Southside Stories

Southside Stories is an immersive audio walk into the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York. The journey features the long-term residents of Williamsburg's Southside Community.

See the city from another perspective. Meet local residents. Explore new places.

Listen with headphones.

Experience Southside Stories, an immersive audio journey into the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York. The walk features the long-term residents of Williamsburg's Southside Community.

Discover how residents are preserving a sense of identity, community and connection to "home" amid exponentially rising rents and a landscape rapidly undergoing transformation.

How to Participate

Download the audio track to a device of your choice, print out the map, and go to the walk's starting point in Brooklyn, NY.

Directions

Start: In front of the Dunkin Donuts at Bedford Av, Brooklyn NY 11211 (formerly the Northside Pharmacy). Across street from L train Subway entrance.

End: Caribbean Club, 244 Grand St, Brooklyn NY 11211.

Explore new places. See the city from another perspective. Meet local residents. Experience the community and diversity of the neighborhood.

Listen with headphones

The Community Garden

Location: Espiritu Tierra Garden

"I realized that the only time you effect change is the change that's the closest to you, that you can make in your community."

Piraguas

Location: S 2nd St & Havemeyer St

"This is our neighborhood. This is where we grew up. People look at us like we're foreigners, and they don't realize that if it wasn't for the Spanish people that stood here, this wouldn't be a neighborhood. Because we stood here when it got bad."

Realtor

Location: 307 Bedford Avenue

"I remember walking down this block, Bedford Avenue...and then realizing that there was not one Spanish person that I saw."

The Drug Lord

Location: 155 S 2nd St

"I wish I had someone tell me, that block you used to sell at, all those abandoned buildings, those little three family houses? They were only going for $15,000 back then. Today, they're worth a million dollars. I could have bought the whole block!"

Rehabilitation Center

Location: 189 S 2nd St

"This is a community that helps each other... I believe in drug free, get a job, get a little education, get some training, go back to the world, be somebody and be proud."

Church Service

Location: Continential Army Plaza

Abandoned Lot

Location: Bedford Ave & N 1st St

This overgrown lot on Bedford Ave is worth millions of dollars, but its owner, Luis Savage, refused to sell it. Carmen, a retired woman living a block away, reached out to take care of Luis every day before he passed away. She still tends the lot to this day.

The Bakery

Location: 171 Grand St

Maria recounts the lines that would form around the beloved La Villita Bakery. After being in business for 17 years, their landlord doubled rent overnight. Unable to meet the price jump, they were forced to move out. The store, however, stayed closed and shuttered for more than a year afterwards.

The Pool

Location: Metropolitan Pool

Every week, hundreds of Hasidic Jewish women come to the pool for swimming sessions, blocked off exclusively for female use. Meet two regulars, Esther and Naomi.

Memorial

Location: 254 S 2nd St

"A lot of people lost their lives here, trying to make this a better place for us."

Fillmore Place

Location: Fillmore Place

A century ago, the Fourteenth Ward, as Williamsburg was then more commonly known, was a densely populated, working-class district, where the various ethnic groups—Irish, German, Italian, Jewish, Polish—lived elbow to elbow and constantly clashed. In author Henry Miller's many recollections of growing up on this block, he described the neighborhood as "tender with violence," filled with both warmth and sudden ferocity.

The Caribbean Club has been in the neighborhood since the early 1970s.

The last remaining Puerto Rican social club in Williamsburg is Toñita's. It is named after the beloved owner who makes dinner on Sunday evenings for all patrons. This is the final destination of the walk. Watch the trailer for the documentary Toñita's by Beyza Boyacioglu & Sebastian Diaz and take a look inside.

Caribbean Club

Location: 244 Grand St

Download: Press kit | Postcard

This project is part of Living Los Sures, a UnionDocs Collaborative Production. The UnionDocs Collaborative Studio is a one-year program for a group of emerging media artists from the US and abroad. Learn more at http://uniondocs.org.

Core team: Shannon Carroll, Jen Epstein, Andrew Hinton and Federica Sasso

Special thanks: Pejk Malinovski, Lu Olkowski, Craig Sinclair and Robert Anasi

UnionDocs Artistic Director: Christopher Allen

Collaborative Program Director: Toby Lee

2012-2013 Collaborative Fellows: Maria Rosa Badia, Beyza Boyacioglu, Emilia Bilinska, Shannon Carroll, Sebastian Diaz, Jen Epstein, Andrew Hinton, Constanza Mirre, Federica Sasso, Anthony Simon, Tamer Hassan, Mike Vass and Parul Wadhwa

This project is made possible in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts' Electronic Media and Film Finishing Funds grant program, administered by The ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes (nysca.org / earts.org). Supported by the 2013 Media Rise Festival. Presented at the 2013 Creative Time Summit.

SOUTHSIDE STORIES