Jeff's Streetlights & Highways Site: Sunset Park, Brooklyn
Photo Gallery: Sidestreet & Neighborhood Scenes
Sunset Park is a working class neighborhood in Brooklyn, sandwiched between Park Slope to the north, Bay Ridge to the south, Boro Park to the east and New York Harbor to the west.
Back in June 1999 I had occasion to roam about it for a few hours waiting for my Saturn to be serviced nearby. Rent apart in the 1940s by the building of the Gowanus Expressway, which plowed through its then heart, 3rd Avenue, Sunset Park struggled for years, hamstrung by the general perception that it was and is a slum. It certainly isn't Beverly Hills, but it isn't Bed Sty either. Historically, Sunset Park had a large Scandinavian and Finnish population. Today, it is largely Latino, with a heavy Puerto Rican, Dominican, Mexican and Central American presence. Chinese and Middle Easterners are also pressing in from Boro Park. It is the kind of place where you can still get shaved ices from street vendors scraped right off the big block. The jewel of Sunset Park's assets is the spacious hilltop park between 5th and 7th Avenues and 41st and 44th Streets, which affords spectacular views of Manhattan and the harbor. Unfortunately, the linchpins of that panoramic view were raped and slaughtered from the air on September 11th, 2001, by the monstrous minions of Osama Bin Laden and the maniacal Al-Khaida terrorist ring he directs. These shots represented almost the last shots I ever took of the Trade Center.
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