Brooklyn Working Class Addresses, 1961-1965
18 months ago I was asked to create some videos to commemorate the 50th reunion of my high school graduating class at long-defunct St. Augustine, located at 6th Avenue and Park Place in Park Slope (pictured below in opening frame). So I used Google Street View to capture the buildings where we lived during our high school years.
I managed to display about 60 of our homes from across Brooklyn (lots of apartments in brownstones and two family houses) along with some evocative photos from the era, synced whenever appropriate to the lyric of "Life In A Northern Town" by the British group, Dream Academy.
The song is placed in the early '60s, referencing JFK and the Beatles, telling the tale of an artist who left his northern town to seek his fortune elsewhere. The recording was an homage to the British singer-songwriter Nick Drake, who was old enough to have graduated with us, but died at age 26 after releasing albums of beautiful acoustic music that nobody bought. Per Wikipedia, Drake "had come to represent a certain type of 'doomed romantic' musician." Anyway, the record seemed to be elegiac, proud, joyful and wistful all at once, so that's why I chose it. More to come in a bit... Click here for video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Xy-dbrQIkg
18 months ago I was asked to create some videos to commemorate the 50th reunion of my high school graduating class at long-defunct St. Augustine, located at 6th Avenue and Park Place in Park Slope (pictured below in opening frame). So I used Google Street View to capture the buildings where we lived during our high school years.
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| Nick Drake, 1970 |
The song is placed in the early '60s, referencing JFK and the Beatles, telling the tale of an artist who left his northern town to seek his fortune elsewhere. The recording was an homage to the British singer-songwriter Nick Drake, who was old enough to have graduated with us, but died at age 26 after releasing albums of beautiful acoustic music that nobody bought. Per Wikipedia, Drake "had come to represent a certain type of 'doomed romantic' musician." Anyway, the record seemed to be elegiac, proud, joyful and wistful all at once, so that's why I chose it. More to come in a bit... Click here for video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Xy-dbrQIkg