When Robert Barbara was a 10-year-old growing up in Canarsie, N.Y., a Brooklyn neighborhood that borders Jamaica Bay, his teenaged brother bought a horse to ride at a nearby stable in Mill Basin. Before long, it was the younger brother who had taken his place in the saddle. His talent evident, Barbara was soon competing…
Join Infinite Hope Animal Rescue this Thursday night at the Nu Hotel on Smith Street (at Atlantic Avenue) to celebrate a year of helping animals and to help fund the organization’s rescue efforts. Infinite Hope is an all-volunteer animal rescue based in Boerum Hill that houses, cares for, and places abandoned animals; the organization’s adoption center is…
When racing returned to New York State after nearly three years, shuttered due to stringent anti-gambling restrictions, the Brooklyn Handicap, first run in 1887, came with it. With survival, though, came transplantation, as the race was moved out of its eponymous borough, from the Gravesend track to Belmont Park. And with transplantation came a whiff…
An archaeologist by training, Lucas Rubin has spent a good deal of his life immersed in the past. He also loves cities, and he loves sports. In his book, Brooklyn’s Sportsmen’s Row: Politics, Society & the Sporting Life on Northern Eighth Avenue, he indulges his passion for all three. Read more at Brooklyn Bugle about an exquisite…
The Gravesend Bay racetrack, under the supervision of Phil and Mike Dwyer’s Brooklyn Jockey Club, operated in Brooklyn from 1885 – 1910, its race dates alternating with those of the Sheepshead Bay track. The rise of anti-gambling legislation in New York led to its closure, and even though gambling became legal again in 1913, Gravesend…
Brooklyn Backstretch 