Last year at this time there was a tornado in Brooklyn. Here’s the OTBKB story from last year:

A CRAZY MORNING IN BROOKLYN

The storm lasted maybe an hour but it was very intense and thunder and lightening woke many Brooklynites. It managed to unleash a tornado that touched Staten Island, but whipped through southwestern Brooklyn at breakneck speed with winds going 135 miles an hour.

This all happened before the morning rush hour and managed to paralyze the transit system, flooding tracks, tunnels, and major thoroughfares.

In Park Slope, there was gushing water everywhere. Met Food on Seventh Avenue near 2nd Street was filled with water, as was their basement. The storm wreaked havoc all over the Slope. Water filled the Grand Army Plaza train station making it look, one friend told me, “like there had been a mudslide.”

All day, readers sent pictures from Bay Ridge which looked like a major disaster area with fallen trees, wrecked cars, broken windows and damaged buidlings. Ditmas Park also had many fallen trees and building damage.

By 9 am it was a bright sunny day and if you weren’t reading a blog or listening to the news you might not have known that there had been a serious storm.

OTBKB readers who left early for the subway were shocked to find that the trains weren’t running. Many people just gave up and stayed home. Others waited hours for trains. One reader did get a train out of Grand Army Plaza, after waiting an hour, but it only went to Atlantic Avenue, where she waited for a R train and then gave up.

I kid you not: Just as the tribe of beautiful performers dressed as hippies began to sing “Let the Sunshine In” during the opening night performance of “Hair” at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, it began to rain ferociously.

While audience members popped their umbrellas, the cast members seemed to revel in the downpour during this, their climatic moment in an evening of memorable moments. It was an intoxicating rain dance and the line between artifice and reality just slipped away; an unforgettable ending to a wildly energetic and stirring revival of the great 1960’s tribal rock musical.

But that’s not all. Moments later, hundreds of people from the audience joined the cast on stage and danced uproariously for the length of the informal curtain call.

A ravishing and crowded mesh of New Yorkers up on the stage in the rain dancing to the music of “Hair.” That was an unforgettable moment for me and it was indicative of the way this production captures the imagination of a new generation of theater-goers, as well as boomers like myself who wore out their copy of the Hair album (and can sing along with every song but I didn’t).

My friend Anna Becker, producer of Life in a Marital Institution, James Braly’s virtuosic monologue at the Soho Playhouse, who took me to opening night, actually saw Hair as a 7-year old during its original run at the Public Theater.

It was hard not to be enthralled with the overall emotion of the evening.”Hair” is truly a classic show with a pantheon of great songs. The first act alone is is a veritable hit parade: Aquarius, Donna, Sodomy, Manchester, England, Air, I Got Life, Initials, Hair, My Conviction, Easy to Be Hard, Frank Mills, Hare Krishna and Where Do I Go.

The second act is darker and more narrative in a way. Much of it is a long hallucination about Vietnam and it contains some of my favorites like Walking in Space, Three-Five-Zero_Zero, The Flesh Failures, Let the Sunshine In and the transcendent What a Piece of Work is Man (lyrics by Shakespeare).

As someone who knows the score backwards and forwards, I will admit to some disappointments. Easy To Be Hard and Good Morning Starshine were totally lackluster. Frank Mills was slightly better. Overall the cast numbers were the best. Tony nominated Jonathan Groff from Spring Awakening gave a great performances, as did Will Swenson as Berger and Bryce Ryness as Woof. Patina Renea Miller, who sang Aquarius and other great numbers, also deserves special mention.

The show’s dramatic ark goes from euphoric hippydom to the darker realities. The song “Where Do I Go” perfectly encapsulates the feeling of the show in the second act: you can drop out but you can’t really escape what’s to come. In addition to growing up, the harsher realities of the world awaits these beautiful flower children.

This production of “Hair” is a history play that expertly transports the audience to the collective joy of the 1960’s without hiding the darker elements of war, drugs, sex without love, sexism, and aging.

The future awaits. And we all know that show.

Talking to residents of 8th Street between 8th Avenue and the Park, it was obvious why they were chosen as the Greenest Block in Brooklyn.

Block spirit!

Winners of the annual contest sponsored by the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and Greenbridge were selected by an expert panel of judges that included professional horticulturists from Brooklyn Botanic Garden, metro area horticulture professionals, gardening journalists, and other New York City greening organizations.

Mike and Joanne Dowding, whose 8th Street stoop was festooned with giant, tropical-looking elephant ear leaves, said that the block really pulled together with parties and events where everyone worked together. "And the opening of the tree pits. That really made a difference," he added.

Thandi Center of 8th Street said it was "the time and energy that people put into this" that resulted in their win.  According to Center, both sides of the block worked together on this effortful project. And it wasn’t just single family homes. "People in the apartment buildings got involved, too," she said.

"The block has come a long way in a year,"  Center said. She also cited events like the Wine and Mulch, a fun way to bring neighbors together for gardening activities. 

Borough President Marty Markowitz, who lives around the corner from the winning block, told the crowd that Park Slope is one of the most  beautiful places to live in the city and in the state.

"Tip of the trowel to the winning block in the most beautiful borough. There are no losers. This is just one more green jewel to our crown."

The second place tie for greenest block went to the East 25th Street Block Association in East Flatbush and the Sate Street Cathedral Block Asociation in Boerum.

The third place tie went to Schenectady Avenue Block Association in East Flatbush and the Bainbrige Homeowners and Tenants Block Association in Bed-Stuy.

In the commercial category, Bond Street from Atlantic to Pacific was the big winner. Innovative and environmentally sound irrigation techniques were cited. For the greenest storefront, first place went to Cake Man Raven at 708 Fulton Street.

Best window box award went to Kathy Geisler at 353 State Street. In Second place, Donna and Edward Drakes in Bed-Stuy (pictured).

So many neighborhoods were represented and it was a very diverse crowd at the ceremony on 8th Street.  I believe Bed-Stuy may have won the most awards but there were winners and runners-ups from Crown Heights, Fort Greene, Prospect Heights, Boerum Hill, Prospect Park South Lefferts Gardens, Clinton Hill, Sheepshead Bay, Downtown, and East Flatbush.

For a complete list of winners, runner ups, and honorable mentions, go to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden website.   

Your pick: Little Murders on Friday at 6:30 or The Long Good Bye (directed by Robert Altman) on Saturday at 6:30. Elliott Gould will be there to do a Q&A with audience members. Check the BAM site (bam.org) for more ‘tails.

The real reason Park Slope’s 8th Street (between 8th Avenue and the Park) snagged the Greenest Block award this year is because the block has fantastic team spirit and everyone came together—young, old, brownstoners and apartment dwellers—to do a little something to make the block green and special.

No, it’s not the Botanical Gardens over there. In fact, 8th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues is even more lush. But there was clearly a great spirit of cooperation and hard work on the winning block and I think that’s probably what convinced the judges that they deserved the shout-out Block dwellers like Thandie Center also said that the block has come a long way since last year when they embarked on this energetic group effort.

So sour grapes from Gersh, who I saw at the ceremony. He was none-too-impressed. But that’s okay. Quite a few of us were. Here’s an excerpt from Gersh’s scathing column (/brooklynpaper.com/stories/31/31/31_31_gk_green_angle.html):

I came to compost Eighth Street, not to praise it. Yes, I was there on Wednesday, when the gray expanse between Eighth Avenue and Prospect Park West was named the “Greenest Block in Brooklyn” by the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

Up and down the block, I saw well-maintained tree beds. I gazed at beautiful window boxes. I inhaled the lush fragrance of begonias, impatiens and rugelach (oh, sorry, that was the refreshments table). I rolled around in mulch.

But there’s one problem with the Botanic Garden’s announcement: This ain’t the greenest block in Brooklyn.

Yes, there beautiful sweet potato vine arrangements, but there are also filthy, exposed garbage cans. Yes, the tree pits look like the Ritz, but some houses have cement courtyards without so much as a drop of green paint.

Sorry to stick a green thumb in the eye of the borough’s horticultural elite, but calling Eighth Street between Prospect Park West and Eighth Avenue the “greenest block” is a decision that will tarnish the Brooklyn Botanic Garden worse than the High Court was damaged by Bush v. Gore.

Full disclosure: I visit this Eighth Street block all the time because my daughter is close friends with another 6-year-old on the block. Yet in all those visits, I never once leaned in close to my wife and said, “Boy, what a green block! I wish we could sell our apartment — at a loss, even! — to move to such verdant splendor.

”

My stepmother just called to say that there was a murder in Brooklyn Heights yesterday. Interestingly, I was in Brooklyn Heights until about 4:30 yesterday. I noticed that there was a police presence at Grand Army Plaza but that may have been unrelated. It turns out that it was not a murder. Police have ruled out criminality. Still, it’s a strange kind of death. Found in a bathtub with stab wounds.

My stepmother told me that Clark and Hicks Street were closed off yesterday and residents were required to show ID. Last night, she and my dad saw helicopters with search lights. She told me to look on the Brooklyn Heights Blog so I did. Here’s the story from yesterday.

The Brooklyn Eagle is reporting that a 42-year-old man was found dead in his apartment at 166 Hicks Street between Clark and Pierrepont. Reportedly stabbed to death in his bathtub (see update 2 below). We’ve received reports that Hicks Street around Clark Street has been cordoned off by the police as they investigate the crime.

Update: NYPD is on the scene. Current word is that authorities have not determined if the death was a murder or suicide.

Update 2 from BHB’s Weegee: The police have identified the victim as Graham Barnett, 42, of 166 Hicks Street. He was pronounced dead by EMS at 4:15 p.m., (on Tuesday) and was found to have multiple stab wounds to the torso. Cops recovered knives at the scene, and do not suspect criminality. Barnett’s wife was being questioned at the 84th Precinct.

Update 3: The NY Sun is the first paper with a blurb, reiterating weegee’s report that the police do not suspect criminality:

McBrooklyn also has the story with pictures.

Yup, 8th Street between 8th Avenue and Prospect Park West is the winner of the annual Greenest Block in Brooklyn contest. The festivities were from 10-12 this morning. The press, the president of the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens and plenty of politicians were there as were winners in other categories, neighbors and friends. The competition was described as friendly but fierce and 8th Street was cited for the way the entire block pulled together to beautify their block, with window boxes, tree pits, and attractive container gardens.

Yesiree, it’s a gorgeous Park Slope block with loads of community spirit. Kudo’s to everyone who lives there and gardens so beautifully!

In the pix many of the 8th Street green thumbs and loads of local officials.

I love Neil Feldman’s e-newsletter Not Only Brooklyn, Wondrous Free Arts and Events in Brooklyn but not limitied to Brooklyn. I urge all Brooklynites interested in the cultural bounty this borough has to offer to subscribe to NOB. All you gotta do is send an email to arbrunr@aol.com with the message “Subscribe to NOB” and your first and last name, so it is legal to add you to the subscription list. Tell him OTBKB told you about it.
And NOB’s Wondrous Event of the Day:

* 6-9:45: Brooklyn Bridge Park: Music At The Bridge Welcomes Union Hall The two year old bar has been presenting an eclectic selection of indie music, comedy, literary readings, and one of NOB’s favorite events, the monthly Secret Science Club when brilliant scientists, including Nobel laureates, make things comprehensible, and maybe even funny, to all of us non-brainiacs who have not looked at a science book since high school. So tonight Brooklyn performer, writer and comedian Dave Hill emcees an program that begins at 6:30 with physicist David Maiullo of Rutgers Univ performing fascinating experiments that will make your hair stand on end, literally. At 7 siblings Ivan and Ada AKA Tiny Masters of Today perform pubescent pop. The Headlights come on at 7:40 followed by French Kicks at 8:45. FREE! Dock St & Water St

The Big City

Just off the airport bus at Grand Central,
A family of four
Puts down their bags while Mom seeks info
On subways at a store.

“It’s this way,” she tells her kids and Dad,
“A train called the Shuttle goes
To our hotel where we can all
Unpack and change our clothes.”

The couple and their solemn daughters,
Who look about seven and ten,
Walk down the ramp in the direction
Of subway-card selling men.

And Mom reaches into a fabric bag
For helmets she knew to prepare:
“Now girls, let’s tie these tightly on–
It could be rough down there.”

Hillary, the blue-haired cashier at Shawn’s Liquors and one of the Park Slope 100 from 2006, is also a dedicated and nurturing cat rescuer; she fosters something like twenty cats. The following is about a fundraising event for the group she fosters for.

The Broadway Comedy Club at 318 West 53rd Street (between 8th and 9th Avenues) has generously donated Friday night, August 22 to us to hold a fabulous, much needed fundraiser, a night of Comedy to benefit Kensington Kitties – Rescue and Adoption Group – desperately in need of space and resources! Top names in Comedy are coming out to lay on the laughs for us!

This benefit will go a long way to saving precious lives! Just this past week, we found Blossom, a very sick 2-week old kitten left to die in 95 degree heat in a shoe box on the street and two kittens we are now bottlefeeding because they were abandoned by their mother in a backyard (see photos below.) This benefit will help us keep Blossom and others alive and find them new homes. We would love you to join us! We depend on your kindness, generosity and love of animals. We need your support to continue rescuing abandoned, unwanted and unfortunate cats and kittens.

C’mon all you cat people! LOVE, LAUGH, MAKE A DIFFERENCE
See you there! Doors open at 7:30, show at 8 sharp!
$20 purr person….

I just got this email from someone over at the Brooklyn Film & Arts Festival set for December 2008. It’s a call for Brooklyn-focused Documentaries. The films will be screened at the Brooklyn Historical Society.

The Brooklyn Film & Arts Festival is currently accepting submissions of Brooklyn-focused documentaries for our December, 2008 screening at the Brooklyn Historical Society.

The Brooklyn Film & Arts Festival documentaries screening program invites filmmakers to submit short documentaries about Brooklyn, Brooklyn history & culture, changing-Brooklyn, Brooklynites, Brooklyn communities, diverse Brooklyn neighborhoods and Brooklyn’s people.

Please visit our website www.FilmBrooklyn.org for more information about the Brooklyn Film & Arts Festival.

I’ve always loved Richie Havens, who was the opening act at Woodstock in 1969. According to Park Slope’s Ben Greenman in the New Yorker, he has a great new album just out called Nobody Left to Crown.

“Nobody Left to Crown” (Verve Forecast), Havens’s first recording in four years, opens with a pair of originals, “The Key” and “Say It Isn’t So,” which manage to address spiritual themes without sounding overly earnest, a trick that sometimes eluded the artist in his younger years. The centerpiece of the album is a majestic cover of “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” Over his trademark open-tuned strumming, Havens delivers a commanding vocal performance that fully restores the revolutionary impulse of The Who’s original; he somehow gets blood from a song that has been ossified for years. Nothing else quite rises to that level, though there’s an urgent version of Jackson Browne’s “Lives in the Balance” and several strong tracks in which Haven applies Eastern-style enlightenment to Realpolitik—including the quietly furious title song, which slyly quotes “Home on the Range.”

And he’s a Brooklyn boy to boot. Born in Bed-Stuy. Here will be performing on August 7 at noon. Marcus Carl Franklin, the incredible kid who played one of the Bob Dylan’s in “Im Not There” WILL BE THERE. Note to self: Don’t miss this.

TheBlogThatMustNotBeNamed.com does not like Cuil, the new search engine developed by ex-Google employees. He, like so many others, was all set to embrace a viable alternative to Google.

My point in telling you all this is that I really
wanted to love Cuil – I would LOVE for Google’s demise to be made
hyper-imminent by a bunch of whiny ex-employees disgruntled because
Sergey stopped givin’ em free daycare. No dice – Cuil sucks the sweat off a dead man’s balls and is set to become iconic of failure like the twenty-first century boo.com.

Everyone wanted to like it. And a boatload of venture capitalists invest in it. The problem is this: it’s pretty bad. The Blog Must Not Be Named addresses a lot of the problems. But one thing really ticked him off:

5) The ultimate crime: Cuil can’t find blognigger, even when you search for it directly.
This is emblematic of the whole problem – when you search for
something, Cuil returns wacky shit based on searching MORE webpages,
instead of looking for what real people want. They couldn’t take my
search term, add ".com" to it and send it back? FAILS!

The following is a note from Tara Schuster, OTBKB reader and the playwright of  Be Brave, Anna! , which is playing in this year’s New York International Fringe Festival

Bringing together 20 artists from the gutter to tell the story of Anna
Nicole Smith, Be Brave, Anna! is a 19th century French melodrama of the life and
times of Anna Nicole Smith. Discover American virtue: trash, glitter,
ambition, and your own series on E! In a world of reality television,
YouTube confessionals, and celebrity worship, what’s a girl from Texas
to do?

According to Schuster, the show is definitely a comedy "but it is written out of love for Anna and all the blond bombshells before her," she wrote in an email.

The show has a website and is playing 8/15 at 6:45; 8/17 2:45; 8/21 9:45; 8/22 3:00; 8/23 3:30 at Venue 12 (115 MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village). In the playwright’s own words:

The play began as my own investigation into
the significance of reality television and celebrity worship in
contemporary America. At the bequest of my playwriting professor at
Brown, Paula Vogel, I took off for Paris- I needed exile, I needed
language barriers, I needed to be alone. I was going to Paris to write-
but with no particular project in mind.

I
decided not to speak English, to completely immerse myself in my new
home. I was here to study the French melodrama and to write- no
distractions allowed. Well, almost no distractions. While living in my
14th century apartment (not as romantic as it sounds), I discovered the
sacred pages of Perezhilton.com. Whenever I felt lonely, or just wanted
a lifeline back to America I would check the pages, searching for
gossip, for glam, for, spectacle. As fate would have it, on my second
week in Paris, I was shocked to find out that Anna Nicole Smith had
died. In America, truth be told, I had never really thought about her,
or paid attention to her doings, but in Paris, I was transfixed by the
unfolding drama of her life and death. Something about her death-
something about the way it was plastered all over the pages of
PerezHilton.com, something about the spectacle, about the salacious
details, about the true timelessness of the event made me question what
it meant to be American, what it meant to want celebrity above all else.

The
more I researched the life of Anna, and the way her unfolding story was
being told, the more I saw that Anna’s life and death was not a
tragedy, but a melodrama. It seemed that Melodrama, a low-form of
theatre in 19th century was present in the black and white of reality
television. In melodrama as in reality television, the world is black
and white; life is reduced to a series of challenges, villains, and
heroes.

"Be Brave, Anna!" posits Anna as the
ultimate woman of American virtue. Wrongly accused of being a witch,
she ventures out of her native Texas to redeem her good name. Along the
way we meet J. Howard Marshall, the sweet billionaire, Virgie Mae, the
diabolical mother, and of course, Hugh Hefner, friend to the weak and
marginalized. Exploding with glitter, gesture, dance, and magic, "Be
Brave, Anna!" investigates fame and celebrity through the melodramatic
imagination.

Thanks to McBrooklyn for clueing me in on employment opportunities at Trader Joe’s. For more Brooklyn job opps, check out McB’s blog.

As everyone knows, I need a job and I need it bad (with benefits preferably).

For the Trader Joe’s job you must apply in person this week, Monday to Friday from 10 am until 7 pm. Should I?  

It’s really happening! Brooklyn’s Trader Joe’s is hiring Food Demonstrators and Crew Members. They are looking for:

"… a food-loving people-person who shops in our store and loves to entertain! If you like people, love food, are ambitious and adventuresome, enjoy smiling, and have a strong sense of values, Trader Joe’s is definitely for you. Come be part of the excitement!"

Food Demonstrator Qualifications: "The ideal Food Demonstrator will have a passion for people, be gracious and outgoing, and be a self-starter who’s organized and a team player. We’re looking for someone who can create an exciting, warm, fun and friendly shopping environment. Lots of customer interaction. This is a great job for a real people-person. Familiarity with Trader Joe’s products a plus. High school graduate preferred. Trader Joe’s is an equal opportunity employer committed to hiring a diverse crew.