An Upper East Sider from the New York Bird Club had a rather rowdy interaction with a police officer over feeding pigeons. I don’t know the person who sent this. Go here to view the thread at the NY Bird Club: http://www.websitetoolbox.com/tool/post/luciedove/vpost?id=2556564

While feeding a smallflock of pigeons in my upper east side neighborhood this afternoon in a quiet out of the way area, a woman aggressively rushed up to me posing in a threatening and confrontational manner and
remarked

"You are not supposed to be feeding pigeons, you are feeding the rats".

My reply:

"I don’t see any rats".

She then proceeded to punch my arm with her fist.

Now when someone physically attacks you, your instinctive reaction is to strike back. I had a small nylon bag with me which touched lightly on her arm as she ran away. Several feet into her retreat, she shouted back

"I’m coming back with a gun".

I then ran after her into a supermarket where we continued a shouting match. I left her in the supermarket.

I had planned a nice quiet late lunch and afternoon of shopping, which was ruined.

I returned to my apartment and called the 19th Precinct and spoke with Officer Adler who answered the phone.  After telling him I was hit and the incident that proceeded it, his answer was

"You are not supposed to be feeding pigeons, it is against the law".

My reply

"You are not supposed to be hit either".

His reply:

"You should have called 911.

My reply:

"I do not have a cell phone".

His reply:

"Well, duh, duh, duh".

I immediately called Community Affairs at the precinct and left a message for a Peace Officer to please return my call after explaining the situation. I then called Officer Adler back and informed him that it is not against the law to feed pigeons, he said that is not the case. I told him  to check his law books.

His reply:

"Well, they crap all over your car".

I hung up the phone after asking for his name.

This is the response that law abiding citizens can expect from the Police Department after they are assaulted, even though I was not breaking the law. He was protecting the assailant. If I had parked a car in the wrong spot with the same aftermath occuring, who would Officer Adler have sided with then? Certainly not with the attacker I am sure.

The New York City Police Department public servants needs to familiarize themselves with the law and protect the innocent as they are hired to do –protect the innocent from crime, because by siding with the guilty one he is as guilty as the attacker is. If not the Police Department, who can we turn to for help?

There is something going on at the mystery building on Third Street between 7th and 6th Avenues—the first building west of the old Tempo Presto.  Two weeks ago I saw a crew carrying metal and plumbing pipes out of the building.

My friend Jerry, who knows EVERYTHING, told me on Friday "Something is going on at the house on Third Street."

I was in the middle of interviewing Mike at ‘SNice so I couldn’t stop to chat.

I did say, "Are people stealing scrap metal out of there or is something going on?"

"Something’s going on," he said.

Jerry knows such things.

‘sNice, on Fifth Avenue and Third Street, opened on Friday and Yogo Monster, on Seventh Avenue near Union, opened on Saturday. Saturday was a miserable day. Rain, rain and more rain.

But Sunday. It was a niceday. I’m guessing a good day for frozen yogurt and vegan sandwiches. Anybody try either of these tasty new spots in the Slope?

Assumptions, assumptions.

I made the incorrect assumption that the poster of the Iraq post on Park Slope Parents was a mom.

My bad. Here is the original post if you don’t know what I’m talking about.

I also said something about his post perhaps containing a bit of guilt for the disconnect between his life in Park Slope and the life of family members in Iraq. Again, he corrects me.

“If anyone should feel guilty, it is the ill-informed people across the globe who support these preemptive wars waged by our government, effectively killing hundreds of thousands of people at the drop of a hat, destroying infrastructure, and destabilizing the middle east as well as the global economy.”

At the Winter Carnival I ran into a friend in the cafeteria, where I enjoyed some delicious pasta from Scottadito.

This friend, a divorced mom of two kids, told me that she’s looking for a new apartment. The owners of the 3-bedroom brownstone apartment she’s in now are raising the rent $500 this summer and the apartment.

“They want to renovate the apartment and they want me out,” she told me.

A longtime Park Sloper, my friend wants to stay in the neighborhood she loves, where her kids go to school and where she has many friends.

Sadly, she is very nervous that she won’t be able to find an apartment in her price range.

If anyone knows of a 3-bedroom apartment that will be available in June please let me know. She’d like to spend no more than $2,300.

louise_crawford (at) yahoo (dot) com

While talking to Mike, the owner of ‘sNice, he mentioned that he’s thinking very seriously about creating stroller and bike parking in the side yard of his restaurant.

The side yard is actually a yard on the Third Street side of his restaurant. I think it’s a great idea. And I told him that he’ll get lots of attention for doing it.

He mentioned something about combination locks for strollers and bikes.

Strollers and bikes. That is very cool, Mike.

Talking to a friend at the Winter Carnival at PS 321, the subject rolled around, as it often does, to the choice between Hillary and Barack.

“I think so many of us relate to Hillary because of the multi-tasking thing,” she said. “Her “ready on day one” thing reminds me of myself when I come home from work. I’m gonna make dinner, clean the house, help the kids with homework, do some work, make some calls,” she said.

And what about Obama?

“He’s the charming husband who doesn’t do a thing.”

‘SNice is a feel good kind of place. I can feel that already.

It’s the kind of place where, in simple ways, you feel cared for. Well-prepared sandwiches, interesting ingredients combined in an interesting way and a helpful staff conspire to create a comfortable atmosphere.

Walking in I go straight for the wood counter where two young staff members smile as I come toward them. I order quickly, as I know exactly what I want (I’ve been studying the menu).

"Tempeh Reuben, please."

"Would you like that with Swiss cheese or soy?"

"Swiss cheese," I say with certainty. This place is very vegan, I think.

While I wait I survey the menu o
f vegan sandwiches, the graffiti-like paintings, the copper light fixtures, the familiar metal Emco chairs like the one’s we have in our dining room. 

The decor welcomes as it brings comfort. It is a place you might want to stop into a few times a day. In the morning for, dare I say it, steel-cut oatmeal and coffee. A lunch of some soup, a salad. A tasty sandwich.

And Park Slope seems to be the perfect destination for this sandwich shop that started life in the West Village. When I ask owner Mike Walters, how he decided on Park Slope he said. "I headed east from Greenwich Village and hit it right on the dot."

Before signing the lease on the Fifth Avenue space vacated by Zelda Victoria,  Mike considered the space vacated by Seventh Avenue Books. Last summer owner Tom Simon emailed me that a vegan restaurant was interested in that space. Then the deal fell through.

But Third Street and Fifth, just across the street from the Stone Park Cafe and a couple of blocks from Blue Ribbon, seems a perfect spot for ‘SNice.

Comparing the location to the West Village, Walter says, "The neighborhoods are very similar," he says. "But to open another place in Manhattan I’d have to charge $20 a sandwich to pay the rent."

Looking very relaxed in jeans, a hoodie and a baseball cap, Mike sits back in his chair and waxes poetic about Park Slope. "This is a great neighborhood to do this sort of thing in. People have good taste; they’re well educated on what they eat. They think about what they put in their bodies."

Walter’s wife, Deborah Pirraglia, is the co-owner and pastry chef. She discovered that she loved to bake making brownies and cookies for their kids. Then she went to the International Culinary Academy. Together they decided to open the kind of place where they wanted to eat.

"We were tired of the one vegetarian option at the bottom of the menu."

Mike is an experienced New York barman and restaurateur. Prior to opening ‘SNice, he owned the New Music Cafe on Canal Street, where, coincidentally, the Bromberg Brothers, owners of the Blue Ribbon restaurant empire, played in the band, Heavy Flow. 
Later Mike opened Elbow Room, another music club on Bleecker. When he wanted to get out of the bar business he decided to open ‘SNice three years ago and the rest, as they say, is history.

The shop was designed by LMD Design, who also designed Rachel’s Taqueria on Fifth Avenue. While I’m there, Marty, the owner of the Taqueria, stops into ‘SNice to admire the new restaurant.

"Wow," he says walking into the kitchen. "This is incredible."

Mike has known designer Luis Delgado of LMD since 1994 and appreciates how he "brings personality to a space; he makes a space come alive." Everywhere I look, there’s a combination of recycled and found materials, including a stone floor from a stone Yard near the Gowanus.

But it’s the feel good atmosphere that seems to be Mike’s M.O.

"In the Village, we have so many good regulars, so many friends. Some people come into the Village shop three times a day," he tells me surveying the crowd in his new space.

"You don’t open a restaurant to make money. I love doing it," Mike tells me. "And doing it with my wife is great. She’s my best buddy and my partner."

As we speak, I finish up my tasty Tempeh Reuben. You hardly miss the corned beef with this combination of tempeh, sauerkraut, Thousand Island dressing on delicious health nut bread. It comes with a generous mescalin salad.

"There are so many intangibles that go into a good restaurant—a million details. You’re selling this community. Music, food, atmosphere, the environment," Mike tells me as a sound system plays a melange of Ani DiFranco, Joni Mitchell and Tom Waits.

"A place where you can leave your keys, like a post office. I want to create a space that people want to be part of. "

Turns out the mom dad on Park Slope Parents, who wrote the famous Is there a Park Slope in Iraq? post, is an Iraqi-American.

Born in Bagdhad, she has civilian family members who were killed by US forces and whose homes were bombed.

She He also has family members who fled the region and were imprisoned refugees. Recently one family member was kidnapped and tortured.

She He is, needless to say, critical of the United States occupation of Iraq and US policy in the Middle East, in general.

So it was all a “joke”. Or an attempt at pointed political satire. That’s pretty much what I thought.

She He writes, “The joke was as much directed at myself as PSP. And so I am also self-critical and understand that we all often live a life full of contradiction.”

Clearly, she he was poking fun at herself and the life she he leads in Park Slope far from the violence in Baghdad. Maybe there was a little guilt mixed in there, too.

He admits that she owns a Mountain Buggy and likes Trader Joe’s and notes that he’s never been to Red Hot but likes Hunan Delight.

“I like to keep things in perspective every once in a while. Therein, lies the humor in the post or so I thought.”

The Brooklyn Paper’s Go Brooklyn section is one heck of a guide to local events. Here are a few highlights among many:

Fun for Kids: PS 321 Winter Carnival. PS 321 on Seventh Avenue at 1st Street. 10 am – 4pm.

Quilt Festival: Quilters Guild of Brooklyn presents 100 member-made quilts. $7, $5 seniors, free for kids 12 and younger. Afternoon viewing hours. 376 44th St. (718) 633-9326. Free

Library Fundraiser: Brooklyn Public Library’s Central branch hosts a fundraising event sponsored by the Brooklyn Vanguard. $75. Snacks, open bar and dancing. 8 pm to 1 am. Grand Army Plaza. (718) 230-2465.

Music at BAM: Brooklyn Philharmonic presents John Adams’ “Dharma at Big Sur.” $20 to $60. 7:30 pm. Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Ave. (718) 488-5913

Theater: Brave New World presents a reading of “Wild Oats,” by John O’Keeffe. $18 includes dinner. (Dinner catered by Fairway at 7:30 pm; reading at 8 pm). BRIC Studio, 647 Fulton St. (718) 855-7882

Opera at the Lyceum: Brooklyn Repertory Opera presents “Cavalleria Rusticana,” by Pietro Mascagni. $20, $10 students and seniors. 3:30 pm. Brooklyn Lyceum, 227 Fourth Ave. (917) 642-6925.

Now that’s a subject close to our hearts. And there’s a new exhibition at the Center for Performance Research in Greenpoint, written about in the Times’ today (see Only the Blog Links), which promotes dialogue about the resulting emotional and physical displacement of individuals within the urban context.

Art and the lives of cultural producers can serve as metaphors for broader spatial, social, economic, and political dislocations. They go through seemingly endless cycles of discovering disregarded and thus affordable corners in which to live and practice their craft, are targeted as a market segment, creating value and drawing new businesses and real estate development, raising the profile of their neighborhoods, and subsequently being priced out of the very niches they’ve struggled to carve out for themselves.

The show opens on Saturday night. Here are the ‘tails:

Saturday, March 8, 2008
6:30 Art Opening
8:30 Performance
10:00 After Party

Performances
will be given by Ann Liv Young, Kayvon Pourazar, Amanda Loulaki, Matija
Ferlin, and Jonah Bokaer in collaboration with Michael Cole.

The art exhibition will be open on Saturdays and Sundays, from noon to 6pm and by appointment from March 9–30, 2008.

Displacement will be held at greenbelt:
361 Manhattan Avenue (between Jackson and Withers)
Williamsburg, Brooklyn

L Train to Lorimer or Graham
G Train to Metropolitan

Visitors are encouraged to visit www.hopstop.com to find the best route for walking, biking, or taking public transportation to greenbelt.

My friend Jezra Kaye from Prospect Heights sent a link to this very funny  Salon article to all on her email list, which she called a brilliant piece about the recent memoir scandal. Kaye is working on a memoir and has a business coaching speakers and speech writing. For more info go here.

Many of you have commented on the recent scandals surrounding fraudulent memoirists — particularly Misha Defonseca, the Belgian who manufactured a Holocaust past, and Margaret Jones, the white Sherman Oaks, Calif., woman masquerading as a half-Native American barrio gangsta.

In response to public outcry, Erewhon Publishing has instituted a stringent new "cards on the table" policy. In the future, every memoirist will be required to provide evidence of his or her dysfunction: arrest records, needle tracks, urine and stool samples — and in the case of Martin Amis, dental bills.

Scary relatives must provide DNA evidence of kinship. Wish-fulfillment detectors will be distributed to editors on an as-needed basis. In the meantime, Erewhon Publishing has instituted a comprehensive fact checking of our back catalog. While still in its preliminary stages, our review has already uncovered troubling inconsistencies in the following memoirs:

The Brooklyn Public Library just received a grant for additional computer resources and that’s a win win for Brooklyites, who will be availed of more free technology.

And what a grant it is: $873,164 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to replace and add public computer workstations for library customers.

Whoa. You gotta love the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation even if you’re a Mac user. They are doing amazing things all over the world, including Brooklyn.

The foundation’s Opportunity Online hardware grant program is designed to help the library provide free access to computers for library patrons long into the future.

Here’s what Donna Mack Harvin, Executive Director of the Brooklyn Public Library, had to say about technology at the BPL

“Brooklyn Public Library is the primary, if not sole, means of accessing technology for thousands of Brooklynites. Youth and adults alike rely on our free computers and access to the Internet for learning, creating, and staying connected to the rest of the world. The generous support of the Gates Foundation will help BPL to continue to serve as a gateway.”

A gateway indeed.

Someone posted that question on Park Slope Parents this morning, which I interpreted as an attempt to make fun of the Is there a Park Slope in Boston? thread on Park Slope Parents.

The headline was followed by this:

I
checked
the
archives
and
can’t
find
any
neighborhood
quite
like 
Park
Slope
in
Iraq. 
They
all
seem
to
have
drawbacks…The
streets
of 
Baghdad
are
too
bumpy
for
our
Mountain
Buggy,
Mosul
doesn’t
seem
to 
have
a
Red
Hot
equivalent,
and
Basrah
isn’t
getting
a
Trader
Joes 
until
2062
(according
to
their
webpage). 
Any
help
would
be
appreciated.

I’m guessing the writer was trying to make a point, like, hey, there’s a war going on and 54 people were killed and 123 wounded in terror attacks yesterday in Baghdad. Let’s not be quite so myopic about our lives here in Park Slope.

Do you think that’s what the writer intended?

Do you think it was just silly and in bad taste.

The comment seems to have annoyed at least one person who said he found it to be in incredibly bad taste and is surprised that the moderators allowed it. He makes the point that there are doubtless people on the listserve, who have friends and relatives serving in Iraq.

Bad taste? Potent sarcasm? An attempt to put things into perspective. I contacted the person who wrote it for a comment. Will be interested to hear more from her.

Last night  I saw Eric McClure and others from Park Slope Neighbors and the Park Slope Civic Council setting up at Old First for their event, PlanPS2008: How You Can Start Fighting Climate Change Today:

From simple, everyday, eco-friendly tips to how you can get started on
installing solar panels or a green roof, our expert panelists will give
you the tools to start making Park Slope a greener community today.

Featuring
presentations by Rohit Aggarwala, Director of the Mayor’s Office on
Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, Anthony Pereira, CEO of
altPower, and more.

I wonder how it went.

Later I walked by Community Bookstore and saw someone there carrying folding chairs up from the basement.

"What’s the event tonight?" I asked.

"A poetry reading," she said.

There was information on the A-frame chalk board, which it is now legal to display outside Seventh Avenue shops.

"Oh yeah, I had something about that on my blog," I said to myself as I walked away.

Later a friend called who went to a literary event at the Brooklyn Public Library, which featured poet, Anne Carson and other writers from various local presses. I know Tin House was there and I believe Elissa Schappell was introducing.

Anne Carson couldn’t make it but it sounded like a good reading at the new Stephen Dweck space in the basement of the library.