Dumbo

One of my absolute favorite places in Brooklyn, and somewhere I'd like to live someday if the prices don't continue to skyrocket like mad into the sky and beyond.

DUMBO is essentially a collection of reclaimed industrial buildings and warehouses that dot the shores of Brooklyn near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. It's is located slightly north of Brooklyn Heights and has fabulous, amazing views of the Manhattan skyline (if you get those pesky warehouses out of the way). In the last few years it has begun a substantial amount of regrowth and is beginning to be a thriving artist community.

Although this strikes some people as being as funny as Carroll Gardens West, I heard a real estate agent call DUMBO the "East Village of Brooklyn".

Release Date: 23 October 1941

The movie Dumbo is one of the shortest of the Disney Animated Features, coming in at only 64 minutes. Despite its short running time, however, it's still an excellent film.

The story, based on a book by Helen Aberson, tells the tale of a young circus elephant named Dumbo. His mother, Mrs. Jumbo, originally named him Jumbo, Jr., but when the other elephants saw his gigantic ears, they dubbed him "Dumbo." His anomalous ears made him a target of much ridicule, both from the other elephants and from the guests at the circus. His mother is imprisoned when she goes on a rampage after a guest mercilessly teases her baby.

That leaves Dumbo with only one ally, a mouse named Timothy. Timothy determines that those big ears of Dumbo's allow him to fly like a bird, but Dumbo doesn't believe it. A "magic feather" convinces him, but when Dumbo loses the feather in mid-flight, he must search within for the ability to fly.

Dumbo earned one Academy Award, for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture. It also had one song, "Baby Mine," nominated for Best Music, Song.

While nothing spectacular or groundbreaking, Dumbo was a solid, modest success, which was a change for the Walt Disney Company after Pinocchio and Fantasia. It reenergized Disney's commitment to animated features, but alas, World War II, which the U.S. entered less than two months after this film's release, put many of his plans on hold.

Information for the Disney Animated Features series of nodes comes from the IMDb (www.imdb.com), Frank's Disney Page (http://www.informatik.uni-frankfurt.de/~fp/Disney/), and the dark recesses of my own memory.

It seems that already the process may be repeating itself, with loft spaces in both DUMBO and LIC becoming ever more coveted.

DUMBO is served by the York Street stop on the F Train. It seems that the planners of the Independent Subway may have known what they were doing when they put a stop in the midst of a bunch of warehouses.