Southside Stories.
I took the “Southside stories” walking tour through Williamsburg. It consisted of walking through Bedford Avenue, south 2nd street and grand street listening to different people who lived in Williamsburg. The tour was 35 minutes, so it wasn’t long, but you heard so many stories it felt like a long time. It was a very immersing experience. You walked following instructions and stopped to listen to different people tell their stories. It felt like meeting all of the people that were talking in front of the place where they worked or lived. It wasn’t just some tour guide telling you about Williamsburg, it was like having locals as our guides, sharing their life stories and thoughts about the neighborhood.
At the time of our visit, it was sunny at times and cloudy at others, so it was a very beautiful view of Williamsburg, light shifting in our eyes as we looked for the places the people in our headphones were telling us about. There were a lot of people on the streets. Some just walking and others selling artisanries. The neighborhood was very beautiful, all the small brick buildings and the little stores or cafés around gave it a different vibe than other places. Also, it was much calmer than Manhattan even though there were a lot of people.
We could truly experience how the neighborhood changes really fast, just like the people in the audio were saying. A lot of the places the tour guide described were now closed or replaced by other more commercial stores. For example, the local pharmacy was now a Dunkin’ Donuts. It amazed me how much history there was in those streets, one of the interviewed men talked about how one of those buildings was the main drug spot on the Southside of Brooklyn, not so long ago.
I was excited to see a lot of Latin community. All the music that they played and most of the people that talked in the audio were Latinos. I hadn’t realized that I missed that feeling of being surrounded by Latin people so much. I got surprisingly homesick while being there, the music, the smell of the food and so many people speaking Spanish really brought me back to living at home.
In general, I enjoyed the walking tour, it was curious that all the sounds from the audio and the streets mixed. Sometimes I didn’t know if the music was coming from my phone or a restaurant nearby and I had to take my headphones off to see where it came from. Also, it was a singular experience because while the woman was talking about the swimming lessons at the pool and we walked over there a smell of chlorine invaded the air surrounding us. It felt like a multisensorial experience, sight, sound, and smell all in one.
