Window Shopping for Nostalgia

An exhibit captures mom-and-pop storefronts from a bygone Brooklyn era.

For anyone with a drop of nostalgia for old New York, the exhibit Counter/Culture: The Disappearing Face of Brooklyn's Storefronts is designed with you in mind. Local photographers James and Karla Murray hit the main avenues and back streets of the borough to snap the mom-and-pop shops whose storefronts haven't changed in decades - the kinds of facades long gone from most of Manhattan - and sights that are getting harder and harder to take in for yourself as the city sweeps out the old and ushers in the new. They also interviewed shop owners for their perspective on the changing landscape. Sure, the exhibit is a statement on gentrification and the hard-fought battle of indie businesses seeking to stay afloat in a big-chain world, but on a much simpler level, it's just a richly-detailed window into city's past.

Counter/Culture is part of the Public Perspectives Exhibition Series at Brooklyn Historical Society, 128 Pierrepont Street in Brooklyn Heights, through 12/28.

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