For further information, visit www.thecivilians.org

Brooklyn is changing fast. We are creating Brooklyn At Eye Level, a theater show inspired by interviews about the transformation of Brooklyn and the controversial Atlantic Yards Project. If you have something to say about the communities surrounding the proposed project (Downtown, Ft. Greene, Clinton Hill, Crown Heights, Prospect Heights & Park Slope), we want to listen.

We want to talk to long-term residents, recent arrivals, players in the Atlantic Yards story, as well as those who work or live in the area. Eager to hear from all perspectives.

If you want to be interviewed send us an email with a little information about yourself to Michael Premo, Project Coordinator: Premo(at)thecivilians(dot)org.  For more information: www.brooklynateyelevel.org .

These interviews will be performed along with original music and dance by Urban Bush Women live at the Brooklyn Lyceum, December 4th – 7th.

Here’s something about The Civilians from Theatermania:

The award-winning theater troupe The Civilians will present their newest work, Brooklyn at Eye Level, at the Brooklyn Lyceum, December 4-7.

This new work will examine the surge of development in Brooklyn, with a
specific focus on the controversial Atlantic Yards project and its
effect on the surrounding communities.

The group, led by artistic
director Steven Cosson, will conduct interviews with residents,
business owners, politicians, and civic organizations in preparation
for the show. They will also work with playwright Lucy Thurber, dance
company Urban Bush Women, and composer Michael Friedman, along with a
variety of local artists.

After the December performances, the company will use the
material to develop a full-length theater piece, along with online
content and other future programs.

The Civilians are currently performing This Beautiful City at Los Angeles’ Kirk Douglas Theater, which will also be produced at New York’s Vineyard Theatre in 2009.
Their other work includes Gone Missing and Paris Commune.

The road less traveled. Photograph by Tom Martinez

As mentioned on Park Slope Parents:

A resident of St Johns Place between 7th and 8th Aves) reported a mugging at gunpoint on Saturday night. The resident was apparently walking up St Johns from 7th Avenue. She turned to enter her  house. While looking for her keys, she was approached by two men, who then forced the resident into the house vestibule.

The resident was then threatened with a gun and robbed. These details were posted up and down St. John’s Place this morning.

Does anyone have more details?

Flatbush Gardener has an incredibly interesting post about the Malbone Street wreck, the worst transit disaster in NYC history, which occurred just outside Prospect Park. Here’s an excerpt from FG.

On November 1, 1918, the worst transit disaster in New York City history
occurred just outside Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
The wooden cars of the Brighton Beach line of the Brooklyn Rapid
Transit (B.R.T.) company left the tracks, crashing inside the tunnel
beneath the busy intersection where Flatbush Avenue, Ocean Avenue and
Malbone Street met [Google map].
The Malbone Street Wreck killed nearly 100 people and injured more than
250. Criminal trials and lawsuits arising from the accident dragged on
for years.

That’s Toby Pannone, with his dad Stephen on the right and his brother on the left, as the G train. You can read all about Toby on this blog.

Toby and his family made last year’s Park Slope 100.

Suffice it to say, this costume won a big prize at the Halloween costume contest sponsored by the Park Slope Civic Council.

I noticed this group at the parade but had no idea it was Toby and his family.

In a recent blog post, his mom Mooki writes,

"Toby is 5 years old. He started kindergarten(!!!). He has hair the color of sun-kissed
wheat, and is up to 48 pounds. He reads SpongeBob comic books, takes
showers by himself and eats at least 2 Italian ices a day. He has a new
invisible bug friend named Mercator, and he’s learning Spanish at
school. He is an awesome little boy."

Correction: You are an awesome family!

Picture by Gilley. Check out her Flickr page.

Here is this week’s Smartmom from the Brooklyn Paper.

Remember “My Mother the Car,” that wacky 1966 show, which starred
Jerry Van Dyke as a guy whose deceased mother was reincarnated as a car?

Well, Smartmom has her late father’s Subaru Impreza now and it reminds her of that classic. Sort of.

It’s not like her dad — Groovy Grandpa — has been reincarnated as
the car or that his spirits are in there, but there is something. When
Smartmom is in the car, she feels a connection with her dad and the way
he did things. Little discoveries:

• Oh, that’s where he kept that card he used to get into the garage!

• Why did he put the tire gauge in that dashboard compartment? It makes so much noise when it rolls around.

• Why are all those books he bought at a library sale in the back?

Truly, the car that really epitomizes Groovy Grandpa is the light
blue Austin Healey, that was the family car from the time Smartmom was
born until she was about 8.

Now that was a great car. Manhattan Granny and Groovy Grandpa bought
it on a trip to England in 1957, during the “Two for the Road” phase of
their marriage. In pictures from those days, Manhattan Granny looks
very Jean Seberg with her short, dark hair and Groovy Grandpa is
awfully handsome with his neatly trimmed beard and tweed jacket. The
two of them drove to Italy and later shipped the car home to New York.

After a while, young Smartmom and Diaper Diva got too big to fit in
the tiny back seat of the sporty, four-seat convertible, so her father
sold it.

Finally, the Subaru Impreza.

On Aug. 19, just weeks before Groovy Grandpa died, Smartmom was
driving out of the driveway of the house she and Hepcat rent in Sag
Harbor very, very slowly. Suddenly, there was a Land Rover in the rear
window, small at first, then bigger and then huge.

Then, crash.

The right rear tail light of the Subaru was SMASHED. The Land Rover had no damage whatsoever. It was like hitting a brick.

The car looked awful and Smartmom cried like a teenager, “My dad is
going to kill me.” All the way home on the Long Island Expressway, she
was in a panic about telling Groovy Grandpa.

The next day, he started to ask questions and worried about his
insurance. He wanted her to get some estimates for repairs. When
Smartmom called from a Fourth Avenue collision place with a rough
estimate off $2,000, he got angry.

“Are you kidding me? Leave. Go to another place.”

Hepcat was out of town at the time, and Groovy Grandpa told Smartmom
to wait for him to get back (Groovy Grandpa was a bit of a sexist about
women drivers).

“Let him take care of it,” Groovy Grandpa told her.

Smartmom hated to bother her father with the details of this silly
fender bender when he wasn’t feeling well. But on some level, it was a
welcome distraction for both of them. Something to talk about other
than symptoms, medications, and chemotherapy. And yeah, they had a
couple of fights about it. He was a little patronizing.

“Why were you driving the car anyway?” he said. “Your sister is a much better driver.”

Not long after that, he went into the hospital for two weeks, where
they talked about it a couple of times. Her father died at home on
Sept. 7.

Smartmom couldn’t even think about the car for a while. Finally, she
called the insurance company and they sent an adjuster to look at the
car. The guy called and said that the car was a “total loss.”

Total loss. Smartmom knew all about loss. Her father was gone.

Of course, the insurance guy merely meant that the car exceeded its
value. He offered her a check and said that the company would be happy
to take it away.

Something felt wrong. Smartmom wanted to keep the car and Hepcat
believed that they could have it fixed for less money. Finally, a
collision place on Sackett Street called Gino’s was able to fix the car
for $750.

So Smartmom picked it up and was happy to have her car — her
father’s car — back. She has all sorts of plans about where she wants
to go — a cross-country road trip; an upstate cruise to visit Gluten
Free and Dadu on a whim; trips to Costco and Fairway — but for now, it
sits there on Third Street.

Her father the car.

It makes her happy just to see it.

I am always moved by the NYC Marathon and generally make a point of watching it in Park Slope.

Here’s a nice marathon map from the Brooklyn Paper.  Brooklynites can see the runners run on Fourth Avenue starting in Bay Ridge. The Brooklyn Paper has the approximate times when the lead runners and then the rest arrive in each nabe.

I always think Third Street and Fourth is a great spot to watch (the
lead runners will get there around 9:40 and the rest around 10:10).

It’s about 6 miles into the race and the runners still have a lot of energy and joie de vivre.

But the runners also run through Forth Greene, Williamsburg and Greenpoint.

Craig Hammerman wrote in with a suggestion for those looking for local volunteer activities:

Assemblyman Brennan’s Office revised the Volunteer Directory for the
2008 Volunteer Fair we put together a few month’s ago.  I think you’ll
find it a great resource for anyone looking for a volunteer
opportunity.  The full document is posted on our website and is
downloadable by clicking here, or using the following link:

http://www.brooklyncb6.org/directory/?a=list&cat_id=24&letter=&dir_cat=24&cbonei=all&btnaddval.x=48&btnaddval.y=6

I hope you find it helpful.  Please do share it!

From Flatbush Pigeon:

City Opera Music Director George Manahan and the City Opera Orchestra, Chorus and soloists present Looking Forward, a concert program focusing on 20th-century classical music by such pioneering geniuses as Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky, Olivier Messiaen, Edgard Varèse, and Lukas Foss. Between each piece, Maestro Manahan will comment on how this vibrant music reveals some of the key artistic developments of the 20th century, including minimalism, electronic music, jazz, and neo-classicism. City Opera will perform this concert in each of the city’s five boroughs, beginning with Staten Island’s historic St. George Theatre and culminating in Manhattan’s newly-renovated Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center.

The Where and When

Sunday November 2 at 4 p.m.
Whitman Auditorium at Brooklyn College
2900 Campus Road
Buy Tickets here

Studs Terkel, one of the inventors of oral history, died yesterday at the age of 96. The Pulitzer Prize winner journalist is known for doing interviews with ordinary people and was the host of a popular Chicago radio show.

There’s a excellent obituary in the New York Times today by William Grimes. Here’s an excerpt from a blog post by Tom McNamee in the Chicago Sun Times:

Hey, Tom," says an editor in the newsroom. "Studs Terkel died."

I stop, turn around.

 

"He did?"

There is a small pain in my voice. I can’t hide it. Studs Terkel died.

Because I am a Chicagoan, Studs Terkel was my teacher.

Because you are a Chicagoan, Studs was your teacher.

I knew him, a bit. One of the glories of working for a newspaper — sometimes you get to meet your heroes.

But it doesn’t matter if you never met him. Studs was your teacher, too.

If you ever read a story or a column by me or by a hundred other
reporters and columnists in this town that made you stop and think,
that made you bigger in the heart, more open, more tolerant, more
accepting, more loving, chances are you were getting a dose of Studs,
the spirit that says give people a break.

I once wanted to write a story about racial tensions in Marquette
Park. I picked up my notebook and walked around the neighborhood and
found two families — one white and one black — and tried to tell their
stories right and fair, like I had learned from Studs in books like
Division Street and Working.

It wasn’t necessary, I had learned from Studs, to pass judgment, to
declare right and wrong, to pick sides, to feel superior, to sneer. It
was enough to find two families, one white and one black, and try to
see. To listen. To understand.

Where did the rage come from in Marquette Park, the stones through
the windows, the hate? And was it hate or was it really fear? And where
was that one thing these two families share, whether they could see it
or not, that one thing that mattered more than skin color or home
values or fear, that lovely shared humanity?

Studs could see it, always — that river that flows through all of us
and makes us more alike than not. He insisted on seeing it. And I
wanted to see it, too.

People read Shakespeare — "If you prick us, do we not not bleed?" —
and learn to see. I read Studs and listened to him on the radio.

If I have learned to see at all — and I can’t say for sure that I have — it has much to do with Studs.

An elaborate costume hinting at the darker side of the holiday (Park Slope, October 31st, 2008).    Photo: Tom Martinez