At 6:31 a.m., the polling place at 21st Avenue and 70th Street in Bensonhurst was recording roughly two votes per minute. Twenty-five people, including polling volunteers, queued and sat amid the green and black PS 247 gymnasium floor and the lingering Halloween decorations on the walls. The pace of voting a half-hour into Election Day in outer-Brooklyn ...

Before the Italian-American exodus from Bensonhurst, only Italian food vendors participated in the annual 10-day Feast of Santa Rosalia--Brooklyn's version of Little Italy's San Gennaro Festival--in honor of the patron saint of Palermo, Sicily. But lately "The Feast," as it is dubbed by locals, has become less a nod to what was once Bensonhurst's most populous ...