Brooklyn Magazine is looking for Brooklyn’s 50 most fascinating people

By Brooklyn Magazine

UPDATE: We have received an absolute deluge of submissions, and yet! We’re extending our deadline by one week. If you want to submit someone, the new deadline is May 1 at the stroke of midnight, ET. Rest assured we’re seeing all of your emails but it is impossible to reply to them all.

Sometime later this Spring—around the first week of June—we’ll be taking the wraps off of something new here at Brooklyn Magazine. It won’t be list season just yet, but Brooklyn is nothing if not frequently first: We’ll be announcing our first annual collection of Brooklyn’s “50 Most Fascinating” … the people who, for better or worse, we can’t take our eyes off of.

This is where you come in! We’re looking for submissions, suggestions, tips and admonitions. We’re currently assembling a crack team of diverse jurors to sift through your suggestions and we now want to hear from you before Friday, May 1. Email us here, at bk50@bkmag.com. (Please note, any submission that comes from a publicist or PR firm will be immediately deleted unread and/or cast into the Gowanus.)

Want more info? Keep reading!

What it is
We know what you’re thinking: Another list???

Here’s the thing: Yes. But! This isn’t your run-of-the-mill clickbait ad-grab list. It’s a little more … fascinating. These are the most engrossing people in the borough right now, across multiple disciplines. These are the main characters of the borough, shaping its future. These are folks you think you know and the folks you need to know. These are the power brokers and these are also the people who you haven’t heard of—yet—who are quietly doing the work. This work makes us think, it makes us feel, it connects us to the borough in meaningful ways as the borough itself digs out from a year of pandemic. These are the 50 most fascinating people in Brooklyn.

The people on this list will be chosen by a jury of Brooklynites who themselves would merit a place high on the list. They are experts in their respective fields. They know what’s happening and what’s coming next.

When it is
The first week of June!

What can you do?
Email us here to tell us whomst you think deserves to be on this list and why! We’re not kidding about publicists, though. We won’t read anything submitted from a PR pro.

Categories
The mind craves order as much as the internet craves lists. So here, loosely, are the ten categories Brooklyn’s 50 Most Fascinating will fall under. This, like so much in life, is a bit squishy and subject to change:

1. Arts & Entertainment (think: musicians, actors, artists, gallerists, filmmakers, dancers, drag queens)
2. Community & Governance (think: organizers and politicians, activists and establishment)
3. Food & Drink (think restaurateurs, service workers, barkeeps, chefs, mixologists)
4. Land & Sea (think: real estate tycoons, slum lords, coastal culture, boat captains, lifeguards, canal dredgers, beaches and buildings)
5. Lovers & Liars (think: the people we hate to love and love to hate)
6. Media Mavens (think: journalists, broadcasters, bloggers, whistleblowers, influencers, truth-seekers)
7. Pandemic Heroes & Villains (think: doctors, nurses, EMTs, frontline workers, helpers and hinderers)
8. Sports & Gaming (think: pro and amateur athletics, esports, gambling)
9. Street Style & Runway Rogues (think: fashionistas, dandies, sneakerheads, Beau Brummell types)
10. Freaks & Geeks (think: everyone who doesn’t fit into the above, the riff, the raff)