Canarsie is a lower middle class neighborhood on the eastern edge of Brooklyn. For generations a district of junk yards, refuse dumps and marsh land, its name has long been used by New Yorkers to epitomize everything that is isolated, grimy and parochial about the outer rim of the metropolis (“Go to Canarsie” serves as a polite substitute for “Go to Hell” for Bronx natives of a certain age). In the mid 1970s, when most of the marshes had been filled (...) in and covered with block after block of small single family houses, Canarsie's unsavory reputation took on another dimension. (shrink)