Brooklyn has been known as a promised land
for immigrants ever since Giovanni Da Verrazano
sailed into New York Harbor in 1524, and A
WALK AROUND BROOKLYN highlights how this steady
stream of settlers from around the world gives
the borough its international character. The
distinctive imprints of New Americans are
seen in Greenpoint's "Little Poland," Sunset
Park's Chinatown, the Middle Eastern shops
lining Atlantic Avenue, "Little Odessa" in
Brighton Beach, and the salumerias of Dyker
Heights. Hartman and Lewis meet a West Indian
costume maker in Crown Heights as he prepares
for the annual West Indian Day Parade, and
chat with a Hasidic rabbi on Eastern Parkway,
where the language of the streets is a patois
of Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, and various Eastern
European tongues.
To set the stage, the show's host and guide
trace the area's rich history back to the
original Brooklynites -- the Canarsie Indians
-- and Brooklyn's first commuters, the Dutch,
who created a ferry service linking agricultural
"Breukelen" with urban Manhattan in 1636.
And as fans of this series know, if there
are treasures to be discovered off the beaten
path, this "urban safari" will go there. Hartman
and Lewis follow a maze of catacombs beneath
Plymouth Church -- once known as the "Grand
Central Depot of the Underground Railroad"
-- where it is believed that fugitive slaves
were safeguarded, and explore Weeksville,
a settlement for free African Americans founded
in 1838. They hear a rousing performance on
the 1928 Mighty Wurlitzer organ housed in,
of all places, Long Island University's basketball
court. (The gym is in the former Brooklyn
Paramount Theater, where deejay Murray "The
K" Kaufman and promoter Alan Freed presented
the legendary concerts that brought rock 'n'
roll to New York City in 1955.) And deep within
the vaults of a now-defunct brewery in Bushwick,
Brooklyn Brewery's president Steve Hindy recounts
tales from Brooklyn's days as the world's
largest beer producer.
