Brooklyn Ron

In Age of Trillion Dollar Bailouts, a Brooklyn Dime Grows Without Fed Aid

The Dime Savings Bank of Williamsburgh is actually opening a new branch on Montague Street in Downtown Brooklyn.

That would be right near the Citibank branch where bank bosses have been demanding untold billions in federal bailout help, as they've also talked about severing parts of their aching body, like the Smith Barney investment side of the banking behemoth.

The Dime goes back to 1864 when Brooklyn and the nation were struggling for survival in the Civil War. The bank, like the nation, survived. And in significant ways, the bank is doing much better than the nation, it seems.

Last year as the country sank into recession and large commercial banks showed the dollar-sapping effects of bad (corrupt, really) practices, Dime says it stayed the course.

Dime's President Vincent F. Palagiano has said his institution, with 23 branches around the region, steered clear of the sub-prime mortgages that destroyed the dreams of innumerable poor homeowners and, in the longer sense, the dreams of most American households.

While others downsize and close, Dime grows.

"We've been doing well and Brooklyn's been very good to us," was quoted as saying in the Brooklyn Downtown Star.

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz is quoted as saying, ""If you look at their financials, Dime has weathered the storm very well."

Obama Election Highlights Transition in Williamsburg: Avant-garde of the New Brooklyn

Perhaps nothing has so clearly reflected Brooklyn's demographic changes as the election night clashes between police and young residents celebrating the victory of Barack Obama.

The most poetic reality of that evening and following morning was its similarity to past treatment of minorities, especially Latinos and Blacks, by police in New York City.

These Williamsburg revelers -- some of whom were soon to be arrestees -- were mostly young whites, politically progressive and representative of the social transformations that have hit the regal borough in the past decade or so.

The changes have upset some of the older folk, who at a Nov. 17 meeting expressed their frustrations with the new, noisier inhabitants; and the changes have also strained relations with police, tensions noted in a Brooklyn Paper article referring to the newcomers as "hipsters."

It was perhaps only to be expected that many of the hipsters, on election night, would have been armed with digital video cameras, leading to some interesting visual accounts of what transpired. One of the clipped reels has audio of the bygone song, "Stop, Hey, What's That Sound," which can be seen and heard by clicking below. (Note: another posted clip follows that one.)

Here's another that ends with a fellow saying he was arrested for "not being on the sidewalk."