By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Scroll to the bottom to hear PortSide's interview with Sunny Balzano. Sunny Balzano was the beloved owner of a legendary bar, some 90 years old, which became known as Sunny’s. He died March 10, 2016 which prompted an outpouring of grief,...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
" You Brooklynites who rush to Coney or Rockaway at the first blush of a hot day don't know your town so very well, " read an article in The Standard Union in 1929. " To be actually in the 'swim' you are just a nobody until you have visited...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
At the end of the 1800s, New York City docked floating pools, known as baths, along the Brooklyn water front to provide relief from the summer heat. They were protected spaces to swim in the river. Bath No. 4 was docked at the foot...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Kids have been swimming off the piers of Red Hook probably ever since the piers existed. It is not common today in part because of the increasing awareness that the polluted water, particularly after a rain fall, is a health hazard. "Taking a...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
" All day naked youngsters are perched on these logs, watching their bait, chasing each other over the slippery lumber or diving and paddling in the water." A story about naked boys in the late 1800s who fish for crabs among the millions of...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
A former "Pointer" recalls his childhood growing up in the Erie Basin and the sometimes heated relationship between the "Pointers" and the "Creekers." A reference in the 1890s sugest that terms go back as far as the 1840s. Pointers lived in...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Remembrances of life on Coffey and other streets in Red Hook. "Hello all you Red Hookers!!! My good friend… still lives on Coffey St. I live at Dikeman St. Graduated Visitation school June of 1949. We done most of our dancing in Sam's Bar on Beard...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
From the 1830s to 1965 Castle Williams on Governors Island served as a military prison. Over the years prisoners have attempted to escape by swimming across the Buttermilk Channel to Red Hook. Text from two Articles Click on the images at bottom for...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Red Hookers' memories of swimming off the docks as kids. The first few are from chat on southbrooklyn.net in 2004, the last one is from Facebook, 2024 "I remember swimming at the pool and at the docks, and the row boat over to White Rock...
