In Fall 2011, the UnionDocs Collaborative program set up a little pop-up gallery on the corner of Union Ave and Ten Eyck Street. It was a space that hadn’t appeared to have been used in years. We invited people to come share their stories about the neighborhood. At the gallery I met David Lopez, a poet and political activist who has lived on South 3rd street for decades. We spoke regularly, but I could tell there was a lot he wasn’t telling me. We were slowly building trust. One day he called me up, saying ‘a few people from the neighborhood are getting together,’ a very casual and last-minute invitation. He invited me come to Patrizia’s, a family restaurant on Broadway near the Williamsburg bridge.
I thought there would be just a few people there. There turned out to be closer to 30 people — it was a reunion. Several of them had come from out of town, a few were visiting Williamsburg for the first time in decades. They were all in their 50s. They had met on Facebook. Their page ‘We Grew Up In Williamsburg in the 50s and 60s,’ has over 3,000+ members now. The day after the dinner, which was a part of this entire weekend reunion event, there was a tour. It was a cold March day. I woke up early and went out with Kaitlin Prest and Meg Kelly. We followed the reunion group around as they reminisced about old corner stores, restaurants, and bars, that were long gone. It was overwhelming to hear their stories, there were so many, how could we capture them all? We had a camera and one external mic, we followed them around and recorded. After the reunion, they invited me to join their Facebook group. They were very active, posting old pictures, articles about the neighborhood, cheesy words of wisdom about life. I was struck how welcoming they were. They embraced me and included me, I really felt like I was a part of the group. I felt like I belonged.
But I struggled to connect to their memories of the past. I didn’t grow up in Williamsburg in the 50s and 60s. I was born in 1979 in Tucson, Arizona. I grew up in Boulder, Colorado. I came to New York once in 1986, and then moved here for graduate school in journalism at NYU in 2009. I joined the UnionDocs Collaborative program in 2011 and was just beginning to understand the history of Williamsburg. I didn’t even live there — I Iived in Bay Ridge. I loved getting to know the native WillyB group, and their affection for their old neighborhood was infectious. But I felt that I was failing to really capture their memories, to represent the Williamsburg they used to know. I wanted to translate that emotion to the screen, but I fell short. I was frustrated. I took an unrelated trip to Boston. I lived there for three years before moving to New York, and hadn’t been back in several years. I walked into a T station, the red line, and memories came flooding back. I was transported several years into the past. The space triggered all kinds of emotional reactions. It was weird, it was wonderful, it was intense. It suddenly hit me — this is what they are feeling. What I felt from being in a place I had left behind, experiencing the aftershocks of the past, seeing shadows from another time, was visceral. What is it about reunions? Why are we so obsessed with the past? I decided I had to look into my own to truly understand the emotions of my WillyB friends.”
— Olivia Koski
