Author: Keith Olsen (Keith Olsen)

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A Brutal Murder Defies Park Slope’s Tony Image

By Keith Olsen At the beginning of August, the sidewalk at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 12th Street in Park Slope had been covered with candles, photos, flowers, teddy bears, potato chips, rosaries, and even unopened bottles of Corona beer and Bacardi rum.  Around 70 friends and family members gathered for a vigil at the...

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Red Hook Plays the Muse for Acclaimed Novelist

By Keith Olsen Red Hook was once a place where men disappeared into black cars with drivers hired by the mob, boys hit Spaldeens that bounced between cobblestones, the docks teemed with longshoremen, and a tall metal pyramid, where sugar was refined, loomed in the background. Stories have long been told about the harbor community,...

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Transit Cuts Strand Brooklyn’s Elderly

By Keith Olsen Rita Pellicano, a lifelong resident of Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn, regularly took the B71 bus: to see her doctor, to go shopping on Smith Street, to attend social events. She only had to wait for it to come, and then get on and off at the right stops.  Now, the B71 line...

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A Cornfield Brings Art and History to Boerum Hill

By Keith Olsen After CBGB, the popular punk music club in the East Village, shuttered its doors in 2006, Carroll Gardens artist and filmmaker Christina Kelly was inspired.  She summed up her feelings in a grainy hand-drawn cartoon depicting two Native Americans riding their horses past the venue. One says, “Wow! I remember when that...