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Biggie’s Brooklyn: A Notorious mural, his favorite NYC spots and more

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  • Biggie Smalls may have been
    Photo Credit: Christa Lopez
  • The name has changed, if not the number of letters: It's now a Key Food, and it's where a young Christopher would try to hustle some legit money. DNAInfo. The shop is still located at 991 Fulton St.” data-id=”113217266″ data-link=”https://amnewyork.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/13568_image.jpg” class=”wp-image-1.13217266″/>
    Photo Credit: Christa Lopez
  • One of the earliest spots for Biggie performances, Orient Temple, 197 St. James Place, hosted
    Photo Credit: Christa Lopez
  • Biggie's famous
    Photo Credit: Christa Lopez
  • Lil' Cease of the Biggie-affiliated Junior M.A.F.I.A. told the New York Times that Fulton Deli Grocery, at the corner of Washington Avenue and Fulton Street, would provide a quick shelter from harsh winter weather (along with a place to hide drugs, when necessary). As Biggie once rhymed,
    Photo Credit: Christa Lopez
  • In 1989, before there was Puff Daddy, Bad Boy and inter-coastal rap feuds, there was this corner, where a 17-year-old Biggie Smalls dropped a battle verse so perfect, his opponent had to just walk away. It's since been commemorated with a building-sized street art tribute, pictured.
    Photo Credit: Christa Lopez
  • The original Junior's restaurant at the corner of Flatbush and DeKalb Avenues has seen many athletes, actors, political figures and singers since its inception in 1950. Biggie was one of them. Wayne Barrow, who produced the 2009 film Time Out that he believes Biggie used to order strawberry cheesecake and a Coke. A photo of Biggie and Puffy Daddy, pictured, still hangs on the wall today.” data-id=”113222128″ data-link=”https://amnewyork.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/13578_image.jpg” class=”wp-image-1.13222128″/>
    Photo Credit: Christa Lopez
  • Thirty years of Brooklyn, in one anecdote: On Zillow.com, it’s now a renovated three-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment which last sold in 2013 for $825,000. ” data-id=”113222056″ data-link=”https://amnewyork.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/13096_image.jpg” class=”wp-image-1.13222056″/>
    Photo Credit: Christa Lopez

Like a childhood bedroom seen through an adult’s eyes, a hometown or neighborhood can seem so small. Even as nostalgia blows through those street corners and parks into settings for widescreen memories, the reality can look tiny after both time and distance allow for unemotional consideration.

On March 9, 1997, Christopher Wallace was shot and killed on the Miracle Mile, a stretch of Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, almost 3,000 miles away from the border of his home in Bedford-Stuyvesant. And while the man known to the world as the Notorious B.I.G. toured the world during his too-short life, many of the haunts of his youth (and occasionally his grownup years – after recovering from an auto accident in 1996, the first restaurant he went to was Country House Diner in Clinton Hill, according to MTV) are clustered within a small radius of the Clinton-Washington Avenue subway stop.

amNewYork took the A train to look for the ghost of one of music’s all-time greats, ahead of the 21st anniversary of his passing, and found a world much smaller geographically than one might expect.

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