Scott Turner's greeting arrived late this week. But don't be late for his pub quiz tonight at Rocky Sullivan's. Late or not, we are always happy to hear the news from Red Hook's quiz master. This missive is brought to you by the Red Hook tee shirt woman, Miss Wit.

Greetings, Pub Quiz Riegelmann Walkers…

It's summertime.  Not that you needed the notification.  The Summer of '09
continues to be weird.  June, a washout.  July, wanting to be summery
but not able to commit — like your paramour not being able to say
those three magic words.  And now, August — hot, sticky, hazy…but
not quite getting there.  Not quite the summer of legends, of Do The Right Thing's
hottest day of the year's descent into madness
with a cause, of pavement-melting, tempers-flaring,
humidity-complaining everpresent sweating lore.

By the way — in fact, two By The Ways:

1) Spike Lee's Mookie wears a Jackie Robinson jersey in Do The Right Thing. 
Cool.  Except it's really a modern day Los Angeles Dodgers jersey with
Robinson's name and number.  Robinson wore flannel, not doubleknit, and
he never played in a jersey with his name on the back.  Spike Lee knows
that.  Point made, if excessively and lacking nuance.

2) In searching for Do The Right Thing images, one of the
searches was "Do The Right Thing riot."  On page 4, about that point
when Google searches start to seriously break down, I got this image
for "Do The Right Thing riot":

The brutal images of Brooklyn's racial, class and national tensions — aw, he's adorable!

Still, I did catch one whiff of summer today.  No, not garbage piling up
near Green-Wood Cemetery or any of the city's other summersmeller
bummers.  No, this was a good'un.

Creosote.

It's the best
summer smell ever.  Better than sea salt, Coppertone, cotton candy,
spilled beer at the ballpark, strawberries and charcoal briquettes.

Okay, another By The Way: briquettes are commonly thought to be a
tag-team invention of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, and they ended up
with a patent.  Seems the real inventor was Reading, PA's very own
Ellsworth B.A. Zwoyer.  But Ford and Edison get the credit.  It's
always like that.  For example, I invented the word "yo."  But do I get
credit for it.  Nope.

Creosote.  It's the black paste used to treat and waterproof
railroad ties and, more germane to the issue at hand, boardwalks.  A seashore amusement park with a the
triple-threat of boardwalks, kiddie train rides and old wooden roller
coast — that's Creosote Heaven.

Finding pix of creosote being applied to, well, anything…harder than you'd think.  Provided you would ever have thought about it.

It used to be everywhere.  As the temperatures skyrocketed each
year, it seemed that new coats of creosote were slathered on everything
from Your House to The Beach.  Not just boardwalks, roller coasters and
railroad ties, but telephone poles, highway barriers, bridge
stanchions, signposts.  A sunny day with a slight breeze meant creosote
everywhere.

Creosote everywhere.  By the way…I'm not as old as these photos.

Creosote's
no longer a harbinger or comforting reminder of summer.  One reason is
that, with the march of Time and it's sometime's misguided partner,
Progress, coating wood products in a coal-tar gook is a bit looked down
on.

Oh, and creosote might also be a carcinogenic.  Bummer, that.

And Monty Python didn't do creosote any favors by naming their grossest character ever after our fragrant-yet-carcinogenic pal.  The Meaning of Life's
Mr. Creosote was something that John Cleese once said "crossed the
line," and that he wished Python had stopped short of.  That's extraordinary, given Monty Python's willingness to cross
lines, borders, walls, trenches, mountains, galaxies and anything
between them and The Laughing Truth — or is it The Truthful Laugh.

Mr. Creosote…giving cancer-causing agents a bad rep since 1983.

There's really not much more to say about creosote.  Well, one
thing.  Many years ago, I wrote record reviews and opinion pieces (i.e.
"rants," just like this one) for a local fanzine.  I did it under the
name Creosote Connolly.  The editor, a young skatepunk, had no idea what creosote was.  Rather he made the determination that I'd mistyped my own nomme-de-colère.  The issue arrives, smelling of the print shop it'd just come from, with my pieces credited to…wait for it…Cresoto Connolly.

How he'd figured I'd meant to have a first name "Cresoto" is beyond me.  Big Bend National Park in Texas has a small area called Cresoto Flat.  That, and a mischristened fanzine writer named Cresoto Connolly, are the only traces of cresotosity on Planet Earth.

Unless there are others.

But I don't think so.

Oh, and By the Way, one more thing:

You can no longer take the IKEA ferry to Pub Quiz — or to Rocky's, or to Red Hook
— for free.  One of IKEA's many promises — exchanged like chits for
Red Hook's blessing for IKEA's rather large blue-and-yellow retail
operation with its Red Rockers' "China" video flags flying out front — was free transportation.

More specifically, let us build, and you can ride our busses and
ferry for free, as much as you want, whenver you want.  It's a courtesy.

Promises
from big businesses have a decidedly evaporative effect.  IKEA is now
charging $5 each way if you're not a shopper.  "“We cannot continue [as
a] commuter service for those who are not Ikea customers,” said manager
Mike Baker in The Brooklyn Paper.

Except for the part where you promised Red Hook you would.

No matter how far you get from the shore, broken promises can still be seen

It's not New York Water Taxi's fault.  They're just doing what IKEA's paying them to do.

This also isn't about Quizzers losing
the free ride.  It's about a promise IKEA made to every resident of Red
Hook, one with a simple premise.  You let us in, we'll repay your
kindness.

Payment of kindness hereby withdrawn.

Times are tough.  No lie.  But it's precisely now, when times are
tough, that you stick with a promise.  Especially one built on trust. 
Hopefully, IKEA will reconsider.  The Red Hook location is rumored to
be one of IKEA's top-performing stores in North America.  Forgetting ethics, you'd think the cash registers' constant clanging would be enough to keep a promise.

Put it this way.  The ligonberries are tasting a kinda bitter these days.

And no amount of creosote can cover IKEA's odiferous change of heart.