Fort Greene-Clinton Hill Patch, One Year On

Can a news and information website without a print component have a "paper" anniversary?

If you're talking about Fort Greene-Clinton Hill Patch, the answer is, "Yes, you can."

That's right: Today marks a full year since this . At the time, some Greene Hill residents were still digging out from last year's post-Christmas blizzard, Mayor Michael Bloomberg's schools chancellor pick, , was still courting controversy and the state intervened to save a in the heart of the BAM Cultural District.

A lot has happened since then.

Through it all, we've worked to create the most comprehensive news and information site for a neighborhood still going through some tremendous changes.

To put it all in perspective, one place immediately comes to mind: , which after 14 years in business at the corner of Dekalb and Vanderbilt will on Saturday.

As a reporter, writer and editor caught in the great arc between Flatbush and Classon, Park and Atlantic, Tillie's was one of many "go-to" places—conveniently tucked right on the border of our two distinct, yet somehow intrinsically linked, neighborhoods.

The other day, while walking through the coffee shop's screen door, I thought of how in just a week's time, it would all be gone. Which got me thinking about change: How it can be good, how it can be painful, but how nonetheless it always seems to be a necessary part of life.

Which brings to me to the particular allure of the brownstone-lined streets of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill—a place at once suffused with history, yet teeming with transformative energy.

It is that change that we seek to chronicle as we embark on Year Two at Fort Greene-Clinton Hill Patch, with an eye still trained on the things of the past that give the present meaning.

So it will be with happiness that I will walk through the doors of Tillie's for my last cup of coffee on Saturday, appreciative of all the good times I had there and, at the same time, open to the many different experiences to come.

After all, as Walt Whitman once wrote: "The future is no more uncertain than the present."