Brooklyn urban explorer and transit enthusiast Bob Diamond is most well-known for rediscovering, exploring, and offering unauthorized tours in, an abandoned subway tunnel under Atlantic Avenue. He has a huge collection of vintage videos that he shares online from time-to-time, and in this one, we get to see a vintage trolly moving along the DUMBO waterfront in 1987.

The exciting BQX Streetcar project actually had its start back in 1987. BHRA, supported by far- sighted developer David Walentas of Two Trees, the Ed Koch NYC administration, and the old Brooklyn Union Gas Co., operated test runs along un-covered track on Plymouth Street, Main Street, and Adams Street. The original "trolley barn" was located at 88 Water Street in DUMBO.

…Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan.

Manhattan Beach is the fifth novel – and first work of historical fiction – written by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jennifer Egan, a Brooklyn resident. Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, the book was also long-listed for the 2017 National Book Award and selected as a top book of 2017 by publications including The New York Times, Washington Post, and Time. Manhattan Beach tells the haunting World War II-era story of Anna Kerrigan, who becomes the Brooklyn Navy Yard's first female diver, and her search for her missing father.

Find the book at local NYC libraries, or purchase it for just $18 on Amazon.

With the goal of increasing ridership and decreasing congestion on the New York City bus system, the MTA has kicked off a pilot program of new Double Decker buses, starting with a inter-borough line from Staten Island to Manhattan. Our friends at the Staten Island Advance recently took a ride on one of the new buses and captured this sneak peek. Check it out!

Come along for a ride inside the MTA's new double decker express bus being piloted from the South Shore of Staten Island to East Midtown, Manhattan.