Video of the Week – Pigeon Kings of Brooklyn

By Dan Hutton on March 26, 2015 in Video

Pigeon Kings of Brooklyn from Narratively on Vimeo.

Look up from the busy streets of New York City and you might glimpse a flock of pure-bred pigeons swooping in circles around an abandoned tenement building in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

Their aerial acrobatics are guided by their keeper, a streetwise Puerto Rican nicknamed 2Tone.

On the other end of the borough, a man named Goodwin and his pal Super 13 tend their own pigeon coop and flock of 300 birds.

Each man is trying to beat the other, to lure his birds away. It’s about bragging rights but it’s also about poetry, it’s about religion. It’s about finding that “true pigeon that will never break your heart,” as 2Tone says.

This video has absolutely nothing to do with the Eastern Suburbs but I just found it absorbingly fascinating. People do the weirdest shit and it’s awesome.