This is from  a Brooklyn Life  Learn how you can get a Brookyn mix tape from DJ Duckcomb.

You know how it goes. You wake up underneath your Georgia O’Keeffe Brooklyn Bridge poster and stumble into the kitchen to pour some Gorilla brand coffee into your Brooklyn parrots coffee mug. A quick shower and you’re on the way out the door, but not before grabbing your Brooklyn sweatshirt
in case it’s chilly. Still, the day is missing something, and you can’t
figure out what. And THEN it hits you, what you need is an iTunes mix
entirely devoted to the great place that is Brooklyn, because you can
never have enough Brooklyn…

READ MORE AT A BROOKLYN LIFE

Callalillie, one of my favorite bloggers, was quoted out of context in a Village Voice column (see above). Here is her post in response, as well as some comments she made to commenters on her comments page:

According to the Village Voice,
I have finally reached the status of ambivalent, embarrassed
post-yuppie. I always thought that I veered more closely toward
neurotic, not embarrassed, and I’m not quite sure what a post-yuppie is
(though I don’t doubt that I probably am one), but with that over with,
I can now die in peace.

Context is always key, especially when dealing with metaphor.

More comments from Callalillie:

I am still trying to find some of the context. I can’t remember when I
said that I would gladly trek to Manhattan for my groceries in order to
save a warehouse. The warehouse where Fairway is wasn’t in danger of
being knocked down. I’ll have to go through my archives. I would
definitely gladly trek to Manhattan to buy crappy furniture in order to
save the shipyard, though.

More comments from Callalillie:

As a blogger, I consciously put myself and my words out there and
part of that is the risk of being taken out of context. If she had
interviewed me, it would be a different story.

So the whole Shopsin’s story was an urban myth. A rumor. A lie. Gawker has the real story – or so they say. A freelance writer named
Kayleen Schaefer from the City section tipped me off on Tuesday  because she wanted to interview me.

I’m a freelance writer with the City section of The New York Times and I’m working on a story about Shopsin’s. It’s not moving to Brooklyn—it was just a rumor—so I’m writing about the press coverage and panicked customers that resulted from the rumor. I saw that you wrote about it on your blog and wanted to talk to you about it. I imagine you must be disappointed it’s not moving to Brooklyn. Please give me a call or email me back by Wednesday. Thanks very much.  Kayleen Schaefer

First the Daily News said that Kenny was considering a move. Now Gawker says it was never true. Ever. This from Gawker:

A few weeks ago, as you might recall, New York
mag announced that Shopsin’s, the West Village institution with an
interminable menu and a cantankerously charming — charmingly
cantankerous? — owner, was up and moving to Brooklyn, looking for
cheaper rent. Then the Daily News followed up on the story, downgrading the move from fait accompli
to something Kenny Shopsin was considering. But now we’re hearing it’s
not true at all. A source who lives across the street from the
restaurant emails:

Shopsin’s is NOT moving to Brooklyn. I was in there last
weekend and the Zack Shopsin (owner’s son) assured me they are not
moving. What happened was: a journalist was sitting in there and
overheard Kenny Shopsin say something to someone about how Brooklyn was
cheaper. And the journalist then asked Kenny if they were moving, and
Kenny told him to write whatever he wanted to write. (They hate
publicity).

It’s sounds crazy, yes; but then so is Shopsin’s. Plus, we ran this
version past one of the city’s foremost experts on the establishment,
who insisted on complete anonymity but said, “My impression is that
your e-mail informant has it right.” That’s good enough for us.

Well, no matter what Kayleen, Gawker, and the Daily News say, I think Shopsin’s is moving to Brooklyn. And I still stand by my story that the Gap is moving into that Salvation Army space on Fifth Avenue…

A marvelous recollection from Richard Grayson of the first earth day in Prospect Park. Grayson, the author of, "TO THINK THAT HE KISSED HIM ON LORMER STREET," copied a page out of his diary from the very first Earth Day in Union Square in 1970. I remember that day – vividly and vaguely if that’s possible – I was in Union Square with I don’t remember who. That was a long, long time ago. Another time.

I don’t know what I will be doing for Earth Day in Prospect Park this
year, Louise, but this post made me get out my 1970 diary. If this is
not too cheesy, here’s an excerpt from the entry for Wednesday, April
22, 1970, the first Earth Day:

A warm & sunny Earth Day. Mark called & asked me to come
with him to the Union Square rally. Mayor Lindsay closed off 5th Ave.
& 14th St. to traffic & the crowds were enormous. But I didn’t
feel like getting into so big a crowd & went by myself to the
smaller Prospect Park rally.

I parked the car on 8th Ave. & walked to the meadow. A singing
group called the Smubbs, dressed as pigs, sang about pollution. They
also sang a song to the tune of "Give My Regards to Broadway" that was
"Give my regards to Brooklyn / Remember me to Bartel Pritchard Square."

Then Gov. Rockefeller made a speech saying, "If you’re not part of
the solution, you’re part of the pollution." He had a lot of trouble
with hecklers…

Walking back to the car when the rally ended ended, I was stunned to
see Rocky waving to me from a bicycle! Too bad I’d used up all my film.

Dad came home and said he was booed by the crowd as he drove through
the streets near Union Square and people banged on his Cadillac. The TV
reports said the crowds were disappointing. It remains to be seen what
will be done about our environment.
–Richard Grayson

PHOTO FROM 1970 EARTH DAY

Continue reading APRIL 22, 1970: THE FIRST EARTH DAY →

An old friend sent word of the birth of his daughter on April 6th.

Congratulations to father, mother, and child. Her name is Safira. Check out the  downy hair on her forehead.

Found this on Callalillie’s blog – it’s from the fairway website.

I guess Fairway really is coming to Red Hook.

I came across this by accident on ye olde Internet. It’s on Sunday night and fits in with my 30th high school reunion, 1970’s mood:

The Storefront has announced the song list for its second production of 2006. Tales of Joni: The Storefront Sings Mitchell will be presented on Sundays, April 23rd and 30th at 7pm at The Duplex Cabaret Theatre (61 Christopher St., in the heart of New York’s West Village).

A stellar array of theatre and cabaret performers will present Mitchell’s work over the course of the two evenings.

The song list is as follows:

Ensemble – "The Circle Game"
Michael Holland – "A Strange Boy"
Sarajean Devenport – "All I Want"
Jeff Blumenkrantz – "My Old Man"
Suzanne Fiore – "A Case of You"
Baby Jane Dexter – "Be Cool"
Tim DiPasqua – "Woodstock"
Kate Pazakis – "River"
Rachel Ulanet – "California"
Nick Cearley – "Big Yellow Taxi"
Gabrielle Stravelli – "Woman of Heart & Mind"
Brandon Cutrell – "The Priest Song"
Liz McCartney – "Night Ride Home"
Jarrod Cafaro – "He Played Real Good For Free"
Ensemble – "Both Sides Now"

There is a $12 cover charge ($10 for members of MAC and Cabaret Hotline Online), as well as a two-drink minimum.

My first cousin’s oldest daughter is getting married on June 4th and we’re already in a tizzy about what to wear.

Yesterday was the Oh So Feisty One’s turn to tiz over her outfit. OSFO, Diaper Diva and I subwayed into Manhattan, 34th Street to be exact, to look for a dress at Macy’s.

We three determined shoppers made our way to the 8th floor, quickly averting the make-up department where swarms of women converged on us like bees with small bottles of perfume.

Once on the children’s floor, it was clear that 9-year-old OSFO had an extremely clear vision of what she wanted. She scanned all the girl’s party dresses in an instant.   "Most of these are too princessy," she said as she quickly walked dismissively from one display area to the next.

And she was right. Too frilly, too frothy, too fro frou, most of the dresses were more suited for  Easter service at church than a sophisticated Baltimore wedding. As far as OSFO was concerned, they were way, way off base

But then we found the tween prom dress department (that seems the best way to describe it). "How about this one?" I said holding a yellow and green patterned dress. "Too fruity," she said. And this one? "Not right for a wedding." she said with an assurance way past her years.

"What about these?" I asked holding up two or three perfectly acceptable choices. "I like them. But not for this wedding."

This wedding? I wondered.

Then she made a bee-line for a dress—a cross between a ballet tutu and something a tad more burlesque. Tight black elasticized top, light pink, tulle skirt with an uneven hem. Diaper Diva looked a little skeptical.

I knew it would be either really great or completely tacky.

OSFO and I crowded into the small dressing room with a thicket of hangered dresses. Diaper Diva was dispatched to the shoe department to search for appropriate shoes. The sexy tutu was the first thing OSFO wanted to try. Tight on the top, frilly on the bottom, it actually looked pretty terrific. We pinned up her hair and she was a vision to behold. "I think this might be it." I thought to myself. But OSFO looked at herself quizzically.

"What does slutty mean?" she asked staring at herself in the 3-way mirror. Ah. Ah. Ah. I stalled not sure what to say. "Why do you ask?" I stammered.

"Because I heard Diaper Diva whisper that the dress might be slutty," she said.

"Oh. She meant…sexy," I said nervously, OSFO continue to stare at herself in the mirror and then  pulled the dress over he head and reached for another hanger. And so it went, dress after dress.

"Nope," she said pulling off a pink dress that looked utterly beautiful. Finally, a white chiffon dress with faded flowers met her approval. "I’ll need the right shoes," she said.

But still she persevered. A half hour later, the room was awash in inside-out dresses as a  half-naked girl surveyed the mess.

"I like these two," she said picking two out of the pile. "One for the wedding. One for the dinner party the night before." she said decisively. Where she got the idea that there might be a dinner party the night before I don’t know. She’s probably right.

Truth is,  she selected the two most perfect dresses – and the sexy tutu wasn’t even in the running.

No big fights, no fits, no yelling matches. It wasn’t what I expected at all. A trip to a department store was usually pretty traumatic for me as a child. My mother always had strong ideas about what I could and could not wear. And trips to the dressing room were always a self-referendum on what I mostly didn’t like about the way I looked.

I’ve always given OSFO more choice than I ever had. Consequently, she’s much more comfortable with her own sense of style and the way that she looks.

She tried on every pink shoe in the shoe department and settled on a pair of jeweled pink slides. My girl. She does know what she likes and she’s damn good at finding it.

THIS IS FROM MY FRIEND LITTLE LIGHT.

I think her Yahoo Avatar is soooo cute. I can attest to the fact that in real life Little Light is  very tall (at least 5’10), has an afro, and is quite stunning.

I
love that little thing, the little cartoon me. It’s like playing with
paper dolls again, switching around the outfits, backgrounds and facial
expressions depending on my mood or the weather or both (it’s a normal
day for LittleLight when she’s standing in the rain wearing black – but
she’s perfectly comfortable there). I look forward to every week when
Yahoo offers a new wardrobe selection.

Yesterday,
LargerThanLifeVIP’s assistant in New Jersey called me because she
wanted to know what I looked like. She said she thought I was "little."
I told her that I’m 5’10 and she said I didn’t sound like I was 5’10.
She wanted me to email her a picture, so I emailed my little avatar.
"This is me," the message said.

After telling me that I was full
of sh-t, she said she didn’t believe me – especially the afro part
(because having an afro is unheard of), so I told her to ask LTLVIP if
it was an accurate likeness. He said it was.

Last night’s BROOKLYN READING WORKS was pretty incredible.

Rachel Vigier’s stark and wise poems grapple with the ghosts of Lower Manhattan after 9/11. With a hyper awareness of the body – the way in which we are all just flesh and bones, Rachel reveals how vulnerable we are to destruction and sudden disappearance. No experience – her daughter’s bath, a trip to Florence, an emergency room hours after Vigier’s escape from a downtown building on  9/11 – is without a pensive awareness of the body – the bones of who we are both mentally and physically. Ghosts are everywhere in Vigier’s poetry as is the idea that history touches all that we do and every place that we are.

Kim Larsen’s gripping essay, "When the Middle is the End," deals unflinchingly with the death of her friend,  Laurel, three years ago. Everyone looked stunned when it was over and it left the crowd feeling pretty raw. In her masterful prose, Kim evoked her friendship with Laurel with humor, honesty, surprising language and sharp details about her friends pain and suffering, and her own inability to accept the inevitable even within days of the end.

The night Laurel cooked us dinner, a week or two earlier, after she
ladled the soup and cut the bread and tossed the salad and poured the
wine, then toted her nutrition contraption over to the table and
hoisted up her blouse and plugged in the hose to the slot in her
midriff; after she shrugged wryly and jotted on her pad: Bon appetit!
After I excused myself as casually as I could and fled to the bathroom
to reason with my reflection in the mirror that if Laurel could do this
then so could I; after I checked on Abe and Anya, who had eaten their
dinner earlier and were now curled up together on Josh and Laurel’s
bed, mesmerized, watching “The Parent Trap;” after I returned to the
table and tasted my soup, which was delicious, and seemed to blaze a
trail for more soup to follow; after Jim and Laurel discussed some of
the things he’d investigated for her about text-to-voice technology;
after Laurel mused on her notepad about the possibility of taking the
kids back to Tuscany and renting another villa, as we’d done when they
were three; after we cleared the plates and lapsed into silence and
said goodnight because we were tired; after we got home and I flung
myself into bed, I wondered aloud to Jim:

   “What will become of her?”

   In a matter of days, we knew

An excerpt from this essay will appear in May’s Parenting Magazine. It will also be included in an anthology about middle age that is coming out from the University of Arizona Press next year.

Rachel Vigier’s book, The Book of Skeletons, is forthcoming from Pedlar Press in Canada.

PHOTO BY GLUOMA

8 p.m. tonight at the Old Stone House,  Brooklyn Reading Works presents two writers,  Essayist Kim Larsen and Poet Rachel Vigier, who explore the suddeness of loss, the fragility of life. The Old Stone House is located on Fifth Avenue between 3rd and 4th Streets in Park Slope. Free. Refreshments. 

From Kim Larsen’s "When the Middle is the End:"

Laurel put a meal together for my family and me a couple of weeks before she died. The main dish was a Tuscan soup — beans, pasta, tomatoes. Delicious. There was bread and a salad and wine. I saw a note she’d jotted to her husband, the word “wine” followed by an exclamation point. The apartment was littered with such notes, not all of them concise. Pen to paper was her mode of communication now that she no longer possessed a tongue — it had been surgically removed six weeks earlier in what would shortly prove a vain attempt to root out the cancer encamped at the base of the organ. Laurel’s handwriting was nearly illegible, a forward-slanting scrawl, and we all marveled to see how expertly her seven-year-old daughter Anya deciphered it. More remarkably, sometimes Anya could blithely interpret her mother’s attempts at speech. To anyone else Laurel’s words were unintelligible — guttural starts followed by featureless nasal incantation. The will to speak still drove her, but it was useless. Anya’s uncanny ability to understand her mother even occasionally represented some kind of umbilical magic. That they both took it in stride increased the dazzle of the little girl’s feat.

A poem by Rachel Vigier:

Remnants

It’s what I have left to offer you —
    the ripple of a flax field in flower
the flow of a river slipping to sea
    the weight of a whale flipping over.
Say it’s images from a life left over
    or the lust of memory
wanting its place of origin
    before the blue fades, before
the heft and swiftness disappear

Finally got to the Museum of Modern Art to see Edvard Munch: The Modern Life of the Soul. A survey of the Norwegian painter’s career, the exhibiton reveals that Munch was clearly a very soulful guy who lived a life of passion and pain.

"We do not want to paint pretty pictures to be hung on drawing-room walls," Munch said. "We want to create, or at least lay the foundations of, an art that gives something to humanity. An art that arrests and engages. An art created of one’s innermost heart."

Innermost heart. You got me at hello. I love a guy who can really express what’s going on in his head. And, oy, Munch lays it all out – in paintings that reek of mania and despair. With swirling landscapes and dark scenes in illicit rooms, the paintings convey a life lived in a heightened state of emotional drama and turmoil: love affairs, drinking, illness, angst.

Conspicuously missing from the show is Munch’s most iconic work. "The Scream" has been reproduced and parodied to death. It’s absence prevented the show from feeling like a greatest hits parade — one of those super shows where people crowd around the most famous work and ignore everything else.

Perhaps the most moving works were the last self-portraits on display. Munch painted himself at every stage of his life. The final one, "Standing Between the Clock and the Bed," shows the artist looking bedraggled and frail. On the precipice of death, he seems ready to let go of a life spent passionately painting the world from within.

Kind of disconcerting to learn that the Roosevelt Island tram’s emergency backup system has been out of service for months. Nice going, NYC. This from the New York Times:

A day after the Roosevelt Island Tramway stalled in midair, trapping dozens of passengers for as long as 11 hours, officials said that a backup power system designed to restart the two tram cars in seconds had been out of service for months

That disclosure came as the tram remained shut down yesterday, after an improvised rescue effort that freed the last of 20 passengers stranded in a tram car 200 feet above the East Side of Manhattan. By then, after 4 a.m., 48 other passengers trapped in a tram car above the East River had already been evacuated, bringing to an end to a late-afternoon tram ride that had turned into a nightlong ordeal.

As relieved passengers recounted how they had passed the hours — chatting, telling jokes and calling family and friends on cellphones — officials began investigating why the incident had forced the police and emergency teams to devise an evacuation plan on the spot.

And as the state-appointed official who oversees Roosevelt Island defended the tram as "an intimate part of the Roosevelt Island mystique," Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg gave it a less-than-enthusiastic endorsement: The subway, he said, was a faster way to travel to and from the island. It was not clear yesterday how long the tram would be closed.

The Swiss-made tramway, which went into operation in 1976, stalled when a power surge knocked out three giant fuses that control the flow of power to the tram cars. It was not clear why the fuses could not simply be replaced and the tramway restarted. But the tramway also has a diesel-powered system that can run the gears and cables and make the cars go.

Herbert E. Berman, the president of the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation, the state agency that manages the 147-acre island, said the backup system was removed for repairs last fall on orders of the State Department of Labor, the agency responsible for inspecting the tramway. He also said the system was not required, but inspectors said that if it was going to be used, it had to work.

But he said the surge that knocked out the main system could have disabled the secondary power system as well. He said it was expected to be returned and re-installed in a matter of weeks.

So rescuers assembled a cagelike rescue basket that had been stored on Roosevelt Island, but never used in a real emergency, to carry the passengers to safety from the tram car over the East River. But the rescuers improvised a way to carry the people in the second tram car to safety after realizing that otherwise they would have to wait until the first evacuation had been completed.

Mr. Berman said that in the tramway’s 30 years, emergency procedures had never been needed before. "That’s a pretty good record," he said. The rescue, he added, "was a tedious process, but it was a safe process."

The mayor said the rescue effort had "worked perfectly."

"It was a classic operation of this city," he told reporters at Fire Department headquarters in Brooklyn, "and it showed that all of these people worked together. We did what we had to do; we got everybody down safely."

Mr. Bloomberg said it took so long to evacuate the two tram cars "because our emergency response people did exactly what they should do."

"They didn’t rush to do anything just to satisfy a beat-the-clock kind of exercise," he said.

And, as other officials noted yesterday, when the tram stopped about 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Fire Department workers who arrived at the scene believed that the power would go back on quickly. For that reason, department personnel who had been trained to rescue passengers from the tram were sent to other duties.

In fact, the power did come on again, at about 8:15. The two tram cars moved about 75 feet, only to grind to a halt again.

That was when the Police Department’s emergency service unit took over. Officers from that unit had been working on a rescue plan just in case, and at 8:30 they decided to go ahead with it.

They started with the tram car on the Roosevelt Island side because it was carrying more passengers. After the basket was assembled at the end of the tramway, about a dozen officers and firefighters — who by then had returned to the scene — climbed in to test how much it could hold.

By then it was almost 11 p.m., and the passengers had been stuck for six hours. Four officers, all trained as emergency medical technicians, rode out in the cage…

I’d been smelling gas off and on in the kitchen for a few days. But when my friend walked into the apartment yesterday morning saying, "Oooh you better call Keyspan." I decided I better call Keyspan.

Within an hour, the Keyspan emergency technician showed up and went to work. She moved our stove – revealing years of behind the stove grease and lost utensils. "You’ve got mouse droppings back there," she said handing me a flashlight. "You wanna look?"

The Gas Lady discovered a gas leak in the oven. "Probably caused by one of those mice biting a hole in one of these pipes." she said. "It’s an appliance problem."

I called Ed, the local appliance repair guy. "I’m in a meeting, I can’t talk," he said. "Will call you back." The Keyspan woman said she’d have to turn off the gas. "I’ll come back after the stove is fixed."

When she wasn’t kneeling on the floor investigating behind the stove or sticking her head in the oven, the Gas Lady seemed intrigued by our things. She liked our globes – we have more than 50 – which are displayed prominently throughout the apartment.

"You make that?" she said pointing at my friend’s huge painting of an owl. "No, my friend did that?" I didn’t explain that it’s a huge portrait of Hedwig, Harry Potter’s owl, which we used for "Pin the Tail on Hedwig" at  Teen Spirit’s Harry Potter birthday party when he was  turning 8.

The Gas Lady commented on a huge photo portrait of a man and child in the foyer. "That’s big. Is it your husband?" I explained that it was not. "We don’t even know them. My husband took that picture."

Since she was interested in all the large pictures, I showed her the photograph in the living room – a 3 x 3 foot portrait of a street person on Ludlow Street. "That’s nice," she said as she lifted up her equipment and headed downstairs.

Ed, the appliance guy, called at 8 p.m. "Did you call earlier about a stove?" He said he’d try to get here tomorrow or the next day. "I’ll see what I can do."

Stove Photo by Phrenophile

This should help. Subsidies to entice math, science and special education teachers to the New York City public schools.  Biggest housing incentive ever offered by BOE.

New York City will offer housing subsidies of up to $14,600 to entice new math,
science and special education teachers to work in the city’s most
challenging schools, in one of the most aggressive housing incentive
programs in the nation to address a chronic shortage of qualified
educators in these specialties.

To be eligible for the
subsidies, teachers must have at least two years’ experience. City
officials said they hoped the program, to be announced by the city
Education Department today, would immediately lead to the hiring of an
extra 100 teachers for September and, with other recruitment efforts,
ultimately help fill as many as 600 positions now held by teachers
without the proper credentials.

Under terms of the program, negotiated with the city teachers’ union, the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg
will pay as much as $5,000 up front to the recruits for housing
expenses, including the cost of moving to the New York area, a down
payment on buying a home, or broker fees and security deposits for
renters.

The program will also pay a $400 monthly housing stipend
for two years. Teachers can live wherever they want within the
metropolitan region but must commit to work for three years in one of
New York City’s toughest middle schools or high schools. The city’s
effort comes as the nation faces a chronic shortage of math, science
and special education teachers that has sparked heavy competition to
court such educators.

FOR MORE THAN FIVE HOURS, 12 HOURS, TWO ROOSEVELT ISLAND TRAMS HAVE BEEN WERE STUCK OVER THE EAST RIVER — BETWEEN ROOSEVELT ISLAND AND MANHATTAN. MORE THAN 80  69 PEOPLE ON BOARD. A POWER OUTAGE WAS THE CAUSE. PASSENGERS WERE RESCUED IN MANUALLY OPERATED RESCUE "BASKETS" 10 AT A TIME. PHOTO BY EYEONASTORIA. THIS FROM NY1:

Emergency responders worked overnight to rescue dozens of passengers from the Roosevelt Island tram after the cable car system lost power Tuesday evening, stranding 69 people.

By 3 a.m. Wednesday, rescuers had removed all 47 people from the Roosevelt Island-bound car, by transferring the passengers to a self-powered rescue gondola high above the East River.

Rescuers removed a window from the tram and used a harness to swing passengers across a two-foot gap to the rescue gondola. It took four separate trips to complete the harrowing process, with the rescue gondola carrying about a dozen passengers each time.

Once back on land, the passengers were examined by EMTs and greeted by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who stood by to monitor the rescue operation.

With all of the first car’s passengers accounted for, rescuers were preparing to remove the remaining 22 passengers from the second cable car, which sat suspended above Manhattan’s First Avenue.

No injuries had been reported at that time.

The two tram cars became stuck shortly before 5:30 p.m. when the tram’s main and backup power generators both failed.

TRAM FACTS:

City officials say they’re looking into what caused the power failure.Here’s a quick look at the two Roosevelt Island cable cars stuck over the East River when they lost power Tuesday:

– Built in 1976 to shuttle Roosevelt Island residents to and from midtown Manhattan.

– Each of two cars holds about 125 people.

– Each tramcar travels about 3,100 feet at an average speed of 16 mph in 4 1/2 minutes, rising to a maximum height of 250 feet.

DOPE ON THE SLOPE had these photos and some reflections on the Underberg building.

One Hanson Place posted a depressing photo last night of the spot formally occupied by the Underberg Building.

The Underberg was vacant, and few would have argued that it was a
stunning architectural achievement worthy of preservation. However, it
was an "old timer," and as such, it had a certain appeal. I was
especially fond of its peculiar shades of green and light blue, and the
contrast between the meticulously painted signage and the equally
meticulous graffiti.  It also imparted a sense of graceful senescence –
what the Japanese might term "wabi sabi." This building wasn’t so much falling down as it was fading away, that is, it was until Ratner demolished it.

Why mourn the destruction of an abandoned building?

No reason, really, except that it was the most
aesthetically pleasing edifice in the immediate vicinity.  The Atlantic
Center and Atlantic Terminal are two of the ugliest buildings I have
ever seen anywhere. Now that the Underberg is gone, I guess the U-Haul
lot is the reigning beauty.

So here’s a last look for all you Underberg-o-philes out there. For larger view, click on the thumbnail below.

Today. (original photo here)

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the San Francisco earthquake.  A major gathering at Lotta’s fountain commemorates the occasion. How many survivors are left? If they were newborns, they are now 100 year’s old.

City’s first surveillance cameras set up in Bushwick.

The cameras along Knickerbocker Avenue are the first to be rolled
out onto city streets. It’s all part of a new high-tech police
surveillance program that will place 500 cameras throughout the city.

Each is equipped with two zoom lenses, and records street activity
around the clock. Police can check the tapes any time they need to.

ISSUE PROJECT ROOM has been in Brooklyn just under a year but what a year it’s been. On the banks of the Gowanus Canal, they now inhabit that cool silo on Carroll Street between Nevins and Hoyt. Here is a year in review from IPR and a request for membership.

Dear Friends and Supporters of ISSUE Project Room,

We are pleased to report on the inspiring body of work IPR presented
since moving to Brooklyn in June 2005. Our exciting new space has been
home to a number of extraordinary performances and events unique to the
New York cultural arena. We are one of the few surviving experimental
performance spaces that provides music, sound, the spoken word, dance,
performance and artisanal cuisine for a nominal ticket cost in an
unusual setting.

Here are a few highlights of the year:

Installation:

* IPR introduces our revolutionary 16-channel hemispherical speaker
system with Spatio0silo, a 42-hour-long live collaborative sound
installation by Julian Ottavi & Dion Workman. This speaker system,
created by composer/audio engineer Stephan Moore, also serves as the
focal point for our burgeoning new Composer Series.

Events:
In September prolific indie icon and enigmatic recluse Jandek
performs his second-ever NY bill with two sold-out sets.

* In February actor/director Steve Buscemi co-hosts An Evening of
Beats with poets Anne Waldman & Bob Holman.

* Also in February, special international artist performances include
The Kusun Ensemble from Ghana, West Africa & the Indonesian Consulate
Gamelan and Dance Ensemble

* January through March, IPR hosts percussion classes with Billy Martin
in creative and rhythmic interplay and collective improvisation

* March, themed Solo / Duo Month, features performances by artists
including Marc Ribot & Henry Grimes, Shelley Burgon & Loren Connors,
Jim Thirlwell, William Basinski, Dorit Chrysler & DJ Olive, Ned
Rothenberg & Marty Ehrlich, and Leroy Jenkins.

* Spring 2006 initiates IPR artist residency with Ne(x)tworks

* In April, IPR & Domino Records present the debut performance of
legendary jazz drummer Steve Reid & Kieran Hebdena Exchange Sessions
Volume 1.

* IPR launches the Theremin Society, now being filmed on site for a
Dominic DeJoseph documentary film

Awards:
* ISSUE Project Room was named Best Avant-Garde Music Venue in the
Best of NYC Villlage Voice awards for 2005

* IPR is the proud recipient of recent grants from The NYC Department
of Cultural Affairs, Foundation of Contemporary Arts, mediaThe
Foundation, and The Edwards Foundation Arts Fund

Together, we have made ISSUE Project Room one of the most distinctive
institutions for experimental performance in New York City. In order to
continue to create and expand our programming we need your presence and your support.
IPR consciously keeps ticket prices low, so that our events are accessible to
all. We rely on generous financial support from members and need their
collective will and resources to fulfill our mission.

Please make your tax-deductible donation to Issue Project Room here:

mail:
Fiscal Sponsorship
New York Foundation for the Arts
ATTN: ISSUE Project Room
155 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10013-1507

internet:
membership options:
http://issueprojectroom.org/support.html
make a donation:
http://www.nyfa.org/level3.asp?id=226&fid=1&sid=44

Looking forward to seeing you soon on the waterfront,

Suzanne Fiol, Jenni Knight & all the Staff of ISSUE Project Room