The city’s bike sharing program was supposed to start on July 31 but it didn’t happen and it ain’t gonna happen this summer. Apparently, the City ran into some computer problems and decided not to start the program until all the kinks had been worked out.
I’m all for bike sharing but I can forsee some problems with inexperienced riders. That said, I know these program work very well in places like Berlin, Copenhagen and Munich. I hope there’s some kind of training for riders inexperienced at riding in the city.
Just so you know what to expect in March, there will be 7,000 bikes at 420 stations across Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. Read more.
You’ll be able to take as many trips as you want for a low price plus overtime-fees beyond the time limit.
There are a few ways that you can use City Bike:
–Annual Membership: $95 (first 45 minutes of every trip at no additional charge)
–7-Day pass: $25 (first 30 minutes of every trip at no additional charge)
–24-Hour pass: $9.95 (first 30 minutes of every trip at no additional charge)
–A special $5 one-day membership will be available for the first few weeks after launch.
Tomorrow is the 8th Annual Fort Greene Park Summer Literary Festival, an event which provides a means for self-expression and creativity for that area’s young people, and builds community through arts and literature.
The Lit Fest caps a six-week series of free Saturday creative writing workshops for young people and includes tomorrow’s end-of-summer reading featuring literary icons Jessica Hagedorn, Tayari Jones and Earl Lovelace. The host will be LC Cumbo of MoCADA. Young writers who participated in the creative writing workshops will also be featured front and center .
The Caribbean American Sports and Cultural Youth Movement (CASYM) Steel Orchestra will be in attendance. This group has been providing academic, recreational, social, and cultural activities for young people since its incarnation in 1983.
The organization’s steel band, which can include up to 90 members, has traveled the world performing steelband music, and has taken home prizes at the world’s largest steel band
Thanks to the New York Writers Coalition, which sponsors the Lit Fest (along with a host of other organizations) this event unleashes the power of the written word to give voice to the thoughts and experiences of everyone, not just the privileged and powerful.
The Fort Greene Park Summer Literary Festival is presented by Akashic Books, Greenlight Bookstore, NY Writers Coalition, and the Fort Greene Park Conservancy, with additional support from Amazon.com and the Walt Whitman Project.
Now, that’s a tough call. There are many thousands of them. Too many. And so many pretty ones. There’s definitely an art to it. Some people have the touch (or the green thumb plus the color/design sense).
So how do you win such a contest. First, you’ve got to enter the contest to be considered. It helps to belong to a Block Association but I don’t think it’s essential. Still, it’s not like some judge-person is going to check out every window box in the borough.
These window boxes created by the Arky’s at 487 10th Street in Park Slope are very pretty indeed. Sadly, they’re trapped behind the window bars. And they tied for First Place. Check out the other winning window boxes and other categories at the Greenest Block in Brooklyn website.
There’s a line in Amy Sohn’s new book Motherland about Park Slope purporting to be a community but it not being a community at all.
I think you have to look for community to find it sometimes.
I thought of that when I received a very exciting press release from the Brooklyn Community Foundation, reporting on some exciting community events that popped up this summer all over the borough.
This is the group that helped announce the winners of the 2012 Greenest Block in Brooklyn Contest, a gardening competition organized by the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. This year’s big winner: Lincoln Place between Bedford and Rogers Avenue (I just drove by there yesterday and saw the big green Greenest Block sign). There were many more winners, including Eighth Street between Eighth Avenue and Prospect Park West, the Cortelyou Road Merchants Association and Newkirk Plaza. You can read about them here.
The Brooklyn Community Fund is also responsible for funding Groundswell, a group that brings exciting wall art to the exterior walls of apartment buildings, schools, gas stations, and even at the Navy Yard.
Working with community partners at the Brownsville Community Justice Center, BCF helped sponsor a team of young men to create a mural dedicated to role models and the male identity, on a wall overlooking a new community garden.
Many of Groundswell’s participants are court involved youth fulfilling their community service requirement through the organization. As part of their research in the design process, the team went to the Brooklyn Museum to view the Question Bridge: Black Males exhibit.
Another bright spot is the I Heart East New York project where young artists—many attending Aspirations Diploma Plus High School—are developing a mural on a NYC Parks wall opposite the Broadway Junction subway station.
The project’s theme: “We Believe in and Heart East New York,” conjured the neighborhood’s past and not yet realized potential. The wall’s design depicts the history of East New York.
There was also activity at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where artists are creating murals to illustrate the complete history of the yard, from its original Native American inhabitants, as a holder of prison ships during the Revolutionary War and as a Naval shipyard employing over 70,000 during WWII, to its modern rebirth as a sustainable small business park.
Just gotta say: There are some pretty wonderful films playing at BAM this weekend—and it’s so much fun to see these classics on the big screen.
I mean, who can resist: Sullivan’s Travels, His Girl Friday, or Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby or George Cukor’s classic, late-Depression-era romantic comedy, Holiday. Or Pat and Mike with Spencer Tracy and Hepburn or The Palm Beach Story with Claudette Colbert.
When Pork Slope officially opens on Saturday, you just might get a chance to taste what all the hype is about. Dale Talde’s new Park Slope outpost with the truly great name is more fun and folick than Talde, his elegant, delicious and somewhat pricey “Asian-American” eatery on Seventh Avenue.
With 25 beers on tap and more than 100 whiskeys, Pork Slope is ready for the Fifth Avenue crowds. And the crowds, I’m guessing, are ready for it. There’s brisket to be had, as well as ribs, po’ boys, pulled pork sandwiches, country ham ‘n biscuits, and fried chicken.
The price point? I’m hearing that most dishes are below $15. Pork Slope is located on Fifth Avenue between Carroll Street and Garfield Place. Heck, it’s in the space that used to be Aunt Suzie’s, Park Slope’s red sauce Italian powerhouse, co-owned by Irene LoRe, president of Park Slope Fifth Avenue BID.
A friend whose opinion I respect went to see Red Hook Summer, the new film by Spike Lee and says that it’s worthwhile. It’s playing at BAM.
Here’s the premise: Flik, a young boy from middle-class Atlanta, comes to Brooklyn to spend the summer with his religious grandfather, who lives in the housing projects of Red Hook.
Between the constant preaching and the culture shock of inner-city life, Flik’s summer vacation is a washout until he meets a pretty girl his age, who shows Flik the brighter side of Brooklyn…
Old news already but I didn’t know about it and maybe you don’t either.
Two 17-year olds were stabbed on Tuesday night near The Owl Farm, a newly opened bar on Ninth Street between Fourth and Fifth Avenues. The victims were taken to Lutheran Medical Center.
This was reported by Park Slope Patch but I don’t have an update beyond what’s here.
Coney Island Circus Sideshow cast member, The Illustrated Penguin, went to the emergency room approximately three weeks ago and has been in the hospital ever since. Turns out he is going to need major surgery.
Debi Ryan writes that Penguin loves working as a performer, but he’s been unable to do his job for almost a month now. “In addition to all of the stress this has brought on, he still has his usual bills mounting with no way to pay them. Luckily, he’s got some really talented friends, and they want to PUT ON A SHOW in order to help pay for these living expenses.”
His friends are calling this fundraiser for Penguin, Penguinpalooza! and it happens at Coney Island USA on Wednesday, August 29 at 9PM.
Penguinpalooza! will be hosted by Ray Valenz and will feature all the sideshow performers, including Adam the First Real Man, Alfie Bunz, Flesh Suspension by Baron Von Geiger, Betty Bloomerz, Lefty Lucy, Serpentina, and Mr. Coney Island himself, Dick Zigun.
Celebrate Brooklyn is one of the rewards for those who decide to spend the summer in the city.
This summer was an especially sweet reward for those who got to hear Wilco, Jimmy Cliff and Lyle Lovett.
If you missed Lyle Lovett’s show at the Prospect Park Bandshell with his acoustic band, as I did, you can hear a little of it on this NPR podcast with photos.
He’s been touring in one way or another for thirty years and he’s really a new country institution. Heck, he was married to Julia Roberts for a few months. On the closing night of Celebrate Brooklyn he played songs from his most recent album Release Me, as well as favorites from throughout his career, including That’s Right You’re Not From Texas.
Get your shark on and get to the Bell House early on Thursday, August 16th at 8PM.
It’s the summer shark edition of the Secret Science Club. Marine Biologist Hans Walters of the New York Aquarium discusses his work tagging and tracking sharks and curates a special live-screening of Great White Highway, a documentary debuting on the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week.
The film follows intrepid marine scientists as they pursue the mysterious migrations of great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias).
There will be many a chance to sample the cocktail of the night, the Land Shark
I think Motherlandis better than Prospect Park West and I’m really enjoying it. A lot. While the book does a good job of satirizing Park Slope, it’s really about modern marriage and all of its travails, inherent disappointments and infidelties.
In the earlier book, I found Sohn’s disdain for Park Slope’s women to be quite gratuitous and insulting. There’s some of that in this book but it’s integrated into the fabric of the narrative and characterizations more elegantly this time around.
Motherland is a fun read as are Sohn’s references to Connecticut Muffin, PS 321, Effed in Park Slope, the Community Bookstore and the Food Coop.
But the book won my heart with a character by the name of Helene Buzzi, an old time Park Sloper. Her encounter with a mother and son playing at the train set in front of Little Things is hilarious, as is her transgressive behavior (the nature of which I won’t reveal here. In a way it’s way more shocking than any of the sex in this sex-filled book). Buzzi has watched this neighborhood go from modest oasis to high-end Yuppieville and she’s not happy about it.
“It was a strange feeling to live in a neighborhood you could no longer afford. You were the reason values had gone up, and yet you were invisible. In the eighties, there were no lawyers or bankers in Park Slope; yuppies lived in Manhattan. Now the whole neighborhood was yuppies. And none of them had any sense of the past. They didn’t understand that Helen’s generation of Slopers had improved the schools, reduced crime, attracted small busineeses, gotten bans to lend, start block associationa, and increased property values—all things that had turned the Slope into a destination. The old stores were gone, gone so long that the numer of people who remembered them were themselves a disappearing minority. Al’s Toyland. Herzog Brothers, the German deli. Danny’s candy store. Irv’s stationery. One Smart Cookie. The Grecian Corner. A true New Yorker knew storefronts according to what used to be in them.”
Sure, Helene is a Park Slope sterotype but she’s a compelling character and her observations are cogent. An ESL teacher at a Lower East Side school, Helen lives on Sixth Street in a house she and her husband (whom she calls The Bastard) bought in 1978 for thirty-seven thousand dollars. The following are my favorite sentences in the book:
“Sometime when they came home at night, they would find junkies on the stoop. They knew their names. Now they she knew only a handful of names on the block. The junkies had been more polite than the yuppies.”
Yet another fancy burger joint in Brooklyn? Not exactly.
Prospect, a new restaurant opening in Clinton Hill not far from BAM serving New American Cuisine and artisinal burgers, will be open by early September (if not sooner).
I got a kick out of the name because one of the first nouveau Park Slope restaurants back in the day (1980s and 1990s) was called New Prospect located on Flatbush Avenue near Grand Army Plaza. They later had a take-out/gourmet shop on Seventh Avenue. New Prospect was way ahead of its time serving organic and locally grown food with a decidedly Moosewood meets the Silver Palatte vibe.
This new restaurant called Prospect, owned by two high school friends, will feature organic and locally grown foods in what sounds like an attractive environment.
The decor will feature reclaimed wood from the Coney Island Boardwalk. The walls of the restaurant will be adorned with early 20th century photographs from the collection of Peter Cohen.
The menu by Chef Kyle McClelland will draw from local sources, including Greenpoint’s Eagle Street Rooftop Farm, Brooklyn Grange, and Sunset Park’s Bright Farm. The restaurant’s location is 773 Fulton Street between South Portland and South Oxford.
At the first Unbound event on September 18 at 7:30 PM, Andrew Zolli will be joined by bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell, radio host Jad Abumrad, and other special guests to discuss resilience, the emerging field of study explored in Zolli’s new book, Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back.
Sounds like an optimistic way to begin the year.
Unlike Eat, Drink and Be Literary, which takes place at the BAM Cafe and includes food and drink, this event is in the Howard Gilman Opera House
Uncovering the interconnectedness of both natural and man-made failures, Zolli shares lessons in recreating stability in our increasingly volatile world.
Things just got a little better for parents looking for a good public high school for their kids. Opening in September 2015, there’s going to be an additional campus for The Beacon School, considered one of the best public high schools in the City. That means that many more students will be able to attend that top rated school, which is currently located on West 61st Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
Beacon offers a rigorous “inquiry-based” curriculum infused with technology and arts. From what I understand history and humanities are a strong suit for the school, which also has an impressive science curriculum. Each year students must present “performance-based” projects to panels of teachers, and pass New State Regents tests and community service to graduate.
On Monday, the DOE and officials from the school held a ground breaking ceremony at the new location 521 West 43rd Street, a 200,000 square foot, former New York Public Library.
The new and larger campus, which will be in a newly modernized old building, will accommodate 1487 students and provide important new features to the Beacon School, which is currently overcrowded because it is so popular. The new building will operate in addition to the other building on West 61st Street.
And who was Commodore Barry? From Wikipedia: John Barry (March 25, 1745 – September 13, 1803) was an officer in the Continental Navy during theAmerican Revolutionary War and later in the United States Navy. He is often credited as “The Father of the American Navy.
Last night I decided to attend the Franklin Park Reading Series in Crown Heights and I’m glad I did. It was my very first time at this monthly event run by Brooklyn literary impresario Penina Roth at Franklin Park, a Crown Heights indoor/outdoor bar and restaurant.
Props to Penina Roth for proving that writers can be rock stars.
The Franklin Park Reading Series is by no means your typical literary reading. In fact, it has more in common with a show at a Brooklyn music club. What a scene. What a crowd. What a fun night.
More than one hundred young fiction lovers show up on a regular basis for this event (which meets on the second Monday of every month) and last night was no exception. The music blares, the crowd wallah is so intense you can barely hear yourself think and it’s a great place to mingle (and talk at the top of your lungs) to young writers and those who appreciate fiction. And then the show begins…
The show opened with three emerging writers. Caitlin Elizabeth Harper, who runs the Renegade Reading Series (also in Crown Heights), read a spooky short story about a swimming pool; Lincoln Michel, who writes for The Rumpus and Tin House read about US President John Adams and Zooey Dechanel; and Courtney Maum who writes a column for Electric Literature read a piece about mastrubation in the voice of guitarist John Mayer.
The second half of the show offered a chance to hear acclaimed author Victor LaValle read from his highly anticipated new novel The Devil in Silver, which will be published next week. Tayari Jones read a chapter from her novel Silver Sparrow about the woman who threw a pot of beans on Al Green in 1974.
Thanks to the website Small Demons, there were drink specials, swag, and a literary mystery quiz. The series partners with BOMB Magazine on podcasts, so you can hear great lit from your favorite authors anytime.
Anthony Swofford, author of Jarhead, will read at Brooklyn Reading Works event in November.
Brooklyn Reading Works at the Old Stone House, a monthly thematic reading series, presents emerging and established writers in a historic stone house in an idyllic Park Slope park.
Highlights of the upcoming season include: Anthony Swofford, author of Jarhead in Writing War: Veterans who Write Fiction and Memoir; a panel on the future of publishing with author Joshua Henkin, as well as editors, agents and publishers; a reading of new plays by Brooklyn playwrights presented by playwright Rosemary Moore; Banquet featuring writers who use food as metaphor or subject matter; and, of course, the annual Edgy Moms, feisty and fun writing about mothers and motherhood.
Conde Nast Traveler in a piece about Literary Brooklyn wrote: “Brooklyn Reading Works at The Old Stone House is the Best Place to Chase Fiction with a Bit of History. Reconstructed from a 1699 Dutch farmhouse that played a key role in the Revolutionary War, the Old Stone House is now a museum. Once a month you can hear up-and-coming writers discuss themes ranging from “Make Mine a Double”—on women and drinking—to books by war veterans (336 Third St.; 718-768-3195).”
Mark you calenders, here is the 2012-2013 season. All events at 8PM except for Young Writers which begins at 7PM. $5 suggested donation includes wine and refreshments.
September 20, 2012: Young Writers Night (poetry, fiction and song) curated by Hannah Frishberg. This event is a Brooklyn Book Festival Book End event.
October 18, 2012: Poetry: A Cure for the Common curated by Patrick Smith
November 15, 2012: Writing War: Fiction and Memoir by Vets featuring Anthony Swofford author of Jarhead and Hotels, Hospitals and Jails. Curated by Peter Catapano of the New York Times.
December 6, 2012: Banquet: Food as Metaphor or Subject in Fiction, Memoir or Poetry with Karen Ritter and others. An annual benefit for a local food pantry curated by Ame Gilbert and Louise Crawford.
January 17, 2013: The Truth and Publishing curated by John Guidry (Truth and Rocket Science). A panel discussion about the future of writers, agents, editors and publishing with author Josh Henkin and others.
February 28, 2013: New Plays by Brooklyn Playwrights curated by Rosemary Moore
March 14, 2013: Voices from the East: In the Year of the Snake curated by Sophia Romero (The Shiksa from Manila). An annual celebration of Asian and Asian-American authors, last year’s event included Susan Choi, Catherine Chung author of Forgotten Country and Brooklyn Poet Laureate Tina Chang.
May 9, 2012: 7th Annual Edgy Moms curated by Louise Crawford and Sophia Romero
Here’s a good deed from Time Warner Cable, the company cable and Internet users love to hate.
Today, they opened a state-of-the-art Learning Lab at Good Shepherd Services in Park Slope, Brooklyn, located on Fourth Avenue near Ninth Street in Park Slope. The community services organization is the first in the borough to receive a Learning Lab, which is meant to provide community members with access to computers, e-learning programs and high-speed Internet to assist with their educational and professional development needs.
This Learning Lab is an essential addition to Good Shepherd Services which is dedicated to helping young men and women get the skills they need to enter the work force. Check out the Good Shepherd website to learn about all the services they have to offer for children and adults. It sounds like an amazing organization.
The Learning Lab is powered by high-speed Internet from Time Warner Cable Business Class, which is also providing the lab’s television and HD DVR services. The facility is also fully equipped with computers, computer software, printers and a HD television that are completely underwritten by Time Warner Cable. The value of the donation exceeds $50,000.
“Good Shepherd Services is very grateful to Time Warner Cable for their partnership and support in establishing the Time Warner Cable Learning Lab at our Fifth Avenue location in Brooklyn,” said Sr. Paulette LoMonaco, Executive Director of Good Shepherd Services in a press release. “This facility aligns perfectly with Good Shepherd Services’ mission to provide youth and families with the services and support they need to make a safe passage to self-sufficiency.
There’s a GO Artist & Voter Meetup on Wednesday, August 15 at Sunny’s Bar ( 253 Conover Street) at 7PM. Come say hello, meet GO artists, voters & neighborhood coordinators from Carroll Gardens, Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, Red Hook & Gowanus.
Get registered to vote and they’ll answer any questions you have as they take over the back room at Sunny’s Bar. The Holy Grail of neighborhood bars, Sunny’s features remarkably untouched late 30’s decor, art shows, and live music.
Here is an opportunity to learn a terrific skill at a very reasonable price. I used to be a film and video editor and I know that Avid is a great system for non-linear editing. It’s quite similar to Final Cut Pro, another popular non-linear system.
The price: $60 for an 18 hour course. Now that’s a good price.
Avid is so popular, many large production houses use it. This summer’s 2012 Olympics, blockbuster movies The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises, and many of your favorite primetime television shows all use Avid editing software to create programs and stories.
BRIC Arts Media is making an offer you can’t refuse. Learn the system the pros use to create your own video productions. In their Basic Non-Linear Editing Certification class, you’ll learn to work with Avid’s interface to cut together footage, B-roll, audio, still images, basic effects and transitions. By the conclusion of the course, students will have edited a short video segment.
Successful completion leads to becoming a Certified Community Producer, which gives you free access to use their editing facilities to produce your Brooklyn Free Speech TV show.
The closing ceremony of the Olympics was on the two televison screens at The Gate, when I arrived at 9:30 on Sunday night. The crowd perked up during the Spice Girls segment and then the bartender switched over to AMC for Breaking Bad, the reason we were all there to begin with.
Episode 505 was a real nail biter as we watched Walter, Jesse and Mike attempt to pull off a train robbery of sorts. Amazing how much they pack into a one hour episode. But I won’t give it away except to say that Walter’s descent into darkness continues.
It may feel like a slow news day in Park Slope. It is August after all and most of the Slope is on the Cape or some such vacation paradise.
Sure, Norman and Jules, a new toy store that will sell “handcrafted and imaginative toys” is going into the space that used to be Park Slope Florist. And Little Things has expanded to fill the pet shop that vacated next to Shawn’s on Seventh Avenue between Garfield and President.
Toys, toys and more toys.
But there is a big story lurking beneath the quiet of summer Park Slope. Tomorrow is the publication date of Motherland, Amy Sohn’s new novel. Her previous novel, Prospect Park West, which was a satiric and sometimes mean-spirited look at Park Slope parents, was the novel Park Slopers loved to love and/or hate in the summer of 2009.
Motherland focuses on the discontent and sexual infidelity of Park Slope parents. It should really be quite the conversation starter at brownstone book groups.
You can buy a copy at the Community Bookstore and find out what all the sexy buzz is about.
In Sunday’s Scotsman, a Scottish news website, Lee Randall, a travel journalist travels to Brooklyn and lives like a native. His father was born in Brooklyn and the reporter found plenty of things to love about the borough, including the Brooklyn Museum, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and Park Slope’s Al Di La.
“Forget hotels and live like a native in buzzing Brooklyn, suggests Lee Randall
“Wandering around Williamsburg, the hipster capital of Brooklyn, brings to mind my late father, who was born in this borough, which was an independent town before its engulfment by New York City in the late 19th century. Dad wouldn’t recognise the place. In fact, even I don’t recognise it. The last time I ventured to this part of my native city was in the 1980s, when we’d joke that you needed to pack heat to get in and out alive. Now – all joking aside – I’d advise you to pack a Mac computer, a trilby, and a refined palate for artisan beer and coffee, else die of shame.”
“Also notable was lunch at Al Di La Trattoria (248 Fifth Avenue; www.aldilatrattoria.com), where they offer a local, organic, sustainable take on Italian food, in a sweet little room overlooking a Park Slope corner.”
Doll Parts calls itself Brooklyn’s premiere Dolly Parton cover band. I think that probably desribes them to a “T”. I don’t think there are any other Dolly Parton cover band in Brooklyn but I could be wrong.
I’m psyched because I happen to love Dolly Parton’s songwriting (Coat of Many Colors, Jolene). A lot of people probably think of Dolly as an icon of country kitsch but I think there’s a lot more going on.
The five member band will play Union Hall on Wednesday at 7:30 PM. Gentleman Callers is also on the bill.
The city’s bike sharing program was supposed to start on July 31 but it didn’t happen and it ain’t gonna happen this summer. Apparently, the City ran into some computer problems and decided not to start the program until all the kinks had been worked out.
