The borough’s first sports team since the Dodgers left during the 1950s represents to Brooklynites both a hip alternative to the dismal Knicks and a symbol of gentrification and erasure
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Uber driver squinted through his glasses at the rearview mirror after I’d finished a phone interview. He had to ask: Do you work in media? Was that someone criticizing Barclays Center? Yes. His assumptions from what he overheard confirmed, he had a take. No, Barclays Center is actually good.
Keble Jackson, a 42-year-old Brooklyn Nets fan, spent the rest of the 20-minute ride conversing about his point. He would’ve been vivid even if he didn’t have his old childhood haunts to gesture at as he drove down Eastern Parkway into Prospect Heights, his lifelong home. To the left, he’d rap with friends near the Brooklyn Public Library’s Central Branch. To the right, there’s a well-kept building that once was a drug house that sits not too far from the Grand Army Plaza fountain, where the neighborhood’s kids swam in its dirty waters. When he turns right down Flatbush Avenue, he mentions how parents use to make their children stand on certain parts of the street, where they could get a view of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower’s clock to learn how to tell time. That sight is now crowded by high rises and condos.