I got a couple of days to work on this story about Crown Heights, a Brooklyn neighborhood with a tough history that is becoming another outpost of coolness. The article concentrated on the tension in the area with young white cool kids moving into an area that was predominantly African-American, West Indian, and Hasidic, and the legacy of a big riot that happened there in 1991. It was interesting. I am too new to NYC to claim any real understanding of the process of gentrification here. Folks want their neighborhood to be safe and successful. They don’t want to be pushed out by high rents, and they don’t want to feel like strangers in it. They are glad the drug dealers are gone from the corners, and there’s new life in the streets. But the tensions are there, and hopefully folks in Crown Heights can navigate them gracefully.

The Times did a slideshow, and there are some more outtakes after the jump…

Jah Mckenzie makes a juice drink for a customer at Veggies Juice Bar.

On Franklin Avenue.

Ty Hill checks his phone as he eats a sandwich from Slice of Brooklyn Pizza.

Bernard Peter Deseignora pauses to show off a drawing of his.

A literary reading at Franklin Park.

Rabbi Ari Kirschenbaum, 33, gives a tour of his synagogue Congregation Kol Israel.

Kevin Phillip, the owner of The Candy Rush.