July 4, 2009
Ghosts of Brooklyn come to life
Halloween is more than a month away, but dozens of ghosts will be on the haunt in Brooklyn this weekend to lead a historical walking tour through Williamsburg and Greenpoint -- and they'll be speaking from the dead via text message.
The Cripplebush Ghost Tour is one part traditional walking tour, and will include the usual guided trek with a living, breathing docent who will answer questions like, "Who was Edmund Driggs and why is there a street named for him?"
But it's also an interactive scavenger hunt designed to zap historical tidbits about the names of streets and buildings straight to your cell phone.
"We thought it would make it more fun and interactive than just seeing a plaque with a name, which is what history tours usually do," said Sarah Williams, who designed the tour's texting component and also directs a digital mapping program at Columbia University's GSAPP (Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation).
Here's how it works: A guerilla team has plastered the neighborhood with rectangular yellow stickers about the size of a postcard printed with a Pac-Man-style ghost graphic, a phone number and a four-digit code. You text the code to that number, wait 30 seconds for the buzz and accept your digital history lesson.
For example, if you stand outside K&M bar at the corner of North Eighth and Roebling streets and text 3101, you learn that, "Krystyna & Margaret ran this space as a pierogi restaurant from '96-'04. One died of cancer in 2004. In the '60s & '70s, the space was Go-Go club."
Williams, 32, decided that the texting plan made for an interesting experiment in urban planning, and she's keeping a log of how many people text from each sticker location.
"We realized later that the data could be used to get information on how people use urban environments and if they're interested in interacting with their environment that way," she said.
The tour is part of the annual Conflux Festival, which unites art and technology with a focus on urban living, and will host events in the city all weekend.
The traditional walking tour is 6-8 p.m. Sunday and starts at The Change You Want to See Gallery at 84 Havemeyer St. Should you take the tour you'll learn this street is named for the brothers Havemeyer Frederick and William who in the 1800s founded a refinery that later became the Domino Sugar Factory.
The two-hour walk will cover about 15 of the 50-odd names included in the text tour.
"We just kept discovering all these wonderful stories and great ghosts that didn't all fit in the guided tour," said Jen Kaminsky, 30, a planner with the City Housing Authority.
Kaminsky dreamed up the Cripplebush tour at work, after she realized she knew little about the notable New Yorkers whose names are used for streets, parks and schools.
Cripplebush, for example, is the old Dutch name for the Williamsburg area, so called for the dense scrubs and thickets that once grew there.
"As I learned more, it became a new way to orient myself to the city," Kaminsky said. "I had this image in my head of the ghosts like you see on TV that are semi-opaque and dressed in historical garb. I started to visualize these people sort of tethered to the buildings named after them."
Incidentally, don't be surprised if you see some of the five-member design team and various volunteers running around dressed as Emily Roebling (a street is named for this woman who helped oversee constuction of the Brooklyn Bridge) and Patrick McCarren (a park is named for this nineteenth century politician) on Sunday evening.
The walking tour is one night only, but the sticker texting will continue indefinitely and the team may add more names as their research continues and as they work to spread the word about Cripplebush.
"We want to give people a little bit of history and maybe for a split second they'll thinking of neighborhood a little differently," Kaminsky said.
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