Brooklyn Bohemians

An exciting social history encompassing music, culture, and real estate during the vital, artistically rich, and plain old fun period of the 1980s and ’90s in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill

When Nelson George moved into 19 Willoughby Avenue in 1985, he was able to rent two of its four floors plus a backyard for less than $1,000 a month. For years, the top floors remained empty, the price not low enough to attract renters scared off by Fort Greene’s reputation for crime. Yet, on those same streets and in vintage brownstones, a black cultural movement of a kind unseen since the Harlem Renaissance was taking place.

In this corner of Brooklyn, Spike Lee and Branford Marsalis huddled with Public Enemy to create “Fight the Power” for Do the Right Thing. Chris Rock, after joining Saturday Night Live, roared around the area in his red Corvette, while Mos Def and Talib Kweli hung out at Brooklyn Moon café to hear Saul Williams’s latest spoken word epic. Erykah Badu, Laurence Fishburne, and Rosie Perez all lived a few blocks away from one another as they did work that shaped the era’s music, film, and literature.

Like Greenwich Village in the ’60s, Fort Greene / Clinton Hill in the ’80s and ’90s was the epicenter of surprising creations and collaborations that continue to influence culture today. Accompanied by photographs of key figures and moments, Nelson George’s chronicle is a vivid retelling of this rich period in the history of a beloved New York City borough.