Black Brooklyn is disappearing in real time — and somebody has to be watching.
SpikeBEE Joints is an independent documentary series dedicated to finding, filming, and
preserving the people, places, and things that make Black and Brown New York irreplaceable.
The stoops. The corner stores. The homeowners who held the block down for decades.
The businesses that never got their flowers.
Every joint is a short film. Every short film is a record.
And every record is an act of resistance.
Think about your favorite spot. The one you've been going to since you were a kid.
The bar where everybody knows your name. The restaurant where the owner remembers
your order. The block that felt like home.
Now think about the last time you drove past and it was gone.
That's what's happening to Black Brooklyn — block by block, business by business,
neighbor by neighbor. And it's happening faster than anyone can document it.
Black businesses aren't just closing — they're vanishing without explanation. Beloved spots that fed us, held us, and reflected us, gone overnight. And as residents get pushed out, the businesses that served them can't hold on either. The community and the commerce disappear together.
This film — and every joint that follows — is a call to action.
To bring visibility and foot traffic to Black and Brown-owned businesses.
To name the rich historic ground people unknowingly walk on every day.
To document what's here right now before it becomes a memory. To prove that
Black Brooklyn is still here — the homeowners, the business owners,
the elders, the block legends — and to make sure the world sees it.
If we don't tell this story, nobody will. And too much has already disappeared.
I'm Brittany "BEE" Long — a Brooklyn-born storyteller, educator, and filmmaker in pursuit of memory.
Spike BEE Joints was born out of a deep love for Black Brooklyn: the stoops, the block parties, the beauty supply stores, the old heads on folding chairs, the small businesses, the language, the rhythm, the contradictions, and the history. I created this space because preservation matters — and because I know what it feels like to watch a neighborhood change so quickly that its stories risk being flattened, renamed, or forgotten.
Before I ever picked up a camera with this mission in mind, I was already doing this work in other forms.
I studied Radio, TV, and Film at Howard University — where I learned that a story is never just a story. It's framing. It's politics. It's memory. It's who gets centered, who gets cropped out, and who gets to narrate what a place means. I then became an educator, and that shaped my lens just as much as film did. I taught English, Film Studies, and built original courses — The Black Experience, Alternate Worlds, Feminist Transformations, Postcolonial Literature — rooted in Black & Brown stories, multiple narratives, and the belief that people deserve to see themselves reflected with honesty and depth. I taught students to read beneath the surface, to question dominant narratives, and to value the stories too often pushed to the margins.
That same lesson lives here.
Because Black Brooklyn is more than a backdrop. More than "grit." More than trend. More than a real estate fantasy with a café and a rebrand. It is history. It is migration. It is memory. It is language. It is style. It is discipline. It is joy. It is pressure. It is survival. It is invention. It is aunties on the stoop and old heads with warnings and wisdom. It is the businesses that held us down before anybody thought the block was valuable. It is the people who made something out of very little and still made it beautiful. That is what I'm here to preserve.
Later, through my work leading programs in tech and education, I carried that same commitment into communities across the country — building experiences for girls of color, cultivating partnerships, shaping stories, and helping young people imagine themselves into rooms they had too often been excluded from.
So when I say I care about preserving Black Brooklyn, I don't mean that casually.
I mean I have spent years thinking about memory, representation, displacement, and what it means to tell the truth about a people and a place. I understand that storytelling is not neutral. A camera can document — but it can also distort, romanticize, extract, or erase. I want this work to do the opposite. I want it to honor. I want it to notice. I want it to remember. The work you'll find here is guided by more than aesthetics. It is guided by responsibility.
Behind the lens is someone who was raised by Brooklyn, shaped by Howard, sharpened in classrooms, and committed to making work that feels intimate, cultural, and accountable. Someone who believes Black neighborhoods deserve more than nostalgia — they deserve documentation, reverence, and care. Someone who knows that film can be both art and evidence.
Spike BEE Joints is for the culture. For the block. For the archive. For the elders. For the kids coming up. For the storefronts that deserve to be remembered.
I'm behind the lens. But I'm also of the place.
And this work is how I say: we were here, we are here, and we will not be edited out.
The film drops soon. Be there when it does.