Art News

Brooklyn’s Bushwick Neighborhood Quickly Becomes World-Class Arts Mecca

NEW YORK (AP).- Brooklyn’s old Bushwick neighborhood has quickly become a new world-class arts mecca — with music, dance, sculpture and theater bursting from defunct warehouses and desolate streets where gangs still roam. That hasn’t kept artists away from the affordable, industrial spaces — ever more rare in a pricey city. “This was a ghost town, with tumbleweeds blowing down the street five years ago,” says Jay Leritz, co-owner of Yummus Hummus, a Middle Eastern-style cafe on a street filled with musician rehearsal and recording spaces. “The streets were empty,” says Leritz, “and that was the big attraction — the lack of rules, like your parents went away for the weekend and it’s a free-for-all.” Born-in-Bushwick creations have reached Carnegie Hall, Madison Square Garden, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other top venues