Making connections at Industry City in Sunset Park, Brooklyn

WNYC's Community Partnerships Desk regularly teams up with the nonprofit, Street Lab, to highlight stories from neighborhoods across New York City. We recently set up shop at Industry City in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Here's some of what we heard.

The transcript of the voices we collected have been lightly edited for clarity.

Juan Pablo Caicedo: "I am from Bogota, Colombia, and now live in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. I really like the neighborhood that I'm living in. It's been a journey of learning about the whole Caribbean culture, realizing that New York and the Caribbean are so connected. I think there's a lot of life in the streets. There's a lot of cultural and musical expression that's similar to Bogotá and to Latin America. Everyone's there with music and there's a lot of food vendors in the street. I think that's why I like it. I feel like I'm in a different version of my Latin American home, although I'm in New York City." 

Rebecca Luliano: "I live in between Fort Greene and downtown Brooklyn. The big things in my life right now are that my oldest daughter has started kindergarten. There's nervous, cautious optimism, and then there's getting up an hour early for preschool. I feel like I got shot out of a rocket every day. That's like the struggle any working parent is going to talk about. You know, we get up, we take her to school, and then I try and carve out just a little bit of time for myself before I'm, you know, heads down at work. And then my head comes back up around five o'clock as I'm thinking about dinner, and just trying to balance it all is difficult, but it's probably the same for so many other people. I'm not the only one, and I'm actually very, very lucky. I have support, and I know there are a lot of other people that aren't in the same position."

Belinda Sarkodee-Adoo: "I'm from Florida. I'm here visiting my daughter Judith, who lives in Harlem. Actually, this is my birthday weekend, so this is my birthday treat to myself. And I'm just enjoying being here in New York. There's such a variety. Every time I come; I see something new. I like that it's so diverse. I like that there are a lot of interesting things going on whenever I come here. And I love going to Broadway shows. I come from a diverse background myself. I'm part Asian and part British. And my husband is from West Africa, so my children are even more diverse. They have all those cultures kind of mixed in. I encourage my children to practice tolerance, you know, to be able to appreciate other people and other cultures."

Sandy Kazinski: "I live on the Upper East Side in New York City. My story is a public service announcement about seatbelts and being kind. Last Saturday I was in an automobile accident. I'd been in my car for three minutes before my life changed. Some irresponsible driver felt that it was more important for him to get through the red light than to pay attention to the road. If I hadn't had my seatbelt on, I would have hurtled through the front windshield. There was no humanity that morning. People who were inconvenienced at 7 o'clock in the morning, were screaming at the ambulance. So, people need to be kind, be nicer, be gentler. Drive carefully, drive smartly. Don't drive like your business is more important than everyone else's. And just really, you never know when your seatbelt will save your life."

Lynn Linn: "I'm from Brooklyn. Basically, I went on this three-day silent retreat. You know, no cell phone, no books, no words, no talking. So, after three days of meditation, I think I realized the reaction is just as powerful as the action itself. It's not as passive. It's actually interesting because, you know, in Upstate, we're in the woods, everything's quiet. And coming back, you come back to the sirens and all the chaotic parts of New York, which is hard for meditation. But I think at the same time, New York never sleeps. That makes me feel safe, in a way. So, I actually really want to take that personal growth and then kind of project it into the city and see how the energy mixes."