Red Hook, recently revitalized neighborhood in Brooklyn with coffee bars, restaurants, Fairway and Ikea in its backyard now needs a new revitalization. After Hurricane Sandy rolled through, all along Van Brunt Street, the air was thick with the steady thrumming of sump-pumps all the way up and down Van Brunt, every building having had its basement flooded, the arriviste businesses and long-time residents finding one another at a kind of clean-up block-party-meets-wake, counting the cost of Sandy’s devastation, soldiering on in the knowledge that whatever they’ve suffered has been suffered by all their neighbors too. Sometimes, it takes a disaster to remind folks that they’re part of a single community whether they choose to recognize it or not.

Red Hook Apocalypse: How Sandy Undid an Up-and-Coming New York Neighborhood