It turns out that there are over 200,000 households in Brooklyn who qualify for Food Stamps but are not enrolled. This is federal money that is going to waste. Speaker Christine C. Quinn and Council Member Letitia James want to remedy this problem and get the Food Stamps to people who really need them. In these tough economic times that sounds like a great idea.

Tomorrow morning, Speaker Quinn and Council Member James will announce the completion and the findings of the Brooklyn borough Medicaid Food Stamp data match, an initiative that identified 211,801 Brooklyn households currently enrolled in Medicaid who may be qualified for the food stamp program, but are not enrolled.

WHAT:     Press Conference

WHERE:   Hanson Place Central United Methodist Church Food Pantry
                144 St. Felix St., Downtown Bklyn.

WHEN:     Wednesday, June 18, 2008

WHO:     Speaker Christine C. Quinn
                Council Member Letitia James
                Hunger Advocates

TIME:     10:00 a.m.

An OTBKB reader had this to say about potential changes to the PS 321 catchment due to overcrowding.

Since when exactly should the views of parents looking to make a quick buck on their home because of the school catchment area in which they live (or those just happy that their investment has gone up) even VAGUELY be a consideration in the formulation of school policy??

You said it yourself: schools are suffering from overcrowding, and authorities have to act if they are to preserve the quality of education that you and your friends have been true beneficiaries of. Would you rather that class sizes went up and standards went down, as long as house prices remained buoyant in the area? Kids in the catchment area of the future have every right to the same quality of education that your child/children had. And that comes before ANY bourgeois worries about house prices, or the concerns of unfortunate parents who moved to beat the system rather than fighting from within to develop other schools.

Of course the real issue is that there needs to be greater investment in education in the borough. But that doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be change in the meantime.

The Seventh Avenue Fair had it all yesterday. Rain and Sun. In the morning there were intermittent heavy downpours and sun showers.

By afternoon it was sun, sun, sun. I only made it from Third Street to Lincoln Place.

Highlights included:

A reading by Nina Crews of her new book, The Neighborhood Mother Goose, at the Community Bookstore’s tent.

I bought a lovely Fofolle skirt at the Brooklyn Indie Market’s booth (pictured left). There were beautiful necklaces by one of the women who runs Urban Alchemy.

Bags, wallets, and money clips by InsidersNY were a treat. Made in Brooklyn’s Navy Yard, the owners photograph Brooklyn and NYC scenes and print them on leather. The results are really fun!

My Little India a shop on South Elliot Place in Ft. Greene had gorgeous curtain panels, rugs, furniture and soap.

Good old Tiki Girl’s Shop had a large selection of mod/hippy rayon dresses, shirts, and her famous bell bottom pants for American Girl Dolls, as well as real girls and women.

The new Mexican place, Barrio, came out with sangria, salsa, guacamole and tasty looking entrees.

D’Vine Taste, Park Slope’s fave middle eastern grocery store, had an unbelievably large selection of food and drinks.

What did you like/not like at the fair?

They’re giving away free couches to the first 35 people on line at IKEA and people are already lining up. I just got word that 18 people have already lined up; they’re going to have to stick around until the store opens on Wednesday morning. The first 100 people get an armchair.

On the left is the Ektorp sofa, they’re giving away. It come in white and it sells for $499.

I wonder what the scene is like over there. Are they camping out? They could probably use one of the cute pup tents we got at an IKEA years ago. Maybe IKEA can bring out some foam mattresses, sheets, pillowcases and duvets from inside the store and sheets, pillowcases, etc.

Why not. It could all be IKEA stuff.

Okay. Okay. Racked is covering the IKEA camp site in excruciating detail. Apparently there are tons of reporters/bloggers over there and the Port-A-Potties are already out of toilet paper.

Meanwhile, the neighborhood awaits the arrival of IKEA traffic, which is feared to bring as many as 14,000 cars per weekend. There is a mix of apprehension and excitement. Some residents have fought the idea of an IKEA in Red Hook for years. Others thought it would bring jobs and resources to the neighborhood. It remains to be see whether it’s a good or bad thing. Or maybe it’s a little of both.

In today’s New York Times, Ian Marvy of Added Value, the organic farm which is right across the street from IKEA, is quoted:

“There’s real apprehension,” he said during an interview at his farm on
Saturday. “Manhattan’s population doubles in a day, and we all know the
impact. You’re talking about tripling the population of this
neighborhood.”

He also said that he’s approached IKEA about collaborating on a composting system. "We have to make lemonade," he told the Times. 

There’s gossip afoot that the Education Department has plans to redraw PS 321’s boundaries. Just this morning my own sister told me that she heard it was happening. I told her that it’s not happening. At least for now. However, the Brooklyn Paper reports that some parents at PS 321 are advocating for that.

I for one haven’t heard anyone advocate for that. Although, parents are wondering what will happen when all those apartment towers on Fourth Avenue fill with families? Will PS 321 become even more over-crowded. Limiting the catchment would certainly aggravate a lot of people who moved into the neighborhood for the school. It would also aggravate those who like the extra value placed on their real estate because they are in the catchment. The Brooklyn Paper does say:

The Department of Education says it has no immediate plans to redraw the school boundaries in District 15, which includes PS 321, though agency spokesman Andrew Jacobs told The Brooklyn Paper that the city is looking at all options to reduce crowding. These measures include cutting back on variances that allow out-of-district parents to send their kids to popular schools like PS 321.

Currently, children who live in the area approximately bounded by Third Avenue, Prospect Park West, and Fifth and Union streets can attend PS 321, a K-5 school

Call it what you will. Gossip. anxiety. jitters about overcrowding. It’s definitely in the Park Slope Zeitgeist.

Today is Bloomsday, which is, according to Wikipedia, “a commemoration observed annually on 16 June in Dublin and elsewhere to celebrate the life of Irish writer James Joyce and relive the events in his novel Ulysses, all of which took place on the same day in Dublin in 1904. The day is a secular holiday in Ireland. The name derives from Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of Ulysses, and 16 June was the date of Joyce’s first outing with his wife-to-be, Nora Barnacle, when they walked to the Dublin village of Ringsend.”

Park Slope’s Michele Madigan Somerville is presenting excerpts from Ulysses at Ceol, an Irish pub on Smith Street. This should be quite an evening. Begins at 7:30.

Monday
June 16th
7:30 pm
featuring readings from Ulysses
by James Joyce

Ceol
191 Smith Street
between Baltic and Warren
in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn
www,ceolpub.com
347 643 9911

Always love a note from Catherine Bohne, owner of the Community Bookstore and the Vice President of the Park Slope Chamber of Commerce. Of course, the Community Bookstore is going a little bit overboard in their celebration of the Fair. They got a tent and everything.

Catherine here, writing with two hats on (picture it as an Ottoman sort of thing, hat-wise, I mean, not so much like a hassock). The less concrete hat is as the Vice President of Park Slope’s Chamber of Commerce (yes, boys and girls, in a stunning twist of fate, the Bookstore has gone, in one small year (thanks to you), from being an almost dead duck, to a thriving representative of local commerce, with me as VeePee at the semi-helm!) Ahem (a-helm!).

As VeePee, I’m asking you to come down and check out the Seventh Heaven Street Fair this weekend. The hither-to semi-defunct Park Slope Chamber of Commerce has woken up, been reinvigorated, and immediately began twisting local merchants’ arms, and asking them to take part (Trust us! It Will be Great!), so that Local Businesses are turning out in unprecedented numbers. It’s a start, to turning the annual Street Fair back to being a Local Celebration. Something like 80 local merchants are going to be strutting their stuff en plein air on that day, and I’d urge you to visit them, in addition to the (of course delectable) ubiquitous sausage and sock merchants.

Most of the good restaurants (where you sometimes can’t get a reservation) will be dishing it up, and out. There’s a Crafter’s Alley at the South End of the Slope, with over 30 local artisans selling their stuff (we never did that before!). Between 3rd and 4th is Do-Gooder’s Alley, with all the local Civic Organizations turning out, in addition to representatives from other important concerns (if nothing else – VOTER REGISTRATION! ) If you want to come and do your thing – Please DO! Wandering Minstrels and Spontaneous Dog Parades are welcome, and positively, downright encouraged. Let’s make it an Avenue-Long Block Party! And as for the Bookstore, what are we doing? (Here comes the concrete hat, which is almost certainly better than concrete shoes!!!)

Ah yes . . . . well . . . . See, once we decided to take part, we went a little overboard . . . . Anyhow, we’ve got this Tent. And given that, we’re going to take the indoors out. We’ll have this tent of more-than-oriental- splendor (that’s a Kipling reference, for those of you who are feeling sleepy), and we’re going to fill it with oriental carpets, sofas, a burbling fountain, peacock feathers, confetti cannons, a star turn by Mrs. De Ropp (our Hamster, and can you name the literary reference?) and . . . . Children’s books. We’ve gotten in boxes and boxes of wonderful books by local authors, and have half a dozen of them, the authors and illustrators themselves ((including but-not-limited- to : David Ezra Stein, Melanie Hope Greenberg, Marilyn Singer, Robert Weinstock and Nina Crews!, and maybe more, who knows?) turning up to sign stock read aloud, or, who knows, just fire off the cannon. Personally, I envisage vats of Sangria, too.

Please come by, and bounce your Little Genius off our cushions. Stand by, at full attention, for the hourly firing of the ceremonial big (confetti) gun. And wallow in the pleasure of all the fun of childhood, of pictures, and games and dreams. Or, if all this is too much for you, you can always grab a peacock feather, and head to the garden, where there are almost certain to be fellow shiverers, sopping up the jam juice, and telling stories, keeping out of the way.

In any case, we urge and invite you to join us. The neighborhood’ s venturing out of doors! Anything (cripey!) might happen!

Here’s a great list from Park Slope Parents.

KIDVERSE; LOST DOG

Dad says he took me to a game
Of baseball at age four
But all I can remember is
The frank that plopped to the floor.

I’ve since attended many games,
A few that can’t be topped.
My strongest baseball memory?
The hot dog that I dropped.

Thankfully, Makeba’s fellow South African and renowned vocalist Sibongile Khumalo has agreed to step in and has traveled to the U.S. specifically to perform at Celebrate Brooklyn!

Sadly, a fall sustained by Miriam Makeba late last week has forced the cancellation of her U.S. dates. Although it makes her deeply sorry to disappoint her loyal fans, Ms. Makeba’s doctors are not allowing her to travel!

A multi-talented vocalist, Sibongile Khumalo, performs traditional South African and European sounds, to jazzy melodies, she glides from world to world with specifically South African flavours.

8 p.m. tonight at Celebrate Brooklyn

This is one of my favorite Park Slope events: the Brooklyn Pride Festival starts at 9am on Prospect Park West from 9th to 15th Streets.

Tonight: the parade begins at Bartel-Pritchard Circle, goes down 15th Street and goes north down 7th Avenue through Park Slope.

See the great floats, the fun bands, the costumes, the politicians. Everyone comes out for this event. See pix from last year at Flatbush Gardener.

As reported in the Brooklyn Paper, Starbucks has introduced a brand new non-caffeinated drink: The Brooklyn

Manhattan has its eponymous bourbon and vermouth. And Brooklyn now has its … ice milk and caramel syrup?

Apparently, a Starbucks vanilla bean frappuccino — with a caramel swirl! — will be our borough’s star in the culinary firmament.

Created by a Starbucks district manager after noticing high school girls customizing the traditional vanilla bean frappuccino, “The Brooklyn” consists of nothing more than the ubiquitous chain’s existing drink, enhanced with a bit more sugar.

A Starbucks on Court Street broke the “news” this week by putting out an A-frame sign heralding, “The new all time favorite drink…the Brooklyn.”

Oh, and did we mention that it’s 40 more cents ($4.90 for a venti!) — and 20 more calories (620, but who’s counting?) — than the standard frappuccino.

The whole thing may feel like a scam — or a way for Starbucks bean counters to stave off the vanilla bean frappuccino blues — but hours after the sign was deployed outside that Court Street Starbucks, customers were genuinely abuzz (and there’s no caffeine in a “Brooklyn,” either!).

I briefly met Brad Lander, candidate for Bill De Blasio’s city council seat, yesterday in front of PS 321 (his kids go to PS 107). He told me that he was going to participate in the Brooklyn PTA Fun Run on Friday night in Prospect Park.

Lander seemed a little bit embarrassed to talk about his campaign for an election that is more than a year away. “There’s a really important election first,” he said (I may be paraphrasing there). That was endearing. But the City Council race is definitely heating up and the field is filling up for De Blasio and Yassky’s spots.

Lander strikes me as a smart and low-key guy who obviously cares an awful lot about affordable housing, public schools, and Brooklyn communities. He can’t be that low key if he’s a politician. And he’s got an impressive resume: He’s got two master’s degrees – one in City and Regional Planning from Pratt and a second in Social Anthropology from the University College London. He also holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago.

In his current capacity as Director of the Pratt Center for Community Development, Brad works to preserve and strengthen neighborhood quality of life, promote sustainability, and create opportunity in low-income areas.

Under his leadership, the Center’s successes include winning community-sensitive zoning in Bedford Stuyvesant, preserving affordable housing for public housing residents on Staten Island, convening a new grassroots coalition dedicated to transit improvements in low-income neighborhoods, and helping to create new parks as part of a greenway along the Bronx River.

Before Pratt, he was the director of the Fifth Avenue Committee. All and all, an impressive resume for the job.

Hey, Brad how was the fun run?

Brooklyn PTA is a new group with a website.

As budget cuts of $450 million loom, teams from the PS10, PS29, PS39, PS 107, PS 139, Brooklyn New School (PS 146), and PS 295 will join forces to run, raise funds jointly for their schools, and challenge the Bloomberg Administration’s proposed cuts. Funds raised from the run will be shared equally among participating schools, with 50% of the total split equally amongst all the schools that participate, and 50% divided up based on the size of the schools.

My friend, Dr. Gina Barreca, talks about trying on swimsuits at TJ Maxx on this YouTube video. It’s HILARIOUS!

In this clip, she was delivering a keynote at the National Speaker Association in 2007 and redefining what it means to be a feminist. Needless to say, she is available for speaking engagements.

Dr. Gina is a professor of English and feminist theory at the University of Connecticut. Her books include They Used to Call Me Snow White, but I Drifted; Perfect Husbands and Other Fairy Tales; Babes in Boyland; and, with Gene Weingarten of The Washington Post, I’m With Stupid.

She’s written or edited other books on vice, Victorians and sex, American humor, the erotics of instruction, The Sopranos, women’s humor, and Italian-American literature. She blogs about teaching, sex, humor, money, publishing, ambition, books, marriage, envy (professional and personal), politics (professional and personal), aging, and cartoons here.

My visit to IKEA sits uncomfortably in my stomach. It didn’t feel right even though I enjoyed the delicious buffet and the gorgeous city views.

They’re boasting about their opening celebration and all the freebies. Giving out 35 free sofas. Big Deal. The idea that people are going to wait on line for two days bothers me.

They’re doing other stuff too (listed below).

But what about the 17,000 visitors they’re expecting. How many of them are going to take public transportation and water taxis when it’s big items like sofas, wall units, and kitchen appliances that they’re buying???

Yes, IKEA has delivery. But still.

Their first weekend could be hellish; the narrow streets of Red Hook clogged with traffic. Everyone is waiting to see what that’s like. Quiet Red Hook transformed into a traffic nightmare.

Here’s the list of opening day activities and freebies:

— Sofa-get about it! – The first 35 adults (18 and over) in line at the IKEA Brooklyn grand opening on June 18, 2008 will receive a free EKTORP three-seat sofa.

— Take a Seat (And We Mean Take It!) – The next 100 adults (18 and over) in line at the IKEA Brooklyn grand opening on June 18, 2008 will receive a free POANG armchair.

— Pick a Card, Any Card – The first 2,500 people to visit IKEA Brooklyn on June 18, 2008 will receive a random prize envelope with IKEA Gift Cards ranging from $10 to $250, or vouchers for a free cinnamon bun, hotdog or frozen yogurt.

— You Say It’s Your Birthday – Visitors who bring proof to IKEA Brooklyn on June 18 that it is their birthday will receive a $10 gift card.

— For the (Truly) Young at Heart – The first 100 children (under 18) in line at IKEA Brooklyn’s grand opening on June 18, 2008 will receive a free FAMNIG heart-shaped cushion.

— Enter to Win When Entering our Home – From June 18 through June 22, 2008, visitors to IKEA Brooklyn may enter a drawing to win one of ten $1,000 IKEA Gift Cards. IKEA will match the prizes (a total of $10,000) by donating to Red Hook’s Conover House, a supportive housing program that provides a stable, nurturing environment for families in need.

— Play Big and Eat Big (If You’re Little!) – Entertainment for kids such as balloon artists and face-painting will take place at IKEA Brooklyn from June 18 through June 22. Kids also can enjoy a macaroni-and-cheese meal with a fountain drink for 99 cents.

— It’s Easy Being Green – On Thursday, June 19 and Friday, June 20, the first 1,000 visitors each day will receive a three-inch tropical plant, representing IKEA roots planted in Brooklyn.

Councilmember Bill de Blasio released the following statement regarding the charges against architect Robert Scarano.

“It is about time that Robert Scarano is held accountable for his illegal and dangerous actions. Scarano is the worst example of an architect who continues to build in this city despite his long history of violating zoning and building codes and practicing unsafe construction.

“Almost one year ago to date, I joined community activists calling on the State Education Department to revoke Scarano’s license because of his shoddy track record. Once again, I am calling on the State to revoke Scarano’s license. What more do we need to know about his record of lies to determine that he should not be permitted to operate in our city?

“It is critical that developers and architects around the city know that they cannot operate above the law. Nobody gets a pass on unlawful activities, especially those that endanger the lives of our citizens. Scarano’s constant law breaking and falsification of documents and statements is inexcusable.”

Councilmember de Blasio repeatedly called for Scarano to be taken off the project at 360 Smith Street. On February 11th, developer Billy Stein announced that he removed Scarano from the project and replaced him with Armand Quadrini of KSK architects due to intense pressure from the community.