The Brooklyn Tower Voices Guide

Text by The Brooklyn Tower Wednesday, May 25, 2022
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BkT neighborhood picks: Voices

A community needs spaces: to share stories, to express new ideas, to create art, to play. Here are just a few spaces dedicated to sharing stories, exploring the past, and cultivating conversation.

Women-Owned

Greenlight Bookstore

For more than ten years, Greenlight has been an important part of the cultural fabric of Fort Greene and a literary destination for readers all over. Founders Rebecca Fitting and Jessica Stockton Bagnulo had always envisioned it as more than a bookstore: Greenlight not only hosts its own community events, but also is a key partner in bringing to life other important literary series such at Brooklyn Voices at St. Joseph’s college and Unbound, in partnership with BAM, where audiences and some of today’s most important writers share direct engagement over critical topics facing contemporary society. 

BIPOC-Owned, Women-Owned

The Center for Fiction

The Center for Fiction is the physical manifestation of a celebration of all things storytelling. As a passerby, the abundance of its overflowing, light-flooded bookshop may draw you in. As a bookworm, maybe you have a membership to take advantage of their expansive library of 70,000+ titles and exclusive member-only reading rooms, workspaces, and outdoor terrace. As a writer, you could find yourself attending workshops or as a member of the Center’s Writing Studio, which allows access to a spacious, sunny, and productive writing space upstairs. However the relationship plays out, you’ll be glad to call this special space a neighbor.

Studios & Exhibition Space

The Invisible Dog Art Center

Within this three-story former belt factory in Boerum Hill is a space for art to be made, discussed, and exhibited. The Invisible Dog’s public space on the ground floor hosts exhibitions, performances of all types, and public events and parties. The main space opens up to a spacious and lush backyard, which is a particularly nice spot to recharge during a weekend stroll around the neighborhood. The two floors above house more than 30 studios dedicated to emerging artists and two rentable short-stay apartments.

PORTAL TO THE PAST

New York Transit Museum

With its easy-to-miss entrance (the familiar green-railed subway station staircase), visiting the New York Transit Museum feels like entering a portal to the past. The portal is a decommissioned real MTA subway station whose platform level is the exhibition space for old subway cars, spanning from 1904 to present day.While its main attraction is certainly the cars, the museum also features new exhibitions, and a permanent exhibition on the New York subway system’s creation and past, technological developments, and a live-view control room that will show you the real-time view of train traffic that MTA controllers use today.

MAP