Robert Guskind at Bklyn bloggers' meeting, Vox Pop 2007
I never met Robert Guskind a Brooklyn blogger/journalist who wrote one of the most well known of the Brooklyn blogs, Gowanus Lounge, but I feel very saddened to learn that he died yesterday, March 4th, at the age of 51. We were both part of the same Brooklyn bloggers’ circle in a sense although I was much more new (and less known) to it. To say his death has shaken up the blogosphere is putting it mildly.
Guskind had a sensibility about covering the changing face of Brooklyn and he did it with heart. He was also a full-time writer for Curbed until January of this year. Curbed writers wrote a sweet remembrance of him here. New York Shitty blogger Miss Heather was a good friend of his and has video footage he shot on March 1st (just Sunday). She put together the footage on her blog. It focuses on an encounter Miss Heather and Guskind had with a woman in front of a house her family had lived in for over 100 years on Havemeyer Street in Brooklyn until through tragic circumstances the family had to leave. It’s a very revealing piece as this woman takes the two of them on a tour. Flatbush Gardener is compiling write ups about him. Only The Blog Knows Brooklyn called the NYC Medical Examiner to confirm Guskind had died after a Park Slope resident got an anonymous tip about it; OTBKB wrote about his death here.
I linked to Guskind’s analysis in late January on “the disgraceful state of Coney Island.” His death and the sadness around it makes me realize how connected I feel to my fellow bloggers particularly those who care so much about our city and the people within it.
(The Gowanus Lounge blog is down right now but I hope it can be resurrected.
Update March 6th, 8:45 a.m.: The Gowanus Lounge site is now back online.)
Photo: Flatbush Gardener
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