I haven’t lived in Brooklyn for decades, but during the 30 years I did live there, I never once ventured into the neighborhood known as Red Hook. Never wanted to. Why? I blame Thomas Wolfe.

I encountered his short story “Only the Dead Know Brooklyn” at an early age, and Red Hook was depicted as a place in which a teenager most definitely would not want to wander. (Well, this teenager anyway.)

I’m sure the area had changed between the 1936 publication of the story in The New Yorker and the time I first read it in the early ’70s, but still … I had no plans to go there. And so never did. Until Tuesday, when I was brought there by BBQ.

Hometown Bar-B-Que, to be precise. (more…)