Monthly Archives: June 2010

arts and culture

OTBKB Music: The Best Album of 1984 Is Reissued

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I missed The Dream Syndicate the first time around: I was living in Philadelphia and in grad school. When I finally found my way to The Dream Syndicate, they had long broken up, and their second album, Medicine Show, was out of print.  Steve Wynn, the leader of The Dream Syndicate, along with his current band, The Miracle 3, came to The Bell House last year to play the entire album on the 25th anniversary of its release (as then noted in OTBKB).

But on June 15th, Medicine Show was reissued and remastered.  As with many modern remasters, the sound on this reissue is incredibly full and clean and a huge improvement over the versions of the record (LP and CD) which had gone before. You can learn more about this great record at Now I’ve Heard Everything.

–Eliot Wagner

arts and culture

Fifties Brooklyn Gang Captured by Bruce Davidson’s Camera

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In 1959, a young photographer followed a gang of Brooklyn teenagers and created a lasting portrait of  Brooklyn street life. Sean O’Hagen who blogs about photography in the Guardian UK sent me his post about renowned photographer Bruce Davidson, who took pictures of a Brooklyn gang. Here’s an excerpt:

In 1959, there were about 1,000 gang members in New York City, mainly teenage males from ethnically-defined neighbourhoods in the outer boroughs. In the spring of that year, Bruce Davidson read a newspaper article about outbreaks of street fighting in Prospect Park and travelled across the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan in search of a gang to photograph.

“I met a group of teenagers called the Jokers,” he wrote in the afterword to his seminal book of insider reportage, Brooklyn Gang. “I was 25 and they were about 16. I could easily have been taken for one of them…

…The saddest story belongs to Cathy, the blonde and beautiful young girl whom Davidson photographed several times and whose reflection he caught unforgettably in a cigarette machine as she fixed her hair while waiting for the Staten Island ferry. “Cathy was beautiful like Brigitte Bardot,” Bengie remembers. “Cathy always was there, but outside … Then, some years ago, she put a shotgun in her mouth and blew her head off.”

Civics and Urban Life

Rally to Save the B71 Bus!

Community Rally: Save the B71 Bus!
When: Wednesday, June 23, 5pm
Where: Union and Smith Streets Bus Stop (in Carroll Gardens)

The MTA has declared the Union Street-Eastern Parkway B71 bus over, but our Brooklyn communities say NO!  Show the MTA, Mayor Bloomberg, and Albany how we feel about cutting our VITAL public services.

arts and culture

Blogger Series by Photographer Gabriela Herman

As I type this, photographer Gabriela Herman is shooting a picture of me for her blogger series. She emailed me last week to see if I’d be interested in being a subject. I looked at a private link to the photos, thought the pictures were great and said sure.

Why not?

Gabriela likes to take the pictures at night, in dark rooms with only the light of the computer screen lighting the blogger’s faces.

On Monday night she arrived at 10PM, set up her camera and asked me to sit at my desk in the dining room. She walked around turning off lights and shutting doors. I asked if I should clear off my desk and she said it didn’t matter. I felt a little self-conscious about all the clutter.

Gabriela told me just to sit at my desk and do what I do on the computer. I’m not even looking at the camera, I’m just typing away while she snaps pictures.

I asked Gabriela what inspired this series and she said that it started with a picture of her best friend just out of the shower wearing a towel working on her photo blog on her laptop. Herman  liked the result and decided to do the series.

By the way, Gabriela has a great blog, which highlights other photographers and photo shows in NYC. I will keep you posted on the status of Gabriela’s blogger series.

Civics and Urban Life

Construction Sites As Canvasses for Public Art

“City Walls,” an innovative art project that turns construction sites into canvasses for public art, opens on June 30tth. This first-ever construction wall art project in Downtown Brooklyn has transformed visual barriers into visual attractions, replacing blue barriers with art.

Three acclaimed Brooklyn artists – Jessica Angel, Junkhaus and Nelson Rivas – have created large scale murals at three separate construction sites in the MetroTech BID area.  The murals, in styles ranging from abstract Picasso-esque to dramatic cityscapes, have transformed ordinary construction fences into street-front art galleries.

The project is funded by  MetroTech Business Improvement District (BID) and the Brooklyn Arts Council with the Stahl Organization and V3 Hotels.

Additional information about the artists and mock-ups of their “City Walls” pieces are available online at www.brooklynartscouncil.org/documents/152

Civics and Urban Life

NYC Now The Most Expensive Place to Smoke

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Yesterday the  Legislature passed a bill  that will give the state the highest cigarette taxes in the United States.

The new law, part of an emergency measure to keep the government running, adds another $1.60 in state taxes to every cigarette pack sold. The new law goes into effect on July 1st bringing the average price of a pack to about $9.20.

But in New York City, cigarettes will be even more expensive! The city imposes its own cigarette taxes, which will bring the cost of a pack to nearly $11 a pack.

$11 a pack! That’s a lot of money to smoke.

arts and culture

Acclaimed Artist in Residence at Piper Theater in July

Yesterday John McEneny, who runs Piper Theater (and the theater program at MS 51), stopped me on the street to introduce me to Nigel Williams, an acclaimed Scottish director and playwright, who is currently directing Nocturnes
, a play by John Connolly, based on the author’s bestselling book of ghost stories. Williams is this summer’s Piper Artist in Residence.

Clearly excited about the upcoming production, McEneny told me that Williams is currently in rehearsal with an incredible group of actors of the play, which will be performed al fresco in Washington Park as part of Piper’s summer residency at the Old Stone House. Performance are July 8th through July 16th.

Ten years ago, Piper was created by the siblings, John and Rachel McEneny. Now after 15 professional productions, 17 youth productions, hundreds of acting classes, and thousands of audience members, Piper will return to Park Slope again with theater productions, as well an exciting drama summer program for young people in all of Brooklyn

This year Piper embraces our community’s rich history and love of great writers. On our main stage, will be presenting the world premiere of The Nocturnes by of one mystery’s greatest new voices, John Connelly.

arts and culture

June 22-23: Music on the Streets of Fifth Avenue

Monday night, the first night of summer, the  4th Annual Make Music New York, filled the streets of Park Slope’s Fifth Avenue with musicians on every corner.

Accordions filled Washington Park. There was jazz in front of the Gate and at other locations classical groups, numerous rock bands, and folkies parked in front of storefronts along the Avenue.

The Park Slope Fifth Avenue BID decided to extend Make Music NY from the 19th – the 21st. Look for musicians on local street corners throughout the coming weekend. There was an official lineup but there were so many other bands along Fifth Avenue.

Civics and Urban Life

Did You Ever Hear of George Chuvalo?

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I had an interesting encounter today on the F-train (which became an E-train in Manhattan). The fact that I was reading King of the World, David Remnick’s biography of Mohammed Ali seemed to attract the attention of the man sitting across from me.

“Does he mention Chuvalo?” he asked.

“What?

“Does the book mention Chuvalo. He fought Ali in ’68.”

“I’m not sure,” I said.

“Check the index,” the man said and I did.

“He in there?”

“He’s mentioned on four pages,” I told the man looking down at the index.

“I fought Chuvalo,” he said. “I called Remnick one day and told him that he should write a piece about George Chuvalo and he told me to write it,” he said.

“So did you?”

“Nah. I didn’t want to write it,” he said.

“Why?”

“Well, Remnick has his own way of doing things. You know Sy Newhouse? Well, he doesn’t touch the editors at the New Yorker. They have their own fiefdom. He can do what he wants,”

“As an editor, you mean,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Well, I’d love to write for the New Yorker,” I said. At this point I noticed that we were at 53rd Street and Madison Avenue.

“I’m getting out here,” I said.

“So am I,” he said. “What do you do?”

“I’m a writer,” I said.

“Short stories?” he asked.

“Yeah, well…fiction, columnist, blogger. All kinds of stuff,” I said.

“What about you,” I asked this man, who was tall and bald.

“I’m a nihilist,” he said.

“Do you do anything other than be a nihilist?” I said.

“I can’t do anything else,” he said.

“So what’s a nihilist doing on the F-train at 9:30 am in the morning?” I asked.

“I’m going to the dentist,” he said. “When I was a boxer I lost my teeth so I’m being fitted for a new set.”

“You still a boxer?” I said asked. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I studied the man’s physique. He had big hands, a broad barrel chest and a thick neck. He really did look like a boxer.

“No, I just celebrated by 60th birthday,” he said. “I haven’t boxed in a long time.”

“What are you going to do now that your’re 60?”

“What I always do. Since I was 10 I’ve done what I wanted. I figured out that no one likes anybody and that all the reasons you think you do things don’t matter,”

“Oh,” I was interested in hearing more of his philosophy.

“A school principal, actually a school supervisor, once told me that I should have had peer pressure. That it would’ve helped me in my life…”

“Were you kicked out of school?” I asked.

“You don’t want to know my story with school and classes and teachers,” he said.

The conversation continued on in this same intense manner. We briefly touched on Malcolm Gladwell, Tony Judt, Israeli politics, Israelis and then it was time to part ways.

“Before the dentist, I have to go to Barney’s to pick up some socks,” he said. “Have a very good life.”

We shook hands and I walked east on 6oth Street completely captivated by this strange encounter.

arts and culture

Accordions Al Fresco in Washington Park

The Famous Accordion Orchestra (plus multitudes of additional accordions) will present a massive accordion event, open to all squeezers and free to the general public!

Starting at 6:00, Soloists and groups of accordions will fill JJ Byrne Park to create “Accordion Forest 2″, in which listeners are invited to stroll around the park and here a mind-blowing collage of accordion styles.

At 6:30 or so, the players will collect at the park’s central square to perform “Square Dance at the Old Stone House”, a site-specific piece for as many accordions as are available,

Monday, June 21, 2010
6:00pm – 8:00pm
Old Stone House/JJ Byrne Park
3rd Street and 5th Avenue
Brooklyn, NY

Accordionists are invited to participate in “Accordion Forest 2/Square Dance” a musical environment directed by Bob Goldberg. Accordion Forest 2 is a collage in which each player (or small group) performs from his/her/their personal repertoire. Square Dance creates an intense sustained texture as it moves around the Park’s central square.  Non-accordionists are invited to participate, provided their instrument can be heard along with accordions without amplification.

How To Join:

For information, email famousaccordions@earthlink.net, identify yourself and describe what you do as an accordionist. Bob Goldberg (director of the Famous Accordion Orchestra) will contact you with instructions.

arts and culture

It’s 10pm: Do You Know Where Toy Story 3 Is Playing?

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You’d a thought we’d be tired. Indeed, the humidity was incredibly high yesterday and we’d spent most of the day outside. Some of us trudged up and down Seventh Avenue for the street fair, some of us went to see the Red Bull Air Races in New Jersey.

We came home hot and sweaty. Some of us took naps, some of us just stood next to the air conditioner and drank cold lemonade. You’d a thought we’d be toast by the time we ate dinner. You’d a thought we’d be ready for bed. But then someone—I think it was Hepcat— made the suggestion.

And then I googled it to find out if it  was within the range of possibility.

And then my daughter said she’d like to go because she was, like, 2-years-old, when Toy Story 2 came out and she sat with me and her brother in Cobble Hill Cinema.

“It’s playing at 10:05 at the Pavilion,” I said aloud from my computer.

“Let’s go,” OSFO said.

“Let’s call Eastern,” Hepcat said and dialed the car service as I paid for tickets online.

Waiting for the car service downstairs I wondered if I’d make make it through the movie. The night was still warm and I felt like if I closed my eyes I might fall asleep. I looked at my watch and suddenly felt completely irresponsible. It was 9:50 and we were taking our 13-year-old to a 10:05 movie on a school night.

“This is kind of crazy,” I told OSFO as we got into the car.

The next thing we knew we were being transported to the Pavilion on Prospect Park West but then had to turn around because I forgot my wallet on the dining room table. Hepcat ran upstairs, the car service driver was pretty good-natured about the round trip and a half, we drove back up to the Pavilion and reminisced about 1 & 2.

“Well, you weren’t even born when the first one came out. I remember seeing it with Teen Spirit in Manhattan,” I said. “And the second one. You were just 2-years-old…”

And then I realized that going to see Toy Story 3 at 10pm on a Sunday night the weekend it opened made sense. The first two were markers in our lives, memories of wonderful movies we’d first seen in movie theaters and then lived with over the years on video and DVD.

I cried with my son when Jesse reminisces about her first owner, Emily, and Sarah Mclaughlin sings “When Somebody Loves You.”

It became a family joke. The second or third time we saw the movie in a theater my son would look my way during that sequence to see if I was crying. Yup.

There’s something about these films that delight and touch me deeply.

Continue reading It’s 10pm: Do You Know Where Toy Story 3 Is Playing? →

arts and culture

OTBKB Music: A Review and Tonight’s Preview

Eli Paperboy Reed and The True Loves have an album, Come and Get It,  due to drop in August but they were at The Bell House (which although it’s actually in Gowanus, I consider part of the neighborhood) Saturday night.  It was hot and sweaty in part due to the intensity of the band and in part due to the lack of intensity of The Bell House’s A/C.  You can read a further review at Now I’ve Heard Everything by clicking here.

Leslie Mendelson has been one of my favorite musicians over the past few years, but she has been on a performing hiatus since the end of 2009.  That break is now over and Leslie will be playing The Rockwood Music Hall Stage 2 (also know as the Rockwood Colosseum) again tonight at 8pm.  If you haven’t heard or heard of Leslie, she plays piano and sings with a great pop sensibility.  You’ll find all the details over at Now I’ve Heard Everything.

–Eliot Wagner

Civics and Urban Life

Second Father’s Day Without My Dad

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I wrote this a year ago on my first Father’s Day without my dad. This is my second FDWD:

(written June 2009) Smartmom’s first Father’s Day without her dad wasn’t easy. They always did something special on that night. Usually, her dad — aka Groovy Grandpa — and Mima Cat came over for dinner. While Hepcat cooked risotto or lamb, she and her dad would stand in the kitchen, and he’d tell tales of his college days at U.C. Berkeley, or working at Papert, Koenig and Lois, that 1960s advertising firm where he wrote ads for Robert Kennedy’s Senate campaign, Quisp and Quake Cereals and the New York Herald Tribune.

Groovy Grandpa would gingerly sip from Hepcat’s collection of Scotch (some Oban, Balvenie or Laphraiog) and compare them, like the connoisseur he was. He always gave Hepcat a bottle for his birthday.

Smartmom loved those evenings with her dad at the apartment, especially when her father would sit down at the Casio piano and play his free-form jazz. He had no formal training and couldn’t read music, but somehow he managed to bang out tinkly renditions of some of his favorite Cole Porter songs.

For a Father’s Day gift, Smartmom would usually go to the Community Bookstore and buy him a book on one of his favorite topics like philosophy, jazz, bird watching, or horse racing.

He’d immediately start reading it and confirm that it was a very good choice.

“How’d you know I’ve been wanting to read this?” he would ask.

A couple of years ago, Groovy Grandpa told Smartmom that he wasn’t a big fan of the Father’s Day holiday, but he appreciated the fact that she and Diaper Diva made such a big deal about it. Now Smartmom wonders why he wasn’t a big fan. Or maybe he was just kidding.

Last year, Smartmom didn’t write a column about her dad for Father’s Day because when he first got sick, he asked her not to mention his illness in her column. She thought a Father’s Day column would be too maudlin, sad and elegiac.

About a week later, Groovy Grandpa said, “I thought you’d write a ‘Smartmom’ about me for Father’s Day.”

Smartmom was startled and stricken. There was something so poignant about hearing him say that. So this Father’s Day, she kept flashing on that conversation and feeling guilty and sad.

Truth is, she never wanted to admit to him that she knew he was dying. Now Smartmom feels bad about all the conversations they didn’t have. And terrible that she didn’t write about him last Father’s Day.

Not a day goes by when Smartmom doesn’t think of her dad. There’s so much she never got around to saying. That’s life (or death).

But it still doesn’t make her feel any better.

Smartmom found herself feeling low energy on Father’s Day. In the quiet of Sunday morning, while Hepcat and the kids were asleep, Smartmom went through a box of old letters that her lovable and funny dad wrote to his parents just weeks prior to the birth of Smartmom and Diaper Diva in 1958:

Dear Folks,

Birth is expected in a couple of weeks, and I am pretty nervous about it. Up until now, the idea of a baby (babies) has been pretty much taking them to their first ballgame, dressing them in Eton suits and listening to their first gurgles of gratitude.

But now, the day-by-day reality becomes clearer, and I wonder how we’ll handle such things as squalling nights, plastic ducks all over the bathroom and shelves full of those terrible picture books. To say nothing of colic, uninhibited bowel habits and stubborn refusal to eat. In addition, the idea of pacing the hospital waiting room for hours, without knowing what’s happening to Edna, doesn’t strike me as better than going to the movies.

Oh, well, it will all be over soon and the joy of having them will, I suppose, put the doubts away. Did you like me at first, or did it take a few years?

Smartmom wonders how long it took her dad to like her and her sister. From the black-and-white photos, it looks like he was quite fond of his twin newborns quite early on. But who knows?

There is so much children don’t know about the inner lives of their parents. When you’re young, you can’t even imagine them having a life before you were born. Finding letters, notebooks, and journals is such a powerful way to learn more about the parents you think you know.

The night of Smartmom’s first Father’s Day without her dad, there was no standing in the kitchen hearing vintage stories. There was no jazzy tinkling of the plastic Casio keys. There was no tasting of Hepcat’s special Scotch.

But there were memories. Plenty of them. And the letters. They’re no substitute for the man but they offer a coveted insight into what was going on in his head just weeks before he became a dad.

arts and culture, Civics and Urban Life

More Mermaids from Paul LaRosa

Paul LaRosa of Here is New York took a lot of pictures at yesterday’s Mermaid Parade. Below he writes,

People everywhere have different ways of welcoming summer. In Brooklyn, we have a mermaid parade on Coney Island where a lot of boys and girls get dressed up to welcome in the sand, surf and sun.

Armed with a bottle of water, a ridiculous white hat to keep the sun off my head, a press card and my Canon Rebel XTS, I managed to get onto the parade route to take these photos. It was a fun day. Enjoy!

arts and culture

The Sunday List: Seventh Heaven, Warhol, Bococa Arts Fest

Music on Sunday Night:

Carefusion Jazz Festival tonight at Barbes at 9PM: Anthony Coleman Plays Jelly Roll Morton. Coleman has worked with John Zorn, Glenn Branca and Dave Douglas (to name the proverbial few) and is one of Marc Ribot’s Cubano postizos. He has led groups such as the Selfhaters and Sephardic Tinge and tours regularly in Europe and the US. He is a voraciously curious musician and a superb pianist who can play Monk, Art Tatum or Sephardic music just as well as he can play post-modern mambo on a Casio. He has applied himself to the music of Jelly Roll Morton the way Borges’ Pierre Menard applied himself to re-writing Don Quixote – and the result is breathtaking.

13th Annual Black Box New Play Festival

Through June 27th: Where can a playwright find an outlet? Where can an audience see new works? The Gallery Players provides both of these in this Festival. Over the years of producing the Festival, we have developed works by countless playwrights, many of whom continue to work with The Gallery Players each year to incubate their new ideas. More than 300 plays have appeared in the Black Box New Play Festival since its inception and this year will bring even more writing and acting talent to the stage. Who knows what you’ll discover in the Box?

Art Fair

Friday through Sunday in various locations: Bococacartsfestival.com, an annual fair in the Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, and Carroll Gardens neighborhoods. Show times and locations vary.

Street Fair

Sunday, June 19: Seventh Heaven Street Fair on Seventh Avenue in Park Slope.

Film:

Saturday at 9PM at BAM: Am I Black Enough for You? Described as the definitive profile of Philly soul legend Billy Paul, most famous for his Grammy-winning number one single “Me and Mrs. Jones,” released when he was almost 40. Yet his more “militant” records made him “a criminally unmentioned proprietor of socially conscious, postrevolution, 60s Civil Rights music” (Questlove of The Roots).

Opens Friday at BAM: Joan Rivers: A Piece Of Work exposes the private dramas of irreverent, legendary comedian and pop icon Joan Rivers as she fights tooth and nail to remain the queen of comedy. Filmed as a cinema verite documentary, the film reveals a rare glimpse of the comedic process and the toxic mixture of self-doubt and anger that often fuels it.

Pixar’s Toy Story 3 IS playing at the Park Slope Pavilion. It’s in Disney Digital 3D
‎1hr 49min‎‎ – Rated G‎‎ – Animation/Comedy/Action/Adventure‎: 1:30  2:15  2:45  4:10  5:00  6:50  7:35  8:00  9:30  10:05pm

Art:

At the Brooklyn Museum, Andy Warhol: The Last Decade is the first U.S. museum survey to examine the late work of Andy Warhol (1928–1987). During this time Warhol produced more works, in a considerable number of series and on a vastly larger scale, than at any other point in his forty-year career. It was a decade of great artistic development for him, during which a dramatic transformation of his style took place alongside the introduction of new techniques.

Civics and Urban Life

Smartmom: Should Park Slope Become a Kibbutz?

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What if Park Slope was a gigantic kibbutz? Smartmom laughed at the idea of turning her Brooklyn neighborhood into a Socialist experiment.

But it sure was fun to think about.

Smartmom lived on Kibbutz Ein Hashofet in 1980-81 when she was just 23 years old. As a volunteer on this self-contained economic community of 800 members and children, Smartmom worked in the children’s house and in the kitchen.

At that time, kibbutz children did not live with their parents, but in dormitory style “children’s houses.”

Early kibbutzniks believed that trained caregivers and teachers (other kibbutz members) would be better at taking care of the children than parents. It was thought that the parent/child relationship would be healthier if the parents didn’t have to discipline their children.

Now that’s worth thinking about.

More important, the children’s houses would liberate mothers from their traditional roles and bring about gender equality. Instead of childcare, women would be free to work and have more leisure time.

Now that’s downright feministic!

Smartmom enjoyed working in the children’s house but she didn’t really get to know the children because her shift was early in the morning and it was her job to make the beds and clean up after the kids.

She did, however, observe the young kibbutzniks around the kibbutz. She even gave a young boy guitar lessons in the afternoons at his parent’s apartment. She did wonder what it would be like to live without your parents and to be raised by a community. Her young guitar student didn’t know any different. At 23, Smartmom thought that it would be pretty strange.

The children did spend time in their parent’s small kibbutz apartment every day after school and would eat dinner with them in the kibbutz cafeteria.

Continue reading Smartmom: Should Park Slope Become a Kibbutz? →