Yesterday a video of two white bros in Brooklyn feuding on the street went viral because one of them was caught screaming at the other about white privilege and how "white people like you are living here because I settled this fucking neighborhood for you." It quickly got him the nickname Christopher Columbus of Brooklyn. If not kinda disturbing (he does threaten to kill the other guy), it's hilarious because lol take a seat white guy, pretty sure you did not settle Brooklyn.
Today, Gothamist published an interview with the Brooklyn settler himself—an unnamed 46-year-old Fort Greene resident—who admits he did not watch the video but wants to clarify the situation. Apparently the man and woman in the video bumped into him with a stroller because they weren't paying attention and when he snarkily said "Excuse you," the couple started screaming "Fuck you" at him. He said the guy even came at him with his fists up. (Gothamist photographed the man in his home as well as the gash on his leg from the stroller bump—see here.)
"I have a temper, when I start seeing red it’s like I lose it, I admit to that. I lose it. I start screaming," he says. Though he obviously is not THE FOUNDER OF BROOKLYN, he is actually an OG New Yorker, born in Mt. Sinai and having grown up on West 4th Street.
His reaction to the stroller man was: "Oh you live in the Bell Tower, you’re walking around in your polo shirt, you’re pushing your stroller into me and you don’t say 'excuse me.' You must be some kind of transplanted white trash. They don’t think they are because they’ve got money, but they act like it, you know?" Not that that's a good excuse to react like that. "I agree: It’s not really fair to go around screaming 'I’m a native New Yorker no one can do anything.' But I’m not that person," he admits.
The man also admits to having grown up in a tough environment—"I was abused as a kid"—and in response to the man who shot the video (who, off-camera, yells "thank you white guy!") says, "My street cred, especially in the black community, in this city, is huge. I grew up on the West 4th Street basketball courts. I grew up multicultured. I grew up with Stonewall, I grew up on the laps of drag queens."
Read the rest here.
