I learned on Daily Slope that Schnack, a raved about hamburger joint in Red Hook is about to open an outpost at the Brooklyn Lyceum on Fourth Avenue near President Street.

Here’s what Schnack has to say about itself on their website. Interestingly, there is no mention of opening in Park Slope there. Apparently, there was something in Time Out about it.

Schnack is "about" serving authentic food at a good price. In Red Hook Brooklyn that means $1 burgers and $1 dogs. Our regular menu is available online and we have a large selection of seasonal specials. We serve Soups, Stews, Mac N’ Cheese and Braised Ribs in the colder months. In the summer, we have roasted corn
(street style), fresh fish specials every weekend, and lots of other great stuff. Our milkshakes are hand dipped and we proudly serve RC Cola, Ginger Ale and Grapefruit soda from our fountain machine and ice cold bottles of Boylan Root Beer, Orange and Black Cherry soda. We always have 4 great tap beers as well.

Schnack is a partnership between Alan Harding, Jim Mamary and Harry Hawk. To learn about what’s going on at Schnack just drop by our location at 122 Union St, Brooklyn.
We are located between Columbia and Hicks along the Columbia Street Waterfront area. Some people call it Carroll Gardens, some Red Hook, we called it Schnack.

We’d like you to know a bit about us. Schnack is a collaboration project between Alan and Jim who have partnered on a variety of Brooklyn eateries including Patois, Uncle Pho, The Red Rail, The Zombie Hut and the Gowanus Yacht Club and Beer Garden.

One person writing on the Daily Slope Message Board had this to say about the new Schnack at the Brooklyn Lyceum.

Oh, no disrespect towards Schnack’s food in any way. I hear it’s great
and really a good homage to the old school new your deli stuff that is
all but gone.

But from a foot traffic point of view, the Brooklyn Lyceum is not
as casual diner friendly as one might think. And that horrid
scaffolding is just pathetic.

But here’s a silver lining. It seems like the guy who owns Schnack
and all those other places on Smith Street is also buying up property.
I have no inside track on anything, but I wouldn’t be shocked if the
guy is eyeing buying the Brooklyn Lyceum and putting it to good use.
And that this little Schnack outpost is the first steps towards that
space finally getting the respect it deserves.

I guess the bigger story here is what’s happening at the Brooklyn Lyceum and WHY is it so underutilized? I suspect someone (and I hope it’s not some developer like Ratner) has plans for it. I hope it’s someone smart and creative.

The true end of summer is NOT September 22, the day of the autumnal equinox on the calendar. It’s not the first day of school.  And it’s not when the stands at the farmer’s market are filled with apples and robust pumpkins, or when the Korean markets display well-ordered rows of yellow and orange mums.

The true end of summer is the day the landlord puts the steam on in our apartment. It happened last night and took me completely by surprise.

According to the Rent Guidelines Board, NYC building owners must provide all tenants with the following levels of heat (During the heating season, October 1 through May 31):

    * Between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., heat must register at least 68 degrees Fahrenheit when the outside temperature falls below 55 degrees;
    * Between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., heat must register at least 55 degrees Fahrenheit when the outside temperature falls below 40 degrees.

The noises started before 4 a.m. I listened to the weezing and banging of the radiator that is right next to my bed in a state of half-sleep. At first I thought it was something in my dream. I didn’t even acknowledge it at first. And then I did; a reunion with something I’d completely forgotten about. Steam heat.

All summer long, air conditioners and cold showers were more pertinent. How can it be time for the radiator now? Just yesterday I took a cold shower to cool down from a muggy afternoon.

Out of practice, the steam struggled up  through the pipes for the first time in months. It gave off a funny smell. In summer, we store books on the radiator; it becomes yet another surface filled with things. Those things give off a funny smell when heated by the just-starting radiator; it smelled like something was burning.

That’s its way of saying "Hello, I’m here. I’m back to heat your apartment and wake you up in the middle of the night with a clanging that sounds like an avant garde orchestra."

I groan inwardly at the thought of our overheated apartment. I’ve so enjoyed these last few night sleeping with the windows open wide as the first strong breezes of Fall filled the apartment and made sleeping so much easier.

There’s just a tiny window of time between being overheated by oppressive summer humidity and  the day when New York apartment become excruciatingly hot. 

Seems that our landlord is putting the heat on a day before he even has to. It’s only September 30 today. Maybe he’s testing it out, making sure it still works after a long, hot summer. A full dress rehearsal, as it were.

I’m out of practice myself. I barely remember what winter coat I was wearing last year or where my gloves, my hats, my favorite wool scarves (not too itchy, not too warm) are. Do my kids have coats that fit them? Are there any clean, long-sleeved shirts in their drawers?

Could it be that we have to think about all that again. This past summer, the heat just pressed on right until…yesterday. Maybe there will be more warm days and the landlord will have to backtrack a bit, giving us a little more time to allow the cool Autumn breezes to waft from one end of the apartment to the other. Before winter truly begins.

Now I remember what happens when I write about Jennifer Connelly. Everyone gets so pissed off.

I should swear off writing about our local movie star girl. I get the nastiest comments when I do. And it was all so innocent — I was walking up Prospect Park West with my neice, Sonya, and we strolled by J’s stoop and…

I don’t feel guilty at all. I was actually more interested in the dogwalker who thanked the gardener for fixing the garden. There was something so Park Slope about that – the way we’re house-and-garden-proud about houses and gardens that don’t even belong to us. Because they’re in our daily vision, they belong to all of us.

I don’t think the dogwalker made that comment because it’s Jennifer’s house. I think she made the comment because, whoever owns that house, she feels, owes it to the neighborhood to keep that garden up. It might be a sentimental thing (I forgot to mention that she lovingly described the old garden to the busy gardener.) Maybe she knew the people who lived there previously.

It’s my job to be the eyes and ears of the Slope; to observe what goes on around me. Whether it’s weird, funny, uplifting, strange, sad, even stupid: no matter. I take it all in and sometimes give it back out. That’s what I love to do and if I seem like a stalker (stalking who? The dogwalker, the gardener, Jennifer?) so be it.

Everytime I write about Jen I have to defend myself. Some of those comments made me feel sleazy and I’m probably one of the least sleazy people I know. I should probably stop writing about Jen, her house, her garden, her attitude toward the Slope…

But I don’t think I can.

At The Old Stone House tonight, Brooklyn Reading Works presents Elizabeth Royte, author of GARBAGE LAND, reading excerpts, talking and taking questions. Refreshments and books available.

The following is from the introduction to the book, an excerpt about Royte’s adventures in a canoe in the Gowanus Canal. Hear more tonight. You won’t want to miss this one.  The House is in JJ Byrne Park in Park Slope. Fifth Avenue between 3rd and 4th sts. 718-288-4290.

On a sunny spring afternoon long before I ever decided to travel around
with my garbage, I slid off the dead end of Second Street, in the
Boerum Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn, and down a seven-foot emabankment
oozing green and brown liquid. I braced my foot on the end of a rotting
nineteenth-century beam and prayed that it would hold. It did, and soon
I was seated in a slime-encrusted canoe in the Gowanus Canal, my
sneakers awash in bilgewater. My life vest and jeans now bore
distinctive parallel skid marks. A sportman in a Gowanus Dredgers
cap  released the bowline and casually informed me that those row
house — he pointed up Second Street – were discharging raw sewage into
the canal. "That would explain the smell," I said.

It was Earth Day 2002, and I’d come out not to collect floating
garbage, the siren call for two dozen local Sierra Club members – but
to get a little exercise. I’d never traveled around the city, and I
wanted a new perspective on my neighborrhood. I also wanted a backyard
view of what the media was touting as up-and-coming real estate.
"Gowanus," after morphing into the tonier-sounding "Boerum Hill" in the
sixties was returning as a sales category…

Walking by Jennifer Connelly’s house on Prospect Park West I was pleased to see that she is fixing up the front and side garden of that corner house on Prospect Park West.

A elderly woman from a nearby apartment building was walking her dog. She went up to one of the gardeners and said: “Thank you so much for fixing up this garden.” He looked at her with a WTF kind of expression and continued working.

“Did you see the garden before?” The woman asked. “I saw it a few months ago,” the gardener said. “No, I mean before. Before.” the woman said emphatically. “It used to be a beautiful garden.”

“Well, it’s going to be better than ever now,” he said getting back to uprooting some dirt. The woman asked him for his card. “I don’t have any cards. You’ll have to ask the lady in charge.

The lady in charge is garden designer, Jane Gil, and she was there working alongside the others. She’s probably a big name in Slope garden design but I don’t know much about that sort of thing.

An adorable little boy with a big forehead and dark hair was watching from the front window. I wonder if that was the son of Jennifer and Paul Bettany? Recently I watched “The House of Sand and Fog” and was blown away by Jennifer C’s performance in that. And I don’t think I’ll ever forget Ben Kingsley’s final act in that movie either.

I didn’t wait around to hear the conversation between the dog walker and Ms. Gil. Everyone’s a busy body in this neighborhood but there are limits to how busy a body I want to be.

Saturday night’s benefit concert at the Old Stone House, Teens for New Orleans, was an unqualified sucess. At $5 and $10 dollars a head, the event raised over $1,600 dollars for the Jazz Foundation of America, an organization that is coming to the aid of New Orleans’ musicians.

The show went off without a hitch. The Foundation, ModRocket, Cool and Unusual Punishment, Capsacin, and Caliber played their hearts out and the crowd, a mixed group of over 200 teenagers, parents, grandparents and miscellaneous adults was extremely enthusiastic.

Thanks to Mark Zappasodi,  a rocker, a sound technician, and a father of a band-member, the sound was excellent. Acting as stage manager with his wife Caroline Zappasodi, he made sure the show ran smoothly. And it did. There were short breaks between sets so that people could buy refreshments downstairs. Jake Gilford, grandson of the great Jack Gilford (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, those unforgettable Cracker Jack commercials from the 1960’s), entertained the crowd with his comedy.

The adults enjoyed the show as much as the kids. There was a great feeling of teens and parents working together. The parents were not there as chaperones or organizers (though they did do a bit of that). It was a real collaboration built on trust and support. It’s a rare evening teens and parents can enjoy together and this was one of them. There is talk of doing more benefit rock concerts at the Old Stone House, which, I think, is a teriffic idea.

On behalf of the Teens for New Orleans organizing group, I would like to thank the following
people and shops who helped make this event a reality: All the bands and their parents, Jake Gilford, everyone who came to the show, Kim Maier, The Old Stone House, Allan Bealy for designing and printing the flyer, Mark and Caroline Zappasodi, Carolyn Kearney and Bruce Cory, Theresa McElwee, Hugh Crawford, Greg Duggins, Caroline Ghertler, Beth Halper and the other parents who brought homemade goodies, all the friends of the band who carried equipment up and down the stairs, Pizza on the Park, Connecticut Muffin, Mojo Cafe, La Bagel, Russos.

Photographs of all the bands at the show by Hugh Crawford are available for purchase at:

http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/840284

Another crime of passion in Brooklyn.

In a tiny beauty shop on 11th Street between Fifth and Fourth Avenue, a man killed his ex-wife (or girlfriend) and then killed himself.

It was a crime of jealousy. Of revenge. He was angry because she was dating another man.

The woman, one of the owners of Delores’ Beauty Shop, was rushed to Methodist Hospital. But she died enroute. The man was dead immediately.

The shootings occurred at 11 a.m. Soon after, the street was closed off as a crime scene. Police and news helicpopters were seen flying over Park Slope.

The beauty shop is right next door to the tiny Cafe Regular, a favorite local spot.  `

At 4:30 when I came by on my way to see my therapist, the block was closed to traffic. A big crowd of onlookers stood in the rain. But I wasn’t sure what was going on. A commercial, maybe a movie. Then I realized that there was a crime scene  on my therapist’s block.

I was determined to get to my appointment so I walked under the police line and walked toward Fourth Avenue. Then I was stopped by a group of four policemen with the words "Crime Scene" monogrammed on their blue uniforms.

I told them that I had an appointment on the block. They looked at me like I was crazy. "This is a crime scene. Get off the block. Didn’t you notice the police tape?" One of the cops rolled her eyes.

They advised me to walk down 10th Street to Fourth Avenue and come around the other way. I arrived a little late for my appointment. My therapist had heard about the shooting from an earlier client. He hadn’t had a chance to go outside.

When the session was over, I was able to walk up to Fifth Avenue from his building. Locals standing under umbrellas crowded across the street from the beauty salon were waiting for the body to come out. There were news cameras and a sprinkling of reporters with notepads and press passes. A man asked me if the woman killed was named Delores. "She used to cut my hair." A reporter asked if she was from the Dominican Republic and he nodded yes, looking sad. 

There were rumors that the woman’s boyfriend had been murdered, as well. "That depends what side of the block you’re on."

Another woman heard that the woman’s boyfriend had also been sent to Methodist. "My friend works there and that’s what she told me."

One of the reporters had the police report. He held it in his hand and said there was just one man killed, a suicide.

Crime scene policemen worked for hours marking up the small beauty shop with chalk and police tape and taking photographs. I saw a policeman wearing blue rubber gloves. I left before the body was removed from the beauty shop.

Later my daughter said that she and her classmates had noticed the helicopters flying above them in the school playground. They stared up at the sky, she said. "It hurt my eyes."

It’s official. About a week ago, the Mojo Cafe on Third Street and Seventh Avenue was sold to a new owner. Small changes are already afoot. The new owner moved some of the furniture and refrigerator cases around. The shop is already noticibly more roomy. As far as I can tell, there are no changes in personnel.

So far, it’s been a fairly seamless transition from one owner to the other. Michael, the old owner posted this gracious comment on OTBKB yesterday:

To all my friends and customers at Mojo Cafe thank-you for allowing me to serve you and be a part of the community for 6 wonderful years.  Remember Corey, Park Slope’s finest barista, is still there. I’ll see you on the Avenue.

I’ll be the first one to admit that I was dubious when the Mojo/Carvel opened six years ago. The corner storefront had been empty for a long time. It had once been a Ben’s of Soho Pizza. After that, a completely inept operation called the Rendezvous Cafe opened after months of renovation. They had pages of musical notation wallpapered to the wall, as well as maps and things. There was very little food or beverage as far as I could tell.
The place closed within a month. A true mystery. What the hell was it? I always wonder if it was a front for something.

When the Mojo opened I knew it would be sucessful as a Carvel but I wondered who in their right mind would want to spend cafe-time there.

Boy, was I wrong. The Mojo is practically the Town Square of Third Street. I for one go in there many times a day. I meet friends and have PTA committee meetings there. It’s my conference room-away-from-home.

For god’s sake, my daughter has her breakfast there practically every day. Of course,  it’s a sprinkled Krispy Kreme donut – not the most nutritious breakfast. Whatever.

The Mojo has many moods. Early in the morning it’s a quiet breakfast spot for locals.

In the half-hour before the start of school at PS 321 and the schools in the John Jay building, it becomes a hectic stop for last minute breakfasts and lunch supplies.

After drop-off, the Mojo becomes a meeting place for parents and caregivers. The women I’ve dubbed, The Women Who Rule Park Slope, meet there on a regular basis This coffee clatch is like a Park Slope (left wing) version of ABC’s  "The View." On the patio or inside, the talk is lively, topical and intelligent.

By 10 a.m. or so the parents with school-age  children have moved on to home or city offices, and the Mojo becomes a friendly hangout for caregivers and stroller-aged kids.

Lunchtime brings the mad rush of the PS 321 lunch scene, the 4th and 5th graders who are allowed to go out for lunch. Barista Cory expertly watches over the scene and makes sure that there is some semblance of order and that the kids remember to throw away their trash.

In the hour or so before PS 321 pick-up, things are fairly quiet: the calm before the storm.

At 3 p.m. all hell breaks lose. Parents and kids converge on the Mojo for hot dogs, ice cream, coffee, various and sundry after school snacks. The shop rocks with the energy of children just released from school classrooms.

<>

Last year around 4 p.m. or so, the patio of the Mojo became a huge gathering place for the teenagers of Park Slope. Things were known to get a bit rowdy. Their presence was, understanably, annoying to the owner and I believe that he put the kibosh on it. Those kids m

oved on to the playground at PS 321 – and that’s another story.

What a vital place the Mojo has become in the six years of its existence. As a resident of Third Street and a parent, I wish to thank him for making the Mojo a place I never thought it could be: a really cool Carvel. It sounds like a contradiction in terms but it isn’t. The Mojo is a place the people of Park Slope hold near and dear.

Best of luck to Michael who has decided to move on and do something new. And welcome to the new owner (whose name I don’t yet know).

Thanks for giving us a place to be – in the many phases of our day.

Leave it to Jet Blue, OTBKB’s favorite airline, to get famous for a near-miss crash landing. They just seem to do everything right and they’ve changed my attitude toward flying since I started flying with them in early 2002.

Jet Blue was the first airline with locked cockpit doors. Their on-line reservation system is excellent as are their automatic check-in kiosks. Television screens for every seat. Snacks but no yucky airline meals. Great staff Informative pilots: Jet Blue is one cool airline. 

And yesterday’s big story about the the calm heroics of the pilot and crew made the cover of all the  major dailies, including the New York Post, whose headline read: JET PHEW!

An article in the San Jose Mercury News mentions that one of the passengers was Brooklyn- bound. 27-year-old, Zacharay Mostoon, a multi-instrumentalist and producer. He along with the rest of the passengers watched their frightening landing on the television screen in front of his seat.

Zachary Mastoon, 27, a professional musician who was taking the flight from Burbank back home to Brooklyn, said the broadcasts were “a little surreal.”

“I thought how it must have been like on Sept. 11 watching on television and seeing the planes come toward the building,” he said.

The in-flight broadcasts, however, were turned off before the final moments of the drama. For 15 tense seconds, as passengers braced themselves and prayed, the plane careened down the runway as pilot Scott Burke balanced it on its rear landing gear, holding the nose high to reduce pressure on the malfunctioning front wheel.

The aircraft then settled forward onto the nose wheel. Within moments, the front landing gear began smoking as the rubber tire burned to the rim. The wheel then exploded into a fiery display that burned until the aircraft slowed to a halt.

No injuries

As the plane came to rest, scores of fire and rescue vehicles sped toward it across the tarmac. But the passengers and crew emerged unhurt, some walking down the stairs waving to cameras and giving one another high-fives.

Burke had delivered what experts said was a “perfect” touchdown of a crippled aircraft.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who spoke to the pilot at the airport, praised him.

“He walked off the plane with a big smile on his face, just cool as a cucumber. He joked that he was sorry he put the plane down 6 inches off the center line,” Villaraigosa said.

A JetBlue representative declined to provide any information about Burke.

A recording by a camera for Los Angeles television station KCAL of the pilot’s conversation with a ground crew member reveals a calm man who even had time to joke about his predicament.

“Do you want to trade places with me?” Burke asked a mechanic on the ground.

Aboard the plane, passengers first learned of the problem 10 to 15 minutes into the flight when Burke announced that the plane had a problem with its landing gear, said Mastoon. The pilot said he was in contact with ground crews at Long Beach Airport, where JetBlue has its regional hub, and in New York to try to determine what the problem was.

At that point, some people on the plane started to cry, but most stayed calm, Mastoon said. The crew tried to calm people by telling jokes.

Prepared for worst

Before the plane landed, passengers were told to put their heads down toward their laps and brace for landing. Passengers were shouting, “Brace, brace, brace.”

But the landing turned out to be incredibly smooth, Mastoon said.

“Everyone applauded,” Mastoon said. “There were tears of joy. Couples were hugging. There were pats on the back.”

The drama also generated strong emotions on the ground. Some people curious about the plane’s fate parked along the frontage roads of the LAX runway, hoping to witness the landing.

At the Tom Bradley International Terminal, about 50 people watched the landing transfixed at the Gordon Biersch Brewing Co. restaurant, many of their own flights delayed by the problem. They erupted in applause when the plane landed safely.

Flight 292 lifted off from Bob Hope Airport in Burbank just after 3 p.m., bound for New York’s Kennedy International Airport. Within minutes, however, pilots noticed a problem. A landing gear indicator light remained on after takeoff.

Burke then flew south toward Long Beach Airport and contacted the tower for help.

“I heard the pilot asking for emergency equipment,” said Stew Sawyer, who lives by Long Beach Airport and was monitoring the control tower radio.

“The pilot asked for a flyby so the tower could check his landing gear. He flew by real low, and the tower said, `Your landing gear is 90 degrees the wrong way.’ ”

Burke was told to pull back up and to burn off all excess fuel before attempting an emergency landing. Some aircraft are capable of dumping fuel reserves over the ocean, but the Airbus A320 cannot do that. So, for the next few hours, the plane flew back and forth over the coast as the crew contacted JetBlue headquarters and formulated a plan.

At the same time, the severity of the situation began to grow on passengers, some of whom had settled into sleep after takeoff.

To shift as much weight as possible to the rear of the plane — helping to keep the nose of the plane high during the emergency landing — crew members asked passengers to move to different seats. Flight attendants instructed passengers on how to brace themselves by bending forward.

-From the San Jose Mercury News.

What a fantasy: to wake up one morning out of the blue to a phone call telling you that you’ve been awarded a $500,000 "Genuis Grant" just because you’re you.

The MacArthur Fellows Program does just that. The five-year, unrestricted fellowships are awarded to individuals across all ages and fields who show exceptional merit and promise of continued creative work.

Brooklyn writer Jonathan Lethem, author of "Motherless Brooklyn" and "Fortress of Solitude"  had that kind of morning just a few days ago. He is one of group of talented individuals all over the country who got the news this week.

I’ve heard that many fellows get the call and think it’s a joke, a friend pulling a prank or something. The foundation is so used to this they direct the recipient to a special web site, where they can check on the veracity of the call. The recipients then have to stay mum for a few days, telling only family and close friends, until the public announcement.

It must be hard to keep silent on the news that you’ve just won enough money to wipe away all your money worries so that you can continue your creative pursuit.

Lethem, who was born and raised in Brooklyn’s Boerum Hill neighborhood, is the only creative writer on this year’s list. My first reaction was: isn’t he already rich and famous? Surely there’ are other great writers who could use the monetary support of the foundation. I thought the awards were for genuises of the unsung variety.

But then I realized that an award like this might encourage Lethem to continue writing his brilliantly rendered narratives of Brooklyn characters. Sentence to sentence, he’s one of the best writing fiction today. And now he will be free to write what he wants, not what sells.

Besides, Lethem’s books, especially "Motherless Brooklyn" and "Fortress of Solitude" are  absolutely teriffic.

At a time when redevelopment and gentrification are hot button issues in New York City, Lethem’s work has special resonance. In "Fortress," he writes about growing up in the Boerum Hill section of Brooklyn during the 1970s, a time when the neighborhood was in the process of gentrification and full of race and class tensions. He vividly renders the physical and social worlds his characters inhabit, in the schoolyards, on the stoops of Brooklyn.

As a literary stylist, he is also much lauded for his ability to mix and match genres like comics, noir, and literary fiction "He weaves the conventions of noir mysteries, westerns, science fiction, and comic books into narratives that explore the relationship between high art and popular culture," writes his MacArthur Foundation bio.

This year’s list includes many scientists, a fisherman, a violinmaker, a vehicle emmissions specialist, a rare book preservationist, a painter, sculptor, and a conductor. It also includes the photographer, Fazal Sheikh, who uses "the personalizing power of portraiture to bring the faces of the world

Tonight, Brooklyn Reading Works is pleased to present novelist Sheila Kohler and poet Matthew Zapruder. Below is an excerpt from Kohler’s 1999 novel,  CRACKS. And below that, a poem called Park Slope from AMERICAN LINDEN, Zapruder’s debut collection. Tonight’s reading is at 8 p.m. at the Old Stone House in JJ Byrne Park on Fifth Avenue between 3rd and 4th Streets.

From Cracks by Sheila Kohler

Fiamma fainted in chapel this morning. The teachers do not know we make ourselves do it, though they suspect we do. They even had a doctor brought in to examine us, but he said there was nothing wrong with us. He said he had never seen such a healthy group of growing girls. We do look healthy. Our skins are gold with all the sunshine, and our hair and teeth look very white in contrast. Weekdays we wear short-sleeved white blouses and green tunics with their big R’s embroidered on our chests and our short green socks. Our tunics are worn four inches from the ground, measured kneeling, so you can see our knobby knees.

Perhaps Fiamma did not make herself faint. Perhaps she just fainted. The girls on the swimming team take turns fainting in chapel. We all know how to do it. Before communion while you are on your knees and have not had any breakfast, you breathe hard a few times, and then you hold your breath and close your eyes. You sweat and start to see diamonds in the dark. You feel yourself rush out of yourself, out and out. Then you come back to the squelch of Miss G’s crepe shoes, as she strides along the blue-carpeted aisle to rescue you. She makes you put your head down between your knees, and then she lifts you up and squeezes your arm. Miss G is our swimming teacher, and she is super-strong.

You lean against her as you go down the aisle and feel her breath on your cheek, and the soft swell of her boosie. Your heart flutters, and you see the light streaming in aslant through the narrow, stained-glass windows: red and blue and yellow like a rainbow. Miss G leads you out into the cool of the garden. You sit on the white-washed wall under the loquat tree in your white Sunday dress and undo the mother-of-pearl button at your neck. Miss G sits on the wall beside you and smokes a cigarette, holding it under her hand, so Miss Nieven, our headmistress, who has an M. A. from Oxford, will not notice if she comes upon her suddenly. When Miss G tells you to, you take off your panama hat and set it down on the wall. Then you lean your head against her shoulder. You get to sit there under the cool dark leaves of the loquat tree and feel the breeze lift the hem of your tunic very gently and watch Miss G blow smoke rings until she asks if you feel all right now. Her voice is deep and a little hoarse, like a man’s.r:

Park Slope by Matthew Zapruder

Where far into evening
speculation is
without further instruction
a staircase one kneels,
an always continuing upwards.
Where I inspect myself
for a black and white cat
who hides my sluggishness from inspectors.
His name is Joselito.
Where sometimes a word can fill the sails.
Where I grow smaller
like a view of a harbor.
Where hydrants are painted
hyacinths arguing
point with pleasure in every direction!
glitter slowly
through conversation with windows!
Where into the bitter dust of my mouth
I bring my face,
to stare back at tacit approval,
wearing huge red feverish hands
rubbing my beard
like a saint.
Where one logician
with half an eyeglass proposes
o perpetual attitudes of summer!
light grey sky
constitutes interference
and is proof of a wariness high above clouds.
Where his neighbor
pissing on the low wall contends
it was merely stolen
from thousands of silvery windows
by an amnesiac painter
a jump rope and naked laughter.
Where a silent chorus of blinking sirens
asks if so who forgot us
stretching it onto his scaffold?
Where down at the corner
of afternoon and 4th
children have been invented again.
Mischievous mothers
paroled from daytime
bend among the lounging bodegas,
filling their starry
implications of sundresses,
climbing a few rungs
of spanish without me.

Excerpted from CRACKS

A 12-year-old boy in my building is taking sitar lessons. Lately, he’s been practicing on the stoop. It’s quite a sight to see him out there sitting crossed leg like Ravi Shankar; his big, ornate  instrument that has  something like 40 strings. I asked him if he knows how to tune it and he said, "No." But his teacher can do that when necessary.  The first song he learned was "Paint it Black," the Rolling Stones song with that unmistakable sitar lick at the beginning.

Our budding sitarist can also pick out other tunes: Ode to Joy from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and Amazing Grace, for example. This evening, at dusk, he was playing duets with a girl from the building next door who plays the flute. It was an unexpected mingling of sounds: the sitar and the flute. But it really sounded quite nice.

When I went downstairs, I got a better look at their make-shift concert. He was sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk in front of our building with his instrument collecting money for Hurricane Katrina relief.

Two children next door were sitting on chairs in front of their buildings; a brother/sister guitar and flute duo.

It looked like both musical acts had raised quite a bit of money – there were lots of  dollar bills in their baskets. A street of music: in my 11 years on Third Street I’ve never seen a concert by children on the street.

I’ve known the sitar player since he was two. He used to play the violin. I think he even took clarinet lessons, too. A few years back he was really into top-40 radio to his parent’s chagrin. He’s traveled quite a bit with his parents and grandmother – to China and Europe, even Korea where he spent a summer with other kids from around the world. It’s amazing to watch kids grow up and see how they evolve. It really is.

An amazing thing.

This morning I heard the daughter of legendary sitarist Ravi Shankar, Anoushka Shankar, on National Public Radio. She’s just released a new album of world music and it sounds really interesting. It’s called Rise, and it was composed, produced, and arranged by Anoushka – with a group of virtuoso Eastern and Western musicians on a variety of both acoustic and electronic instruments.

I wanted to mention it to my neighbor, the budding sitarist, but I forgot. I’ll have to remember to do that one day.

September is the most exhausting month. The transition from the sluggish pace of summer  to the rah rah rah pace of fall is always draining. And this year it’s taking me longer than ever to get into the swing of things. Could be the humid, doggy weather we’ve been having. Or the intense allergy season that has me popping Claritin like candy and sneezing and itching all the time.

Worst of all, is the new morning schedule we’re on. Or should I say, my son is on. But of, course it means the whole family has to follow along, too. In order to arrive at his high school by 8:30 a.m. sharp, my son has to be out the door at 7:30. That means my husband’s cell phone alarm goes off at 6 a.m. He’s got it set to something called "Chinese Dance" and the sound of it really gets one of us out of bed fast to turn off the loud, annoying sound.

Once the alarm is off, we sometimes drift back to sleep, which can be very dangerous. On Monday, no one woke up until 7:30. Then we go into emergency mode -showerdressglassesbreakfastbookbagout – my husband has to drive my son to his school in Bay Ridge.

My husband usually goes into my son’s room, which is right next door to ours, to wake him up. "The weasels are coming," my husband says. That is code for: ‘I’m going to start tickling you.’  "The weasels are here. You better wake up," he says. This is a wake up game the two of them have been playing for years. Then the tickling begins and the yelping, the screaming. the "Stop it, dads. Stop it!" I’m not sure if he loves it or hates it. But I think some sort of male bonding is going on.

The tie is another key component of the new morning ritual. My husband has instructed my son not to tie his tie until he’s brushed his teeth or had breakfast – it’ll get dirty that way. This is how manly information is passed from generation to generation. Just before he leaves the apartment, my son stands in wait while my husband ties his tie.

Soon my son may learn how to tie it himself. But for now, he’s learning by watching his father engage in this ancient rite.

He’s still wearing that silver tie with the diagonal black stripes he wore the first day of school. Guess it’s his signature tie. Do you have to wash ties?  Better ask my husband about that.
Once he’s out the door, we take a short break until it’s time to wake my daughter up. Her commute is a bit shorter – PS 321 is right around the corner. But she hates to wake up…

September is the most exhausting month.

.

Teens for New Orleans, a benefit concert on September 24, at the Old Stone House from 6-9 p.m., is really gathering steam. All proceeds from the event are going to the Jazz Foundation of America, which has set up an emergency fund for New Orleans musicians.

Cool and Unusual and their parents met last night for a major production meeting. A large group, we sat at the dining room table and went over all the production details: equipment, lights, load-in, line-up, food, security, clean up. There was a lot to go over and we managed to do it in a fairly efficient manner. The band is taking this rather ambitious endeavor quite seriously.

The line-up was determined early on: The Foundation Quintet, a jazz group, will open the show. Then Jake Gilford, comedian and M.C. will entertain the crowd followed by Modrocket, a grrrrl band  made up of students from NEST+M high school in Manhattan. Cool and Unusual is third up followed by Capsacicin (three members of StunGun). The show will end with Calibre, a band from Chappaqua, New York.

We also discussed signs, safety, ticket takers, hand stampers, trucking of equipment, and food set up and delivery. As one of the mom’s said, "It would have been so much easier to write a check. But this is really a great experience for all of us." 

That particular mom has been dubbed "momager" by her son in appreciation for her help in organizing this event.

If you are an individual or a business and are interested in donating baked goods, beverages, or other food items to the event please e-mail me: louise_crawford@yahoo.com Your help would be much appreciated.

Yesterday, I noticed that the flyers about the missing plaque honoring David Fontana are the only flyers on Seventh Avenue that haven’t been removed by the ‘committee to rid Park Slope of flyers.’

I papered Seventh Avenue last Friday with flyers about the  Brooklyn Reading Works reading this Thursday September 22 — few of those flyers are still up. My son also put flyers up around the nabe about the Teens for New Orleans Benefit on Saturday, September 24. He says that most of those were taken down, too.

But the blue flyers offering a reward for the return of the plaque, no questions asked, were stilll up. I saw quite a few of them this afternoon. And while I’m annoyed that my flyers are gone, I am relieved that the flyers about Dave’s plaque are still there.

On Tuesday, there was a front page article in the New York Daily News about the stolen plaque — a story that appeared in OTBKB last Thursday and Friday. It was weird to see that familiar picture of Dave on the cover of the News; it’s the image on his wake card – a wallet-sized, laminated card Marian Fontana had made for those who attended Dave’s wake at The Montauk Club – something I truly treasure.

There it was on the front page of the News with the story of the plaque, which said simply said: "In memory of Firefighter Dave Fontana,
1-0/17/63 – 9/11/01. Beloved husband, father, neighbor, artist, hero."

According to the Daily News, sometime between 1:15 p.m. and 3:15 p.m. on Sept. 12, the plaque disappeared from its spot under the tree.

"I’d like to believe that people aren’t that cruel, and that it was
just a stupid prank," Marian Fontana told the News. "Why anyone would want to take something like that is beyond my comprehension."

I couldn’t agree more. The story has really gathered momentum in the last few days. I received a polite e-mail from a reporter for the City Section of the New York Times. It was a little confusing but nice just the same:

"I’m e-mailing mostly to reverse (and apologize for the disturbance of) an earlier call. I’d been going to do something for the Times’s City Section about the missing plaque–but this was before my editors and I realized there was already some press coverage.  (The City Section, being a weekly, tends to steer clear of things covered in the dailies, esp. early in the week).  So my earlier messages, left at the two numbers listed on the flyer, are unfortunately moot.  (Though I would still like to have done a story.)  I wanted to apologize, and to say I really hope you get hold of the plaque.

 
The News reported that Marian visited the plaque on the fourth anniversary of 9/11 just over a week ago. She went to a ceremony with the families at Squad 1 and then went to the meadow in Prospect Park where Dave proposed to her. Afterwards, she went over to Fourth Street to check on their old apartment and see the tree with the plaque.

"Just put it back where it belongs," Marian said.

It really is the strangest thing that someone would steal a memorial plaque. I just can’t figure out why anyone would do it. But I agree with Marian: put it back where it belongs.

I hope those blue flyers with their offer of a reward for the safe return of the plaque stay where they are. Enough has been ripped off lately – let those flyers fly. And maybe they’ll help to restore the plaque to its rightful place. For Dave and Marian. For her neighbors on Fourth Street. For people of Park Slope.

Put it back where it belongs!

From Curbed.com

Behold! The new and improved Coney Island of the future, maybe. As we’ve said
before, shopping mall developer Thor Equities has been buying up land
along the Boardwalk like it’s going out of style (which it did, about
30 years ago), to much speculation as to what they’re up to and how it
will fit in with the city’s own redevelopment plans. New York magazine went to the source

At my 14-year-old son’s last check-up, his pediatrician, Dr. Edna Pytlak, delievered one of the best anti-drug and alcohol speeches I’ve ever heard.

It was the casualness of her delivery that was so disarming and my son really listened. "Be careful of teen parties in Park Slope," she said moments after asking him to jump up and down 30 times. "Kids are consuming toxic levels of alcohol," she added as she went about his 14-year check-up. "Some of my patients wound up in the hospital last year after drinking much too much. They nearly died."

She talked about the tragic drug overdose of a boy who’d just graduated from Brooklyn Friends in June and the kids who got alcohol poisoning in the PS 321 playground last Spring. She talked, my son listened. She has an easy authority and my son’s well-earned trust.

Dr. Pytlak appears, on first meeting, to be a cross between Mary Poppins and Miss Frizzle from the Magic School Bus books. But she is really so much more: a whip-smart physician, a great diagnostician, a common sense healer, and an always reliable partner in the event of an emergency.

"With all this IM-ing, kids who weren’t invited to the parties are showing up," Dr. Pytlak, the mother of two grown children, continued knowingly. "At one party, some kids came with heroin (that’s a felony, you know). Heroin is very, very dangerous. It’s very easy to overdose."

I think it was her matter-of-fact, non-judgemental manner that really got the message across. You could say that she used scare tactics but it wasn’t an outdated "Reefer Madness" message which is so easy for kids to discount. She speaks from experience using specific examples from the community we live in. She’s got the facts and she’s not afraid to use them. It doesn’t sound like platitudes or "Just Say No." She seems to understand where the kids are coming from. Like she’s one of the kids herself. But with authority and experience.

With her pretty floral aprons and her sing-songy voice, Dr. Pytlak is beloved by legions of Brooklyn children and parents. When we joined her practice in 1991, she was already a legend in these parts and it was close to impossible to get in. But Dr. Pytlak had just partnered with another great doctor (Brianne O’Connor) and she had room for families with newborns. I guess we got lucky and she has seen us through a host of medical emergencies.

Dr. Pytlak works hard to establish an easy relationship with her young patients and check- ups are fun; the kids actually look forward to them. On the walls of her office are the framed collages she makes of all the holiday photos she receives each year. The kids trust her and really listen to what she has to say. "Your mother and I, we might have had beer, maybe pot at parties," she said while looking in my son’s ears. "But we weren’t drinking alcohol the way these kids are. It’s really quite different."

Dr. Pytlak is a great partner to have during this scary teenage phase.  Somehow she makes it all feel so much less frightening. With her help, maybe we’ll all make it through.