In this week’s New York Magazine, Park Slope new mom Amy Sohn asks,  "Will Fairway Kill the Park Slope Food Coop?"

Kudos to Sohn, who used to have a sex column in New York but post-bebe seems to be switching to other topics, for coming up with a new way of describing Park Slopers that doesn’t use the words crunchy, lefty, or Birkenstock-clad. Instead her lede goes: "The scruffy, Michael Pollan–reading culture of Park Slope is probably
best embodied by the Food Co-op, the 13,000-member DIY grocery store
founded in 1973."

Okay. So, we’re scruffy. And she coulda said Elizabeth Royte-reading culture…to be more specific.  Still, later in the piece, jazz musician and former Coop member, Roy Nathanson refers to himself as an "old lefty." 

Yeesh.  You just can’t lose those cliches. Hippie era. Old lefty.

Nonetheless, her story was informative and on the mark. Are Food Coopers defecting to Fairway? Park Slopers want to know.

Sohn reports that the Food Coop dropped 300 members last month. Could Fairway be partly responsible for this?

Yes and no. The first-wave of Fairway defectors will be those who have a love/hate relationship with the Coop; those who are fed up with the workshifts; and those who have cars.

But they must have cars.

However, I don’t think people are leaving for Diet Coke and Twinkies as the article suggests. I do, however, agree that parking spaces will be a big pull for car people. The fact that Fairway has parking is very appealing and gives Brooklynites that fleeting feeling that they’re living in suburbia. 

A couple I know, recent Coop defectors, are now happily shopping at Fairway. They did say that they’re spending a lot more money there. They told me that the  prices are higher and you buy more because everything looks so good.

Spouses who have to work their spouse’s shifts, because of the rule that all adult members of the household must work,  will also be early defectors. Sadly, this is mostly women who work for their husbands. Those who join without mentioning their husbands are called Coop Widows. Over six hours a month is a big commitment.

Also, those who can only shop during Coop rush hour will probably choose Fairway to avoid long checkout lines. Again, if they have cars.

That said, many Coop members, myself included, enjoy the sense of community, the wackiness, and the great food at the Coop. It’s a shopping environment without junk food where there are warning signs about genetically altered foods.

Shopping there makes me feel like I am being more conscious about sustainable agriculture and healthy eating. I am constantly learning about new products and new things to eat.  I feel adventurous and willing to give new things a try. Like Vegan Hunan dumplings.

I also admire the way the Coop works; the system is quite an amazing thing. The fact that it works at all day in and day out is itself a miracle.

There’s lots to complain about. But Dag, Key Food and all the others have big, big problems, too. I guess I’m just really hooked on the Coop: the idea of it, the fact that it isn’t just Park Slopers but people from all over Brooklyn. As one member said the other day, "If people are willing to work here, it must be pretty good."

Finally, the PSFC has gotten too big; there are so many members that there aren’t enough for jobs for people to do. This could be addressed by reducing the number of work hours required. But it hasn’t been. About a year ago, when Whole Foods was said to be coming to the neighborhood, someone said that the Coop wasn’t dealing with the overabundance of members because they expected, yes expected, to lose members when Whole Foods and Fairway came in.

So maybe this is the shake-out that will result in shorter lines — a  win-win for loyal members.

It has to be one of the great New York Post front page headlines: NYPD JEW.
I just love it. And it’s true. The NYPD recruited the first Hasidic cop. And he’s from Brooklyn. And he’s a Talmudic scholar. Here’s an excerpt from the Post’s front page story.

Joel Witriol, a 24-year-old Talmud scholar from Brooklyn, starts his training at the department’s Police Academy today. "I realized there were so many things you could do [as a cop] – everything from community service to fighting narcotics," Witriol said, coming off the heels of a stint with the department’s auxiliary police force. "There are a hundred things, and every day is different."

Witriol has a degree from United Talmudical Seminary in Monroe, where he studied "religious stuff, mostly."

He’s also held part-time jobs doing everything from driving a delivery truck to working for a furniture company.

But the Brooklyn native wanted something more – and believes he found it five years ago when, while volunteering for an ambulance company, he heard about the police auxiliary. "I decided to go and check it out," Witriol said. "I went for training and passed."

Growing up in Williamsburg, Witriol admitted that he had the same cops-and-robbers ideas about policing as many youngsters. "I thought it was only about arresting people," he said

Dope on the Slope says there’s an exhibition of paintings of birds at Ozzie’s on Seventh Avenue and Lincoln. I haven’t seen them but I take his word for it. He says it’s a good place to stop on your way to batwatching in Prospect Park. Check out Dope’s posts about bats in Prospect Park.

Cousin John’s has an ever-changing exhibit of artwork by locals. Today I noticed that the work of a fashion illustrator was hanging on the walls. Pretty cool stuff.

At The Cocoa Bar, there are black and white photographs of Manhattan streets that are kind of interesting, too.

Art and coffee. There must be a connection.

Back in the mid-1980’s when I lived on the Northside of Williamsburg, I happened upon the Giglio Festival on Havemayer Street. I didn’t know what I was seeing but I could tell it was a tradition that had gone on for many years. There were so many mysterious and interesting things about Williamsburg and Greenpoint back then.  I used to spend hours just walking, thinking how exotic that neighborhood was. Most people spoke Polish, Italian, Spanish. I felt like a stranger in a strange land. And I loved it. It was very visual — the domed church, the aluminum siding, the low industrial buildings, McCarren Park, the bright lights on the baseball field.

This is way before it became a groovy place to live. When I lived there, Bedford Avenue had a bodega on North 6th (still there) a Salavation Army, Polish butchers, Polish bars, and a place to get pastry.

Gowanus Lounge took pictures of the annual "Dance of the Giglio" at the Giglio Feast on Havemeyer Street
on Williamsburg’s Northside took place on Sunday. He writes:

The Giglio Feast, now
in its 113th year, is sponsored by Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church and
parish priest Fr. Tom Conti called the Giglio Dance, in which dozens of
men hoist the three-ton, five-story statue and carry it up and down
Havemeyer Street–also turning it and lifting it up and down–"as
Brooklyn as it gets." Fr. Conti, the Bishop of Brooklyn and a brass
band rode on the platform as it was carried down Havemeyer through a
huge crowd.

One of those great New York things. I must have seen it more than 20 years ago, when it was just 93 years old.  How time flies.

You know that pizza place across from MS 51 on Fifth Avenue between 4th and 5th Streets?  Well, the pizza biz is out of biz and a hot dog stand is going in.

I’m guessing gourmet hot dogs. A friend asked the owner, who is also grip in the film business, if it was gonna be like Schnack, Red Hook and Union Street’s groovy hot dog place. The guy apparently said, the hot dogs will be much highter quality than Schnack.

Okay. Bring on the new hot dog place.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PARK SLOPE PARENTS! Believe it or not, the parenting list-serve is four years old.

"Over the past 4 years, our Park Slope Parents community has grown
tremendously to include more than 4,500 families, two Yahoo Groups and a website. We’ve discussed strollers, schools, breastfeeding, parking, babysitters, restaurants, religion, discipline, values and so much more (not to mention swinging and lost blue hats!)." 

To help celebrate PSP’s 4th BIRTHDAY, PSP is asking members to donate to support the website.

“With success comes growing pains: Given limited website resources, some of the valuable information on the website is increasingly being exchanged "off-line" between individuals. Some topics are frequently repeated ("What holiday bonus is appropriate for a nanny?" "Can I take a car seat on a plane?") because the website isn’t constantly updated.

PSP is confident that member donations will help them revamp the website without instituting  advertising on the website.  Monies are needed for software, design, and implementation, project management, editors and programmers.

"We are recommending $40-less than one latte or video rental each month for a year. We appreciate anything you can give and hope those who are able will give more. "

PSP is hoping to build a NEW IMPROVED website with:
–Continuously updated content such as Preschool/Daycare and Summer
Camp information

–Better navigation and organization

–Calendars

–Better search functionality on the site as well as the ability to
search all the former yahoo messages without trying to navigate the Yahoo
site and search.

Click here to make a contribution

The Parachute Jump on the boardwalk in Coney Island, a city landmark, will be lit up as of Friday night. Engineers successfully tested the new lights Wednesday night.

The Parachute Jump, which is 277-foot tall, will be lit throughout the year with six different color themes just like the Empire State Building and Brooklyn Borough Hall.

On Friday night, there will be an official lighting ceremony. Afterwards: A fireworks show.

The Times’ has a profile of Rosie Perez, the actress who starred in "Do the Right Thing. She just may be one of Brooklyn’s coolest celebs. She talks about her involvement with Working Playground, an arts education program in Brooklyn. Here, from their website, is how Working Playground describes itself:

By supporting underserved schools and communities Working Playground inspires, enlivens, and enriches students’ educational experiences with the in-depth study of an art form. Through a dynamic range of programs including theater, playwriting, animated video production, documentary and film, instrument building, science cartooning, dance performance and spoken word, Working Playground empowers youth to develop the creative and analytic impulses that will serve them as students, professionals and citizens.

Rosieis also one of the new celebrity members of the board of Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn:

"She is more than willing to vent about the multibillion-dollar Atlantic Yards project that is, she frets, threatening to change her eclectic home borough into, horrors, "a mini-Manhattan." Just call her Citizen Rosie." – NY Times.

Citizen Rosie lives in a Victorian house in Ft. Greene and she has every intention of being at the July 16 rally against the Atlantic Yards project:

"It’s awfully ugly and so out of character for Brooklyn. I’m all for progress and I’m all for development, but I’m not for the betterment of the filthy rich. If that eyesore comes to Brooklyn with the Nets, it’s over, it’s done. But why give in and let Bruce Ratner take over? My nabe was like my private Mayberry."  – Rosie Perez

I knew of Ralph Ginzburg and Eros Magazine because I went to elementary school with his son. My sixth grade class wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times in support of him.  He died yesterday. This is from his obituary in today’s New York Times.  No surprise, Ginzburg was born in Brooklyn.

Ralph Ginzburg, a taboo-busting editor and publisher who helped set off
the sexual revolution in the 1960’s with Eros magazine and was
imprisoned for sending it through the United States mail in a case
decided by the Supreme Court, died on July 6 in the Riverdale section
of the Bronx. He was 76.

Ralph Ginzburg wore handcuffs outside the federal building in
Lewisburg, Pa., in 1972 as he was being taken to federal prison.

The cause was multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bones, said Shoshana Ginzburg, his wife and collaborator of 49 years.

First published in 1962, Eros was a stunningly designed hardcover
"magbook" devoted to eroticism. While Playboy and other men’s magazines
of the time catered mostly to male fantasies, Eros (named for the Greek
god of love and desire) covered a wide swath of sexuality in history,
politics, art and literature. Mr. Ginzburg valued good writing, and his
contributors included Nat Hentoff, Arthur Herzog and Albert Ellis. – New York Times Obit

Continue reading RALPH GINZBURG, EDITOR OF EROS DIES →

Tonight at Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park, THE WIZARD OF OZ opens the Movies With a View annual film series.

The movie starts at sundown. According to Brooklyn Record, RICE
provides dinners on site and Transportation Alternatives provides free
bike valet parking.

On Tuesday July 11 at 8:30 p.m. come to Brooklyn Film Works. Movies Alfresco in JJ Byrne Park (Fifth Ave. and 3rd Street). Coney Island: The American Experience. A documentary by Ric Burns. Plus Buster Keaton shorts. The last screening, Little Fugitive, was fantastic. Food concession by Stone Park Cafe (last time: tamales, cup cakes, great lemonade). This series made possible with the financial and in-kind support of Showman Fabricators, Scharf Weissberg, Greg’s Rubbage Removal, and Methodist Hospital.

The Third Street Cafe is in full summer swing. This year it’s hop hop hopping. Maybe it’s the colorful umbrella someone found. Or the brand new Weber we split with the Kravitzes.

Most nights now, we can be found downstairs sitting at the green plastic table in the green plastic chairs drinking wine, chatting up the neighbors, dodging frisbees, disciplining our children as they vroom down the street on bikes, skates, scooters. We even discipline the children from neighboring buildings who seem to love our yard and wreak havoc.

Takes a street to raise a child, I guess. Third Street.

Ravi, the 13-year-old boy who lives downstairs, plays sitar sitting on a beautiful Indian cloth on the stoop. He even burns incense. He and his mother went to Queens and bought him a beautiful brown and gold silk robe and Indian pants.

He looks like an Indian prince. Sitar is fast becoming the soundtrack of this summer.

Other friends make our Third Street Cafe a fun place to be. Fofolle and her boyfriend Jack Twist, so named for his spot-on imitation of the Jake Gyllenhall character in Brokeback Mountain,  joined us at the cafe.

"I can’t quit you, Ennis." Is fast becoming the quote of the summer.

Sunday, Fofolle was selling skirts in front of the Third Street Cafe. It got so hot, I splurged for four six-packs of Corona beer and limes to cool us all off. Spent the day trying to sell skirts, handing out cards, cheering her on. Drinking Corona beer.

That night, my next door neighbor hosted a barbecue for friends and graciously invited everyone in the building to join in. There was so much food: lobster tails, steaks, hot dogs, hamburgers. "We don’t usually have such fancy barbecue," Teen Spirit said.

Food. Much of the weekend was about food. Namely: barbecue.  On the fourth of July, there was another barbecue. The Kravitzes, Mr. Kravitz’s mom and dad, Phized, Ravi and family, Fofolle, Jack Twist: they were all there.

Mr. Kravitz’s father is a master at the barbecue and he mans the grill. Steak, salmon, turkey burgers, corn. More food, more festivity. Jack Twist made sure everyone had enough beer and entertained the kids with puppet shows and rides on his shoulders. He also let them paint his fingernails.

Come summer, we live on the street. There’s no air conditioning at the Third Street Cafe. You have to go back to your apartment every now and again to cool off in frosty air conditioner air. Hot, humid, sweaty, we park ourselves on our chairs…

That’s life at the Third Street Cafe.

Looks like the New York Sun wants to improve their coverage of Brooklyn. This summer they’ve got a Harvard student, Leon Neyfakh, walking the Brooklyn beat.

Yesterday (July 5) he had an article in the Sun about the demise of "glossy" Brooklyn Magazines. True, BKLYN Magazine folded a few months ago and it was a glossy. But some of the other mags he mentions ain’t so glossy. Still, he got this quote from the publisher of BKLYN:

"We saw ourselves not only as a Brooklyn magazine, but a vehicle for
high-end advertisers in Manhattan," he said. "But people don’t
understand the value of the market out here."

At its peak, BKLYN was being mailed to 80,000 high-income households,
Mr. McCarthy said, but advertisers were nevertheless reluctant to
advertise.

"We had a publisher visit from a large city in the Midwest who
publishes a city magazine, and he came out and looked at Brooklyn, and
it just blew him away," he said. "But he asked me, ‘Where’s the high
end mall?’ I pointed across the East River and said, ‘It’s over there.’
Advertising really is local."

The Brooklynite, which folded last month  was hardly a glossy. But it was on the verge of being noticed on a larger scale by locals. I wish they could have hung in there a little longer because it was a smart, interesting magazine. Daniel Tremaine, its editor and publisher, said this to Neyfakh:

"Brooklyn deserves a magazine whose editorial interests are as wide as the diverse spectrum of the people who live here: newcomers, natives, and immigrants. That’s what the Brooklynite tried to be."

Also in the graveyard of dead magazines is one I never heard of called NRG. The only surviving magazine is The Brooklyn Rail, which is supported by various grants. It’s a very interesting, specialized mag more along the lines of The New York Review of Books. Quite erudite and not the least bit afraid of being esoteric or unpopular, it’s more of a cultural/intellectual magazine than a Brooklyn-focussed one. Poetry by Jonas Mekas, letters between Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers.

Neyfakh did mention that Daniel Tremain announced the demise of The Brooklynite at last month’s blogfest, which I organized at the Old Stone House.

Mr. Treiman disclosed the end
of the Brooklynite at last weekend’s Brooklyn Blogfest, an event
dedicated to the borough’s blossoming local blogosphere. His
announcement had been reported first on a blog. But according to Mr.
Treiman, who lost thousands of dollars with every issue, it was not
blogs that sank his ship, but Brooklyn itself.

I know Neyfakh was not at the blogfest which was on a Thursday night not on a weekend. But Gary Shapiro, reporter for the Sun’s Knickerbocker column was there. He arrived after it was over, while people were hanging out. He interviewed various bloggers and said he was going to give me a call. Maybe he passed along the Brooklynite announcement to Neyfakh. Maybe Daniel Treiman told him about it. Thanks for mentioning it Neyfakh!