I got this helpful reminder from an OTBKB reader. It may just be an Internet rumor. Ahhhh…Hold off until I confirm. Thanks for all the comments.

.

Robert Guskind writes powerfully of the current state of Coney Island.
Read it and weep. Here's an excerpt but read the rest at his blog,
Gowanus Lounge:

"There were a lot of people in Coney Island on Saturday and most of
them were taking pictures of the mess it has become under the
stewardship of Joe Sitt and Michael Bloomberg. We stood on
Stillwell Avenue, freezing, with Mr. Sitt’s big empty lot on our left
and the vacant Beer Island on our right and wiped tears from our eyes,
not because of the cold but because of fond memories and a sense of
hopelessness and despair that those in charge of this process aren’t up
to the challenge of keeping it on life support while the economy works
itself out.

"What a sad, sad thing for a place that has suffered so much. We urge
the city to negotiate hard with Mr. Sitt. We hope all parties sit down
and come up with a realistic five year plan to keep Coney going. We
hope that Mr. Sitt shows that he has a shred of human decency in his
body and that “Joey Coney Island” helps save it instead of being the guy that pulls the trigger and inflicts the final fatal wound.

Time is running out."

Times Square Gaza Protest on January 3rd.

photo by Tom Martinez 

We only had one day in San Francisco during our Christmas trip to Northern California but we always cherish whatever time we have in that great city.

Part of the fun was that we took the BART into town. That means a 40-minute drive from the farm in Tracy to Pleasanton and then a 40-minute ride to the Embarcadero.

We went to the new Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, which meant taking the N-Judah Muni, which is both an underground and overground mode of transport. Cool.

We got off at Ninth Avenue in the Sunset district and walked into San Francisco’s awe-inspiring Park. Imagine our surprise when there was a one hour wait to get into the museum, which opened its new building in October. And that was the member’s line.

But it was a lovely day and we didn’t mind standing on line. Well, we minded a little. But it was worth it: the museum’s new digs are gorgeous complete with a green roof that reminded Teen Spirit of the Teletubby set.

In addition to a great aquarium, the museum features an elaborate rain forest exhibit, dioramas akin to those at New York’s Museum of Natural History, an albino alligator, a penguin exhibit and much more.

Worth the wait. But it was very, very crowded inside.

We also went to the gorgeous new deYoung Museum, designed by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron and Fong & Chan Architects, where we saw an amazing—and very powerful—exhibit called In the Name of God: War, Religion and the Reliquaries of Al Farrow, in which the artist appropriates and reinterprets the traditional iconography of Jewish,
Christian, and Islamic religious institutions. The Spine and Tooth of Santo Guerro (2007), is an elaborate construction appears to be a scale model of a European Gothic cathedral. Closer examination reveals
that nearly the entire structure is fabricated from deconstructed gun
components, as well as bullets and steel shot.

Afterwards, we made our usual pilgrimage to the City Lights Bookstore in North Beach, where I browsed their second floor poetry department—one of the best poetry selections I’ve come across.

We walked from North Beach back to Market Street passing the tail end of an Anti-Gaza  demonstration, which brought out a crowd of kafiah-clad protestors, police vans, news trucks and police helicopters overheard.

Later, we stopped in the Palace Hotel, our favorite bathroom stop in San Francisco. We also like to gaze at the Victorian Garden Court, and the wood-paneled Pied Piper Bar with its gorgeous Maxfield Parish mural over the bar. That hotel was built before the 1903 earthquake.

Then it was back to Tracy on the BART. 40 minutes and we were back in Pleasanton to begin our drive through Livermore and the Altamont Pass, a hilly area filled with graceful windmills generating electrical power.

Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the Brookyn Paper:

They had a little fight about it. Smartmom said they couldn’t afford
to go. But Hepcat prevailed. It had been two years since they’d spent
Christmas in California and Hepcat wanted to go.

Ultimately Smartmom gave in. She knows that Christmas means a lot to
Hepcat and it had been a while since he’d celebrated with his family:
last year, Smartmom’s dad was in Mt. Sinai Hospital between Christmas
and New Year’s. And the year before that, Manhattan Granny’s health
necessitated that they stay in town.

So it was decided. Hepcat charged the tickets ($2,000!) and they
were good to go. Smartmom knew the kids wouldn’t be thrilled at first
because they like to be around their friends during school vacation.
But they’d adjust.

Even Smartmom got used to the idea. She decided that loads of
together-time as a family was just what they needed. For seven days,
they’d be stuck in a big house in the country with nowhere to go;
they’d eat every meal together and have loads of time to talk, play
Scrabble and do jigsaw puzzles.

It sounded like heaven to her. 

Hepcat was thrilled to be going home for Christmas. That’s not to
say that he didn’t enjoy his two Brooklyn Christmases. He loved buying
Christmas trees from the handsome Vermonter who sells them on Ninth
Street from a tent blaring jazz music, and he loved the Christmas lox
and bagels brunch with Diaper Diva, Groovy Grandma and various members
of Smartmom’s extended Jewish family. And he always seemed to love a
Christmas Day movie at the Pavilion and Christmas dinner at Hunan
Cottage on Union Street.

But Smartmom wouldn’t be Smartmom if she couldn’t tell that her big
old California farm boy was homesick. He pined for the smell of
eucalyptus leaves in the garden, the whistle of the Southern Pacific
freight trains in the distance, the braying of his mother’s goats,
Flora and Miss America, out in the pen.

You can take a farm boy out of California, but you can’t take the farm out of the boy — especially on Christmas.

Teen Spirit and the Oh So Feisty One liked their Brooklyn
Christmases, too. It was fun to wake up on Christmas morning to find
their filled stockings tied to the dresser in the living room. No
matter that there’s no mantle. In Brooklyn, it is believed that Santa
Claus enters through the dumbwaiter or disguised as one of the delivery
guys from Coco Roco.

On the night before Christmas, Smartmom and family arrived on
Hepcat’s family farm (after an unusually long flight which included a
refueling stop in Salt Lake City) tired, hungry and ready for sleep.

For a nice Jewish girl from New York City, the scene couldn’t have
been more perfect. As always, there was a towering Christmas tree
festooned with vintage decorations; Mexican crèches placed tastefully
all over the house; and roaring fires burning in not one, but two,
fireplaces.

Yup, it was nice to be back.

OSFO popped out of bed Christmas morning. Teen Spirit was harder to
rouse (he’s 17 after all). They opened their gifts and hung out with
their cousins who they hadn’t seen in more than a year.

It was a jigsaw puzzle and Scrabble kind of day topped off by a
bountiful Christmas super, which included ham, oysters, sweet potatoes
and great conversation. Smartmom couldn’t stop eating the pannetone,
almond roca and coconut macaroons and swore to be back on Weight
Watchers by morning.

She could tell that Hepcat was enjoying himself big time. His mother
went through bags of old photographs while his sister regaled them with
hilarious stories about her new chihuahua.

In the days after Christmas, Teen Spirit and OSFO pretended to be
wildly bored. But Smartmom knew it was good for their creative juices.
Teen Spirit spent much of the holiday writing songs while OSFO
practiced a Bach minuet on the piano and used her grandmother’s
potter’s wheel.

As promised, the family ate every meal together, played plenty of
Scrabble and did jigsaw puzzles. They spent loads of time in each
other’s company.

Sure they got on each other’s nerves. 

Sure they had a few fights.

But it was Christmas in California. Seven days with nothing to do but be together. What could be better?

Well, they’re around. Their shop just in’t in Park Slope anymore. Here’s the Root Stock & Quade calendar of January and February events, where you can find out the latest about what they’re up to.

Find out who and what to watch out for in Brooklyn in 2009. Here are just a few of the things on the Brooklyn Paper’s long list. For the full list, go to their website.

Like any respectable publication, The Brooklyn Paper makes lists. So
without any further ado, here are the 90 people, places and things to
watch in ’09:

84. Paul Auster: The prolific Park Slope author is rumored to be coming
out with a new novel this year, “Invisible,” after penning “Man in the
Dark” last year, which was set in a fictional United States wracked by a post-election civil war.

77. Cordula Volkening: This Park Slope artist has been battling
brain cancer while producing an astonishing array of representational
paintings in the past year. She is planning a spring show to benefit
her children at Brooklyn Artists Gym in Gowanus.

76. Susan Fox: The founder of the once-quaint, now-booming Park
Slope Parents Web site has emerged as a force throughout the borough.
She’s on the Park Slope Civic Council, she’s helping the Old Stone
House, she’s helping local merchants, and this year she even led the
annual Halloween Parade for kids. Someday, she’ll be in the City
Council.

70. Peter and Kristen Sclafani: The restaurateurs who brought Bar Tano
to a barren stretch of Third Avenue in Gowanus are planning to open
another European-styled cafe and wine bar in 2009, this time on an equally foodless stretch of Eighth Avenue in Park Slope. Econony be damned: These two know what they’re doing.

68. Catherine Bohne: The Park Slope Community Bookstore’s owner can’t
be stopped with her ebullience to keep the locals shopping locally. In
2008, Bohne started a restaurant tour along Seventh Avenue and expanded
the holiday bazaar Snowflake Celebration to two nights. She’s got more
up her sleeve for 2009.

                  YOST LEARS

Have you done it yet, remembered to write

Two thousand nine now it’s due?

Then you’re many miles ahead of me–

I’m still writing two thousand two.

Brenda Becker, who writes the blog, A Year in the Park, has completed her year in the Park. Now the big question: will she continue to visit Prospect Park daily?

I am happy to report that the answer seems to be yes:

This little chronicle of my forays will indeed continue into 2009–I
keep finding cool stuff and can’t not share it, just as I promised,
although for Google’s sake I don’t think I’ll rename it "Another Year
in the Park."

Becker writes movingly about what she has learned this year in the park. Here’s an excerpt. Read more at the blog. 

A year ago, I wondered aloud in cyberspace whether a year of daily visits to Prospect Park could change my life.  To understand what this year has meant, let me tell you a signal moment–a danger sign, if you will–in my shared history with my mother in her old age. Once sharp-witted and tender-hearted, she had slipped into a deepening cycle of depression and disability. One summer evening, as she sulked on the couch before her array of pill bottles (none of which made her any happier), I suggested that we sit together on the porch and get some fresh air, which blows straight off the park to our house.

Why bother pushing the damn wheelchair out there? my mother responded. There’s air in here.

Some folks spend a lifetime searching for the secret to happiness; in that moment, I intuited that I had stumbled on something perhaps even more valuable, the secret to perfect unhappiness. Why move? There’s air in here. I carry half my genes from my mother’s pool, in which swum a brace of robustly morose and self-obsessed Irish neurotics, several of them prone to dramatic suicide attempts. I do not mock her response as much as you might think; I’ve done time draped over the furniture, brain bloated with bad chemicals, barely motivated to breathe the air "in here," much less out there.

But the other half of my family tree, like the tree above, seemed to have gifts of astonishing resilience. My father, who never met a human being in whom he couldn’t find some interest and goodness. His twin elder siblings, Don and Valeska, who lived to their mid-nineties defying a battery of physical ailments and frailties just to get out of the house, explore their worlds, and (especially in Don’s case) take pictures, even when one eye no longer worked and his hands shook. (He produced some wonderfully impressionistic photos in this phase.) They would all have understood AYITP and come along for the walk, in any weather. They showed me another way forward, even into old age, beyond thin ice.

I want my MTV! That’s what Park Slopers are saying to Time Warner Cable who discontinued some of the area’s most popular children’s and adult programming, which happens to be provided by Viacom (which owns MTV).

I was just over at the Time Warner Cable website and they’re saying that the two companies have reached an agreement "in principle."

TWC says to  "ignore incorrect Viacom/MTV ads" that were in newspapers today and yesterday. Time Warner Cable and Viacom have reached agreement for continued carriage of 19 of Viacom’s MTV Networks, with no interruption for Time Warner Cable customers. They are calling them false ads. The ads, which wrongly stated that Viacom had pulled programming from Time Warner Cable, ran in New York, Cleveland, Orlando, Dallas, and Raleigh

Sounds like the programming isn’t back yet but it will be in the next few days—once they are able to finalize negotiations.

Here’s the press release from the Time Warner Cable’s website:

Time Warner Cable (NYSE:TWC) and Viacom (NYSE: VIA and VIA.B) jointly announced this morning that they have reached an agreement in principle to renew carriage for Viacom’s MTV Networks.  The companies expect to finalize the details of the agreement over the next several days.

Glenn Britt, President and CEO of Time Warner Cable said, "We are pleased that our customers will continue to be able to watch the programming they enjoy on MTV Networks. We are sorry they had to endure a day of public disagreement as we worked through this negotiation."

Philippe Dauman, President and CEO of Viacom said, "We’ve been partners with Time Warner Cable for a long time, and we’re happy to be renewing that partnership for the benefit of their customers and our loyal viewers.  It’s gratifying that we could reach an agreement that benefits not only our audiences but that is also in the best interest of both of our companies.