Author: Mark D Phillips

Macy's Fourth of July Fireworks 2016 fill the sky above the city like a Van Gogh painting from Brooklyn Bridge Park. ©Mark D Phillips

BOOM!!! BAM!! SPLAT! Macy’s Fireworks COVID-style

The Macy’s annual July 4th fireworks display 2020 has been drastically changed, unrecognizable from last year’s event, in which mondo rockets went off from the Brooklyn Bridge. Replacing the single spectacle in the age of COVID-19, a series of five, unannounced, five-minute shows are due to go off without warning in each of the five boroughs.

Red Hook Fest Livestream will include powerful performances by The Illustrious Blacks, Taína Asili, Martha Redbone, The Resistance Revival Chorus, and Kyle Marshall

Red Hook Fest Livestream

The 27th Annual Red Hook Fest will be LIVESTREAMED on Saturday, June 27th at 2:00 PM via RedHookFest.com featuring powerful performances by The Resistance Revival Chorus, Illustrious Blacks, Taína Asili, and Martha Redbone, with special tributes to Red Hook’s young artists and local coronavirus relief efforts.

Anna Schwartz, Louis Valentino, Jr. Park and Pier, Red Hook, April 2020; BHS COVID-19 collection, 2020.003; Brooklyn Historical Society.

COVID-19 Project documents our new Brooklyn reality

The Brooklyn Historical Society is actively collecting material related to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which is impacting daily life in ways no one could predict. The organization is asking for all of our help. The goal is to document and preserve the collective experiences of our community during the crisis, […]

BHS historian Nalleli Guillen looks at a different object every week in the BHS collection, and every week brings a new guest for an in-depth discussion of local history.

Bite Size History from BHS

The Brooklyn Historical Society presents their new 5-part weekly series, Bite-Size History, starting Friday, May 22, with BHS historian Nalleli Guillen providing in-depth looks at intriguing objects in the museum’s collection.

THE REAL PICTURE #6: Photographing Manhattan During the Global Pandemic with Gary Hershorn

The Real Picture with Greg Gibson features Gary Hershorn

When two of your favorite photography people get together, you can expect some remarkable discussion and phenomenal images. The Real Picture with Greg Gibson features Gary Hershorn, one of my favorite photographers of our generation. I am proud to know him and have worked with him at numerous events. In […]

Celebrate Brooklyn

The Bandshell goes silent

BRIC announces the cancellation of the annual Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival for 2020. The outdoor concerts draw over 200,000 people to the Prospect Park Bandshell. This year’s season was to on June 9 with Brittany Howard, frontwoman and guitarist for the chart-topping, GRAMMY Award-winning band Alabama Shakes.

For Want of a Stadium: A Story of Development, Displacement, and the Dodgers, a webinar presented by the Brooklyn Historical Society.

For Want of a Stadium

We all know the story: Despite their 1955 World Series win, in 1957 Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley uprooted Brooklyn’s beloved team, moving “Dem Bums” to the sun and palm trees in LA. But what was the impact on their adopted city? While the doors may be closed for the time […]