This from Richard Grayson, who’s piece about "Bonnie and Clyde" at the McCarren Pool was picked up by New York Magazine’s blog yesterday. Grayson is the author of I Brake for Delmore Schwartz and To Think He Kissed Him on Lorimar Street among quite a few other publications.

The Martin Luther King Jr. concert series has been going on in Brooklyn for 25 years, almost as long as Celebrate Brooklyn!  Last week Lauryn Hill appeared, and on Monday night I saw Anita Baker.

The concerts are held in Wingate Field, just north of Kings County Hospital and next to Wingate High School, which opened in 1955 – its then-modernistic banjo-shaped building facilitated ditching classes, graduates have told me – and closed last year, broken up into four small schools.  It’s easily accessible by the 2 or 5 train and several bus lines; I got there easily from Williamsburg.

Baker put on a terrific show; as she said when she came out (after Marty Markowitz read an endless list of names of politicos, community leaders and businesses), “I didn’t bring anything but a bunch of old love songs.”  That’s all she needed for her several thousand fans there.  My favorite Anita Baker song is “Sweet Love”; yours might be "Fairy Tales," some "You Bring Me Joy" and she sang most of them.  Her enthusiasm, and the crowd’s, was palpable.

I was surprised to see very few other Caucasians there.  I know Anita Baker has many white fans, so perhaps some of them worry about their safety at Wingate Field.  Everyone gets patted down before entering (the security guard who checked me out made me take out my eyeglass case to make sure it wasn’t a weapon) and there’s no alcohol allowed.  The police presence was very large, both by the field and on the way to subway and bus stops.  I don’t think it’s just because I grew up around there that I felt perfectly safe.

The shows at Wingate Field are for everyone in Brooklyn.