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  • 5 weeks ago
All along the waterfront and throughout blue collar Brooklyn, pigeon keeping has been an active pastime for centuries, passed down from one group of residents to the next. But as with so many once blighted and now hip districts throughout the world, Brooklyn--and Williamsburg in particular--is being scrubbed of its character to make way for a new urbanism.
Transcript
00:00.
00:42How many divorces your father went through because of these things?
00:45Like two, right?
00:47Two.
00:48Like four.
00:50He likes them better than he likes his wife.
00:53He'd rather be with the fizzards than his wife.
00:57This is like a meditation period.
00:59Whatever problems you have in the street, however stressed out you may be feeling, when
01:04you come on a roof, it's like, you forget everything.
01:08We are addicted to pigeons!
01:16I started as the superhero of the building in 1993.
01:21There was also always controversy with my bosses as to having the pigeons upstairs, but I always
01:28found a way of getting around it and staying with the birds.
01:31Now, recently, well, unfortunately, they really put the pressure on me to take them off.
01:36There was a tenant in that one building that gave them the hassle.
01:40Kept complaining about the birds, and then that's when all the, as they say, the shit
01:45hit the fan.
02:16You know, the poor guy got to get fired?
02:16They don't even want you to go on the roofs and never mind having the pigeons on the roof,
02:19you know?
02:20They just want the birds off the roof.
02:21They want them off.
02:22It says two weeks, but they got to give us more, you know, because you got a lot of young
02:26ones in that coop.
02:27And once you get them out of this coop, the mothers ain't going to take care of them.
02:29Who's going to take care of them?
02:30You know?
02:31The mothers will abandon them.
02:33It's going to die if, you know, you figure four more guys getting away, and they ain't
02:38going to have to put it in themselves.
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