The event that would be the seed for a Brooklyn kid\u2019s lifelong drive to become famous enough to make it out of Brooklyn is almost comically on the nose.<\/p>\n
One day during the spring of 1977, 8-year-old Michael McLeer came upon an almost impossible sight. A film crew had descended on his Bay Ridge neighborhood, and they were shooting a movie. It was about a guy from Bay Ridge named Tony Manero who liked to disco, particularly on Saturday nights, but he would learn these details later.<\/p>\n
What captivated Michael in that moment was seeing his idol, John Travolta \u2014 Vinnie Barbarino from \u201cWelcome Back, Kotter\u201d (Tuesday nights on ABC at 8:30) \u2014 strutting down the Brooklyn sidewalk in white polyester, trailing hubris and Brut by Faberg\u00e9.<\/p>\n
Michael would have to wait till his mother took him to the PG-rated version of \u201cSaturday Night Fever\u201d to see it for himself, but it was the first time he could remember watching somebody from his neighborhood become something, which is exactly what he planned to do.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Tony Manero could get out using his talent,\u201d he thought, \u201cmaybe I can, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
His mother, Donna Blanchard, had spent much of her life trying to do the same thing. She grew up in Brooklyn, the daughter of Italian immigrants from Naples. Her drive for fame was passed to her by her mother, who was one of the Quattrone Sisters, a musical group of six siblings who sang standards in Brooklyn hot spots of the late 1940s.<\/p>\n
Everyone said Donna resembled a young Sophia Loren, and they expected her to go to Hollywood. But then she got pregnant with Michael at 18, and soon after split with his father. She took waitressing jobs to keep the family going and, realizing that she was stuck in Brooklyn, transferred her dreams of fame to her son.<\/p>\n
Mr. McLeer recalls a day that he and his mother were in the welfare office. She told him to scan the room. \u201cYou\u2019re no better than anybody here,\u201d she said. \u201cBut you\u2019ve got talent, and if you do something with your talent, you could have anything you want.\u201d<\/p>\n
After many fits and starts, dead ends and a moment of near devastation, Michael McLeer did make a name for himself. He became an actor, a dancer, a rapper, a celebrated graffiti artist. But none of his successes felt the way he had imagined when he watched John Travolta on the sidewalk that day.<\/p>\n
It was only when he stopped trying to break out of Brooklyn that he realized what he was meant to do.<\/p>\n
The Birth of \u2018Kaves\u2019<\/p>\n
That name he made for himself was actually bestowed on him. As a teenager in the 1980s, Mr. McLeer ran with a posse of Brooklyn kids \u2014 all, he said, \u201con the wrong side of the tracks\u201d \u2014 climbing bridges, hopping turnstiles, roaming tunnels and tagging subway cars. He was good with a spray can and a marker, and he become a celebrity in the graffiti world, using a nickname given to him by an elder. \u201cThere was a cave in the Verrazzano Bridge all the kids hung out in,\u201d he said. He started signing everything with his new tag, Kaves. \u201cI liked the way it sounded.\u201d<\/p>\n
But then the Police Department\u2019s Vandals Task Force caught him decorating the side of a train with the visage of Sonny Crockett, from \u201cMiami Vice.\u201d He was ordered to pay a fine and do community service. His mother was less than pleased at his arrest, but she took a philosophical approach. \u201cAt least I wasn\u2019t robbing cars or doing dope,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He realized he needed to get his voice out in a new way.<\/p>\n
The answer was rap music. He had the right look \u2014 he was picked as one of the break dancers in the 1984 Chaka Khan music video \u201cI Feel for You<\/a>.\u201d By the early \u201990s, Mr. McLeer and a younger brother, Adam McLeer, started a hip-hop group they were calling the Verrazano Boys. They made a demo and shopped it around, and the record producer Rick Rubin was interested; his label, Def American, was going to put out their debut record. Brooklyn was still years away from becoming international shorthand for a kind of urban hipness, but Mr. McLeer knew the Lordz of Brooklyn, the group\u2019s new name, was headed for huge success.<\/p>\n On the morning of June 7, 1994, Mr. McLeer\u2019s mother and his 4-year-old sister, Michele, were walking home from a grocery store on Fort Hamilton Parkway and 92nd Street when a white box truck careened into them, killing them instantly. The truck sped off, and the driver was never found.<\/p>\n On the cusp of the McLeers finally making it out of the neighborhood, the family was shattered. \u201cImagine the most terrible thing that could happen to you,\u201d Mr. McLeer said. \u201cThe grief doesn\u2019t end.\u201d<\/p>\n The \u2018Sanford and Son\u2019 House<\/p>\n Mr. McLeer, now 26, had vowed to do whatever he could to become a star, but as the oldest child, he knew he had to take charge of the family after his mother died. Mr. McLeer\u2019s longtime girlfriend, also named Donna, moved in and helped him raise his 6-year-old brother. But he didn\u2019t exactly cast his aspirations aside, as his mother had done. The Lordz of Brooklyn finished their record, and it came out, almost a year after the hit and run. They toured in Italy and Japan, opening for Cypress Hill and House of Pain. They were even teased on \u201cBeavis and Butt-Head.\u201d<\/p>\n He kept at music for a while, touring occasionally, but the anguish of loss was too much.<\/p>\n Over these years, Mr. McLeer worked a wide array of jobs. He opened a tattoo parlor, a graffiti gallery and a pizza and concert venue, the Brooklyn Firefly<\/a>. All the while he showed his own artwork in museums and galleries and did design work for clients like Porsche<\/a>, Gretsch guitars, the Cow Parade<\/a> and Bay Ridge<\/a> itself.<\/p>\n He and Donna eventually moved out of his childhood apartment and bought a house in the neighborhood, where they would raise three sons and a daughter of their own. He made money, and he loved his new family, but he felt like he was in a \u201ccreative coma.\u201d No matter what he did, he couldn\u2019t escape the grief he felt for his mother and sister.<\/p>\n So he started collecting. He can\u2019t say exactly why. \u201cI was always interested in things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The things he collected were all over the map, but they did share a common trait: They represented an ideal Brooklyn.<\/p>\n