Monday on the F-train, on my way back from Tekserve, a Englishman asked me how far it was to Coney Island.

"Is it worth the trip?" he asked.

"Absolutely," I said. In the next few years it’s going to change a lot. You really should see it before it’s all destroyed."

The man had a camera around his neck so I figured he wanted to take pictures. We talked a bit. He wanted to know other "off the beaten path" destinations for sightseeing.

Williamsburg. Dumbo. Brooklyn Heights. I told him to catch Doug Aitken’s outdoor film installation at MOMA, Sleepwalkers. Harlem. 

Turns out he’s on a grand trip after being laid off from his job in IT. "I’ve been working 17 years straight and I wanted to do something interesting before looking for another job."

We talked a bit. He’s rethinking everything and getting out of the computer business. He doesn’t know what he wants to do next. This guy wasn’t young but he’s facing the future with a very open mind.

For starters, he got a special off-peak Amtrak ticket only available to non-American travelers. For 30 days he can take Amtrak anywhere. He’s going to Florida, New Orleans, Tuscon, San Diego, San Francisco.

From San Francisco he’s going to New Zealand. Then he goes back to London to look for a job.

"I’ll be out of money then," he said.

Inspiring. I love the idea of a train trip across America. "I’m sitting in a railway station got a ticket for my destination…"

To Look  for America. And himself. Sounds very exciting to me.

 This was my idea so I’ll take all the credit. Mrs. Cleavage has a blog on Metro Parents and it’s SO FUN. It’s called: Mrs. Cleavage’s Diary

Mary MacRae Warren (aka Mrs. Cleavage) is a single mother who lives
with her delightful young boy child in a cluttered apartment in East
New York. She is saucy, opinionated, creative, and a smarty-pants – not
necessarily in that order. This is her story, live and unedited from
Brooklyn. Here’s an excerpt. She just lost her job…

At 11:30
a.m., my boss called me into the conference room sat me down with the
Senior Vice President of Human Resources who politely informed me of
the terms of my severance, due to structural reorganization.  Hey, at
least I wasn’t actually fired.  I’m just unnecessary.

I feel so much better.

Strained
smiles and handshakes all around, then Mrs. Cleavage went to pack up
her desk.  Who knew in six months one could accumulate such sh*t.  Into
the paper bag went my son’s photo and the cardinal paperweight he made
me, the spare pair of panty hose, the baby wipes.  Gave my Earl Grey
tea to my co-worker along with my hand sanitizer, the Emergen-C to my
boss. Fired off a couple of farewell emails, deleted junk from my hard
drive and that was that. 

Then I turned in my keys, picked up
my little bags, and went into the ladies room to freak out.  I sobbed
all the way home on the train.  What a nightmare. I hate public
displays, but I could not keep it together. 

I messaged a
friend who couldn’t really deal with my panic.  I called my therapist
who now stands even less of a chance of being paid for his services. I
hiccupped through that phone call. 

I feel like such a loser.
This morning and in the last couple of weeks, I’ve been so – um –
tranquil in the face of all the crap that’s happened to me in the past
two and half years. In essence, I’ve just handed myself over to the
safe-keeping of the universe (what some people call giving themselves
up to god, but which I can’t say because I’m not invested in a
figurehead).  And this is what the universe thinks I f*cking deserve –
unemployment, no money and no career prospects, no lover or social life
to speak of.  Nice.

Okay, I sound a bit sour grapes here.  And
right now I am very bitter.  But there is got to be a positive reason
for all of this.  I have to believe that or I’d stick my head in the
oven tonight. 

Monday morning I’m going to get up, get dressed
and pretend to go to work.  I can’t tell my son I don’t have a job.
What the f*ck?

Gowanus Lounge has a post about the BAM cultural district. It looks like that’s moving forward on the $650 million project built around BAM, it will include a theater (Theater for a New Audience, an arts library, dance studio, public park, a musuem and a gallery, as well as underground parking and residential houseing. Read more on Gowanus Lounge.

Isabel Hills documentary, Brooklyn Matters, will be playing around Brooklyn in then next few weeks. The film.

Here’s the blurb from the website:

No single event will have a more drastic and long-lasting impact on Brooklyn than the proposed Atlantic Yards development. This uncommon proposal, however, is mostly misunderstood. Brooklyn Matters is an insightful documentary that reveals the fuller truth about the Atlantic Yards proposal and highlights how a few powerful men are circumventing community participation and planning principles to try to push their own interests forward.

February 1 6:00 pm Pratt Institute, Higgins Hall Auditorium, 61 St. James Pl, Bklyn.

February 21 7:00 pm Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School on Clermont and Greene, Bklyn.( sponsored by Fort Greene Association and Society for Clinton Hill.

February 27 7:00 p.m.Fifth Avenue Committtee-621 DeGraw St, Bklyn RSVP-718-237-2017, ext. 162 or vrentz@fifthave.org

March 7 7:00 p.m.Two Boots Pioneer Theater (sponsored by the Historic Districts Council) East 3rd St bet Aves A & B, NYC, RSVP: 212-614-9107 Ext/ 10 or lbelfer@hdc.org

At Issue Project Room this month: Couplings: Likely, Unlikely & Actual

FEBRUARY 3-24, 2007

Saturday, February 3
christine bard + jim pugliese
julian bennett holmes + jim pugliese

first set

CHRISTINE BARD + JIM PUGLIESE

The long-awaited reunion of Duo Bard and Pugliese in Concert
a.k.a. “The Mighty Drums of Christine Bard and Jim Pugliese”

Bard and Pugliese play percussion that creates other worlds and takes
you on a guided tour. They will make sounds move through IPR, to
surround and suspend the listener on the pulse of their own Chi.
Pitched and “non-pitched” instruments will play pieces of precision
and
beauty. Deep drums will take care of the rest.

second set

JULIAN BENNETT HOLMES + JIM PUGLIESE

Julian Bennett Holmes was born in New York in 1991. He has been the
drummer in the bands Stungun, Soñar (which debuted at Issue Project
Room) and Fiasco. He co-founded (with Lucian Buscemi) the independent
record label Beautiful Records (beautifulrecords.org,
myspace.com/beautifulrecordsny) in 2005, which has since released three
albums – two Soñar recordings and one recording of Care Bears on
Fire’s Confuse Me, which was released in November 2006.

8:00 p.m.; $10

Since Friday, my three-month-old MacBook has randomly been turning itself off. No warning. Nothing to do with the battery. In fact, it tended to do it when the Macbook was plugged into the wall. I thought maybe it had to do with the power source…

I took it to Techserve on Monday. The technician said, “I think I know what’s wrong. The first batch of Macbooks had a software problem, which resulted in random shut downs…”

He looked at my Macbook and said: “Have you done any upgrades?” I told him that I hadn’t.

Well, my Macbook needs multiple upgrades and that should take care of the problem…

it contagious. You live in Park Slope — you write a book.

Senator Chuck Schumer, a Park Slope resident, has just published "Positively American: Winning Back the Middle-Class Majority One Family at a Time"

Here’s something about Schumer’s new book from the New York Daily News:

"Positively American: Winning Back the Middle-Class Majority One Family at a Time" is a half-memoir, half-policy list that Schumer dubs "the 50% solution."

"This book is an attempt to answer the question, ‘What do Democrats stand for?’" Schumer said at a signing yesterday at Grand Central Terminal.

"I yearned for the Democrats and the government to start connecting with the middle class again," he said.

In the book, Schumer creates his version of a typical middle-class family. The family has an annual income of $75,000, two cars and three kids, and lives in Massapequa, L.I. The father, Joe, works in insurance.

"The Baileys are people I have talked to for 15 years," he said of his imaginary constituents. "They’re fictional, but I know them well."

The book opens with Schumer listening to election returns last November, then goes through his personal and political life, right down to his favorite Chinese restaurant in Washington.

His proposals run the gamut from reducing – all by half – property taxes, dependence on foreign energy sources and cancer deaths to increasing test scores.

"I hope the presidential candidates will rip [the ideas] off and use them," he said. "But I don’t think it will outsell either Hillary Clinton’s or Barack Obama’s book."

Start the new year right. Get a proper work spac — invest in your career.

Writer looking to share her office space with a nice, quiet person. Great location in Park Slope. Great for writer, graphic designer, computer programmer, web designer, etc. Free Internet. Nice, clean space.

The office is also available nights and weekends solo.

If you’re interested, please email louise_crawford@yahoo.com

This excerpt from the NY Times. Read more…

IT was only a matter of time before someone was able to spot the
test driver deep within me. O.K., test parker: I was asked if I would
do a road test of the self-parking device on the new Lexus LS 460 L.
Although I like to think that I was being perceived as a laconic man
with steel nerves and steady hands, I suspect that the invitation had
something to do with my authorship of “Tepper Isn’t Going Out,” which
is considered by most scholars to have been the first parking novel. It
might even have had something to do with the fact that in 1964 I was
the founding co-editor of Beautiful Spot: A Magazine of Parking, which
I’ve seen referred to as a one-issue publication even though we prefer
to say that the second issue hasn’t come out yet. (We’ve had some
production difficulties.)

If I were asked to name my talent —
talent, that is, in the way the Miss America pageant uses the word
talent, as in “Miss West Virginia will now do her talent” — I would say
“parallel parking.” For the second issue of Beautiful Spot: A Magazine
of Parking, I’ve been preparing an article on how I came up with the
term “slicing the bread” to describe maneuvering into a spot that
leaves only the width of a bread slice between your bumpers and the
bumpers of the cars ahead of and behind you. In a later issue, I intend
to discuss “breaking the matzo” — getting into a spot so small that a
matzo would crack if you tried to place it between the relevant
bumpers. Just for the record, the last time I broke a matzo was May
1994, on Riverside Drive, between 83rd and 84th; unfortunately, there
were no witnesses.

THIS FROM BABY GADGET:

A bit of old news around the blog world, but one of our favorite onlines stores, ModernTots
has opened it’s first retail showroom in Dumbo, Brooklyn. The 2500
square foot store has plenty of space to showcase all their tempting
products with enough room for your toddlers to explore and try out toys
and furniture. I’m a big fan of online shopping – especially since
having my second – but I admit to being disappointed by a few products
that were not what I expected ("hey, this looked so much more blue on
my computer screen, why is it gray??"). So it makes sense to be able to
see products firsthand, if possible, rather than trusting the screen,
especially if you’re about to invest in some furniture (who here has
opted not to return something they didn’t quite like because it was too
much hassle?).

The showroom is located at 53 Pearl Street in Dumbo.

And while you’re checking things out, there are a few more days left in the ModernTots winter sale. Stock up on wiinter items for next year, like these adorable hats below.

This from New York 1:

A Brooklyn man froze to death in his car after he and his wife spent 32
hours stranded in below zero temperatures upstate.

The couple was driving home from a wedding in Montreal when their car crashed off Interstate-87 around 1 a.m. Thursday.

Barbara Langner had tried to call for help with her cell phone but couldn’t get service.

Family members reported them missing, and state police found the
couple Friday in their Lincoln Town Car in North Hudson, about 90 miles
north of Albany.

When authorities found the couple, Alfred Langner – who was 63 –
had died of hypothermia. Barbara Langner is hospitalized. She suffered
frostbite and also hurt her back.

Tens of thousands marched in Washington on Saturday against the troop increase in Iraq. The event drew demonstrators from across the country,

"I can’t believe it was less than one hundred thousand," a Brooklyn friend who attended the march said this morning. "It wasn’t an angry march. Not angry enough," she said.  "People were committed. But it wasn’t loud and angry."

"What does it take for people to really get angry. Does it take bringing the draft back?" she wondered. "People are disgusted. They don’t want the escalation."

My friend who drove down, noticed a lot of Brooklyn groups there, including Brooklyn Parents for Peace. The weather was gorgeous; perfect day for marching.

Code Pink was there in full force. My friend described a wonderful puppet, brought by a group of Seattle puppeteers, that was a 30 ft long spine made of white, silk parachute material. On it was printed: Impeach, Indict, Imprison.

On the other side it said: Fund the Homecoming (of the soldiers.

According to my friend, all the usual celebrity suspects wise were there. The big surprise: Jane Fonda spoke. It was the first time in 34 years that she has participated in a protest march.

My friend spotted a counter protest — five or sx people — with signs that disparaged Jane Fonda (Hanoi Jane) and other peaceniks calling them Al Queda Appeasers.

On the march, people talked about impeachment.  "We want to get him out before the term is over. But then you have Cheney. You have to impeach Chaney first. Then get Bush out," she said.

Tim Robbins, a fave of my friend, "had great energy, he’s lively." Susan Sarandon spoke about the vets and the cost of the war on the mental and physical health.  She said that 200 returning vets have committed suicide thus far. They’re having a hard time when they get back and there’s little support for them.

How did I not know until recently that the makers of Zoloft are were located in Brooklyn. There’s an extensive history of the makers of the famous anti-depressant in the Sunday’s Times.

If this area on the Williamsburg-Bedford-Stuyvesant border is not
quite Pfizerville, it still may be the closest thing to a factory town
in this largely postindustrial city. For 158 years, the Pfizer company
has presided over this remote-feeling stretch of Brooklyn, a windswept,
big-sky place sliced like a pie by broad, angling streets: first as
industrial magnet, then as big brother-benefactor.

So Pfizer’s imminent departure, which the company announced on Monday, will mean more than the loss of 600 jobs.

“I
wish it didn’t have to end,” said Ricardo Guadalupe, who was laid off
from the plant last year and still gazes at the brick behemoth of a
factory every time he drops his two sons off at the school. “I wish it
could have lasted forever.”

The school will remain open, but
Mr. Guadalupe, who lives several miles away, now works in New Jersey
and is not sure how much longer it will make sense to send his children
there.

Standing in the first floor hallway at PS 321, Frank McGarry, the school’s beloved music teacher, walked over and thanked me for putting him on my blog. He is responsible for teaching the kids about Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Mozart, and Bob Dylan.

McGarry, a school treasure, also teaches them:  "Here Comes the Sun" and the Bob Marley song, "Three Little Birds" "Don’t worry about a thing, cuz every little thing is gonna be alright."

"People kept telling me about it," he said. "It was an interesting list. I learned a lot about what people are doing around here," he said.

Well, he deserved to be there. And I told him so.

Teen Spirit and I went into Lisa Polansky, a shop on Seventh Avenue near Carroll Street, while waiting for his passport picture to printed at Photofaction next door. TS had never been in Polansky’s self-named store, which is chock full of shoes and clothing from floor to the ceiling. She carries an impressive selection of Converse, Doc Martins, and cut-rate Giraudon, and every imaginable clothing item for women. TS found the store interesting although he had to stoop so as not to bump into hanging gloves, scarves, and sweaters,

I asked Lisa Polansky is she’d seen her citing in the Park Slope 100. She didn’t know a thing about it. "But I have heard about these Brooklyn blogs, tell me how to go there,"

As I wrote down the URL of OTBKB, I told her that she’d been chosen because she’s an important member of the community; her store is a longtime institution.

"You made my day," she said with a big smile.

Once out on the street, I asked Teen Spirit  if he wanted to go into Loom. "Not if you’re going to mention the blog," he said. "You’re such a shameless self-promoter."

But Loom isn’t even on the list. Yet.