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The Breevort Houses are a public housing complex in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. 894 apartments are housed within 13, 7-story buildings that sit on over 17 acres of land. Life in the projects of New York City and its boroughs is really known to a select group of people and only imagined by the rest of the world. These were once the home of famous rapper, Fabolous, but only a slim number of those that grow up in the projects make it to stardom; those that do add a touch of romantic glamour to idea of growing up there.

 

This post is not about the Breevort Houses though, it is about a menswear shop across from the complex that offers everyday young men a feeling. The story of BedStuyFly made me fall in love with an idea – with a dream. For about six years the shop has been up and running and every year they design a sweatshirt with the word “Success” printed on the front and the number of the year printed on the back and the sleeve; when I asked about the sweatshirts, Mark, one of the young men manning the shop wearing that top said the purpose for the wording was a way to speak (or wear) a way of life into existence. This not only marks the success of the store but of he who wears it and potentially all who read it. There is also the fact that the décor of the store is a mixture of vintage furniture, unfinished wood and hardware, and a copper tile ceiling that instantly ties the rooms together and brings you back to the early days of the historic Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood. These are only some of the facets I loved about this place. Everything sold in the store is of the label bearing its namesake, even the store’s exclusive scent is BedStuyFly, its deep and rich just as the young men I met inside who believed in the vision of the store so genuinely you could feel it vibrating in every word they said.

There is a place in the world that offers every passer by a glimpse at a dream, a dream that for some comes true everyday as a passer by, like myself, enters this store, this haven, this oasis, in Bed-Stuy and falls completely in love.