Yearly Archives: 2010

arts and culture

Mr. Popper’s Penguins Shooting in Park Slope

Mr. Popper’s Penguins, the film adaptation of the 1938 children’s book written by Richard and Florence Atwater, has been shooting the last few days on Montgomery Place in Park Slope.

The film stars Jim Carrey and is directed by Mark Water, who directed Mean Girls. The cinematographer, Florian Balhaus, is a resident of Park Slope. The film, which also stars Carla Guigno, Angela Lansbury, Philip Baker Hall and Madeline Carroll, has been shooting for the last two months at Steiner Studios in the Navy Yard section of Brooklyn.

It is my understanding that the film is quite different from the beloved book. The script follows what happens when a businessman inherits six penguins and his New York apartment becomes a winter wonderland and his career starts to fall apart.

Civics and Urban Life

Drs. Gordon and Glaser: Partners No More

Many in the neighborhood are talking about the split between Drs. Amy Glaser and Phillipa Gordon, two highly respected pediatricians in Park Slope, who have been in partnership for many years.

Both of the doctors are going solo and their clients will have to choose between them. One neighbor said it was like Sophie’s Choice. “How am I going to choose?” she said to me the other day.

I know many families who use their practice. The word on the street is that Gordon has the better bed-side manner. From what I’ve ascertained over the years (and through her participation in discussions on Park Slope Parents) she’s a smart, warm, and engaged pediatrician with a deep interest in public health. Glaser, who has been on New York Magazine’s list of the Best Doctors in New York City numerous times, is considered a brilliant diagnostician and practitioner.

The practice, located on 8th Avenue in the North Slope, has an excellent reputation.

Smartmom

Last Year’s Charlie Brown Xmas Tree

We’re an interfaith family (New York Reform Jew and California Presbyterian) and we usually celebrate Christmas in California and Hanukah in Brooklyn. When we don’t go to California it’s always that Shakespearean question: to get or not to get a Christmas tree. Last year we got one. This year, we’re not going to bother. Here’s a Smartmom from last year about our Charlie Brown Xmas tree.

Smartmom bought her Charlie Brown-style Christmas tree from the
Vermont tree farmers who set up in front of the Park Slope Food Co-op
 every year. It was $20, which is a lot to pay for what was more like a
branch. But the gangly tree caught her eye and seemed lovable in its 
own — slightly pathetic — way.

As Smartmom walked home, she knew her little tree was a far cry from
the huge, tree that Hepcat’s mom always sets up in her humongous
California living room and decorates with a lifetime’s collection of
vintage ornaments. The fragrance of pine and hot apple cider permeates
the house as a fire roars.

Christmas with Hepcat’s family is a Jewish girl’s fantasy, and
 Smartmom loves that her inter-faith children have such holiday’s in
their memory banks of childhood.

Smartmom knows she could never match that level of Christmasness:
she’s Jewish, for Buddha’s sake, and any attempt at Christmas is
fraught with inexperience and ambivalence. But this year, the family is
spending Christmas in Brooklyn.

This has happened three times before in
 her children’s lifetimes. Turns out, Teen Spirit is thrilled because 
all of his friends will be home from college and he’s excited to hang out 
with them. The Oh So Feisty One has mixed feelings about not being in
 California, but she, too, is glad to be near her friends.

Walking up Seventh Avenue with her tiny tree conveniently tucked 
under her arm, Smartmom remembered 2007 when they bought a huge
 Christmas tree and it was like Rockefeller Center in the apartment
 because the Oh So Feisty One kept bringing friends in and out to see it.

Now Smartmom worried that OSFO and Teen Spirit would feel cheated by
this year’s tiny tree. But she tried not to worry about it. She was 
already stressing about how to make this as nice a Christmas as the 
one’s they spend in California. O the pressure, o the guilt, o the need
to meet everyone’s expectations at this time of year.

Continue reading Last Year’s Charlie Brown Xmas Tree →

Smartmom

The Gift of Good Values

Here’s a Smartmom piece from December 2004 when my kids were younger and the whole present thing was so fraught with longing and disappointment:

The gift-giving time of the year sometimes brings out the worst in OSFO and Teen Spirit. The trouble is: they get way too excited about getting presents, their expectations run sky high, and disappointment is sure to ensue.

Then there’s the fact that they celebrate both Hanukah and Christmas. That is, they do Hanukah with Smartmom’s relatives in New York and Christmas with Hepcat’s family in California. This means that OSFO and Teen Spirit tear through gift wrap on numerous occasions during the holiday season.

Continue reading The Gift of Good Values →

arts and culture

OTBKB Music: The Best Albums of 2010 – Part 1

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It’s time to trot out the best of the year list, and I’ll spend today and Friday doing just that.   This Best Albums  list will  be presented in two parts.

2010 was a pretty good year musically with a bit of a pick up in quantity and quality from 2009.  It seems that it was also the year of the EP, and three of the top 10 albums are, in fact, EPs.  Note that nine out of the 10 bands that comprise this list are NYC based; four and parts of another are Brooklyn-based.  And eight out of the nine play around town frequently.

The top album of 2010 is:

Steve Wynn & The Miracle 3 – Northern Aggression:  I’ve said this for years: Steve Wynn and The Miracle 3 (Jason Victor, Dave DeCastro and Linda Pitmon) are the best rock band out there. This album contains 11 songs (10 Steve originals and a cover) that run the gamut of styles (including straight ahead rock, psychedelia, rock/funk and soft rock ballad).  Some songs were recorded live in the studio and one was even made up on the spot (Consider the Source).  But no matter what, you get great musicianship and songwriting on each track.  It was well worth the five year wait since the last Miracle 3 album.  If  you like rock, get this album.

The rest are presented in alphabetical order

Del-Lords – Under Construction: The Del-Lords are a New York City based band active in from 1984-90, playing a straight-ahead brand of rock with some of the most intelligent lyrics anywhere.  They came back together again this year and put out this five song EP to bring with them on their short tour of Spain early this year.  The songs here are presented as rough mixes,  but they sound great.  When the Drugs Kick In (a profoundly anti-drug song) and Silverlake are the standouts here.

Sasha Dobson – Burn:  This six-song EP is the first record from Sasha Dobson since 2006, when she released Modern Romance.  Sasha’s voice is a clean and pure as before, but this record is sparked by the four songs on which Steven Elliot plays tasty, imaginative and even blistering lead guitar.  While Sasha had rock elements in her music previously, she jumps all in to the rock pool here on those songs.  Two additional songs which have more jazz leanings round out this excellent outing.

Maura Kennedy – Parade of Echoes: Maura Kennedy, along with her husband Pete, has been one half of the duo, The Kennedys, for the past 15 years.  She steps out on her own for the first time with this album, and it is a winner.  Although longtime listeners to The Kennedys will find much that is familiar here, the 13 songs here were all Maura’s own (all the original songs by The Kennedys are co-writes by Maura and Pete).  This is definitely a rock record, and the song Chains delivers all the power chords you’ll need.

James Maddock – Live at Rockwood Music Hall: I don’t know who has a better time at a James Maddock show; the band or the audience.  No matter, a James Maddock show is someplace between a concert and a party. This live album finally captures that feeling and puts you right in the audience.  As good as lat year’s Sunrise on Avenue C was (and it made the NIHE Best Albums list then), this record really gives you an idea of what James and his band can do with their material in a live setting.  Most of the songs come from Sunrise, with a couple off of  Songs from Stamford Hill, the album by James’ former band, Wood.  Although James’ material is pretty much all mid tempo, it really rocks here.

Part 2 of The Best Albums of 2010 will appear Friday.

–Eliot Wagner

Civics and Urban Life

Signage Malfunction: Walk and Don’t Walk at the Same Time

Alex Goldmark, one of the editors of WNYC’s Transportation Nation, wrote in to say that the show is  doing a little crowd sourcing experiment. They’re trying to map the broken street signs around the city that display walk and don’t walk at the same time.

It’s an epidemic, admittedly not of life threatening proportions, but still, far more widespread than most people realize.

Here’s the reporting on it with map.

http://www.wnyc.org/crowdsourcing/mixed-signals-photo-map/mixed-signals-map-report/

Civics and Urban Life

Is Park Slope the Most Livable Nabe?

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Is Park Slope is the most livable neighborhood in NYC. It’s in the running for that title in Curbed’s Neighborhood of the Year.

After slipping by underdog Roosevelt Island in a controversial vote, Park Slope‘s march to Curbed Cup glory continues. The Slope is the people’s choice (it received double the reader nods of the next most popular Curbed Cup nominee), and this year it was scientifically proven to be NYC’s most “livable” neighborhood. It also sported the city’s most controversial new bike lane. Quite the achievements! The retail and restaurant scenes continue to expand,starchitects are showing up and wealthy Googlers arerenovating $8.5 million mansions. But every giant has weaknesses. The neighborhood’s outskirts still leave something to be desired, and even some Slopers loathe the place. But as one reader put it, “If it’s good enough forNew York magazine and the American Planning Association, it should be good enough for Curbed.”

arts and culture

Happy Birthday: Now I’ve Heard Everything!

Today Eliot Wagner is celebrating the first birthday of Now I’ve Heard Everything, his wonderful NYC music blog. Hard to believe he’s only  been doing it for a year. Prior to starting the blog, he wrote posts for OTBKB three times a week, which he still does (they link to NIHE). He briefly wrote music posts for the Gowanus Lounge.

Eliot is passionate about music and has been involved with music and radio in New York City all of his life.

In the late 60s and 70s, he spent a lot of time at The Fillmore East, The Academy of Music, The Palladium and anywhere bands would set up and play. He was present when Lou Reed and Bob Dylan recorded seminal live albums.

Throughout the 70s and early 80s, radio was his constant companion. Sometimes the dial would be set on WPLJ, sometimes on WPIX, but mostly it would be set at 102.7, WNEW-FM.

These days he can be found  listening to music in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side and here on the Internet. Now that he has a blog, it is his mission to give readers a “continuing music education” and help expand their horizons and learn about the great music that’s out there.

The other night I saw Eliot at the Keren Ann and Danya Kurtz show. He’s a great fan, a great appreciator of music and a walking encyclopedia of the music he loves.

Happy Birthday, Eliot.

Civics and Urban Life

Give a Book to a Kid in Senegal!

In 2007 the co-founders of Telephone and Soup, Casey Scieszka and Steven Weinberg,  lived in Mali where we came to care deeply about local language issues.

They founded Local Language Literacy in 2008 and for their first project raised enough money to print nearly 1600 books.

Most of the school day in West Africa is taught in French, then students go home and live the rest of their lives in a different language like Bamanankan or Wolof.

Being able to speak and read French is a valuable skill in this region, but having the opportunity to learn in the language in which you dream/bargain/joke is essential to any student’s success and sense of self-worth.

LLL’s goal is to get books written in (or translated to) local languages into the hands of students at no cost to them.

This January they will return to West Africa to document the results of that first project in Mali and to begin a new one in the neighboring country of Senegal where the school system faces similar language issues.

They are asking for donations, that will be used to fund specifically the translation and printing costs of this still developing project. For reference, the previous project’s cost per book was $3.

You can make a tax deductible donation to LLL three ways:

–Write a check made out to Local Language Literacy Inc and send it to our offices at 515 8th St. 3R, Brooklyn, NY 11215.

–Make a donation online on our website: LocalLanguageLiteracy.org

–Make a donation online using the Facebook app Causes

Telephone and Soup is the name of Casey and Steven’s book/art/zine/stuff operation. Most of it they make together. Generally the pictures come from Steven, the words Casey. They are from Brooklyn and D.C. respectively. They’ve set up camp all over the world– from China to Mali to Morocco– but are currently Brooklynites.


arts and culture

Words About the Daily Pix

Hugh took the No Words Daily Pix picture last night during the eclipse. At 4AM I woke up to the sound of him leaving the apartment with his camera, tripod and other equipment.

He stood on the corner of Third Street  and Sixth Avenue and took pictures Our neighbor Tim gave him some gloves to wear.

Prior to that Hugh was gloveless and so inspired.

At about 3:30 AM, the beautiful full moon rose above New York City. The Earth passed between the sun and the moon. It cast a shadow on the moon with unusual colors.

According to NASA (via Tonic) “the moon reflected even richer colors because there were extra particles in the air due to recent volcanic activity.”

Tim: thanks for the gloves. Thanks be to the universe for the eclipse. And thanks Hugh for the beautiful picture.

arts and culture

The Last Line: eliot

“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

From Middlemarch by George Eliot

Civics and Urban Life

Patch It Together This Week

Today’s Park Slope Patch, AOL’s new hyper-local news outlet in Park Slope has a fun list of five things to do this week in Park Slope.

Here’s one that caught my eye. Go to Patch to read more:

Relive your childhood Christmas classic with a holiday screening of Home Alone at Union Hall. Brooklyn comedy team the Raspberry Brothers presents an entire night of 90s pop culture at the Union Street venue, complete with a screening of Home Alone featuring live commentary and, well, mockery.

arts and culture

OTBKB Music: Lots of Live Music This Week

Even this week, the week before Christmas, there’s still lots of live music out there.  I want to draw your attention to tonight’s Willie Nile (with a full band) show at Don Hill’s in Soho at 7:30pm, which was announced only on Willie’s Facebook page.  For the rest of the week, including a performance of Jewmongous on Christmas Eve and Dar Williams at The Bell House on December 26th, check the handy list I’ve prepared for you here at Now I’ve Heard Everything.

–Eliot Wagner

Civics and Urban Life

Christmas Caroling

I had so much fun caroling at a Christmas party on Saturday night. It was, truly, a classic Park Slope holiday scene. Here’s the recipe:

1 historic brownstone with a big Chirstmas tree in the bay window, decorated with arty, crafty decorations by children

20 or more votive candles strewn about for mood lighting

3 tables of pot luck casseroles, cheeses, breads, charcuterie and desserts

An assortment of wine, beer and alcohol

1 pianist at the upright playing through a book of carols

Booklets containing song lyrics for the guests

A smattering of interesting and friendly friends and strangers

Children of all ages hiding out upstairs

Mix it all together and you can create quite an idyllic scene. When the carolers launch into Silent Night, the hostess hands out votives to the singers and dims the lights.

Holy Night

arts and culture

OTBKB Weekend List: Dec 18-19

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It’s Saturday and there’s lots to get done and so much to do. Movies, theater, art, dance and music. Speaking of music, tonight Harry and the Potters bring their Yule Ball to The Bell House. Draco and the Malfoys with be there, too.

And shopping:  Gifted at the Brooklyn Flea, Kings County General Store at Southpaw on Sunday, a Holiday Craft Fair at the Brooklyn Lyceum and just added a holiday shopping party at Urban Alchemist. Click on read more for all the essential details of what I’ve listed so far.

Continue reading OTBKB Weekend List: Dec 18-19 →

Civics and Urban Life

Ground Broken on Prospect Park Skating Center

Park Officials broke ground on the new lakeside skating center and restoration of the revitalization of the surrounding nature.

The Prospect Park Alliance has $54 million of the $70-million needed for the project, which will include two skating rinks and a restoration of the shoreline around the lake.

“The old meets the new as the Prospect Park Lakeside’s historic landscape gets restored with improved access and state of the art, green amenities,” said Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe told the crowd (as quoted in the Brooklyn Paper).

The design by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects looks very nice. I’ve always been a fan of those two.

Why? Because Tod Williams was responsible for the redesign of an apartment in the building I grew up in. My friend’s parents hired him to turn their pre-war Upper West Side apartment into a minimalist palace, sort of.

It was very minimal, and very lovely and it was the first time anyone I knew used Metro Shelving for kitchen shelves and even books. This was back in the 1970’s and it was oh so cool then.

So, I’m excited about the new skating rink, the design, and the fact that the Alliance has such a big hunk of the money needed to move forward. The only thing I’m sorry about is that the ice skating rink will be closed for quite a while.

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