I had a feeling that the Brownstone Bride story was going to be a sad one. The Brooklyn Paper did some investigation and came out with a story on their website yesterday.

The Brownstone Bride, who was holding a teddy bear and a box, was taken to the hospital for psychiatric evaluation. According to a Brooklyn Paper quote from a policeman: the bride’s father lives on Fourth Street.

A police source at the 78th Precinct told The Brooklyn Paper that the ring was indeed genuine. Cops called the Fifth Avenue gem merchant with the ring’s serial number and were given the name of the man who purchased it.

The man later told cops that the woman had indeed been his fiancee, but that he had dumped her because “she was bi-polar and wouldn’t take her medicine,” the police source said.

The woman was later released from the hospital and is in the custody of her father, who lives on the block, the source said.

After being reported in The Brooklyn Paper, the story of the mystery bride was covered nationwide.

READ MORE AT THE BROOKLYN PAPER.

What’s Up Doc?  With Ryan O’Neal and Barbara Streisand and Madeline Kahn. What could be more fun on a beautiful summer night? It’s playing tonight in JJ Byrne Park on Fifth Avenue at Third Street in Park Slope.

There will be a Bugs Bunny short, a hot dog concession by Willie’s Dawg’s (which made New York Mag’s Best Cheap Eats list) and a funny movie directed by Peter Bogdanavich from one of the greatest eras of American filmmaking: the 1970’s.

Come in your very best Charivari dress.

Wear a little Jean Nate perfume.

Put on some tan wedgie sandals.

Pack a Blimpie picnic (or have a Willie Dawg).

Remember a time before cell phones and Wikipedia (how did we live without you?):

What’s Up, Doc? is a screwball comedy from 1972, directed by Peter Bogdanovich and starring Barbra Streisand, Ryan O’Neal, and Madeline Kahn (in her first full-length film role). It was intended to pay homage to comparable motion pictures of the 1930s, such as Bringing Up Baby,^[1] as well as the Bugs Bunny cartoons—which, like this film, were made by Warner Bros. Pictures.

The film was a huge hit in theaters, and became the third-highest grossing film of 1972. The film won the Writers Guild of America 1973 "Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen" award for writers Buck Henry, David Newman and Robert Benton. It was placed number 61 on the list of 100 greatest comedies published by the American Film Institute.

Look what’s  there now: Three first run films you’ll want to see:

Hairspray: 4 OTBKBs. Really fun, funny, entertaining.
Rescue Dawn: 5 OTBKBs. Very gripping, very intense.
Sicko: OTBKB hasn’t seen it.
Plus: their Leading Ladies of Italian Cinema series is a sublime selection of some gems of international cinema.

Check out the schedule…

Rating system:

5 OTBKBs: Run to the theater and see it now!
4 OTBKBs: Well worth a trip to the theater.
3 OTBKBs: Get it on Netflix.
2 OTBKBs: Get it at Hollywood Video sometime.
1 OTBKB: Don’t even bother

Brooklyn Bitch, the writer behind Brooklyn Nester, is girl after my own heart. She writes today about CLEANING HER BEDROOM.

Nesters, today is a difficult day. Today begins the horrible, horrible task of launching the The Brooklyn Project.

Today Brooklyn Bitch motivates to take on the war zone that is my bedroom.

With this wretched, awful, and fuckin’ disgusting task, begins the 5 stages of death as we know them here at The Brooklyn Nester:

I didn’t get a chance to chat with this Brooklyn blogger at the Blogade Roadshow at the Casa Mon Amourbut her blog, Last Night’s Dinner, looks like loads of gourmet fun.

Doesn’t this dish called Calabicitas Tacos look amazing????

Last Night’s Dinner includes photos, recipes, and peeks-a-plenty into her kitchen.

Pix by Last Night’s Dinner. Check out her Flickr page.

Check out the State of the Subways Report from NYPIRG’s Straphanger’s Campaign. It’s a very interesting report. Here’s why the people at Straphangers do what they do:

First, riders are looking for information on the quality of their trips.
The MTA has, unfortunately, resisted putting detailed line-by-line
performance measures on their web site. In June 2003, the MTA did begin
posting its quarterly performance data on its website, www.mta.info.  However, none of this information is broken down by line.  Our profiles seek to fill this gap.

Second, our report cards provide a picture of where the subways are headed.  This
report card paints a picture of a stalled system:  Subway cars break
down a little more often, a troubling trend at a time when hundreds of
new technology subway cars have been coming on line.  The subways have
shown no improvement in regularity of arrivals or in making accurate
and understandable subway car announcements. On one measure we found
there was significant improvement: subway cars became cleaner.

Continued
progress will be a challenge.  The MTA is struggling to obtain all the
planned funding for its current rebuilding program, including rising
construction costs, a weak dollar and realizing $1 billion dollars from
the sale of its assets, such as its valuable Manhattan rail yards.

Lastly, we aim to give communities the information they need to win better service.  We
often hear from riders and neighborhood groups.  They will say, “Our
line has got to be worst.”  Or “We must be on the most crowded.”  Or
“Our line is much better than others.” 

For riders and
officials on lines receiving a poor level of service, our report will
help them make the case for improvements, ranging from increases in
service to major repairs.  That’s not just a hope.  In past years,
we’ve seen riders — including on some of the lines we found the worst —
win improvements, such as on the B, N and 5 lines.

For those
on better lines, the report can highlight areas for improvement.  For
example, riders on the 7 — once the best in the system — have pointed
to declines and won increased service.

This report is part
of a series of studies on subway and bus service.  For example, we
issue annual surveys on payphone service in the subways, subway car
cleanliness, and subway car announcements, as well as give out the
Pokey Awards for the slowest city bus routes.

Our reports can be found at www.straphangers.org/reports.html, as can our profiles.

I like the sounds of that.

The City Room Reports that landmark status is being considered for the Eberhard Faber Pencil Factory in Greenpoint. 

The yellow pencils, roughly 10 feet tall and still sharp after 83
years, adorn the facade of 61 Greenpoint Avenue, once part of the
Eberhard Faber factory in Greenpoint, where No. 2 Mongol pencils were
made until 1956. Together with structures on West and Kent Streets, the
building is part of the proposed two-block Eberhard Faber Pencil
Company Historic District. Read more at The City Room.

These look like nice t-shirts designed by local Brendon Manwaring. You can order one in chocolate brown or slate here.

Note from the designer: This design is a tribute to my neighborhood home, Park Slope. It
depicts the area’s urban complexity and natural simplicity; the unique
beauty of classic Brooklyn that is Park Slope.
On the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch, a landmark at the northern
entrance of Prospect Park, I’ve overlapped an aerial view of the Park
Slope Historic District. According to the New York Landmark
Preservation Commission, it is "one of the most beautifully situated
residential neighborhoods in the city." With this, I’d have to agree.-Brendon

Seeing Green is sick of Harry Potter. Find out why in one of Seeing Green’s best posts ever….

You see, I say to D., when you read a non-serialized book (or see such a movie,) you’re like an empty slate (a tabula rasa,
I say, always eager to nudge his vocabulary,) and you let the author
work his/her magic on you as you immerse yourself in the writing. A
good author brings something fresh to every chapter, something new is
revealed, something old is borrowed.

But a serial, by definition, is constrained, which is why so many of
Volume II’s are so disappointing. Rowling avoided the disappointments
magisterially, and was constantly inventive, constantly juggling the
many, many balls of her plot, constantly tying up or connecting loose
ends from previous novels. In this she was masterful and it worked well
through five books. VI and VII?…well…

I tell D. to avoid cliches in his nascent writing (which he does a
lot of,) because cliches are like the wormholes in that apple, empty
but assertive. And, I continue, in an epic spanning, oh, what, some
3,500+ pages, how could an author not create her own cliches?
You start noticing these. I mention that, inevitably, the freshness
disappears, like taking another bite of the apple you’re saving for
some reason from the day before. Inevitably you see constructs seen
before, plot lines mentioned two volumes before, conceits you noted
three books ago. Formulas emerge…

READ MORE AT SEEING GREEN

I sat next to this blogger at the Blogade Roadshow in Greenpoint. Her blog, the-queries.com is an interview blog.

It looks really interesting. She mostly interviews artists, I think. I plan to visit often to see what’s up.

If you were at Hal Willner’s Doc Pomus Project at Celebrate Brooklyn featuring Lou Reed / Ben E. King / Howard Tate / Teddy Thompson / Shannon McNally / Steven Bernstein / Robin Holcomb / Joel Dorn / Mocean Worker / Pete Guralnick and Laurie Anderson on Saturday night do tell.

His multi-artist concept shows (and albums) are simply the greatest. At Celebrate Brooklyn, he’s done: Leonard Cohen (2003) and Neil Young (2004). Send pix if you have them.

Did anyone see Odetta on Friday night at CB? She was subbing for the Bobbie Blue Band which cancelled due to illness.

On Saturday night it was all about Doc Pomus, the great Williamsburg born songwriter and author of classics like “Lonely Avenue” and “Youngblood.”

If you were at the Siren Festival in Coney Island. Do tell. Or send pix. I know a bunch of Teen Spirit’s friends were there and I am hoping one of the photographers he knows got some pix.

And let’s not forget the great Dan Zanes performed his Ezra Jack Keats songs at Celebrate Brooklyn at 5 p.m. on Sunday. It looked like a BIG crowd of little ones and their parents, all who love the GREAT DAN.

Here’s our pal Pete on the Park Slope Food Coop and why he quit and took the fair way.

Well, count me among those who just recently left the co-op. After 3 years, I finally had enough of the Soviet-style Communism masquerading as socialism (which OTBKB commenter Michael reminded us is rooted in the philosophy: to each according to their needs, from each according to their means).

The PSFC’s “love us or get out” attitude is hardly exemplary of anything resembling cooperative. I have been a supporter of sustainable agriculture for two decades. One of my best friends was executive director of the largest activist organization in the country for sustainable agriculture and even she told me that the PSFC hard-core were notoriously known as the Co-op Nazi’s – even in those liberal circles!

And oh yeah, on Fairway, first of all, you totally DON’T need a car – the F train to Smith and 9th and the 77 bus is a quick and easy route, and with no long lines AND FREE home delivery for orders over a hundred dollars, we have saved hours over the co-op life every week, AND don’t let anyone lie to you, the prices are totally comparable to the co-op’s, in some cases significantly cheaper, and they have ever-expanding organic sections, including beautiful organic meats and chicken. By adding the two local greenmarkets in Prospect Park on Wednesday and Saturday to our bi-monthly trips to Fairway, our food-shopping life has once again become pleasurable.

The bottom line is this: like most fascist regimes, the PSFC’s dogma has ended up superceeding its original mission, which in this case was to help local, small, organic farmers stay in business and help consumers obtain healthy food. I believe in sustainable agriculture as a way of life. I’m also very busy as a psychotherapist, writer and parent of two kids. Most other serious food co-ops in the country today allow members the option to work at the co-op and pay lower prices, or not work and pay higher prices. Who does that hurt? Reall

Willie’s Dawgs makes New York Magazine’s Cheap Eats list.

351 Fifth Ave., nr. Fifth St., Park Slope, Brooklyn; 718-832-2941
You would expect to find pedigreed hot dogs made from grass-fed cattle in a place like San Francisco, where the sustainable-agriculture movement is practically organized religion. In Nathan Handwerker’s backyard, it’s a little less likely. But as it happens, Park Slope’s bright, cheerful Willie’s Dawgs is the sole local purveyor of Let’s Be Frank, the brand started by Chez Panisse’s own “meat forager.” It’s top dog on a menu of alterna-franks like the skinless “Pedigree,” the poultry dog, the tofu dog, and the carrot dog, a whole root marinated in hot-dog spices. The best of the bunch is the homegrown “Mutt,” a Karl Ehmer all-beef number that comes swaddled in a house-baked challah bun. Excellent onion rings, too.

This Corteylou Road favorite made New York Magazine’s Cheap Eats list. Props to you.

The Farm on Adderley
1108 Cortelyou Rd., nr. Stratford Rd., Ditmas Park, Brooklyn; 718-287-3101
Some restaurants are instantly embraced by their famished neighborhoods, and so it was when this casually rustic spot opened last summer in Ditmas Park, a corner of Brooklyn where the Victorian fixer-uppers attract the sort of Manhattan expats who expect to find Cowgirl Creamery’s Mt. Tam on the cheese plate and crispy tofu with sweet corn on the kids’ menu. And so they do at the Farm, where seasonal ingredients are duly worshipped in preparations like housemade fettuccine with peas and pea shoots, and bluefish with corn and okra. To the place’s credit, there is also a serene little garden, a nice long bar where the “local and organic” motto extends to some of the beer and wine, and a respectable English-muffin burger that’s overshadowed by its world-class fries.

After a day at the Siren Fest, ABL had dinner at Po. How Civilized.

Po is a Cornelia Street Italian eatery started by Mario Batali that now has a post on Smith Street.

ABL enjoyed her meal immensely. Especially the appetizers.

Read more here. She knows her restaurants and she knows Smith Street. She’s a great blogger who’s been around for a long time. I love her take on things.

Brooklyn Paper had a story about her and the photo’s by Nathanial Harpaz are on the website.

So does Gowanus Lounge.

And Gawker.

Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the Brooklyn Paper:

The Oh So Feisty One has been away at summer camp for more than a week and Smartmom hasn’t received a letter.

Not one friggin’ letter.

Frankly, Smartmom is worried and a little hurt. It would not be an understatement to say that she is the throes of a curiosity-induced cardiac arrest. She wishes she could be a fly on the wall of OSFO’s open-air cabin and get a firsthand look at her 10-year-old woodswoman — mosquito bites and all.

Smartmom knows that OSFO is probably not miserable. At the orientation, the friendly camp directors said that if a camper is terribly homesick for more than a day two, there will be a phone call home.

And that’s a call you don’t want to get on your iPhone. That’s for sure.

Fortunately no call came. But neither did a delightful little missive from OSFO gushing about her adventures in the woods of Vermont. Worse, Smartmom’s friend, whose daughter is at the very same camp, already got a detailed letter from her daughter that was practically Proustian in scope.

Smartmom wanted to scream with envy.

And it’s not because OSFO doesn’t have stationery or postage stamps.

Far from it. Before she left, Smartmom and OSFO addressed well over 30 stamped postcards and envelopes to friends and family.

“I think I’m going to be bored, so I’ll probably write a lot,” OSFO told Smartmom.

Clearly, this was OSFO’s way of battling her fear of going away from home for the first time. With these hand-addressed cards in her trunk, she could sustain a connection with those she loves.

Smartmom certainly didn’t expect OSFO to use all 20 of the Ugly Doll postcards or all 10 of the cheery yellow note cards with the handy multiple choice questions.

But one lousy note card. Is that so difficult?

So it’s been over a week without contact of any kind. And Indian Brook is not one of those camps that lets the kids send e-mails or gives parents access to a hidden camera.

“Unplugged and unforgettable,” that’s the camp’s motto and it also means rural and rustic. A wilderness camping experience, Indian Brook encourages simple living.

There’s even a non-sectarian Quaker element, which means that all campers and staff participate in a Meeting for Worship that is, according to the camp’s brochure, a time to reflect, pray, enjoy the birds, think about your parents…

It all sounds pretty great, right? So why has Smartmom heard nothing?

The first few days of camp, Smartmom certainly didn’t expect to get a letter. She and Hepcat dropped off their precious girl on a Sunday in beautiful Plymouth, Vermont. She was pretty tight lipped in the car but the night before the drive she’d let her apprehensions hang out to dry.

“What happens if I get homesick?” she asked Smartmom.

“You can talk to your counselors about it. If it’s really bad you can give us a call,” Smartmom said comfortingly.

“What happens if I hate it,” OSFO asked.

“We’ll come get you,” Smartmom told her.

“You know, I never really wanted to go to camp in the first place,” OSFO was getting worked up. “I said I was interested, that doesn’t mean I wanted you to SIGN ME UP FOR SOME CAMP.”

Her anger was mounting.

“I don’t even like sleep-over dates and now you’ve got me going away for two whole weeks,” OSFO snarled.

Smartmom assured her that Indian Brook is a very special place. She lulled her to sleep reading the Parents Handbook for the umpteenth time.

Knowledge is power and it seemed to bring some modicum of comfort to her frightened girl.

Smartmom made a point of not mentioning her own Alan (“Hello Mutha, Hello Fatha”) Shermanesque experience when she went to that hippy camp in Copake, New York. It was the summer of Woodstock and on the days of the festival, all the counselors abandoned the camp for some fun and frolic.

Smartmom wrote her parents a letter-a-day full of sturm und drang.

“I hate camp! Please come get me!”

Manhattan Granny recalls the sheer panic and gastric pain she felt when she got Smartmom’s pencil scratching.

“It felt like a note put in a bottle by a desperate prisoner,” Manhattan Granny remembers.

By the time she got Smartmom on the phone, things had improved. But Manhattan Granny was still a basket case.

So maybe it’s a blessing that Smartmom hasn’t heard from OSFO. Still, Smartmom has a laundry list of questions she’d like an answer to:

Have you gotten used to the composting outhouses (knows as “kybos”)?

Has the pregnant rabbit had her babies, yet?

Do you like your counselor?

Are you missing Teen Spirit, Ducky, Diaper Diva, your dad or even your mom?

Smartmom will just have to wait to get the news. Maybe today will be the day. Or tomorrow.

Then again, OSFO will be back in just four days. Smartmom can ask her all about camp as soon as gets off the bus on West 33rd Street in Manhattan.

Smartmom can hardly wait.

I was just checking on directions for Casa Mon Amour, where we’re having today’s Brooklyn Blogade Roadshow and I couldn’t help but notice all the rave review it has gotten from Yelpers. I can’t wait for lunch today. Everyone seems to love the owner, Beatrice.

I’m still not sure which G train stop to get off on. Can anyone help?

162 Franklin Street
(between Huron St & India St)
Brooklyn, NY 11222 (718) 349-1529