Join Councilmember Bill de Blasio
and talk about the future of Carroll Gardens.
WHAT: This is a town hall meeting to share thoughts and ideas regarding the city’s commitment to down zone Carroll Gardens. We are also requesting community input about extending the landmark district of Carroll Gardens.
WHEN: August 23rd 6:30-8:30
WHERE: Scotto Funeral Home 106 1st Place, Brooklyn, NY 11231
Sometimes a family vacation just clicks and that seems to be the case out here in California. For much of the summer, we’ve all been running around in different directions and it’s fun to be together in this magical house, the house of Hepcat’s youth.
Hepcat’s mother is an artist, who makes beautiful ceramic work. She has a large studio with a potter’s wheel. OSFO has been pining to throw pots on a wheel every since she was away at camp.
Voila. The electric wheel in the corner of the studio works perfectly and OSFO is learning froma pro how to center a pot.
Tres tres difficile. But OSFO is hooked on the goopy, sensual feeling of the cold, wet clay on her fingers.
Teen Spirit has been reading a lot; he just finished Factotum by Charles Bukowski and is halfway through the great Slaughterhouse Five. He’s playing his songs for his grandmother and figuring out new songs on the piano.
OSFO is hooked on diving into the swimming pool and wants me to judge every dive. No perfect 10 yet, but she is really starting to get good.
Hepcat is, of course, fiddling with the Little Orange Car, the Porsche that belonged to his Uncle. He’s been restoring it over the last few years. When he can drag himself away from the car, he takes his 1950’s underwater camera housing into the pool and shoots some pix of OSFO and Teen Spirit underwater…
I find myself excited by the creative energy around me. Piano, potter’s wheel, cars, tools, swimming pool, books, underwater camera…
I am full of love for my family and happy to be in this beautiful part of the world.
Here’s another post from guest blogger, Brooklyn Beat, about the summer of love in Brooklyn.
I have other memories of Windsor Terrace in the early 60s, when the
10th Avenue Boys still ruled that area, I guess those were the days
before peace and love dared to show its face, when it was more West
Side Story than Woodstock..I recall when I was 8 or 9, my sister
Mackey (four years older than I at the time) came home crying from some
verbal assault from the jooches who hung out on 10th Avenue…I was
still fearless then and ran down to the corner to unleash my own verbal
assault of swear and curse words on them..I think the 10th avenue boys
were a little surprised at my the verbal sally issuing from the mouth
of this 9 year old, red headed scholarly altar boy with plastic – coke bottle glasses, and for a few years after that referred
to me as "Red Savage"; which, while it wasn’t an initiation into the
gang, was my own personal badge of honor that I could wear proudly on
my way to the library..One other thing I recall from Windsor Terrace and the hippie era proper
was the brief appearance of what in the olden days of the 60s was known
as a "Head Shop".. selling hippie paraphernalia, Hendrix posters,
rolling papers, etc…Sort of like Funky Monkey that opened briefly in
Park Slope on 7th avenue but has now itself entered the ages.Anyway,
while today the shop would be considered a purveyor of hip cultural
items, and welcomed as an entrepreneurial addition to the slow
growth of 9th avenue/PPW, back then it was considered the equivalent
of a crack house, no matter how relatively innocuous the crap that it
sold (well, I guess rolling papers were a red flag). But more than
this, the entrepreneurs had the total rocks and temerity to open it on
the corner of PPW and Prospect Avenue, maybe one or two shops from the
corner, and DIRECTLY OPPOSITE THE MISSION, i.e., Holy Name Church..Tune in tomorrow for more Summer of Love in Brooklyn by Brooklyn Beat.
BIO: BB resides deep in the heart of Brooklyn in Fiske Terrace with
his wife and four kids (ages 12-19) and a voracious Corgi. When not up
to his elbows as a manager/analyst/writer in organizational realms, BB
reflects on life’s mysteries, and other issues as befits a
superannuated existencialista, and attempts to give expression to them
in his writing, blogging, illustration, and painting.
WHEN: Thursday, August 16, 1 PM
WHERE: City
Hall Park ,
East side of park, Park Row and Lafayette Streets, facing the
Brooklyn Bridge
WHAT: READING
OF WAR AT HOME,
A NEWLY-RELEASED REPORT BY MOVEON.ORG.
(PART OF OVER 100 SUCH EVENTS NATIONALLY)
FOR THE FIRST TIME, THE EFFECTS OF THE HALF-TRILLION-DOLLAR COST OF THE IRAQ
WAR TO EACH NEW YORK CITY
CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT WILL BE DETAILED.
PHOTO OPP: 1) GIANT CHECK DISPLAYING LOCAL
COST OF WAR.
2) Speakers include an Iraqi schoolteacher, and Kevin Powell,
best-selling author of Who’s Gonna
Take The Weight? Manhood, Race, and Power in America, and Someday We’ll All Be Free, on the
2004 presidential election.
BACKGROUND: On Thursday, August 16, members of MoveOn.org will release a
new report, "War at Home,” compiled
by Moveon.org from the National Priorities project, highlighting the
enormous cost of the Iraq War to residents in every
New York City congressional district since
the war began. Over 100 Moveon councils nationally will release the
report on the same day. There are separate reports for each Congressional
district, detailing the economic effects and deprivations of the war on that
area.
Since the Iraq
war began, Congress has spent almost a half-trillion dollars on an unwinnable
civil war. New York City ’s
contribution to this has been almost 41 billion dollars. This has taken funds
away from other national and international priorities, but also local
priorities in each district, which will be detailed.
Each local representative will be named, and the cost to his/her district.
After the event, local MoveOn members will deliver the report to local
representatives at his/her office in each of the five boroughs. ###
The city reduced car hours in Central Park but made no change to the car hours in Propsect Park. What gives and what does Markowitz have to do with it.
The Daily
News reports that Brooklyn transportation activists like Park Slope
Neighbors and Streetsblog are up in arms. Here’s an excerpt from the
Daily News story. Read more here.
Advocates charge the city’s policies involving cars in the two parks
were already unfair to Brooklyn and that the latest changes made the
discrepancy worse.Markowitz spokeswoman Laura Sinagra said the borough president was
never given a formal proposal to sign off on but that his long-standing
position remains unchanged."Our historical position has been that further limiting hours would
result in unacceptable traffic backup," Markowitz said in a statement.
"The current hours are appropriate to the needs of the many in our
borough who must rely on these roads to get to work and school."The flareup is the latest round in the ongoing battle among some
neighborhood and transportation groups to ban cars altogether in both
parks.In Brooklyn, members of Community Board 14, which includes Midwood
and Flatbush, have vehemently opposed banning cars from the park for
congestion reasons.
This is a multi-part series from OTBKB reader and frequent commenter: Brooklyn Beat (his bio is below):
It’s time you walked away
set me free I must move away leave you be…
time’s been good to us, my friend
wait and see how it will end
we come and go as we please…we come and go as we please…
that’s how it must be
Here in crystal chandelier, I’m home
too many days, I’ve left unstoned
if you don’t mind happiness
purple-pleasure fields in the Sun
ah, don’t you know I’m runnin’ home…don’t you know I’m runnin’ home…
to a place to you unknown?
I take great peace in your sitting there
searching for myself, I find a place there
I see the people of the world where they are and what they could be…
I can but dance behind your smile…
I can but dance behind your smile…
you were the world to me for a while
— "D.C.B.A. " by Paul Kantner, Jefferson Airplane
Wow, besides now fading"The Sopranos" finale (which my son is already
tired of hearing my digressions and speculations on), the Summer of
Love, 1967, is popping up in the media as a cultural icon of the Summer
2007.
40 years ago this summer, I was a 12 year old, the age that my
younger daughters are now, and I was an elementary school kid at Holy
Name on Prospect Park West (or 9th avenue as it was often referred).
Music of the era made its way to my consciousness thanks to the radio
and the LPs that my older sister, then in high school at St Brendans,
brought into the house.Although the music and the culture were
exploding around me, it would still be a few years until I started
writing and pursuing publication in earnest as a student at Bishop Ford
HS and before I began to select and buy music much less dare to make
critical assessments of it..
But then, back in 1967, I was still an
elementary school brat at HNS (or, as our Windsor Terrace crowd later
referred to it in our rebellious teen years, at "The Mission"). Music
was everywhere, New York City, at least the mainstream and parts of the
city locked into the media maelstrom, was undergoing waves of change,
but Brooklyn, my Brooklyn, was still dormant.I grew up on 17th Street
between 9th and 10th avenues. I remember a young couple moving into the
basement apartment of a home across the street from us. He had the hip
look, long hair and beard, dressed for business during the week if I
recall correctly, but most noticeably, on the weekend wore jeans and
high leather boots, the first time such cool and radical fashion
probably trod these Brooklyn streets..
We referred to him simply as
"Cow Man" and I sincerely hope that we were not teasing or mean to him,
although, children being who they are, we probably were and came off as
dumb Brooklyn urchins..He lived next door to the "Stretzelmeyer"
(pronounced by us as "Stretchemeyer") home, which was a remnant of old
Brooklyn, a large Victorian house, like we live in now in Flatbush, but
it was on a large piece of land, fenced in from 17th street to Prospect
Avenue, behind a fairly high grey fence..two elderly ladies lived
there, largely out of touch with the rest of us Irish, German and
Italian working folks who had moved into the neighborhood in succeeding
waves. We would see them occasionally when a ball went over the fence
and they were patient enough to allow us into the yard to retrieve
it..I imagined the house and the sisters were from "Arsenic and Old
Lace" and I assume the house had been there from the 19th century when
Windsor Terrace was more open land, farms, etc., and the brownstones
and row houses of 17th street and beyond had simply grown up around
them.
That reminds me of another childrens’ book, about a little cabin
in the woods, that becomes a small home, and is eventually dwarfed by
the City structures and skyscrapers built around it. Years later, when
the homes was taken down and new construction was built on the site.
The home and fenced in land were easily replaced by four or five
attached homes on 17th street and an equal number around the block on
Prospect Avenue…
Tune in tomorrow for Summer in Love in Brooklyn by Brooklyn Beat.
BIO: BB resides deep in the heart of Brooklyn in Fiske Terrace with his wife and four kids (ages 12-19) and a voracious Corgi. When not up to his elbows as a manager/analyst/writer in organizational realms, BB reflects on life’s mysteries, and other issues as befits a superannuated existencialista, and attempts to give expression to them in his writing, blogging, illustration, and painting.
Brownstoner has the latest on the Park Slope Armory on 8th Avenue and 14th Street. For years, people have been talking about its transformation into a sports complex.
Part of it will remain a women’s shelter. The City recently issued a Request for Proposal to those who might be interested in running the sports center. So what’s going on?
This from New York 1:
A veteran teacher has been tapped to temporarily head the city’s first
Arabic-language public school, following the resignation of the
school’s original principal just weeks before opening.Danielle Salzberg will temporarily head the Khalil Gibran
International Academy in Boerum Hill. The veteran teacher replaces
Debbie Almontaser, who resigned from her post last week.Salzberg is currently a senior program officer at New Visions for
Public Schools. Salzberg is helping teachers prepare their curriculum
for the first day of school, which is September 4th.
All the way in California, I heard the news. Andy the Fruit Truck Guy is coming back. An OTBKB reader sent me an email. THANKS.
at least that’s what "mike," who was
selling fruit from a large white truck, and a sign on the truck said at
the corner of 7th and president today..
This from guest blogger, Eliot Wagner, My Lunch Date. His bio is below.
While at the South By Southwest music festival in March, 2006, my friend
Austin Bob introduced me to the Waco Brothers. I had never heard of
them before, but I’m always up for a bunch of English guys from Chicago
playing country music with New York session drummer Steve Goulding.
Anyway, they were good musically and the front man, whose name I never
caught, was pretty funny as well.Cut to October, 2006 . My friend Doug asks me if I’m going to the Jon
Langford show at Southpaw, a music club here in the Slope (but it’s as
far as you can get from my house and still be in the neighborhood). I
told Doug I never heard of Jon, but Doug said I would like him. I know
Doug’s taste in music is close to mine so I told him I would be there.Doug showed up after the opening act and we spoke a bit. He mentioned
that he had seen Jon and Sally Timms, who was in Jon’s band, around in
the club. Not unusual for Southpaw, which must have a really tiny
backstage area. Doug said that he thought that Jon was married to
Sally, but he wasn’t sure. Jon and band soon come on and although I
think they needed a second guitar, they were pretty good. And Jon, who
has an English accent, was pretty funny between songs. Slowly it began
to dawn on me that Jon was the guy who fronted the Waco Brothers.Looking around the crowd, I noticed Rabbi Andy Bachman, who I know from
the neighborhood, and his wife, Rachel. I’m not surprised to see them
here, as I ran into them on East 2nd Street the day that street was
dedicated as Joey Ramone Place (Andy told me later that it was important
that his kids be at that dedication). But after awhile he disappeared
from view.When the show was over, I walked home and decided to check on the
Internet whether Sally was Jon’s wife. Pretty quickly I learned she
wasn’t. Jon was actually married to Helen Tsatsos who, it turns out,
was the college roommate of Rachel, Andy Bachman’s wife. A bit more
googling digs up information on how Andy and Rachel used to follow the
Mekons around, and the fact that Jon, Sally and Steve Goulding were all
members of that band.Interesting. I’m not sure what conclusion to draw from all this other
than somehow it’s all connected.************************
My bio:
Eliot Wagner, a life-long New Yorker and a Brooklynite for the past 21
years, is an attorney, a technologist and a musicologist. He retired
from the full time practice of law in 2006.Eliot worked in the broker-dealer industry practicing in the area of
technology law from 1991 through 2006. He has spoken about legal issues
which relate to the use of technology and the Internet by businesses
before the Securities Industry Association, the Institute of
International Research and the International Information Integrity
Institute.Currently, Eliot can be found attending live music several times a week
both here in Brooklyn and on the Lower East Side. He also designs and
builds desktop computers, evaluates Linux distributions, and is the
creator and host of a rock music podcast series that has a small but
enthusiastic following.
This from our pal Peter, who’s feeling the heat for harping about the narcissistic tendencies of local children.
Some
bloggers have become annoyed with me because I appear to be harping on
concerns about narcissism being inculcated in our young due to
overly-indulgent/overly enmeshed parenting.My reason for persisting in
trying to illuminate this problem, however, is not simple pettiness (or
narcissism) on my part. I am adamant about this issue because the
effects of narcissism go far beyond irritating behavior in restaurants
or coffee shops or bookstores. As Paul Krugman points out in his column
in today’s NY Times, narcissists wreak havoc on our society and world
because of their self-centered lack of empathy for the needs and
feelings of others.One difficulty in facing up to this epidemic is that the origins of a
narcissistic disorder can seem benign in childhood because narcissists
are generally not created from harsh, abusive parents, broken homes or
any number of early traumas. Narcissists are created from parents who
give their offspring a false sense of entitlement, parents who try to
prevent their kids from having to experience the natural frustration
that comes from living in a social environment where the needs of
others may conflict with their immediate desires and impulses.Here’s Mr. Krugman on some of the damaging effects on a macro scale:
"It has long been clear that President Bush doesn’t feel other people’s
pain. His self-centeredness shines through whenever he makes
off-the-cuff, unscripted remarks, from his jocular obliviousness in the
aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to the joke he made last year in San
Antonio when visiting the Brooke Army Medical Center, which treats the
severely wounded: ‘As you can possibly see, I have an injury myself —
not here at the hospital, but in combat with a cedar. I eventually won.
The cedar gave me a little scratch’…Arguably, the current state of
the Republican Party is such that only extreme narcissists have a
chance of getting nominated…We shouldn’t be surprised, then, to learn
that these men are monstrously self-centered…All of which leaves us
with a political question. Most voters are thoroughly fed up with the
current narcissist in chief. Are they really ready to elect another?"
Brooke Astor, society lady, philanthropist, and champion of great New York City institutions like the New York Public Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Central Park, died today at the age of 105. Sadly in the last year there was much controversy about her care. Her grandson Philip Marshall accused his father (and Mrs. Astor’s only son) of not taking good care of her and exploiting her for his own wealth.
The New York Times reports that Mrs. Astor became a philanthropist after her third husband, Vincent Astor died. He was an heir to the real estate fortune of, John Jacob Astor.. Vincent Astor left Mrs. Astor $60 million and $60 million for a foundation intended to help alleviate human suffering.
The New York TImes’ reports that Mrs. Astor truly enjoyed giving the money away. This is from the New York Times obit:
She had a great deal of fun giving money away. With a wink and a sly smile, she liked to quote the leading character in Thornton Wilder’s play “The Matchmaker,” saying, “Money is like manure; it’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around.”
It was Mrs. Astor who decided that because most of the Astor fortune had been made in New York real estate, it should be spent in New York, for New Yorkers. Grants supported the city’s museums and libraries, its boys’ and girls’ clubs, homes for the elderly, churches, landmarks and other institutions and programs.
The Metropolitan Museum issued this statement:
The flags here have been lowered to half mast—and will remain so until Mrs. Astor’s interment—in tribute to someone who is truly irreplaceable in our hearts and in our history. If this entire building could shed a collective tear, it would—she symbolized the soul of this institution, a magical presence who could endow galleries and touch individual visitors and staff members with equal impact. We have lost an icon and a beloved friend, for whose long life and generous spirit we feel grateful and blessed.
Don’t you just love Wikipdia at times like these. Here’s the Wiki on John Jacob Astor, who was the great grandfather of Vincent Astor, who was the third husband of Brooke Astor, a great philanthropist and New York citizen, who died today at 102.
Born in Walldorf, near Heidelberg in the old Palatinate which became part of Baden during the 19th century, Germany (currently in the Rhein-Neckar district), his father was a butcher, and he learned English in London while working for his brother, George Astor, manufacturing musical instruments. Astor arrived in the United States in March 1784 just after the end of the Revolutionary War. He traded furs with Indians and then he started a fur goods shop in New York City in the late 1780s.
Astor took advantage of the Jay Treaty between Great Britain and the United States in 1794 which opened new markets in Canada and the Great Lakes region. By 1800 he had amassed almost a quarter of a million dollars, and had become one of the leading figures in the fur trade. In 1800, following the example of the “Empress of China”, the first American trading vessel to China, Astor traded furs, teas and sandalwood with Canton in China, and greatly benefited from it. The Embargo Act from Thomas Jefferson in 1807, however, disrupted his import/export business. With the permission of President Jefferson, Astor established the American Fur Company on April 6, 1808. He later formed subsidiaries: the Pacific Fur Company, and the Southwest Fur Company (in which Canadians had a part), in order to control fur trading in the Columbia River and Great Lakes area.
The Columbia River trading post at Fort Astoria (established in April 1811) was the first United States community on the Pacific coast. He financed the overland Astor Expedition in 1810-12 to reach the outpost. Members of the expedition were to discover South Pass through which hundreds of thousands settlers on the Oregon, California and Mormon trails passed through the Rocky Mountains.
His fur trading ventures were disrupted once again when the British captured his trading posts during the War of 1812, but rebounded in 1817 after the U.S. Congress passed a protectionist law that barred foreign traders from U.S. Territories. The American Fur Company once again came to dominate trading in the area around the Great Lakes. In 1822, Astor established the Astor House on Mackinac Island as headquarters for the reformed American Fur Company, making the island a metropolis of the fur trade. A lengthy description based on documents, diaries etc. was given by Washington Irving in his travelogue Astoria.
In 1802, Astor purchased what remained of a ninety-nine year lease from Aaron Burr for $62,500. At the time, Burr was serving as vice president under Thomas Jefferson and was desperately short on cash. The lease was to run until May 1, 1866. Astor began subdividing the land into nearly 250 lots and subleased them. His conditions were that the tenant could do whatever they wish with the lots for twenty-one years, after which they must renew the lease or Astor would take back the lot.
if i could live all over again, i would buy every square inch of Manhattan.
John Jacob AstorIn the 1830s, John Jacob Astor figured that the next big boom would be in the build-up of New York, which would soon emerge as one of the world’s greatest cities. Astor withdrew from the American Fur Company, as well as all his other ventures, and invested all his proceeds on buying and developing large tracts of land, focusing solely on Manhattan real estate. Foreseeing the rapid growth northward on Manhattan Island,
Astor purchased more and more land out beyond the current city limits. Astor rarely built on his land, and instead let others pay rent to use it.
After retiring from his business, Astor spent the rest of his life as a patron of culture. He supported the famous ornithologist John James Audubon, the poet/writer Edgar Allan Poe, and the presidential campaign of Henry Clay. At the time of his death in 1848, Astor was the wealthiest person in the United States, leaving an estate estimated to be worth at least 20 million dollars.
In his will, he gave orders to build the Astor Library for the New York public (later consolidated with other libraries to form New York Public Library), as well as a poorhouse in his German hometown, Walldorf. As a symbol of the earliest fortunes in New York, John Jacob Astor is mentioned in Herman Melville’s great novella “Bartleby the Scrivener”.
The great bulk of his fortune was bequeathed to his second son, William Backhouse Astor Sr., instead of his eldest son John Jacob Astor II (1791-1869).
John Jacob Astor is interred in the Trinity Churchyard Cemetery in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The famous pair of marble lions that sit by the stairs of The New York Public Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street were origially named Leo Astor and Leo Lenox, after Astor and James Lenox, who founded the library. Then they were called Lord Astor and Lady Lenox (both lions are males), before being given the names Patience and Fortitude by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia during the Great Depression.
From her weather tower in Coney Island, here’s the Weather by Rose at 9:00 a.m.
"Monday will be hot and humid. High in the 80’s. Tonight the temperature is going drop down to the 60’s. Tomorrow will be sunny and in the 80’s. (You’ve got a good day for flying). There were some showers early this morning; I could see some dark clouds when I woke up. But the rest of the week should be nice. But on Wednesday or Thursday, they’re saying that there’s a chance of showers. But sometimes the weatherman is wrong. They say it’s going to rain and it doesn’t do anything at all."
McBrooklyn reports that Senator Barack Obama will be at the Brooklyn Mariott on Wednesday. I won’t be in town. Can someone send a detailed report to OTBKB?
Senator Barack Obama
will be at the New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge on Wednesday,
August 22, 2007 from 5:30pm – 7:00pm for a special event hosted by
Brooklyn for Barack together with Obama for America.
I will be blogging from Hepcat’s family farm in Northern California so expect lots of stories about life on the other coast.
Brooklyn Beat and others will be guest blogging. Speaking of guest blogging, does anyone want to guest blog while I’m out of town (Richard G
Send me your submissions. Keep ’em short. Less is more at OTBKB. If it is longer, I will figure out how to break it up into a few posts.
If you do send posts include a bio.
If it’s good enough for Seeing Green…
Stardust is probably the best of the movies I have seen with my son, most of which are formulaic (Eragon), overloaded with special effects (Transformers),
trying too hard to be hip and funny (anything by Dreamworks) or
marginally entertaining (too many to name.) I do, however, grit my
teeth and go see them for his sake.Stardust was an extremely pleasant exception. Based on the novella of the same name by Neil Gaiman, and directed by Matthew Vaughn,
it has all the elements of the classic fantasy story… a Quest, a
likable young hero (Charlie Cox), evil witches (four of them, Michele
Pfeiffer being the most evil,) villainous characters (an airship
captain (Robert De Niro) and several unsavory brothers who vie for the
kingdom of Stormhold) and, unexpectedly, a true love story with the
unlikely female star being, indeed, a real star…a fallen one, that
is, in the shape of the beautiful, injured and cranky Claire Danes.
Take pix of Red Hook. From August 12-15. Learn more at the What’s the Hook website.
What’s the Hook?, a community based photography project designed to document one week in
the life of Red Hook, Brooklyn, one of New York City’s most unique and
rapidly changing neighborhoods. Open to locals and visitors alike,
"What’s The Hook" encourages photographers of all backgrounds to submit
digital images captured during the week of August 12th – 18th. This
week has been selected as it begins with Red
Hook Old Timer’s Day, an annual event at Red Hook Housing that has been
going on for more than 30 years.The images produced during August 12th – 18th will be accessible on a
dedicated website soon after the photographs have been submitted, and
representative photos will be printed and displayed in a wide variety
of Red Hook venues during the Fall and Winter of 2007 – 2008.What’s The Hook? encourages submissions from photographers of all
ages, backgrounds, and experience levels.What’s The Hook? hopes to feature images from every possible time
of day, angle of vantage, and facet of life that exists in Red Hook.
The Stephen Talkhouse Fellows, the Montauk Club’s
“house subcommittee for under-35’s," was out in force today on the steps of the Montauk Club doing all kinds of home improvements to the building. These are the guys who were profiled on New York Magazine’s blog recently (and pictured left):
“Every other Thursday, the Fellows take over the club’s spectacular
second floor. Tompkins e-mails invitations to a “curated list." The crew personally unscrewed half the bulbs in the
bar area (it used to be lit like a high-school gym), wheedled the club
into replacing the ancient eggplant-colored tablecloths with crisp
white linens, and expanded the cocktail menu. Staff complaints about
the Talkhouse crew, which came bearing well-forgotten cocktail recipes
and ostentatiously exacting standards, waned with the arrival of a
demographic long unseen at the bar: young women."
Clearly, they’re bringing fresh energy to the mysterious Montauk Club, which is a popular spot for film shoots, weddings, Weight Watcher’s meetings and Gymboree.
I’ve been hearing about jazz music nights and literary readings. It’s all a win-win for Park Slope and the Montauk Club. One of the Talkhouse Fellows said that there are frequent prospective member events and hey, I wanna know about it.
My office is downstairs in the condo part of the building. I love going to work in that building. It gives me a lift every day. And I love walking out because someone is always gawking at the building, admiring it and reading the historical plaque.
Props to the guys on the stoop. The Stephen Talkhouse Fellows are my kind of guys. Shining up the bannister, restoring, improving, bringing some much-needed spirit to a very special place.
The new svelter Smartmom still has a ways to go. Just keeping you posted, that’s all. Somebody tell Hepcat he’s supposed to notice and make complimentary noises.
Residents will be able to fill out the paperwork when the city opens a
Disaster Recovery Center tomorrow at I-S 30 on Ovington Avenue. The
center will house several agencies including Homeless Services, the Red
Cross, the State Insurance Department, and a clothing bank.For more information, call the DOB Hotline at (212)227-4416.
The New York State Insurance Department will also be back in
Brooklyn tomorrow helping residents who want to recoup some of their
losses.State Insurance examiners will be back at the Bay Ridge Community Service Center between 1 and 4 p.m.
"The people coming in – it’s all different questions: my homeowners
insurance, auto questions, my neighbor’s tree fell on my car. It has
been a lot of different things,” said Vincent Palma of the New York
State Insurance Department. “Some people have actually been paid
already. I met a man who bought his new car already."Residents with insurance related questions can also call the department’s toll-free disaster hotline at 1-800-339-1759.
Bklyn Stories is sad about the imminent departure of Seventh Avenue Books. I like her blog and have become a daily reader.
The real downer is the imminent closure of 7th Avenue Books, near 2nd Street. As the clearing house for great literature in both used and new format, the store will be closing on August 31st.
As the Brooklyn Paper reports,
Tom Simon opened the bookstore on Seventh Avenue, between 7th and 8th
streets, six years ago . In 2002, he opened a children’s bookstore down
the street, between 2nd and 3rd streets. In 2005, after the landlord
raised the rent of the original storefront, Simon moved his entire
operation to the same block of 7th Avenue where his kids book store
sits. “I’ll tell you one thing,” said Simon, who guessed he had about
20,000 titles in stock. “If we do go out of business, we’ll offer the
best moving-out sale New York has seen in years.” Good luck to the
writer moving to Park Slope for creative inspiration.
The red-haired beauty with the fairest skin, a contagious laugh, and the brightest eyes imaginable is turning three. Hard to believe she’s three already.
But oy is she three. She’s so full of spunk and fun; a little bossy sometimes and very, very smart; she’s oh so definite about what she wants to do and what she does and doesn’t want you to do.
She and OSFO are thick as thieves. Sisterly cousins, they play and play and play. There’s no end to OSFO’s love for Ducky and visa versa. OSFO has set aside the entire day for birthday prep; filling Ducky’s pinata, getting Ducky’s balloons at Little Things, helping at Ducky’s party.
And let’s not forget Diaper Diva, who nailed the Clam Bar for its rude child-unfriendly signage and even ruder staff. She has been a mother for three years now. That’s something to celebrate, too.
Three years and the transformation is complete. Diaper Diava morphed from a non-parent living in the Slope (who was slightly annoyed by the nabe’s child centeredness) to a full-fledged leaves-her-stroller-in-the-middle-of-the-sidewalk-Park Slope mama.
At least she doesn’t have a Bugaboo.
But motherhood becomes her big time and she and her red-haired beauty are quite a team at the playground, on Seventh Avenue, at Tempo Presto, at the temple pre-school, on Third Street.
And wherever they go, people comment on Ducky’s red hair. “Look at the hair on her.” “I’d love to have hair the color of that little girl’s. ” Such gorgeous hair…”
Fiercely protective, loving, nurturing, and serious about her mothering, Diaper Diva travels with Dora the Explorer Band Aid’s, a pocketbook full of First Aid supplies, and sugar free lollipops for potty training incentives (Ducky is fully trained now). And you don’t even want to know what’s in Diaper Diva’s well-stocked red Skip Hop diaper bag.
Happy Birthday to Ducky.
And Happy Birthday to another niece of mine: the Underwater Ballerina, who is off exploring the blue Carribean sea. She turns 23 today (see post Underwater Ballerina Turns 23 below). Love to her wonderful sisters, too.
From her weather tower in Coney Island, here’s today’s weather by Rose at 9:20 a.m.
It’s going to be nice like yesterday. Sunny all day. High in the 80’s. Now they’re saying no thunderstorms on Monday. Not too humid today. Humid tomorrow but not today.
The New York Times’ reports that the Federal Highway Administration has changed the font used on highway signs from Highway Gothic to Clearview.
The Federal Highway Administration granted Clearview interim approval in 2004, meaning that individual states are free to begin using it in all their road signs. More than 20 states have already adopted the typeface, replacing existing signs one by one as old ones wear out. Some places have been quicker to make the switch — much of Route I-80 in western Pennsylvania is marked by signs in Clearview, as are the roads around Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport — but it will very likely take decades for the rest of the country to finish the roadside makeover. It is a slow, almost imperceptible process. But eventually the entire country could be looking at Clearview.
The typeface is the brainchild of Don Meeker, an environmental graphic designer, and James Montalbano, a type designer. They set out to fix a problem with a highway font, and their solution — more than a decade in the making — may end up changing a lot more than just the view from the dashboard. Less than a generation ago, fonts were for the specialist, an esoteric pursuit, what Stanley Morison, the English typographer who helped create Times New Roman in the 1930s, called “a minor technicality of civilized life.” Now, as the idea of branding has claimed a central role in American life, so, too, has the importance and understanding of type. Fonts are image, and image is modern America.
Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the award-winning Brooklyn Paper:
Diaper Diva was fit to be tied. During a beach vacation in Long Island last week, Smartmom and Diaper Diva stopped for lunch at the Clam Bar on the Montauk Highway. Smartmom noticed it first: there was a note on the menu blackboard and in the menu as well that said: It is a condition of service at the Clam Bar that all children must stay in their seats.
Frankly, it made sense to Smartmom. The Clam Bar is an outdoor restaurant with umbrella tables and a bar just off the Montauk Highway. There is no fence or any kind of partition between it and the highway.
Smartmom figured that the stipulation had something to do with the restaurant’s insurance policy and the fear that a car might come barreling into the dining area.
Ducky, Diaper Diva’s 3-year-old sat in her seat while the sisters ordered a delicious array of lunch specialties — lobster salad served in a fresh tomato, grilled shrimp on greens, fish and chips, and clam chowder — but while they waited for their food, Ducky got down from her seat and happily played on the ground near the table.
When Diaper Diva went to get something from the car, a young waitress came to the table and told Smartmom: “You better move your baby. The owner is here and he’ll have to throw you out…” Nice.
Smartmom told the waitress that her sister was on her way and she would put Ducky back on the chair.
“Have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous? I’m sure there are fights here every day. Ducky wasn’t doing anything noisy or dangerous she was just sitting a few feet from the table playing with pebbles,” Diaper Diva told Smartmom.
Then Diaper Diva pointed at some other children who were walking around.
“What about them? Maybe they should be kicked out!”
Truth be told, Smartmom thought DD was going a little overboard. But she did have a point. When a waitress came by two more times to tell Diaper Diva to move Ducky, an argument ensued.
“It’s totally ridiculous. You have no right to tell me that my child has to sit in a chair,” Diaper Diva told her.
“It says so in the menu,” the waitress said.
“So what are you going to do?” Diaper Diva countered.
“We’ll have to throw you out.”
Diaper Diva was incredulous. While she ranted, Smartmom noticed that waitresses brought bowls of water for patron’s dogs. But they seemed to have very little tolerance for kids. The note on the menu was the first time Smartmom has ever encountered such a request at a restaurant. If the Clam Bar owners are doing it for safety reasons, why don’t they say so in a nice way? (Then again, what if they’re doing it just to be child unfriendly?)
Diaper Diva hasn’t heard the end of it since the whole imbroglio ended up on a popular Brooklyn blog.
Now she’s really fit to be tied. Especially after Au Contraire, a Park Slope psychotherapist sent this missive her way, via the blog.
“Dear Diaper Diva, You may believe that it’s OK for your little future narcissist to grow up believing that wherever she goes, whatever she does, the world will be glad to serve her, but in so doing, you are not, in the truest sense of parenting, serving her. One of the most difficult and essential parts of growing up in a social world is learning that your impulses and desires must respectfully dovetail with those of others, including those living in the adult world. Little children generally don’t eat clams — a bit much for their digestion — so why was Ducky there?”
Smartmom’s friend and blogger, Seeing Green, offered this elegant response to the psychotherapist:
“It’s not the letter of the rule, it’s the spirit that should count. For a restaurant to ask politely that children be in seats is reasonable, but it seems that the Clam Bar was way overreacting. As for Au Contraire, get a grip on yourself, man! What a ridiculous statement to make — ‘Why was Ducky there?’ Maybe because they’re on a family vacation? Perhaps something you missed out on growing up? And also eating clams when you were a toddler?”
But it was this response from a former waitress at the Clam Bar that really put the whole matter into perspective:
“I worked at the Clam Bar on and off for 14 years. I never once had a safety problem with a dog owner. They understand that although the restaurant is outside that does not make it a dog park.
“I did however have countless problems with parents allowing their children to roam the dining area and parking lots unattended as if the restaurant were a day-care center or a public park. The staff takes the majority of the burns and falls to avoid an out-of-control child, but there were many times I swerved and burned patrons (and a few children). Let me tell you, chowder is hot, but steamer broth is some thing else entirely.”
While on vacation, Diaper Diva had to learn the hard way that she wasn’t in Park Slope anymore. Clearly, few restaurants are as child tolerant as Park Slope’s beloved Two Boots (although Lunch, also on Montauk Highway, is remarkably child-friendly).
But parents, like children, have to learn new rules wherever they go. It’s all part of growing up and learning to exist in the complicated, scary world outside of Park Slope.