Cripplebush Ghost Tour

Filed under Walk/Tour, projects

Event Information

Artist: CB Crew

Come meet the ghosts of Williamsburg and Greenpoint. Cooper, Roebling, McCarren, the dense thickets of cripplebush that once gave the neighborhoods their name, and the rest. Decode their stories and discover the neighborhood.

Edmund Driggs and John Lorimer Grahm probably never met in real life, but their ghosts meet everyday as the streets named after them intersect. All around us are streets and public spaces named after landscapes of years past, local politicians, artists, people we aspire to be, people we forgot long ago. What does it mean to be surrounded by all these names, these stories, these ghosts? The Cripplebush Ghost Tour aims to lead participants through the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Greenpoint, not by their physical monuments, but by the people and the stories within them.

Through both guided and self-guided experiences participants will have the opportunity to directly engage with the history of these neighborhoods, experience these spaces in a new way, and interact with friends and strangers. At each Tour location there will be clues to decode and artifacts to collect—cards, maps, downloadable video, recorded debates, and more. Or perhaps the ghosts will simply announce who they are themselves and lead participants to new destinations and experiences.

The Cripplebush Ghost Tour, however, is more than another opportunity to passively collect knowledge. By exploring the ghosts trapped within the place names, the Tour brings to light the very human processes behind how they came to be there. From there, we create a forum for participants to discuss the names, offer new ones that might better reflect the neighborhood and those who live and pass through it, and create new maps based on this collective experience.