Tales of a Brooklyn Neighborhood

EVERY morning on her way to school, 7-year-old Estella Quy walks by a stocky middle-aged man with a pointy salt-and-pepper goatee hanging out on the stoop of 61 South Elliott Place. She walks by him again every afternoon.

Rafael Medrano and George Yzquierdo of No. 45 South Elliott Place, Apt. 5A.

South Elliott Place, in Fort Greene, was once a working-class stretch plagued by drugs. It’s a different place now: homes that sold for $29,000 in the 1970s now go for $2.7 million.

“Hi, princess,” says the man, who is known as Tony the Greek. “Hi, princess,” Tony the Greek has said to Estella through kindergarten, first and second grades. He’s been there her whole life.

That’s how things are on this block of South Elliott between Lafayette and Dekalb Avenues in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Many of its residents do not know each other’s phone numbers, but they know each other’s lives. In the bad old days, they swept the street together every Sunday. Lately, there have been monthly rummy games; each September, they...full article