Red Hook is a neighborhood in northwestern Brooklyn, New York City, New York, within the area once known as South Brooklyn. It is located on a peninsula projecting into the Upper New York Bay and is bounded by the Gowanus Expressway and the Carroll Gardens neighborhood on the northeast, Gowanus Canal on the east, and the Upper New York Bay on the west and south. A prosperous shipping and port area in the early 20th century, the area declined in the latter part of the century. Today it is home to the Red Hook Houses, the largest housing project in Brooklyn.
Dumbo is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The area known as Dumbo used to be known as Gairville. It encompasses two sections: one located between the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges, which connect Brooklyn to Manhattan across the East River, and another that continues east from the Manhattan Bridge to the Vinegar Hill area. The neighborhood is bounded by Brooklyn Bridge Park to the north, the Brooklyn Bridge to the west, Brooklyn Heights to the south and Vinegar Hill to the east. Dumbo is part of Brooklyn Community Board 2.
In New York City, taxicabs come in two varieties: yellow and green; they are widely recognizable symbols of the city. Taxis painted yellow are able to pick up passengers anywhere in the five boroughs. Those painted apple green, which began to appear in August 2013, are allowed to pick up passengers in Upper Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. Both types have the same fare structure. Taxicabs are operated by private companies and licensed by the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC). It also oversees over 40,000 other for-hire vehicles, including "black cars", commuter vans, and ambulettes.
Monique T.D. Truong is a Vietnamese American writer living in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated from Yale University and Columbia University School of Law. She has written multiple books, and her first novel, The Book of Salt, was published by Houghton-Mifflin in 2003. It was a national bestseller, and was awarded the 2003 Bard Fiction Prize, the Stonewall Book Award-Barbara Gittings Literature Award. She has also written Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry & Prose, along with Barbara Tran and Luu Truong Khoi, and numerous essays and works of short fiction.
Iris Weinshall is the chief operating officer of The New York Public Library, former vice chancellor at the City University of New York and a former commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation. Weinshall was appointed Chief Operating Officer by the Library in July 2014, and she began her tenure on September 1, 2014. She is the wife of U.S. Senator and Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer.
Gretchen C. Morgenson is an American, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist notable as longtime writer of the Market Watch column for the Sunday "Money & Business" section of The New York Times. In November, 2017, she moved from the Times to The Wall Street Journal.
Jeffrey E. Garten is an American economist, author, businessman, and former government official who is Dean Emeritus at the Yale School of Management, where he teaches a variety of courses on the global economy. From 1996 to 2005 he was the dean of the school, and from 2005 to 2015 he was the Juan Trippe Professor in international trade, finance, and business. Before that, he was Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade in the Clinton administration from 1993 to 1995, and had a career on Wall Street as a managing director for the Blackstone Group and Lehman Brothers.
Sylvia Jukes Morris was a British-born biographer, based in the United States. She was married to writer Edmund Morris.
Ashley Rae Maika DiPietro, better known by the stage name Ashley Alexandra Dupré, is a former call girl. She has worked as a sex columnist for the New York Post, and as a singer. She became a public figure when it was disclosed that she was the woman at the center of the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal. In that capacity, she was known as Kristen, the name she used as a call girl.
Ann Rachel Marlowe is an American critic, journalist and writer working in New York City.
The Brooklyn Theatre fire was a catastrophic theatre fire that broke out on the evening of December 5, 1876, in the city of Brooklyn. The fire took place at the Brooklyn Theatre, near the corner of Washington and Johnson streets, with over a thousand guests attending. The conflagration killed at least 278 individuals, with some accounts reporting more than 300 dead. 103 unidentified victims were interred in a common grave at Green-Wood Cemetery, marked by an obelisk, while more than two dozen identified victims were interred individually in separate sections at the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn.
Sharon Mesmer is a Polish-American poet, fiction writer, essayist and professor of creative writing. Her poetry collections are Annoying Diabetic Bitch, The Virgin Formica, Vertigo Seeks Affinities, Half Angel, Half Lunch and Crossing Second Avenue. Her fiction collections are Ma Vie à Yonago, In Ordinary Time and The Empty Quarter. She teaches in the undergraduate and graduate programs of New York University and The New School. She has lived in Brooklyn, New York since 1988 and is a distant relative of Franz Anton Mesmer, proponent of animal magnetism and Otto Messmer, the American animator best known for creating Felix the Cat.
Ann Louise Bardach [A.L. Bardach] is an American journalist and non-fiction author. Bardach is best known for her work on Cuba and Miami and was called "the go-to journalist on all things Cuban and Miami," by the Columbia Journalism Review, having interviewed dozens of key players including Fidel Castro, sister Juanita Castro, anti-Castro militant legend Luis Posada Carriles, CIA and Watergate plumber E. Howard Hunt, anti-Castro militant Orlando Bosch and CIA operative Felix Rodriguez, who was present for the assassination of Che Guevara.
Pier 11/Wall Street is a pier providing slips to ferries and excursion boats on the East River in the Port of New York and New Jersey. It is located east of South Street and FDR Drive just south of Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City. The ferry terminal has five landings, each with two berths, and is used by four privately owned companies. Within walking distance, public transportation includes the New York City Subway's 1, N, R, and W trains at South Ferry – Whitehall Street and 2 and 3 trains at Wall Street; the M55, M15, M15 SBS, M20 New York City Bus routes, and the Staten Island Ferry at the Whitehall Terminal.
Alix Marian Freedman is an American journalist, and ethics editor at Thomson Reuters.
Occupy Sandy was an organized relief effort created to assist the victims of Hurricane Sandy in the northeastern United States. Like other Occupy Movement offshoots, such as Occupy Our Homes, Occupy University, Occupy the SEC, and Rolling Jubilee, Occupy Sandy was made up of former and present Occupy Wall Street protesters, other members of the Occupy movement, and former non-Occupy volunteers. The effort worked in partnership with many local community organizations in New York City and New Jersey and has focused on mutual aid in affected communities rather than charity, and long-term rebuilding for more robust, sustainable neighborhoods.
Ahmed Ibrahim is an Egyptian immigrant known as the "Cupid Cabbie" of New York City. From the driver's seat of his yellow taxicab, he has collected the names and phone numbers of over 2,000 New Yorkers and organized over 100 dates, over 30 of which have led to long-lasting romances. Ibrahim's service, which is free of charge, has been covered in The Wall Street Journal, the Fox News Channel and NBC's Today Show.
Kenneth P. Thompson was an American lawyer who served as the District Attorney of Kings County, New York, from 2014 until his death from cancer on October 9, 2016.
Davidson Garrett, also known as King Lear of the Taxi, is an American poet, living in New York City, New York. He drove a New York City yellow taxi cab from 1978 until 2018 to supplement his writing career. Garrett has authored six books of poetry.
Ann Gillen is an American sculptor.
