/Brooklyn Ink.

The now weekly Thursday-to-Saturday ritual began in 2002 when the diner opened its doors. “There had not been a new sit-down restaurant in Red Hook literally in decades,” recalls owner Joe Bernardo as he watches a stream of well-heeled customers file through the door. The once desolate street now bustles with activity as word of the up-and-coming neighborhood has drawn winers and diners from all five boroughs. And as more and more people come to Red Hook, Hope & Anchor’s Karaoke Night has become something of a gathering point for residents and visitors alike. “It’s really a godsend,” says Rosemary McGettrick. “When we arrived here in 1988, there was nothing on Van Brunt to eat or do. But there is still has such a warm atmosphere here that we drop in every week.”

According to Bernardo, karaoke is an ideal way to bring the community together since it creates a bond between participants similar to that of “soldiers going to war,” only instead of war, it’s singing in front of a live audience and risking total public humiliation. The first brave soul to volunteer tonight is a graying, pot-bellied man named Ron. His song of choice: David Lee Roth’s “I’m Just a Gigolo.” As he clears his throat and unzips his black leather jacket, his wife shifts nervously in the seat of her corner booth. The couple they’re dining with looks on with curiosity and mild skepticism. However, by the time Ron launches into his grand finale, “Wooon’t some sweeeet mamaaa cooome and take a chance with meeeee,“ the entire room, including his wife – and a table of young giggly women – are on their feet cheering. Ron, it appears, is a karaoke pro.

The next volunteer takes the stage and soon a long line of willing victims has formed in front of the karaoke booth. Some are just as good as Ron, while others are a less so, but each singer’s skill is hardly the point. “It’s all for fun,” says McGettrick. “Even the bad ones have a good time.”

While the restaurant prides itself on providing a friendly and supportive environment for people to meet, some of Karaoke Night’s appeal is that it allows customers to lose themselves in the music and adopt an alter-ego that no one has ever seen. Friends and families seem stunned to discover that their loved one can actually sing, or that their white-collared, gel-haired boyfriend is a fan of angry Eminem rap music, or that their mother knows all the words to Tina Turner’s “Private Dancer” (“I’m your private dancer, a dancer for money, I’ll do what you want me to do“). In their brief moments on stage, with their eyes closed, veins bulging from their necks, sweat forming around their temples, those karaoke singers can be whatever they want to be.

The star of the show, though, is mistress of ceremonies Dropsy Desmond. By day, she is better known as Reggie Flowers, a soft-spoken Big Friendly Giant who graduated from the Yale School of Drama and leads a children’s performance arts charity in Red Hook. But as soon as the disco balls starts to spin, Dropsy the Grand Dame of Karaoke comes out to play. Since taking over hosting duties in 2005 after the previous emcee, Kay Sera, aka artist Richard Eagan, retired to become a bee farmer in upstate New York, Dropsy has earned a loyal following and has even had a burger on the diner’s menu named after her. Inspired by the divas of the 1950s and 60s like Nina Simone and Eartha Kitt, Dropsy describes herself as a “loving, mothering and nurturing spirit, especially around tipping time.” She says she likes to mix up her looks each night, saving her most glamorous and outrageous outfits for Saturday. On this particular evening, Dropsy is channeling something of a Jessica Rabbit lounge singer, with a lush blonde wig and a gold-sequined backless mini dress to show off her leggy physique. In between karaoke sets, she struts around the restaurant serenading the audience, pausing occasionally to crawl across the bar top or dance on top of banquettes.

Even if Dropsy is a larger-than-life figure, she knows her role is to ultimately make everyone feel at home in the small neighborhood diner. “I give a lot of affection,” she says. “I treat every one of them like they’re a regular.” For Red Hook’s newcomers and old-timers alike, that is music to their ears.

By Miranda Lin

Masud Rahman arrived at his home at 395 Warwick Street in East New York, Brooklyn early Tuesday morning to discover that it had been gutted by a two-alarm fire just after midnight. Over 100 firefighters were called, according to reports, and they needed nearly an hour to put out the blaze. Rahman’s first thoughts when he arrived were of the clothes and cash that would surely be destroyed and his pet cat and bird that were trapped inside his room. But he soon discovered that he had lost much more than that.

Shahab Uddin, a 46-year-old Bengali man who Rahman had been sharing the two-story stone-tiled house with since the summer, was found by rescue crews inside the house, his body charred and his limbs tied together. The cause of death and the motive for the crime have not yet been determined.

East New York has earned a reputation as one of Brooklyn’s toughest neighborhoods with over 2,000 cases of violent crime recorded this year, but the details of this incident startled the residents of this quiet tree-lined street. “This is a good block,” said one onlooker who asked not to be named. “The rest of the neighborhood isn’t, but I actually raised all three of my kids in the house that got burned down and they played on the streets with all the other kids.” Another neighbor who lives two doors down from the scene of the fire added, “We don’t have much crime; we take care of each other around here.”

They described Uddin as a shy man who kept to himself and spent most of his days wandering up and down the street looking for cigarettes, sometimes even picking them off the ground to smoke, and only occasionally stopping on the corners to chat. Neither knew of anyone who had a grudge against Uddin and guessed that he was the unfortunate victim of a random act of violence perpetrated by local thugs. “Some people around here just like to pick on the weak and don’t need much more of a reason than that,” said the onlooker.

Though the police have remained tight-lipped as they continue to investigate, Uddin’s small circle of friends is struggling to understand what led to his death. “They’re saying they found him in the living room and his legs were tied. Can you imagine another human doing that?” asked Rahman as he sat hunched next to his burnt-out home. “It just doesn’t make sense to me.” Rahman met Uddin while the two were working at Papa John’s Pizza in Rockaway, but Uddin had been unemployed for some time since. Nonetheless, Rahman’s girlfriend, Mahbuba Shahrin, remembers the short, heart-faced man as the “sweetest guy in the world. If you ever needed anything, he would get up in the middle of the night just to get it for you.”

She and Rahman would often bring Uddin food and listen to him tell stories about his “daily hustle.” Uddin also told them about coming to America from Bangladesh, how he traveled through South America and California before settling in New York City almost 25 years ago. “He was like Huck Finn,” Shahrin said, a weak smile breaking through her otherwise somber face. “He had so many adventures all around the world.”

Shahrin recalls hearing him speak about living several years ago in Long Island with his wife, but the eventual divorce had left with almost no money and caused him to fall into depression and alcoholism. She was unsure if he had any other family in the area. “I have to figure that out now and call his family,” said Shahrin as her voice tightened. “I just don’t know how I’m going to tell them about this.”

It is Friday night in Red Hook and the streets are eerily still. From time to time a human shadow will emerge then quickly disappear again into the darkness. The only traffic is the B61 bus that languidly rolls on to Red Hook’s main strip, Van Brunt Street, every half hour but rarely stops. During the weekdays, almost no one gets on or off here. But in less than 24 hours, Red Hook will be invaded. Hordes of weekend warriors will ride in on their luxury SUVs and charge with their platinum credit cards. They are a welcome arrival to some, but to others they are a nuisance.

There once was a time in the 1980s and early 90s when no one outside of Red Hook dared enter and even many of the residents were trying to get out. Karen Hatch used to teach at P.S. 27 Brooklyn in those days and remembers Van Brunt as a street full of empty storefronts with shattered glass. Now, though, she often comes to Red Hook on IKEA’s free weekend water taxi and spends time shopping in the row of trendy arts and crafts boutiques that line Van Brunt. “It’s lovely here,” she exclaims. “I would move here in a second if I could.”

On weekends, the IKEA water taxi can carry up to 2,100 shoppers from Manhattan to Red Hook every day. Photo: Lin/Brooklyn Ink

And Hatch isn’t alone. While most weekenders are drawn to Red Hook for the IKEA or Fairway Market, more and more are beginning to venture beyond the big box bubbles and into the local stores, creating a swell of new businesses catering to their upmarket interests. Eric Famisan, owner of the custom soap and flower shop Saipua, was one of the first stores to open on the block five years ago. Since then, he can think of at least a half-dozen other stores that have joined him selling mostly one-of-a-kind handicrafts.

Famisan originally started working Thursday to Sunday, but he realized that “Thursdays and Fridays were essentially lost days for me because there were so many more productive things I could have been doing than tending the store on those days.” Similarly, many of the stores on Van Brunt have decided to limit their hours to when they can reap the most success with outside visitors. “Only about 10% of my customers are from Red Hook,” says Russell Whitmore, owner of Erie Basin jewelry store. “We really work to attract people from other neighborhoods.”

But those who do reside in Red Hook are less than enthusiastic about the influx of day-trippers. In addition to the literal boatloads of shoppers that are brought in by the IKEA ferry, there is also a significant upsurge in car traffic. “On the weekend, Van Brunt turns into a total expressway,” says Famisan. With limited access to public transportation, the narrow thoroughfare is the only option for IKEA-bound cars as well as the designated route for freight trucks. Still, with few street lights and plenty of nearby parks and playgrounds full of children, some residents fear that it is only a matter of time before an accident happens. “Traffic is probably what we get the most complaints about,” says Detective Paul Grudzinski, Community Affairs Officer for the 76^th Precinct. “But what can you do when that’s the way it’s designed?”

A car speeds by as young pedestrians prepare to cross Van Brunt Street, the neighborhood's main thoroughfare. Photo: Lin/Brooklyn Ink

And while it might also make good business sense to stay closed during the weekday, it has left some local residents frustrated and excluded from their own community. “There’s a real micro-economy springing up around just weekenders,” says Michael Eckblad, an installation artist who has lived in Red Hook for the past ten months. “Red Hook is a completely different place on the weekends than any other day, especially at Fairway.” Though Eckblad has learned to cope with the weekend crowds (“Just get your grocery shopping done early on the weekdays and stay in on the weekends”), he still fears that the neighborhood will become a generic destination and “lose all of its spunk.”

Despite the weekend disruptions, Red Hook’s main appeals remain intact: low cost of living, quiet (generally) and plenty of green open space. “I guess that’s the one good thing about our terrible transit system,” Eckblad says with a smile, “It keeps us isolated.”