In this introduction to my ‘Brooklyn, My Beloved’ series, I begin the journey from my first moments as a Brooklynite. Subsequent pieces will discuss the communities that embraced me and how they shaped our approach to developing the Brooklyn Innovation Portal.
I was 21 years old when I moved to BK with a suitcase and a dream. It changed my life forever, of course. Brooklyn was the thing I’d been looking for my whole life.
As a lifelong nomad, moving between three countries by the age of seven, experiencing movement constantly throughout my youth, Brooklyn was the first place that felt like an eternal home.
Growing up in Columbia, Missouri, while seeking the excitement of the Lagos I was born into, the television was my primary portal to a good time. It was there, as a simmering creative soul, that I encountered Brooklyn culture for the first time.
The Cosby Show, music videos like LL Cool J’s Doin It, Foxy Brown’s BK Anthem, and everything by Jay and B.I.G. made my teenage self feel like Brooklyn was where the beauty and bounty of Blackness was to be experienced.
“You already know that I like it hardcore, I’m from Brooklyn, you can leave your timberlands on.”
Foxy Brown, 2004
This far away, intriguing place represented the epitome of Black culture. I knew more, consciously, about Brooklyn culture than I did about the Yoruba culture I was born into. The pull was magnetic and I told my friends in high school that I was moving to New York, no question.
Landing in Flatbush years later, with my little Black suitcase, and being surrounded by Caribbean women taking the bus home from work at midnight, older men who wanted to help me carry my load, the scent of cuisine that brought my whole body to life, just made me feel so at ease.
It was as if feeling ordinary, like I blended in–for the first time since coming to America–energized me in a new and powerful way. My uniqueness was no longer about the fact that I was one of five Black students in a sea of white faces, or one of the only Africans in any context. What was special about me would truly have to emerge from my own revisioning of myself in this context of Black affection, Black kindness, Black welcoming, Black beauty.
Landing in Brooklyn was like being welcomed home by an endless sea of “familiar” faces after a long trip away.
It’s interesting to think that after being displaced from my Nigerian roots for 14-16 years at this point, the things that made BK feel like home were the things that are inherent in the indigenous African experience. It was the sense of oneness, the sense of communion, the freedom for authenticity.
I fell head over heels in love with this place that my family was terrified of me living in. People had fears about safety and crime, but I had truly never felt more safe in my life. People had fears about the cost of living, but every minute of the New York experience was worth whatever money it cost at that point. To be in a place where I was energetically, fully embraced, there was no price you could put on that.
The afros and twists that had inspired stares and questions in pre-natural-hair-movement Missouri was totally run-of-the-mill here. The random hand-made outfits I fashioned from indigenous textiles were just as welcome to the backdrop of “anything goes” energy that makes New York the creative Mecca that it is.
In a global context that said Blackness was “other”, “less than”, “unworthy”, Brooklyn laughed and said “Fuck you, we it.”
And the evidence was everywhere. In spite of ongoing poverty and violence across the borough, the visibility of Black pride, Black creativity, Black opulence, Black success was greater here than anywhere in the world.
It’s this obsession with BK that rooted the relationships I formed here, the identity that I expanded in here, and the contributions I committed to making—from here to the world.
It is my time in Brooklyn that concretized my identity as a designer of Liberation technology. The Brooklyn Innovation Platform, the most recent addition to my resume, brings me so much joy. I see it as a potential healing salve for Brooklyn’s dirty streets, her unhoused citizens, her relegated kids, her gentrification plandemic, her broke mothers, her economic chokehold, her “migrant crisis”.
A place where Brooklyn artists can go to easily bid on projects that directly address the borough’s most critical challenges–and to cultivate their creative skills. A place where corporations can go to be intentional about hiring Brooklyn creatives for their most important campaigns–at truly fair rates. A place where citizens can go to invest in the hyperlocal creative economy while supporting the causes–and neighborhoods–they care most about.
I see the BIP as a pathway to success for creative souls. A pathway to New Brooklyn. It’s the kind of thing I wish existed nearly twenty years ago when I got off that bus in Flatbush.
More to come 🙂
