Yesterday, Crazy  Guy, with a three inch diaper pin through his nose and a Elmo hand-puppet on his hand, said a most friendly  "Good morning, how are you today," as I walked by his morning post at Lincoln Place and Eighth Avenue next to the Montauk Club.

My dear friend and office mate wrote, "Crazy Guy says hello to me as well. He waved to me today as if we were
friends. I’m afraid to talk to him, though. I say hello back but
quickly look away so he won’t be compelled to say anything more to me."

And he never does.

I wonder how many people are aware of Crazy Guy. Surely the morning commuters on their run-walk to the Grand Army Plaza station notice him. He must be part of that daily blur of people that we see our way to the places we need to be.

They are part of our mental landscape, in the periphery like the cast iron indians on the Montauk Club fence. We may focus on them for a moment but then, just as quickly, we put them out of our mind.

The Scholarly Homeless Guy was sitting near Joe’s Pizza yesterday highlighting paragraphs in a dense academic textbook. He looks pretty good lately; his rumpled preppy clothes are relatively clean, his face clean shaven. I get the sense that he vascilates between various states of mental illness. Sometimes he looks almost functional and coherent. Other times he is definitely lost in his own world. Sometimes I have to resist saying hello to him. "Hey, what are you reading?" But I stop myself from an easy familiarity with someone I don’t know, who doesn’t know me.

It’s been ages since I’ve seen William Burroughs, the older man who sits on a step next to Starbucks. "Can you spare some change?" He asks in a deep whisper. Sometimes I don’t register it until I’ve walked by. With his dirty trenchcoat  and mournful face, he’s been in the neighborhood as long as I have.

I like to think that Park Slope is a hospitable place for this small community of vagabonds.  They seem to stick around for a long, long time. Part of the scenery, you might say. Crazy Guy never asks for anything. Nor does Scholarly Homeless Guy.  William Burroughs obviously needs some help to get by, as does Smiling Man who panhandles on the corner of Berkeley Place and Seventh Avenue.

They’re part of this community, too.

What did the women of Park Slope do this Mother’s Day?

I caught my downstairs’ neighbor hiding out on a bench outside the Mojo reading "New York Magazine," while her husband prepared a Mother’s Day feast. She looked blissed out and serene. "I was afraid to go home," she said. "Afraid there’d be something I’d have to do."

A mother I know dug joyfully into the dirt of her Third Street stoop garden planting geraniums and flats of other annuals. There was dirt beneath her fingernails and a  look of utter contentment on her face.

Wherever I went, women wished one another, "Happy Mother’s Day," looking pleased that some attempt was being made to indulge them, to give them a break from the usual routine.

My mother, sister, brother-in-law and my clan ate a late brunch at the Stone Park Cafe, where more than one table had a young baby strapped onto a dad while a mom ate her brunch undisturbed — happy to be allowed to finish her food without stopping to appease baby.

There were many multi-generational parties: toddlers, mothers, grandmothers, even great grandmothers smushed together at tables in that crowded restaurant that recently earned two stars from the New York Times.

The staff looked exhausted, eager for the day, considered by many to be one of the busiest restaurant days of the year, to be done. The restaurant was chaotic with loud rock ‘n roll blaring: the music an obvious ploy to get people to eat quickly and leave.

At our table, a fast fight broke out between my mother and sister: something silly, no doubt. Probably a perceived slight. It threatened to escalate like wild fire but something intervened: god, the universe, common sense. Maybe it was just the drink order. Civility was restored before everyone was even aware of what had gone on.

My sister appreciated my gift of a newly revised version of Dr. Spock’s famous, "Baby and Child Care:" a little light reading before her trip next week to Russia, when she and her husband will meet their nine month old baby girl for the first time.

When my son saw the book he thought it might have something to do with Spock from Star Trek.

My brother-in-law made a toast to all the mothers at the table, including my sister "the mother to-be."  To which my mother added: "Mamainwaiting, as the blog says!"

Here, here.

Late in the day, my sister and I drank Chardonnay in her living room and looked through a box of her photographs. There were pictures of my son, now a gangly 14, as a newborn, a toddler, at his 6th birthday (a Beatles party), and my daughter, now 8, as a newborn, at her first birthday, naked on a Cape Cod beach, and on and on…

"It all goes by so fast," I said sounding like every other mother in the world. "Enjoy it while it lasts," again stating the obvious cliche. But in that moment, clutching a handfull of fantastic memories, it felt unbearably true.

-Louise G. Crawford

BROOKLYN WEATHER: What’s it gonna do today?  Check here for Brooklyn weather.

FYI: Be one of the lucky 10,000 who will get emails from the MTA about
weekend subway disruptions. As part of pilor  program, you can find out if there are problems on your train line. Go to  www.mta.info and sign up now.

BLOGGERS IN THE NEWS: The New York Times ran a piece on Sunday about about blogs that is currently making the  rounds in blogland. Nick Denton, founder of Gawker is quoted as saying: "The hype comes from unemployed or partially employed marketing professionals and people who never made it as journalists wanting to believe. They want to believe there’s going to be this new revolution and their lives are going to be changed." <>

Ooh that hurts.

"For all of the stiff-arming and disdain that Mr. Denton brings to the discussion of this nonrevolution," writes the Times, "there is no question that he and his team are trying to turn the online diarist’s form – ephemeral, fast-paced and scathingly opinionated – into a viable, if not lucrative, enterprise. Big advertisers like Audi, Nike and General Electric have all vied for eyeballs on Gawker’s blogs, which Mr. Denton describes as sexy, irreverent, a tad elitist and unabashedly coastal."

_Hot Coffee Tip. Painter Suzanne
Meehan and sculptor Yasmin Gur have just opened the Crossroads Caf

My sister flies to Russia next Saturday to meet her daughter, Sonia.
Svetlana was her given name and what they call her in the orphanage.
But Sonia Rose is the name my sister and her husband have chosen for
her. 

Ducky is her nickname around our house.  My daughter came up with
that. The only picture we have of Sonia is one taken when she was five
months old and she was swaddled within an inch of her life in a blue
receiving blanket with little ducks on it.

So Ducky it is. I wonder if it will stick?

Today we spent this day before Mother’s Day at Target getting the
remaining items on the list of things that adoptive parents must bring
to the orphanage. This includes new baby and toddler clothes for the
other children, art supplies, educational toys, and gifts for the
caregivers.

My sister picked out a cute outfit for Sonia, a host of drugstore
items, rice cereal, soy based formula and a baby book where she can
document everything about their life together. After much ado, I
selected two board books for her. "The Wheels on the Bus" and "Daddy
Kisses,"which begins "Daddy wolf gives his pup a kiss on the nose."

It was a surreal day. A sweet one, really. Pushing a big red
shopping cart around Target Knowing that in just one week my sister
will be with her nine month old baby. What a long road it has been
through infertility, medical prodedures and the arduous process of
international adoption.

Unfortunately, next week is not the end of the road. They will have
to return to Russia in early July to pick up their Sonia and bring her
home. It’s all part of the adoption game. One can’t help but wish that
they could swoop her out of the orphanage next week and bring her home
to Brooklyn. But they can’t.

I can’t wait to give my sister her first Mother’s Day gift tomorrow.
Even if she has never met her daughter who is thousands of miles away,
my sister is already a mother full of love and attention for her little
girl.

Happy Mother’s Day, sis.

As I was walking out of Possibilities, that chotchka and card emporium on Seventh Avenue, a father and son were walking in.

"This is a woman’s store," the father said. "It is?" the boy asked. "Yes, my son. You see there are only women in here…"

Aside from the sexist implications of that father’s remark, I knew that the two of them were about to embark on an important mission: buying a  Mother’s Day gift.

Ah, the pressure. The agony. The thump thump thump heart beating anxiety to locate a gift for mom.

As you can imagine, Mother’s Day is a big deal around here. Today there will be hordes of fathers with children making the pilgrammage to the Clay Pot, which will undoubted be filled to the gills with clueless men and kids struggling to find the perfect gift.

More than once, when shopping for a gift for my mother, I’ve been tempted to steer a particularly clueless man toward what I knew would be a more appropriate gift. But I resisted. It was not my place. If I did, however, run into a friend’s husband, I might make a small suggestion. But hey, it was all in the name of friendship and karma (and she could thank me later for the Lisa Jenks necklace).

While there are now more good stores to choose from (Living on Seventh, Loom, Bird, Nest, Shangri La) on Seventh Avenue. And too, too many places to name on Fifth Avenue (Diane Kane, Matter, Flirt, Cog and Wheel, Eidolan and on and on…), the Clay Pot is still, symbolically, the destination of choice, the holy grail of Mother’s Day gifts.

For one thing, they have a comprehensive selection of the best in contemporary jewelry design (at a variety of price points) and they feature an eminently tasteful selection of the best in contemporary home and gift items. As they say on their web site:

"The Clay Pot was established in 1969 as an urban ceramics studio by Robert and Sally Silberberg. Thirty-five years ago Park Slope was hardly the enclave for young professional families it is today, but it was always a neighborhood, and The Clay Pot is essentially a neighborhood store. Joined by their daughter Tara in 1990, the store now reflects her passion for jewelry and has developed into a nationally recognized source for America’s premier jewelry designers."

Plus, they make it so easy for men to find a gift that will make their wives swoon. The window is chock full of great ideas, as is the store itself. But more importantly, their long-time employees are the best at giving advice on gifts at every price range and style. They ask all the right questions (price, personal style of the recipient, likes and dislikes) and take the time to work with you. From hand crafted, simple and tasteful, high design or even something a little Blink, there’s something for everyone’s taste.

That brown Clay Pot gift box with a black ribbon is the de-facto Park Slope equivalent of the blue Tiffany box. To many a woman it means that her husband has done his job, that he’s reached to the sky and pulled down a star. Good work.

Some men even venture into the vaulted and expensive wedding ring department. Oooooooh. Now that’s a guy who really knows how to buy a gift.

That’s my kind of man…

My husband seems to have a mental block against Mother’s Day and that other holiday he hates to comply with (see Postcard from the Slope_Valentine’s Day). In his defence, I must add that on many a Saturday before Mother’s Day he has braved the Clay Pot crowds  and returned with a specially selected jewelry item pour moi. Why, I’m wearing one right now, it’s a silver Lisa Jenks ring he discovered on the sale shelf two years ago.  I happen to ADORE IT.

So you see, even for a man who has a major issue with these so-called Hallmark holidays, the Clay Pot is a marriage-saver and a sure fire way to please the mother of his children on Mother’s Day.

The shop is open on Saturday. All day. On your mark, get set…

There’s a crazy guy I see every morning as I walk to my office on Eighth Avenue. He’s been around the neighborhood for a few years and used to hang out near various playgrounds and places where parents and children congregate. Sometimes I’d see him wearing a children’s mask, which really freaked me out…

…completely!

Once I saw him hovering near a PS 321 class picnic in Prospect Park by the Picnic House. He was holding a Halloween mask over his face and just standing there.  It was really creepy.  I had him pegged as a deviant pedophile schizophrenic nut job.

Lately, he unnerves me less. Oddly, I’ve taken a liking to him. These days, he usually has a white Beanie Baby bear with gold angel’s wings, a Lambchop hand puppet, and two white gooey plastic finger puppets – space aliens, I think. A short black man, his lip is pierced with two small silver hoops and he says a friendly hello to me every morning like it’s the most normal thing in the world; like we’re office mates or something. He always waves his hand puppet at me (or maybe that’s Lambchop saying hello).

I find myself moved by this little man and his puppet. For those who don’t know, Lambchop was the sock puppet sidekick of Shari Lewis, the perky, redheaded puppeteer and ventriloquist who had a television show in the 1960’s. When my son, now 14, was a baby, she was still on the air.

Maybe the crazy guy is attached to his memories of watching the Shari Lewis Show as a child on television. I know I am.

The man with the puppet and Beanie Baby entourage usually parks himself near the tall, elegant newspaper man who sells the Times’ to the subway commuters as they rush by on their way to Grand Army Plaza, and the metal coffee cart, that says "We Made Best Coffee Daily" that is stationed every morning on Lincoln Place.

The tall newspaper guy and the coffee cart guy don’t seem to mind crazy guy

They say Brooklyn is the city of diversity and color. But omigod nothing says that better than two events that are going on right now on Eastern Parkway:

The cherry blossom extravaganza at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden AND the Jean-Michel Basquiat show at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

My  husband and I took a little lunchtime sojourn to the gardens yesterday and whoa we’re glad we did. Not only are the cherry blossoms, those wild, sexy sirens of horticultural glory in full bloom but so are the lilacs and the tulips.

It is a color extravaganza over there. A veritable visual bounty for those who love to savor color, composition and fragrance.

Stick your nose in a lilac blossom. It’s a totally acceptable thing to do this week at the Gardens. Get close and sniff the glorious nose gay that is a blooming lilac. Go soon and swoon, they don’t last long and their fragrance, not to mention their sultry droopiness, are worth the price of admission. Ahhhh.

We then decided to check out the Basquiat show at the BMA that neither of us had see though it was very high on our "Let’s not miss another great NY art show that’s why we live in New York list."

We figured, we’re here already, let’s get our buttocks over there.

The EXPLOSION of COLOR. The SUCKER PUNCH of expression – color, cartoon, text, collage, stream of consciousness, Griot, jazz, anger, boxing, humor, identity, pain, and the power of diversity.

The Brooklyn-born son of a Haitian dad and a Puerto Rican mom, Basquiat was a student at St. Ann’s School and became a graffiti artist known as SAMO (for same old shit) in the late 1970’s.  He rose to fame in the 1980’s after befriending Andy Warhol and painting voraciously and passionately until his death of an accidental overdose in the late 1980’s at the age of 27.

My husband met him back then and says that while he’s a great artist he was a real pain-in- the-ass person. He saw him spontanously create a SAMO grafitti in a friend’s kitchen. Basquiat started out on the wall but when he ran out of room he sprayed over pots, pans, and the refrigerator. He then fell asleep in a bean bag chair.

A few years later my husband saw him wheel his bike into the Mary Boone Gallery and then roll it across the space so carelessly that a gallery worker had to rush to catch  it
before it hit a painting by another notable 1980’s artist. Everybody in
the gallery was like, WTF?

That aside, what a sucker punch of a show. In fact, there is a painting right at the entrance of the show called "SUCKER PUNCH."

Eastern Parkway awaits. What a duo. Stick your nose in a lilac blossom and then peel open your eyes to the wonder of Jean-Michel.

You just gotta.

Park Slope has become such a crowd scene on weekends when the neighborhood fills with all the people who work in Manhattan during the week. Most noticible are the twenty-somethings, who come out for brunch, shopping, and group-promendading down Seventh and Fifth Avenues.

I am almost completely unaware of them until the weekends.

Husbands and fathers are also in full force. Often I’ll recognize a child or a baby in a stroller with his/her dad and say to myself: "So that’s the father."

The weekend pedestrian traffic jams are a stark contrast to the almost provincial pace of weekday life. Gone are the post-drop-off moms at Connecticutt Muffin or the convergence of Caribbean babysitters at the Mojo.

Weekdays have their predictable rhythms; Seventh Avenue street life ebbs and flows

Monday to Friday, there’s the school day rush, which brings crowds of parents and kids to and from PS 321, John Jay, Berkeley Carroll and St. Francis onto the Avenue. Lunchtime is a madhouse of PS 321 fourth and fifth graders at Pinos and Mojo and the MS 51ers galavanting on Fifth Avenue. Late afternoon, the high schoolers move in to shock the neighbors with their rock ‘n roll antics.

The evening rush begins around five. But all those commuters in their city clothes have a destination: groceries they need to buy, children that must be retrieved from afterschool or playdates. And then the Avenue clears again for the quiet weekday night.

But the weekend  crowds are another order of magnitude altogether.

Lately, I find myself retreating from the weekend shuffle. On Thursday or Fridays, I’ll often force myself to do an errand, like picking up the dry cleaning or going to Tarzian Hardware. Something I know will be difficult to do on the weekend.

I’ve actually got a growing list of activities I don’t even bother with on weekends:
–The Park Slope Food Coop is helaciously crowded; a must to avoid.
–I don’t go near the Second Street Cafe for weekend brunch;  it’s been the only game in town for so long and there’s always a big crowd outside.
–You won’t catch me in the post office or trying to get my hair colored at Michaels Hair Salon.
–Little Things is a nightmare zone of stroller gridlock and cranky birthday-gift-buying parents on a long cashier line.
–Starbucks, which I generally avoid anyway, is chock full of day sitters and crowds of who knows who.
–Going out to dinner on a Friday or Saturday night on Fifth Avenue

There are, however, distinct pleasures of the Park Slope weekend. Running in Prospect Park before 10 a.m. with the weekend runners can be eupohoric, as is shopping at the Farmer’s Market at Grand Army Plaza. Brunch at Beso is always a dependable treat; despite the crowd, it’s usually possible to find a seat for breakfast Cuban style topped off with a huge cafe con leche.

Stoop sitting is probably the perfect spring weekend activity. I watch the kids on Third Street ride their bikes, color the sidewalk with chalk, use garbage can lids for baseball bases, set up lemonade stands, and sell their old books and toys in front of their buildings.

They are virtually growing up before my eyes.

It’s also fun to converse with the grown ups as they pass our yard. Sometimes I see the same people many times in one weekend day. There they are with the dog, now they’re going out for a run, walking to the mailbox with the red Netflix envelope, time to pack the kids in the car for a slumber party…

For me the weekends are best viewed from our stoop; life slowly passing before my Park Slope eyes.