Oshima, on Seventh Avenue between Berkeley and St. John’s, is doing a major renovation. That’s one of my fave sushi places for lunch on Seventh Avenue. It’s all boarded up so it’s hard to tell. I am, of course, excited to see what they do.

Yogo Monster looks ready to open. I walked by the smartly designed shop this morning on my way to my office. A sign in the window says that they’re opening on March 8th. That’s tomorrow. Woo hoo. The store in located on Seventh Avenue between Union and Berkeley.

It’s supposed to rain, which doesn’t bode well for frozen yogurt. But hey, I’m sure there will be a crowd of curious Park Slopers wanting to see what all the Yogo Monster fuss is about.

And I’m on my way to ‘SNice now. Will let you know sooner or later.

BBG’s annual community horticulture event, Making Brooklyn Bloom, is tomorrow (Saturday). This year the MBB program is titled "Edible NYC: Green It! Grow It! Eat It! and is devoted to urban agriculture and building a healthy food system in  our borough (and beyond).

There are 15 hands-on workshops to help educate city residents on how they can grow food at home and make their neighborhood a little bit greener by doing so. Apartment dwellers with a single windowsill might take Savoring Home-Grown Herbs Year-Round; those with a small outside area or even fire escape can learn from The Sky’s the Limit: Growing Food on Trellises; and for brownstone residents with– gasp! — a yard, The Edible Palette: Food Producing Plants for the Decorative Landscape is ideal. (Note that BBG’s vice president of horticulture is teaching the latter workshop; all these workshops are conducted by BBG staff or other experts in the field from organizations like Slow Food, Just Food, and East New York Farms.)

All visitors, of course, will likely love Best Vegetables and Fruits for Brooklyn or Raising Chickens and Bees in the City.

Seeing Green was at last night’s event at Old First Church and filed this report on his blog. Here’s an excerpt:

The Park Slope Civic Council hosted a  great Sustainability Meeting titled PlanPS2008: How You Can Start Fighting Climate Change Today
last night, well attended by over a hundred people. Introductions were
by PSCC trustee Eric McClure and Ken Freeman, PSCC’s president.

There’s a piece in today’s New York Times about the Park Slope’s own Cynthia Wade, the filmmaker who won as Oscar for the film, Freeheld, a documentary about a detective in New Jersey who fought for the right to transfer
her pension to her domestic partner.

BACK at her bare-bones office on the fringe of Park Slope, Ms. Wade is
eating a takeout salad she picked up after teaching her weekly class in
advanced digital cinematography at the New School.
The Oscar, swathed in bubble wrap, accompanied her on the subway and
made the rounds of the classroom. She also took it to her local latte
shop, where one bystander mistook it for a jar of maple syrup. When
informed it was a genuine Oscar, the next question was, “Whose Oscar?”

So the space that used to house Maggie Moo’s on Seventh Avenue between 2nd and 1st Streets (across from PS 321) is going to be a nail salon.

The workmen, who didn’t speak English, kept pointing to their nails when I asked them what was going in.

I was confused. What? I kept on asking. What? They kept on pointing to their nails.

Finally I figured it out. A nail salon. Got it.

I am in DEEP mourning about Red Hot (I live a block away and
expected it to be there forever) and now this?  But maybe they’re just
redecorating at Purity…?  But on the other hand, it didn’t need
redecorating!

I saw it in the Brooklyn Paper and it’s big news in the Slope already especially among the Food Coop crowd: Thou Shall Not Sell Water Bottles at the Park Slope Food Coop.

As the oldest and most successful Food Coop in the US, this is a powerful stance and an influential message. The general election is in the spring and this measure will most likely pass without a problem. 

Note to the Coop’s 12,000 members: Just say No to Plastic H2O

The Park Slope Food Co-op is poised to ban the sale of bottled
water, reaffirming the supermarket’s status as a hotbed of
self-conscious environmentalism.

The ban, if approved by a vote
of the Co-op’s 12,000 members, would apply to all plastic and glass
bottles of water (though distilled and carbonated water would be
exempt).

Co-op General Manager Joe Holtz predicted the proposal
would pass this spring, thanks to the members-only supermarket’s
famously environmental ethos.

“Even my 11-year-old daughter is
aware of the transportation cost and energy waste that comes with
plastic bottles,” said Park Sloper and Co-op member Katia Righetti. “I
think everyone should start becoming aware of the problem.”

The
problem is this: 30 million or so bottles end up in landfills every
day, environmental experts say. The vast majority of the bottles are
made from petroleum — roughly 1.5 million barrels of oil a year, enough
to fuel 100,000 cars, according to the Earth Policy Institute.

‘SNice, the new vegan sandwich shop on Third Street and Fifth Avenue opens today says OTBKB commenter Sarah.

So let’s see what the fuss is all about. They took over the spot that used to be Zelda Victoria and before that…

I don’t remember.

Here are some menu items from their Manhattan shop. The sandwiches are all $7.50:

Brie, pear, and arugula with raspberry mustard

Sandwich Nicoise on a baguette

Fontina with sun dried tomato paste with carmelized red onions and arugula panini

Roasted vegetable panini

Philly-style seitan sandwich

Cuban panini with soy ham

Triple decker tofu club sandwich

Tempeh Reuben

Smoked tempeh Wrap

I’m gonna have the Tempeh Reuben. See you over there later.

That’s today’s question on Park Slope Parents. It gave me a chuckle. Maybe someone should franchise PS and open “Park Slope style” communities all over the country.

I guess Park Slope is short-hand for a certain type of place. I bet you could have a lively conversation about what kind of place that is. Or not.

They probably want the good:

A sense of community, kid-friendly, park, nice architectural scale with brownstones and tree-lined streets, a reverence for historical preservation, progressive politics, independent bookstore, a food coop…

And not the bad:

Overpriced, bad parking, too many strollers on the sidewalks, not enough schools, lack of diversity, etc. (there’s a whole article coming out in New York Magazine about why people hate Park Slope…).

So what’s the Park Slope brand that everyone is looking for in Denver and Boston? And where in Denver can you find it?

And would you want to? I mean Denver has it’s own personality. Wouldn’t you want that, too?

So now that the red chair is in its temporary position in the dining room next to the doorway to the kitchen, I keep bumping into it.

To put it succinctly: It’s in the way.

But it does make a great place to dump coats, backpacks, electric guitars and cereal bowls (with the Raisin Bran caked on – gross).

How long will it stay there I wonder. Mrs. Kravitz hasn’t asked about it in days. Maybe on the weekend. I showed it to my lovely neighbor. She may come back.

Someone wrote in to say:

“I think you should keep the chair. Things like that linger with kids. Eventually they will go to college and THEN you can get rid of the chair.”

Spoken from the heart of someone who obviously had something important taken away from them when they were a child. Truthfully, I think everyone is enjoying the more spacious living room. Although Teen Spirit pointed angrily at the Eames plastic chair I put in the red chair’s place and said,

“You don’t expect us to sit on THAT do you?”

I remember when we moved out of our Fifth Street apartment and moved here. Teen Spirit was so upset even though this apartment was an obvious improvement (to us, anyway). He missed the old place so much. He was only three. He got over that when a nice boy named Eddie moved into the apartment downstairs. Then he loved it on Third Street forevermore.

So kids adjust. They really do.

Still, the red chair bump into me, stubs my toe, looks longingly my way overflowing with leather jackets, books and other detritus of life in the apartment.

What will become of me? it seems to say. What will become of me?

Remember when all the Brooklyn teen bands played at Liberty Heights Tap Room in Red Hook?

Well, Steve Deptula, former owner of Liberty Heights Tap Room and guardian angel to Brooklyn teen rockdom,  sold the bar to Rocky Sullivan’s (he still owns the building) and he’s producing The Young + Wrestless, an all-ages music series, at Southpaw now.

I’m not sure how often he’s doing the shows there, but there’s one coming up with on Saturday March 15th starting at 2 p.m. with Play, Jet Lag, Dulaney Banks and the Mighty Handful.

Here are the ‘tails:
125 Fifth Ave. Brooklyn, NY 11217
Phone:
718.230.0236

Play 2:00pm   35 minute set.
Jet Lag 2:45pm 35 minute set
Dulaney Banks 3:30pm 35 minute set
The Mighty Handful 4:15pm 35 minute s

Racked had this story yesterday: The grand opening is March 13th of the first Brooklyn Urban Outfitters. I happen to love the store.

It’s where Teen Spirit buys his jeans. I was just in the 72nd Street branch yesterday and bought a belt, Jukebox, the new Cat Power CD, and 2 pairs of skinny jeans. For him.

Says Racked: “A week from now Atlantic Avenue will be irrevocably changed.”

They got that right. The avenue of antique stores selling oak barrister shelves and Victorian fainting couches is now tres chic. Sort of.

It ain’t like it used to be.

Ready for my close up, I arrived at the CUNY Television studio at 7:15 and sat in the Green Room with Steven Berlin Johnson and John Geraci until they went in to do their interview.

Eating fruit salad and sipping Diet Pepsi, I watched as Steven and John talked about place blogging and what Outside.in is all about.

Steven is so ready for prime time.

They showed their buzz maps, which traces the location of hot stories and the ratio of bloggers to traditional media coverage. When Brian asked why Brooklyn is so bloggy Steven said: gentrification.

What’s the bloggiest nabe? he asked. Clinton Hill, of course.

Then it was my turn. "The dentist will see you now," the producer said. It all went by in a blur. I know Brian asked who reads my blog. He asked about Hugh’s pictures and said something like,

"Crawford, eh? Do I detect nepotism?"

I talked about the kind of stories I like to do. He asked about the blogfest. And that was about it. Oh yeah, Brian read Leon’s poem

DEM PREZ TICK

Winning combo,

Cream of the crop;

Newbie below,

Woman on top.

I told him about Leon. "I call him the oh-so-prolific-one He sends me poems every day. I’ve never met him…"

Luckily Leon was watching the show:

You actually pronounced my name correctly.  My mom never mastered it, to my father’s chagrin.  You can be sure she’ll bake you a fruit cake for Hanukkah.

You started off shakily–who wouldn’t?–but just two minutes into it, you sounded like  a seasoned pro, on a par with Brian Lehrer.

I’m sure your blogfest along with OTBKB will benefit from your upbeat performance.

In case your Inquiring Photographer forgot, I taped the broadcast and it’s instantly available to you; I live on Eighth Ave/Fiske Place, probably minutes away from you.

Mom says you look like Anna Magnani, only more passionate.

The Hellgate Harmonie, an adventurous and gutsy local performance group, used its citing as one of the 2007 Park Slope 100, to advertise a coming show at the Brooklyn Lyceum.

Cool.

They will be performing Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana in English at the Brooklyn Lyceum on
March 8, 15, 16, and 22, starting at 3:30pm.

I love the sense of risk that they bring to everything they do:

A great opportunity for kids to experience grand opera up close. 40 piece
orchestra, chorus, great voices, fantastic music and drama.

Not
sure if we’re going to pull this one off – a huge and intense score,
lots of instruments, unfamiliar conductors…should be interesting
(think: NASCAR pile ups, smell of burnt rubber, exploding bassoons)

Check here for details and to order tickets:  http://www.gowanus.com/MORE?listingid=100119

The Mark Ravitz sculpture inside the storefront where Park Slope Books used to be is really cool.

It’s sort of a standing anthropomorphic version of one of Ravitz’s drips. Think sun/octopus creature with a cyclops-like eye.

The artist has posed a light on the sculpture, which makes it easy to see around the clock and gives the space of very dramatic feeling. The octopus/cyclops creature definitely draws attention to the storefront, which is empty. There’s a For Rent banner on the window.

For Rent by owner it says. No food.

About the drips, Ravitz says, "…they are an abstract expression of an other worldly entity of an unexpected experience. They have made thousands of people smile."

Indeed.

Some of you may remember that our gold Volvo stationwagon broke down in January on the approach to the George Washington Bridge.

The car suffered engine failure and we were towed from the Palisades Parkway to Summit Avenue in Ft. Lee right across from the Econo Lodge. I called a local car service and we were ferried home. The car service driver gave us the name of a local garage that would tow our car.

In the subsequent days, we had to figure out what to do with our disabled Volvo. Finally, we decided to tow the car to a Ft. Lee garage. But then I got a call from the tower, "The car’s not there."

"What do you mean the cars not there?"

"The cars not there," he said again solemnly.

Seems that the Ft. Lee Police authorized another local towing service to take the car to a local garage. We’d been towed.

Later that day, I went to that garage where they took the car and gave the car to the owner there. It was sad to say adieu to 20-year-old Goldie. We’d had it for ten years. Hepcat loved that car. So did I.

A few days later I received a summons about a court date. A court date? What did we do wrong?

CAR ABANDONMENT I was told when I spoke to someone at Ft. Lee Boro Hall. And according to the summons, I’d already missed my court date—a mandatory court date.

Car abandonment? I almost fell over. Well, the court date was rescheduled for 5 p.m. on March 4th.

Yesterday, a family friend drove me to Ft. Lee and we got to the seemingly empty courthouse at 4:45. We followed signs to the Prosecutor’s Office and found ten people already on the queue—all with 5 p.m. appointments.

At 5 p.m. more than 40 people lined up behind us.

"What time does the courthouse close," I asked a cop trying to gage how long I might be there.

"Until the court is finished. You should be here for about an hour. Tops."

I felt faint. It was hot, the florescent lighting was getting on my nerves, there was nowhere to sit, aggravation about the whole thing, why wasn’t Hepcat with me, agitation, anxiety…

People with lawyers got first priority. That was irksome. I made friends with the couple in front of me, who were summoned for not using a turn signal.

"I think the cop was following us because we were in a 2008 Cadillac," the African-American woman with stunning dreadlocks told me.

Finally I saw the prosecutor. He did a double take when he saw the charge on my paperwork.

"I’ve never seen this before," he said. I began to tell my story. "Well, our car broke down…"

"Your car broke down, that’s not abandonment," he said decisively. "These charges are dismissed. Go into the courtroom and the judge will dismiss these charges."

I said no more. At least there were seats in the courtroom where proceedings moved quickly. When I was called up the judge explained things to me.

"Your car broke down?" he said.

"Yes," I replied.

"All charges are dismissed. But I want to give you a little history. Car abandonment is a very serious charge that carries a $1,000 fine and results in an automatic suspension of your license for one year."

He explained the harsh penalties: years ago there was a national Teamsters strike. The Teamsters were threatening to abandon their trucks on the highway. New Jersey instituted a law that such an action would result in automatic suspension of your license for one year and a $1,000 fine.

That put the kibosh on that. The penalties are still on the books.

"Now you can go through that door, go home and pay no fine," he said.

I said: Thank you.

From Hillary Clinton’s victory speech:

"For everyone here in Ohio and across America who’s ever been counted
out but refused to be knocked out, and for everyone who has stumbled
but stood right back up, and for everyone who works hard and never
gives up, this one is for you."

Last night two local Hillary Clinton supporters, one Obama supporter who said she had guilt feelings about not voting for Clinton in the New York Primary, and I sat in the Santa Fe Grill on Seventh Avenue. From a distance, we saw Clinton on the bar’s television in her bright red suit looking positively radiant. The set was on mute.

"Omigod, she won," one of my friends said. "I’m SO excited."

No one at the almost empty bar seemed to be reacting to the scene in Ohio. I called Hepcat to find out what was going on. He didn’t have the TV on either. I told him to turn it on.

"She definitely won. She wouldn’t be looking that happy if she didn’t win," my friend said.

I reminded them that the Texas primary is tricky. She could win the popular vote but still get less delegates if she didn’t win liberal counties like Austen, at the caucusesI told them.

"But it looks like she won," she said. None of us were wearing our reading glasses so we couldn’t read the informative text on the screen.

"I think she’s going to pick Obama as her running mate," the other Hillary supporter said.

"Really?" I said skeptically.

"Definitely," she said with certainty. "They’ll be an incredibly strong team. If you campaign for Hillary I want to do it with you," she told the other Hillary supporter at the table.

I couldn’t help but feel proud and happy for Hillary. She really managed to pull these primaries out of the bag.

What stamina, what strength, what an ability to bounce back from adversity. It’s pretty impresive if you think about it.

"The pundits were wrong once again," I said as we left the restaurant.

"Yup," someone said as we walked out into the light rain.

The Brooklyn Eagle reports that you’ll be able to strap on your roller skates this summer at Lola Staar’s roller rink in Coney Island. A roller rink near the board walk. That’s sounds like a whole lot of fun. I think it’s going to be very popular.

"Lola Staar entrepreneur Dianna Carlin’s dream of installing a seaside
temporary roller rink didn’t make such ambitious claims, but does
promise to add some pizzazz to a place that’s changed little over the
years besides the occasional clearing of another lot."

This Saturday March 8 (not sure about the time), a “Save Coney Island” event is planned at  Southpaw in
Park Slope, 125 Fifth Ave. between Sterling and St. Johns. This should be quite the shindig:

Burlesque
dancers and hot rodders will be on hand, helping to promote awareness
of the city’s (controversial) plan to convert a portion of Coney Island
into a park, leased to a single amusement operator. Borough President
Marty Markowitz and Coney Island Development Corporation President Lynn
Kelly are expected on the red carpet. Dance party DJs, burlesque
performances and “never-before seen slide shows” await inside.