Here’s the latest from author Richard Grayson, author of the forthcoming, Who Will Kiss the Pig? Sex Stories for Teens, I Brake for Delmore Schwartz, With Hitler in New York. He had fun yesterday at the Brooklyn Bridge celebration.

Dumbo Books spent most of today, now that our attorneys have given us the go-ahead, sending out PDF files of Who Will Kiss the Pig?: Sex Stories for Teens
by Richard Grayson, to the kindly cool young hipsters who answered our
Craigslist ad and agreed to take an advance peek at the book. (Not so
nice was the person who broke our confidential pre-publication press
blackout and leaked it to The Gothamist.  And a big boo to the mean commenters on that site.)

Anyway,
we were tired, but after a short nap during “All Things Considered”
(Darn! We missed the last show with those great pledge breaks), we were
up for some fun. The famous writer Tao Lin had a blog post mentioning a big party in honor of Brooklyn’s indie presses,
but when we looked down the list of publishers – Akashic, Melville
House, Soft Skull, etc. – we didn’t see our name. Dumbo Books wasn’t
invited! Sniff. Maybe we are not “Brooklyn” enough for them. We have
not been so bummed out since we were in Mrs. Eisenstein’s first grade
class at P.S. 244 in East Flatbush and a certain Walter O’Malley did
something really mean to us.

(After all, in our new book of teen
sex stories, a lot of the teen sex takes place in Brooklyn, a borough
famous for teenage sex. For example, on page 77 of the book, after a
lot of sex involving a whole bunch of friends, Kevin has to take Libby
to the free city gynecological clinic in Coney Island and while he is
anxiously waiting to hear if she has an STD, another boy asks him: “You
done knock up yo’ fox?” By page 83 Libby and Kevin are staring at a
baby in the maternity ward of Methodist Hospital in Park Slope although
by then Kevin is more interested in looking at Ted… but we digress.)

Downcast
at not being invited to the shindig for Brooklyn small presses, Dumbo
Books glumly walked the streets of our eponymous neighborhood until we
heard about an even better party that, yes, we were invited to.  Wow!

It
was the kickoff of the celebration of the 125th anniversary of the
famous Brooklyn Bridge just a few blocks away at Empire-Fulton Ferry
State Park.

Entering the park, we admired the dark blue Brooklyn
Bridge anniversary T-shirts worn by the event volunteers, who were
probably freezing – we had a hoodie over a sweater over a long-sleeved
shirt over a Medgar Evers College T-shirt and were still cold.

The
T-shirts reminded us of the powder blue T-shirts honoring the bridge’s
centennial that we got in May 1983 for ten dollars at the Brooklyn
Museum gift shop. We wore the shirt proudly but either it shrunk or we
expanded and eventually it ended up usefully but rather ignominiously
as a dustrag in Grandma Ethel’s Rockaway apartment.

Back in
1983, we watched the Brooklyn Bridge centennial fireworks with our BFF
(and current Dumbo Books landlady) Nina, who was rewarded with her work
in the Cuomo campaign the year before with a great job in the state
department of transportation. So we got to see the spectacular
fireworks from the huge windows of her office on the 89th floor of a
building that doesn’t exist anymore.

Thinking about that made
us a little sad, but then right in front of us, we saw our old friend
Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, decked out in a top hat and
1890s-style suit, looking slightly steampunk but just as handsome as we
remembered him from the first time we saw him on the second floor of
LaGuardia Hall back in the day when he was the Graduate Student
Organization president at Brooklyn College and we were a lowly reporter
for the student government newspaper The Ol’ Spigot.

Mayor
Bloomberg was there with him, drinking one of the free Snapple
antioxidant waters in five colors and flavors that they were giving out
along with blue tote bags and other tchtotchkes. And also Manhattan
Borough President Scott Stringer, whom we recall as a little pisher
standing on the corner of 86th Street and Broadway hocking Nina and us
to sign his petition to get on the ballot as district leader. How time
flies!

Well, the night was fantastic. We found some friends from
Crown Heights by way of Trinidad who shared some goodies and a blanket,
and listened as Mayor Bloomberg told a little kid with a sippy cup,
“It’s all downhill from here…You have to go to school and get a job”
before he trailed off and went to the podium, where his image, and
everyone else’s was enlarged on two big Jumbotron screens.

After
a military officer from Fort Hamilton (we patriotically failed our
January 1970 draft physical there) sang “The Star-Spangled Banner”,
there was a great chorus from an intermediate school who sang and moved
to “Give Me That Old Time Rock and Roll” and other songs; and the
Brooklyn IMPACT Project; and the Brooklyn Philharmonic looking very
classy in white dinner clothes playing favorites like Brooklyn-born
Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man,” Dvorak’s New World
Symphony and the rousing John Philip Sousa march that goes, you know,
“because a duck may be somebody’s mother.”

Also, Marvin
Hamlisch and his many chins sat at a piano and after calling the bridge
“one singular sensation,” played some of his finest songs and even an
original one for the occasion. Mr. Hamlisch is a talented lyricist –
you try rhyming something with “Emily Roebling”!

Marty said they
had spent a lot of money on this celebration – they really went all out
for last night’s kickoff – but at least they did not have to sell the
Brooklyn Bridge to fund it. Ha ha.

At 8:30 p.m. a bunch of
people with white T-shirts that said CAKE TEAM on the back started
handing out the bridge’s birthday cake from Cake Man Raven. We were
hoping for a slice of his famous red velvet cake, but we got something
that was bright green instead. Whatever it was, it was good!

It
was a beautiful, if chilly, night and as the sky darkened, Mayor
Bloomberg counted down and then the colorful lights for the bridge went
on. They change colors every few seconds and will be on for the
remainder of the celebration. Also, a tugboat or something was spraying
water really high from near the Manhattan side, and one of the big
cruise ships from Red Hook passed by just before it took off (do ships
take off?) for the Caribbean or someplace exotic like Europe.

Then
the fireworks began. The Gruccis outdid themselves with a spectacular
display on both sides of the bridge, and even a little near the
Manhattan Bridge so it wouldn’t feel left out, we guess. (We could see
the people on the D train from my little spot on the grass).

There
were some fancy VIPs in a roped-off area by a structure, and they were
drinking wine (one of the state park rangers made a young hipster girl
sitting next to us on the grass leave because she had a sixpack of PBR,
which wasn’t allowed) and eating ravioli or lasagna or something. A lot
of them wore suits and stylish dresses and some of them had press
badges.

Waiting for the port-o-potty, we were kind of shocked
when not one but two teens came out of the little locked space. Well,
we guess they were making their own fireworks! We considered hyping our
book of sex stories for teens but frankly we hate hype – except when
it’s justified as it is for the magnificent Brooklyn Bridge (although
we had a terrible panic attack the first time we drove over it as well
as one the first and last time we tried to walk across it).

Despite
our being disappointed at Dumbo Books being left off the invitation
list for the Brooklyn indie presses party, we had a glorious evening
celebrating the 125th anniversary of the spectacular achievement of the
Roeblings and the brave sandhogs who built the bridge. We think we
heard Marty misspeak and pay tribute to the “sweathogs,” but that was
another group of Brooklynites headed by the cute teen Vinnie Barbarino).

At
Hoyt/Schermerhorn the fabulous G train conductor actually waited in the
station for those of us on the A train to get aboard. What a perfect
night! Isn’t life wonderful!