The Street Singer

A gonzo telling of Brooklyn's $5 billion Atlantic Yards project by the award-winning journalist who played a pivotal role in bringing the NBA's Brooklyn Nets to the borough.

The Street Singer follows flat-broke New York CIty subway musician, Jason Spirit, as he stumbles into contact with Thaddeus Hoover, the high-powered developer with a plan to build the Barclays Arena and bring Brooklyn a National Basketball Association team - the first major professional sports team since baseball's Dodgers left for Los Angeles in 1958. He ends up playing project supporters and opponents against each other as he plots a song he's written to BScott, the world's most famous rapper and a money mogul in his own right. The Street Singer is a laugh-out-loud satire on present-day New York City complete with gentrification, blogger journalists, poverty, celebrity adulation, Russian oligarchs, basketball, and America coming into a new paradigm of global capitalism. Along the way it also gives a bow to the underground poets, singers, and musicians who add to New York's character and flavor.

Stephen Witt was born in Chicago and raised the near-north suburb of Skokie. He currently lives in Brooklyn where he works as a journalist and musician. The Street Singer is his second novel.