We used to get funny looks from passerbys when we’d set up the Weber grill near the garbage pails in front of our building and have pot-luck BBQs on summer evenings.

But now everyone’s doing it  on Third Street. On the north side of Third Street, that is.

On Memorial Day, at least four apartment buildings got out their grills and folding tables. The succulent smell of BBQ steaks, veggie burgers, salmon and other delicacies traveled from Sixth to Seventh Avenues inspiring others to do the same.

Our building has been doing this for years. All it takes is one person to say: "Anyone wanna do a BBQ?"  and we’re off and running. It’s the casual nature of the thing that makes it so sweet. Neighbors bring whatever they’ve got. Sometimes that means running out to the supermarket for meat and vegetables. Sometimes that means bringing leftovers from the fridge.

At our Memorial Day feast, in addition to the usual BBQ fare, there was tuna steaks, veggie shish kebab, Apple Brown Betty pie and a fruit salad with mangoes.

And there’s always plenty of wine and beer to drink.

The kids in the building spent much of the evening roasting marshmallows.  And S’mores are a tradition: What would a Third Street BBQ be without  a grahm cracker  sandwich filled with marshmallows and Hershey chocolates? Wrapped in silver foil, this concoction is heated for a few minutes or so – the kids seem to know the exact duration – until the ingredients are perfectly melted together. And delicious as hell.

Observing this warm-weather ritual, one is disabused of all guilt about bringing kids up in the city. If you squint your eyes, there’s little difference between this Park Slope scene and a summer evening in suburbia. The kids, hunched over a grill roasting marshmallows on chopsticks, could be anywhere: Scarsdale, Summit, or Syosset. And the adults, too: sipping wine, sitting on lawn furniture, discussing local politics and world news.

Sure,we’re out there on  the cement by the garbage. Sure the furniture is plastic, not Smith and Hawkins teak. Sure, the only green is the tree in front of our building and the geraniums and posies that got potted early in the day.

It’s a classic American scene, but very Park Slope in its way:

Everyone’s invited, the food is delicious, friendly pedestrians are welcome, and the conversation is as juicy as the burgers: veggie or otherwise.

We left the cement beach on Third Street for the real beach in Coney Island. My true reason for the expedition was to lay eyes on the brand new Stillwell Avenue subway station with its 75,000-square-foot glass canopy, made up of 2,730 solar-energy panels,over eight tracks and four platforms, all completely rebuilt.

It did not disappoint. That is one gorgeous train station worth every penny of its $300 million renovation. A truly majestic gateway to Coney Island, it is a wonderful example of urban improvement! Kudos to the MTA.

The kids were vaguely interested in the train station. But their real raison d’etre was to check out the rides. They wanted to play in the sand, too, of course. But for them this trip was about: RIDES.

I wasn’ really planning to go on the Wonder Wheel. A self-avowed scaredy cat when it comes to heights and claustrophobic spaces, I was initially content to let my daughter, son, and their two friends do it on their own. But my dear friend Rose, who lives out in Coney Island (and joined us on the boardwalk) egged me on. "You are going to love it. Really. There is nothing to be afraid of," she said. "Besides, it’s a great view."

Rose and I waited together on the long line. "Do you want a swinging car or a stationery one?" She asked. The swinging one is better,"  she said with a mischevous smile on her face.

"Swinging car?" I asked incredlously.

I agreed convinced that somehow this whole experience was going to be good for me. Recently I overcame a life-long fear of flying with meditation and deep breathing. I figured, I’m probably ready for the Wonder Wheel. If not now, when? 

After 9/11, I developed a subway phobia that had me taking expensive car service rides into the city. I seem to be over that too. I take the subway now without obscessing about suicide bombers and dark subway tunnels.

As Rose and I waited on line, I tried some meditation breathing and prepped myself for what I knew was going to scare the wits out of me. "Well if we go down, we go down together," I said to Rose, who has been working for our family for nearly 14 years, since my teenage son was 3-months old. Rose has the most beautiful smile on earth and a personality that can only be described as beatific.

Nothing really prepares you for the Wonder Wheel. First of all, there’s the view. While it was a little hard for me to appreciate it even on what must’ve been one of the most gorgeous clear blue sky days of the year, I did manage to look when my eyes weren’t closed, bracing for whatever was coming next…

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh

Periodically the Wonder Wheel impersonates a roller coaster. On creaky tracks you are sent flying into the air. And then propelled
forward and downward.

The ride stops every minute or so to let passengers on and off on the bottom. That’s the part I found most difficult. You’re just sort of hanging out high up in the sky, waiting for the ferris wheel to start moving again.

<>

"This is really good for me," I told Rose. But inwardly I was sure we were going to fall to the ground. I could actually visualize the newspaper headlines. But I tried to look brave. "It’s important to overcome what frightens you. To have courage…"

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Rose seemed non-plussed by the whole experience. She casually made remarks about familiar buildings, other rides. "It’s such a nice view," she said from time to time, seeming to truly enjoy herself.

"You really like this?" I asked Rose more than once. "Yes, I do. I really do." she said.

It was really inspiring to be with someone so brave.

It was a typical warm, sunny Saturday on Third Street. My daughter woke early, sussed out the weather conditions and begged, "Can we please take out the pastic pool?"

I declined because we no longer have access to the basement hose the way we used to, but we went downstairs anyway. My daughter found a big cardboard box in the recyling, flattened it, and created a make-shift beach.

Soon her best friend, who lives on the first floor, came out and the two of them were slathering their bodies with suntan lotion and lying on the cardboard, sunbathing Brooklyn style. Jokingly, I said, "Hey, where are your bikinis?"  And the next thing I knew they were running into the  building to put their bikinis on.

When my daughter’s friend from around the corner came over for a day-long play date I heard my daughter tell her:  "It’s a beach party!" The friend was promptly escorted home to get her tankini and the girls were set for a day of fun and sun at the beach. The beach on Third Street, that is.

One of my neighbors recalled how when she was a kid in Bensonhurst they’d go sunbathing on their apartment building rooftop. "You ever hear the expression ‘tar beach?’" she said. "’Well that’s what we used to call it.’"

The girls were not deterred when the weather changed mid-afternoon. It certainly didn’t  interupt their beach behavior as they continued pouring buckets of warm water on one another in an attempt to simulate swimming.

The parents, meanwhile, did what parents in our building do on a lazy Memorial Weekend day. We sat on the green plastic lawn furniture we keep in the basement, read the New York Times, drank ice coffees and tried to keep the children’s noise level down to a comfortable minimum.

Needless to say, we didn’t put on our swimsuits. But I did find the smell of Coppertone amazingly evocative of a summer’s day on the beach. A real beach, that is.

Last night, my sister, my daughter, and I had supper at the new Sette Restaurant. Located on the corner of Seventh Avenue and Third Street, it has big, gorgeous corner windows and a patio where seasonal vendors used to sell Christmas trees. It’s ‘Windows on the Weird:’ great for people watching and gawking at Seventh Avenue walkers.

Sette is doing what’s called a "soft opening." That is, they are open for business but only serving part of the menu: appetizers, sandwiches and dessert. It’s the shakedown cruise, a chance to test things and get the problems worked out before the newspaper reviewers and the amateur neighborhood critics.

Well, shakedown cruise or not, the nabe seems to be embracing them with a vengeance. They’ve only been open a few days and the place was packed. Slopers are a curious bunch about what goes in and out on Seventh Avenue. And they’re quick to judgment when they are displeased. But in this case, I must say, the people I spoke to were impressed.

We sat next to a nice middle-aged couple from Windsor Terrace who seemed to know as much or more about Brooklyn than me. Their 12-year old daughter was having dinner with a friend at Two Boots and were nervously calling her every twenty minutes or so. They started chatting us up early into the meal. We were all surprised by the abbreviated menu. But we agreed that it was a smart thing to do. A great way to  tell the hordes: Hey, we’re just getting started, just trying to get it right. Reserve judgment until we really up and running. In this nabe it’s all about buzz and Slopers are quick in their opinions about shops and restaurants.

In other words: Restaurateurs beware: Hell hath no fury like a Park Sloper scorned at a new restaurant. Bad service, rudeness, boring food, you name it. If you don’t got the goods, you won’t get the word of mouth. And word of mouth is what makes the world go round ’round here.

We had fun playing the: Do You Remember What Used to Be on Seventh Avenue?  game with the Slope veterans sitting next to us. "I feel like I’m trying on shoes at the Third Street Skate Shop," the wife said. "They used to have  a bench right where I’m sitting."

Then we remembered that Al’s Toyland, a fixture for years on the Avenue, used to be in this space – and that was good for a good 20 minutes of conversation. The owners of Al’s owned Sette’s corner building before Al dropped dead and they sold it in the mid-1990’s.
Al’s was where you would go to buy classic toys: the Spalding balls, Duncan Yo Yo’s, hula hoops, kiddie pools, footsies, Fisher Price pull toys, Barbies, and Milton Bradley games. It was the antithesis of Little Things: there wasn’t an "educational" toy in sight. No developmentally correct playthings or black and white mobiles for newborns.  They sold the real stuff we all grew up on.

Al and his staff were big smokers and incredibly grumpy, even mean. The place stunk of cigarettes and cat piss and there were all kinds signs and warnings posted around the store: KEEP OUT. DO NOT TOUCH.  It was really unpleasant to go in there and deal with those people.
With our dining neighbors, we proved our Park Slope mettle by going back to 1991, remembering Abiyoyo, Pennywhistle Toys, the Russian stationery store, the gourmet shop that lasted two minutes, 200 Fifth Avenue when it was the only restaurant below Union. We seemed to have a great deal of shared Park Slope knowledge between us.

Finishing our $20 bottle of pretty decent wine, we decided that the price is a real inspiration: ‘I was about to order a glass of wine and then I saw the price," said the woman. "And I thought: ‘why not have a bottle?’  The portobello pizza with ricotta cheese was pretty incredible, too. My daughter found the Margarita pizza sauce too spicy.

A friend that was eating in the restaurant came over to say,  "I spoke to the owner and told them the sauce is too hot. That pizza is really for the kids. They should know that."
It’s called feedback. Park Slope style.
For dessert my daughter tried the blood orange sorbet. I think she ordered it because it sounded so grisly. But she seemed to enjoy it. At this point, she was talking to a school friend who was sitting at the table on the other side of us, having dinner with her weekend dad. She also spotted another classmate in the  restaurant who she waved to from time to time.

In Park Slope, even the second graders run into their friends at the chicest restaurants.

I’ve been thinking a lot about envy. On the one hand, it’s an
insidious emotion: one that can twist you in and out leaving you
feeling bent out of shape with longing and desire.

On the other, it’s very, very real. It may be one of the Ten
Deadly Sins, but who hasn’t, from time to time, felt that oozing,
green pang in the heart? That pull toward what others have.

Envy can create a quiet desperation or bring on bouts of the
blues. Sometimes it makes you want to lash out at another person or
find something wrong with the picture. They may have, say, the house
of your dreams, but they’re terrible, terrible people. Really.
Undeserving. Bad.

I have been accused more than once of envy; of coveting what they
neighbor has. It’s a natural state of affairs in an urban
neighborhood like Park Slope. We all live on top of one another and
know all too well what people’s houses are worth, what people do for
a living, what scores children get on standardized tests, which
schools they get into, where people go on summer vacation, how big
their backyard is.

Even in a seemingly homogeneous
environment like this, it’s amazing how incredibly stratified this
community is. Park Slope is a class society like any other in some
very obvious and not so obvious ways.

There’s what people refer to as old Park Slope and new. Old PS is the generation of dwellers who got here early. They are Legal Aid
lawyers, social workers, teachers, and artists. They live anywhere
from Fifth Avenue to Prospect Park West and send their kids to public
schools and summer on Cape Cod or in Ulster County. They have, by most
standards, a solid middle to upper class life. And, by getting in early on
the real estate boom, they have a nice little
nest egg, something to retire on.

On the other extreme, there’s new Park Slope. This includes those who work in
finance, corporate law, and other lucrative careers, in which the
yearly bonus can be the size of ten  "middle class"
salaries. Some were priced out of Manhattan in the 1990’s and grabbed the four story brownstones, the apartments in Prospect Park West doorman buildings, the loft-like  dwellings. They send their kids to
private schools,  own weekend houses and spend vacations skiing in Switzerland or on sailboat adventures around the Carribbean.

Beyond those two extremes,  there is much diversity: freelancers,
the low paid, underpaid, the under and unemployed, the chronically broke, the
not so forward thinking, the one’s who missed out on the house, the
apartment, the neighborhood when it was cheap.

Real estate is one measure of success
around here and a huge source of ENVY. And it afflicts people at every
level. Those who pay high rents envy the rent-stabilized. Those who
own apartments envy those with a house, those with the three story
houses envy those with the four. Those with the small wood frames long
for the limestone or the brown. Those on a wide
street like Union or Ninth Street, say, long for the quiet and
tree-lined. Those without a view of the Park or a  city desire a
view. Those who can’t afford to renovate envy those who can.

And on
and on.

A certain measure of success and a
definite source of envy in Park Slope is the kitchen renovation. The
very concept makes me twinge inside: I would so love to shop for a
stainless steel refrigerator or  a high-tech German
dishwasher that doesn’t make a sound. French tiles, slate floors,
granite or marble counters. Fixtures. I overhear renovation stories at Connecticut Muffin all the time and it leaves me with a pang. I’m not
gonna lie, I wish I could afford to do it. Why not?

There are other kinds of envy, too. In Park Slope and other
places, people envy one another for satisfaction in marriage,
in career,  in family life. Oh they
look like such a perfect family. Or: He or she must have such a
satisfying career. Or: their kids are so well-behaved and polite. We
envy others for the choices they’ve made and their so-called smarts.
We envy the way they look, what they weigh, how often they attend Yoga class, their taste in clothes.

We idealize those we barely know and make up stories and
assumptions about them. At least I do. Some of us create equations
that may have no truth value at all. A big house means a happy life.
A nice suit means a satisfying career. A high achieving child means a
satisfied parent.

Envy is the most subjective of emotions. It exists at all
levels and it’s a constantly moving target. It always amazes me when the people I think "have it all" think they have nothing at all. Come to think of it, I could be one of those people. They too envy what they don’t have
and spend great gobs of time looking at others and coveting their
lives.

The subject of envy is a fascinating one. Even those of us who
know with great certainty that money doesn’t mean happiness and
processions are not the key to life spend an awful lot of time feeling it.

Still, it’s hard not to want, not to long for. Even if we know
that we’ve got a pretty good thing; desire fuels so much of what we
do. My friend and fellow blogger from Stuttgart
put it well:

"I am on the whole content with my life, from one moment
to the next I am on average very happy," he writes in Udgewink.blogspot.com. "I have the knack (or the character defect,
take it as you will) of being able to derive joy from very simple
things: Show me a nice sunset and I’m happy for the rest of the
week.I’d like to have more money, sure. It would be nice to just walk
into the store and buy a bicycle, without calculating which meals I’d
have to skip to pay for it. It would be nice to have no debts, not to
feel a flash of panic every time the doorbell rings. It would be nice
not to know the income-tax office’s repo man by name (true).

On
the other hand, there were times when I earned substantially more
money than now, and I was not happier then. The things that are
missing from my life (summarize them as "love and family")
cannot be bought."

I’ve never been one to suppress my envy.
I know it can come across as ungrateful, as hopelessly bourgeois,
as petty, capitalistic, and self-denigrating. And blind. At minimum,
the way people live in Park Slope is way beyond the standard of
living in most parts of the world, in most parts of the United
States, in most parts of Brooklyn.

It’s important to get real and get educated about this so one has
a frame of reference: some sense of reality.

But still, envy is envy is envy is…

When I wrote those pieces about Jonathan Safran Foer and Jenifer
Connelly I was accused of being hostile, of being jealous, of
knocking others for what I can’t have for me.

But I guess, in the expression of envy, I attempt to exorcise it
as well. Exposing it for what it is helps a litttle. I need to get
that nasty green stuff out of my system from time to time.

Like the rest of New York City, the residents of Park Slope came together on September 11th. As white ash and dark smoke floated toward Brooklyn and tiny pieces of paper rained down on the neighborhood, many of us ran to PS 321 to check in on our children. Later we waited for friends and neighbors to come home from work. I’ll never forget the site of a friend walking toward the school, his shoes covered in ash, as he told us what he’d seen that day in Lower Manhattan.

Some didn’t come home. Marian Fontana’s husband, Lt. David Fontana of
Squad 1 on Union Street in Park Slope, was one of the missing. It was weeks before we truly believed that he was dead. 

That first awful night, a group of Marian’s local woman friends gathered in her garden apartment on 4th Street and waited for Dave to come home. We took turns calling hospitals in New York City and New Jersey  to see if he had turned up. Bravely, Marian lay on the couch in her small living room  letting friends massage her and hold her hands as we all waited for Dave to walk through the door. We were sure he would.

At midnight, a firetruck pulled up to the house. "Oh No," Marian cried. I remember thinking: this is just like in the movies when the soldiers come to the door to bring news of a death. Their faces bright red and covered in dirt and sweat, the men smelled of toxic smoke and death. They came to say that they hadn’t found Dave yet, but were still holding out hope. These men were clearly traumatized by what they had seen that day but they urged Marian to have faith. "There are voids out there, Marian. The guys are probably waiting in one of those," the firefighter said.

For many, Marian became the face of 9/11. She was relentlessly interviewed because  her natural charisma and articulateness made for great sound bytes. She threw herself into the spotlight as a way to lobby on behalf of the underpaid firefighters; it was also a way to keep Dave’s memory alive.

And in Park Slope, she was a local hero. She could barely walk down Seventh Avenue without being stopped for conversation, a hug, a moment of shared grief. After a while this became overwhelming. Marian needed to retreat from the attention, from her status as the official 9/11 widow, so that she and her son could begin to heal alone.

Tonight at Brooklyn Reading Works at the Fou Le Chakra Cafe, Marian Fontana will be reading from her memoir, THE WIDOW’S WALK, which will be published this summer by Simon and Schuster. In it she writes with honesty, passion, and great humor about her life before and after Dave’s death.

The reading tonight is a reunion of sorts because quite a few of her friends who were there that first terrible night will be at Fou Le Chakra. One of them, essayist and fiction writer, Susan Karwoska, is reading an excerpt from her work-in-progress, THE RIVER  FROM NOTHING. Although I knew Susan before, on the night of 9/11, I learned what an enormous heart she has. It infuses everything she does, including her work teaching children to write poetry in the NYC public schools.  Marian nicknamed her "The Soup Lady" because she would bring soup over to the 4th Street apartment every day during the weeks after 9/11. "And it was really good homemade soup," Marian says.

That night I forged a bond with everyone who was in that apartment. As we made phone calls to hospitals, endless cups of tea, and well-meaning efforts to comfort Marian in the early moments of her  unfathomable pain, none of us could really imagine what she was going through. None of us had ever been in a situation like that before and we were scared out of our minds.

Tonight we will join with others to listen to the writing of both Susan Karwoska and Marian Fontana. And we will celebrate the power of art to help us understand the world and the life that’s been given to us.

Brooklyn Reading Works at Fou Le Chakra Cafe. Thursday May 26th at 8 p.m. 411 Seventh Avenue between 13th and 14th Streets in Park Slope.

My sister met us at the Mojo Cafe this morning, with a shopping bag full of gifts from Russia and Holland. She has a knack for great presents; she bought my son a Russian hat with a Communist Party pin on it and Beatles’ nesting dolls. Form daughter:  Russian girl nesting dolls (10 pieces from big to teeny tiny) And for me she got a book about Anne Frank from the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.

My son loved his presents, especially the John, Paul, Ringo, and George dolls. "I’m just glad you didn’t get me a tourist t-shirt, I hate those." he told her.

My sister is jet lagged and full to bursting with the excitement of the last week. Her epic trip to the orphanage outside of Perm was probably the biggest adventure of her life. She will return in 4-6 weeks to bring her beautiful little red-headed Svetlana/Sonia/Ducky back to Brooklyn. What a turn their lives will take then.

Although my sister’s e-mails were incredibly informative, hearing her stories face to face really brought the trip alive. Every day they traveled over two hours each way by car to the orphanage out in the country. They would sit in the large, sunny music room and play with Svetlana. My sister got to know Sveltlana’s caregiver, a very nice woman named Oksana. For most of her visits, she didn’t see any other children. "Where are they keeping them?" she wondered.

Finally, she got to see Svetlana’s room, where she lives with 10 other children and two caregivers. The children sleep in playpen-like cribs and are not allowed to go on the floor ("It’s dirty").  They are not encouraged to crawl and explore: this can make for temporary developmental delays, which usually grow out of quickly.

The driver and interpreters they met were helpful and
very nice. One of them said: "We are very happy that you come to take
care of the children that need homes." My sister gave him a FDNY
baseball cap and T-shirt. "I will always have it and remember you."

The Russian gifts caused quite a stir in the Mojo. My daughter had her nesting dolls arranged in size order on the cafe table. A few children gathered around to stare at the colorful wooden dolls. My daughter wants to bring them in for "Share," the PS 321 version of Show and Tell. Yesterday she said she was hoping that my sister would just swoop Svetlana out of the orphanage and bring her home. "Maybe she just didn’t tell us because she wants it to be a surprise."

Undoubtedly, over the next few days more stories will come out, more descriptions of this experience, which was unlike anything my sister has ever done. How often do you go half way across the world to meet your daughter, the child you will nurture and love for the rest of your life?

Maybe I went too far with that Jennifer Connelly piece yesterday. Some people, including my husband, thought I sounded a tad hostile. I certainly didn’t mean to. But I guess it came off that way.

Truth is, I was in a bad mood. And when I’m in a bad mood I "kick the dog" as my husband says. And we don’t even have a dog. So I pick a fight with him. And if he’s not available, I pick a fight with…

…Jennifer Connelly?  That’s weird.

Yet, her quote about being a loser really did touch a nerve in me. It says so much about American life in the 21st century that you could be construed as a loser if you stay close to home and don’t partake in the quest for upward mobility.

It’s all because of the capitalist mindset that we’re swimming in.  In this culture, you’re supposed to do better than your parents and strive to move up and out of the class you’re in. And if you don’t?

You’re a loser.

Think back to the distant agrarian past when people were expected to follow in their parent’s footsteps; butcher, baker, candlestick maker. Whatever.

Not so long ago, my husband grew up on a family farm in Northern California that was started by his grandparents in 1929. His mother still lives and farms there and loves the connection to the land, her family history, and the people she loves. My husband sometimes thinks about moving there because of the passion he feels for the place.

I’m a native New Yorker; born on the Upper West Side. People are always surprised to meet a native. I guess everyone thinks New Yorkers come here from far and wide. As E.B. White wrote in "Here is New York:" The residents of Manhattan are to a large extent strangers who have pulled up stakes somewhere and come to town, seeking sanctuary or fulfillment or some greater or lesser grail. The capacity to make such dubious gifts is a mysterious quality of New York. It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.

So it is a funny thing being from Manhattan. But there is no shame in staying in your hometown if your hometown happens to be New York. Yet, Brooklyn is a famous place to escape from. As my mother says, "People from Brooklyn are overachievers. They have to cross the bridge."

For my mother’s generation,  it was all about getting up and out of Brooklyn. Maybe Jennifer Connelly identifies with that impulse. But it’s a whole different ballgame now. Brooklyn, the new "It-Borough" is a destination now. Not a place to run away from.

That said, Jennifer Connelly has every right to feel like a loser. And she is in no way obligated to come out and play with the Slopers on Seventh Avenue. And maybe she does come out to play every once in a while. One of the readers of OTBKB, Procrastinet.com, had this report:

The first time we saw them, at the Garfield Tot Lot, I thought: "who’s
this big good lookin’ guy crawling around between people’s legs after
his kid? He’s got an accent. Oh holy crap, that’s Paul Bettany." He was
crawling around after little Stellan, having a high old time. Stellan
and my son rolled a ball back and forth a bit between them, and Paul
and I had a lovely chat about their names and ages.

Point well-taken, Procrastinet, I haven’t been to the Garfield Tot Lot lately as my kids are 8 and 13. But I did rush to judgment and that isn’t nice.

Like I said, I had a bad day. And for some reason, that article in New York Magazine was sticking around my brain. I didn’t mean to sound snarky.

I guess it just came out that way.

Brooklyn is having a moment. And it’s a noisy one. Developers and politicians are trying to shape the future of this borough – and they want it their way. Many, many people are working hard not to let that happen. Without a fight, anyway.

To me, this feels like the beginning of an urban movement; a citizens uprising in the name of livable cities. Cities that don’t just cater to the rich but honor human values, scale, greenery, and thoughtful architecture.

Coney Island, Red Hook, the North Brooklyn waterfront, Kensington, the Atlantic Yards:  they’re  all up for grabs and if Brooklyn could talk she would probably scream: "Wait a minute!" But since she can’t speak: her faithful citizens are screaming for her.

Which isn’t to say that Brooklyn doesn’t need development and investment. There are vast stretches of Brooklyn that are crying for intensive TLC. The Atlantic Yards is surely one of them. But the developer’s schemes don’t often have the hearts of the borough at heart.

Why should we put our neighborhood in the hands of the guy who brought us the unbearable Atlantic Center. And as an encore, created the Atlantic Terminal Mall, which is quite a bit better. And it does sort of hide the Atlantic Center, which is a good thing. I know I’m not the only one who enjoys the convenience of having a Target Store there.

Brooklyn is having a moment the likes of which I haven’t seen since I moved here in 1991. All of a sudden it’s the it-borough: Manhattan is expanding eastward and the land grab of 2005 is a veritible gold rush.

But there’s also a whole lot of shoutin’ going on. People are organizing and blogging and demonstrating and talking and petitioning and yelling and writing and speech making and thinking  and…

You get the idea.

This is fighting the good fight Brooklyn style. And like Brooklyn, it’s smart and scrappy, down to earth, spunky and ambitious. It’s gotta be. Development on this scale represents big money, big politics, big corporations, and in some cases, big bad guys. It’s a tough fight to fight. But with the help of the activists, the urban historians, the humanistic theorists, the gurus of smart development, maybe, just maybe, some visionary plans can get generated and put to the test.

Francis Morrone, who writes the About New York column for The New York Sun and is the author of An Architectural Guidebook to Brooklyn, has studied Brooklyn for many years had this to say in The Brooklynite: "The Atlantic Yards area needs development. The proposals on the table, however, beg the question of whether Brooklyns’ urban success stories have taught us anything at all, or just paved the way for thoughtless mega-development. Jane Jacobs coined the phrase "cataclysmic money."  Disinvestment is bad. So is over-investment. And it seems that in some parts of Brooklyn we may be going from the one to the other."

I wonder what would happen if the developers and politicians took a long, hard look at the Brooklyn they seek to transform. What if they were to truly explore Brooklyn’s livable streets. Maybe then they would begin to understand the meaning of scale, beauty and livability. Morrone continues:

"Brooklyn neighborhoods have succeeded because they retain a scale and a style from an age when city development reached a stage of optimal habitability. Such neighborhoods are exceedingly hard to find in urban America today. These Brooklyn neighborhoods are not only a New York treasure but a national treasure of preserved, human-scale places."

Human scale – what a concept! What if developers sought to enhance human scale rather than destroy it. What if developers decided to learn from these communities rather than try to overwhelm them with profit-making schemes that add little to the urban experience.

The scariest part of what’s going on is that it feels like the wrong people are making the decisions. Morrone shows how short term thinking could destroy some of the most remarkable neighborhoods in America.

"Developing their interstices with mega-projects like the Atlantic Yards proposal would destroy the scale of neighborhoods that would, as a result, be edged and hemmed by phalanxes of outsize buildings," writes Morrone. "Only the crudest short-term cost accounting could possibly justify playing so fast and loose with these treasures of comely urban form."

The silver lining of what’s going on is that people are actually talking about urban design and planning. Architecture is on everyone’s lips. People are devising alternate plans,  getting organized, and making themselves heard. They are quoting Jane Jacobs and other great urbanists. The discussion is sometimes angry and intense. But democracies are often messy and loud.

It’s the sound of people not taking things sitting down.

Note: The log cabin playhouse in Hugh Crawford’s Daily Pix is in the pre-school playground in the lot next to Union Temple. That lot will soon make way for Richard Meier’s luxury glass high rise.

Prolaundry the company that wants to be the Fresh Direct of laundry, has arrived in Park Slope. Hey, it’s an idea whose time has come. With one caveat: they don

Why does Jennifer Connolly keep saying in interviews that living in the same neighborhood where you grew up makes you a loser?

The Saint Ann’s grad was quoted once again, this time in New York Magazine, that she feels funny about moving back to Park Slope. "I remember looking at people. thinking, ‘He’s in the same neighborhood, what a loser.’ Now I ask myself, ‘I’m not a failure, right?’"

Yeah, Jen. Only losers can afford to buy a gazillion dollar limestone mansion.  You’ve got one of the nicest properties on the park.

Connolly told Vogue Magazine last year that, in addition to feeling funny about living here, it takes her forever to actually do any decorating. Well, it looks to me like she is finally getting around to it, Her windows are now covered with white paper (or are those shades?) and I just have the feeling that a mucho dollar renovation is going on. Maybe she is finally buying furniture.

Connolly has real Park Slope roots even if they embarass her. After St. Ann’s and college, she lived in a tiny studio apartment in the West Village for years and years (anywhere but Brooklyn). After winning the Oscar, the poor girl had to schlepp back out to the nabe with two children and the impossibly tall and handsome Paul Bettany (also from "Beautiful Mind") to inhabit a mansion most people would die for.

I’ve never seen Jennifer in the neighborhood. At first I was excited that she was living here ("Ooh that beautiful actress from "Beautiful Mind" is living here now," I said more than once).  I read in Vogue that she jogs in the Prospect Park and rides her bicycle. I figured one of these days I’d see her out there sleekly running our 3.2 mile loop.

But unlike our beloved, Steve Buscemi, who is a real member of this community, Jen probabaly spends most of her time elsewhere (i.e. taking her kids to, you guessed it, Saint Ann’s in Brooklyn Heights, and  doing whatever it is off-duty Oscar-winning actresses do in Manhattan).

For her, Park Slope is strictly a bedroom community. She wouldn’t be caught dead on Seventh Avenue. Her childhood friends might think she’s a loser or something.

But really, I don’t think she needs to feel bad about being a returnee. Coming back to the community that you grew up in can be construed as a real compliment to the place. I often wonder if my kids will want to flee their childhood home or stick around. My son used to say he wanted to live here forever – but he may be growing out of that. Everyone needs to spread their wings and fly, see the world, explore a little.

Returning to Park Slope would not be a sign of loserdom. It would actually be a sign of good taste: an appreciation of the scale, the sense of community, the tree-lined streets.

And the houses are real nice, too.

Note: the house in Hugh Crawford’s picture above is NOT Jennifer and Paul’s.

There’s a joke in Park Slope that you can’t walk more than a block without running into someone to talk to. These intermittent sidewalk conversations can turn a quick shopping run to Seventh Avenue a time-consuming adventure.

Many a Slope kid knows the feeling. "Mom, let’s get GOING," they might whine as they pull a parent from a conversation that’s gone on way too long.

My daughter has been known to say:  "Now that’s the last person you’re going to stop and talk to…"

On spring weekends, when Seventh Avenue is bustling and stoop sitting is a major activity: this is truer than true. For instance, a walk down Third Street toward Fifth Avenue can mean more than one conversational stop at various stoops

Just yesterday I stopped to chat with friends who have an 8-month old baby (see above) Standing in front of their brownstone, I asked to hold their baby — partly to get a feeling for waht Svetlana, the Russian baby girl my sister is going to adopt, must feel like. They were more than happy to oblige and asked lots of questions about my sister’s Russian sojourn. 

There are many people in the neighborhood who have been following Svetlana’s adoption. It’s interesting how sharing of information can create a small community of well-wishers. Two women in particular have been my Seventh Avenue support squad. They both have adopted children and every time I see them they say, "How’s your sister?" When they heard that she was finally in Russia they swelled with excitement. Intimately understanding the experience, they’ve been full of information and good energy.

Sometimes a quick outing can mean multiple conversations about multiple topics: one might be about high school and the ubiquitous: "So where is he/she going next year?"  This usually leads to a long shared SIGH about the loathsome public high school admissions process.

Other conversations might be about real estate; a new restaurant (Have you been to Song?, How about Miracle Grill?); the Atlantic yards debacle (So what do you think about it?); a community walk through Kensington on May 22nd (Can you put it on your blog?); Is Hugh still taking portraits at Fou Le Chakra (When’s the next one?); Can your daughter have a playdate next week…

Sometimes all the conversations merge together and I can’t remember who said what. I  have so much local information in my brain – just sort of swimming around.

But I love the verbal connectivity. Love the way this neighborhood has the feel of a college campus or a small town. Yes, it can be a tad dizzying at times; downright distracting. And perhaps it means that Park Slopers tend toward the fashionably late.  I have friends who take Sixth Avenue or Eighth instead of Seventh just to avoid the constant interaction.

But more often than not I look forward to it. It adds an unexpected dimension to a banal task like picking up orange juice and milk:

Who will I see today? And what will they have to say?

Note from The No Words Guy:
The Typepad server was a little stopped up this morning and the
Postcard Lady had to go to her writing workshop so this picture will
just have to be worth the proverbial thousand words.