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arts and culture

The Worst Cellphone Dead Zones

I think the deadest cellphone zone is in my apartment, and in my office (all the places I need to use my cell phone). But Park Slope is full of dead zones. I’ve got an AT&T iPhone and that could be part of the problem.

There’s a cool article in today’s issue of The Wall Street Journal, “The Worst Cellphone Dead Zones.”  It inclues an INTERACTIVE feature online that lets users check the coverage on a block-by-block basis.

Here is a link to the article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704269204575270562789713490.html

Food and Drink

Lucas Foods is Open on Union Street

Union Street is now The Park Slope Foodie Triangle (see below for explanation).

Lucas is the nabe’s new prepared foods shop run by Misty Kurpier (pictured above). a Park Sloper, who’s yummy sounding food offerings include grilled chimichurri hanger steak, gazpacho with grilled shrimp, roasted beets with mustard seed, lentils and onions, as well as pasta and fish entrees. Also available: espresso drinks and drip coffee. She’s also got: mac-and-cheese, Balthazar pastries and Ample Hills Creamery ice cream (made in the shop).

The shop is located at 847A Union Street (between 7th and 6th Avenues) which happens to be across the street from the Park Slope Food Coop and not far from the famed Blue Apron Foods.

I’m calling it the Park Slope Foodie Triangle.

arts and culture

Bored to Death Filming at the Brooklyn Lyceum

The other day I planned a Brooklyn Blogfest planning meeting at the Brooklyn Lyceum except we couldn’t get into the Lyceum because it was filled with Bored to Death actors and production crew.

I guess I shoulda checked with the Lyceum first.

For the past few weeks they’ve been shooting that popular (and I imagine very funny) show written by Jonathan Ames  in Park Slope. I imagine it’s been a good thing for the Lyceum. In fact, I hear the new floor in the downstairs “auditorium” has something to do with Bored to Death.

Bored to Death: we love you.

Since we couldn’t get in, we had our meeting sitting on the stoop of the Lyceum. While we talked technical details of the upcoming Blogfest, the show’s stars Ted Danson, Zach Galifianakis and Jason Schwartzman came out of the building. Exciting. Is that a cool cast or what. Extras dressed as The Green Hornet and Ghostbuster entered our frame of vision as well. It was really hard to concentrate.

Really hard to concentrate. We were trying to have a serious meeting about Blogfest and all these actors were distracting us.

Yeesh.

Our producer said it was like some kind of vaudeville routine. The whole thing was kinda funny.

Civics and Urban Life

The Weekend List: Luna Park, Parade, Please Give

OPENING DAY AT LUNA PARK

Saturday, May 29th, 2010 the NEW Luna Park opens with a unique collection of state-of-the-art amusement rides and attractions.

THE STATE OF CONEY ISLAND ADDRESS

On Sunday May 30 at 4:30PM at the Coney Island Museum (1208 Surf Ave between Stillwell Ave. and West 12th Street) hear Dick Zigun, the Officially Unelected Mayor of Coney Island, give his annual overview of the current state of affairs in America’s Playground. Zigun is expected to highlight the launch of the New Luna Park, the excitement of the long-anticipated “rebirth” of the amusement area, and the remaining questions about the future of the important historic structures that remain intact in Coney Island’s historic district.

BROOKLYN MEMORIAL DAY PARADE

The 143rd Kings County Memorial Day Parade, the nation’s oldest continuously run Memorial Day parade begins at 11am on Monday, May 31 in Bay Ridge on 91st Street and Third Avenue and travels along Third Avenue to Marine Avenue, up to Fourth Avenue and concluding in John Paul Jones Park on 101st Street and Fourth Avenue. Immediately after the parade, a ceremony will be held in the park.

FILM

Babies, Please Give and Sex & The City 2 at BAM; Iron Man 2, Sex & The City 2, Shrek Forever After at the Pavilion

MUSIC

Monday, May 31, 2010 at 2:30: A Memorial Day concert at Green-Wood Cemetery by the ISO Symphonic Band, featuring select compositions by Green-Wood Cemetery’s permanent residents Fred Ebb, Leonard Bernstein, Louis Moreau Gottschalk and Paul Jabara. Bring a folding chair, a blanket and a picnic lunch. Cookout food, snacks and drinks, as well as Historic Fund books and apparel will be for sale. Admission to this event is FREE. Location: The Grounds of Green-Wood Cemetery at The Gothic Arch of Green-Wood Cemetery.

THEATER

Sunday, May 30 at 7PM at Barbes: The Twenty-Five Cent Opera Company of San Francisco: theater slash performance slash entertainment brought to you once monthly. Featuring new works for the tiny stage by landscape artist Erin Courtney, theater architect Yelena Gluzman, & word contstruction worker Kristen Kosmas.

DANCE

It wouldn’t be Memorial Day Weekend in Brooklyn without DanceAfrica at BAM, presenting troupes from Zambia, Dallas, Philadelphia and Brooklyn’s own BAM/Restoration DanceAfrica Ensemble will entertain at the Fort Greene venue, performing traditional dance and music to hip hop. The day will also feature film screenings, an art exhibition, and an outdoor bazaar, with nearly 300 vendors from around the world transforming the streets around BAM into a global marketplace offering African, Caribbean, and African-American food, crafts and fashion.

ART

Also part of DanceAfrica at BAM: an exhibition of works in BAMcafe by artists Bara Diokhane, Duhirwe Rushemeza, Francis Simeni and Ezra Wube, who all originally hail from various nations on the African continent, will be featured. Each will choose a piece from their oeuvre and pair it with a piece from BAM’s own collection of predominantly American artists. Organized by BAMarts and MoCADA.

FOOD & FESTIVITY

The BKLYN Yard in Gowanus is sponsoring PARKED, a festival of the city’s best food trucks, including traveling pizza vendor Pizzamoto, selections from the Greenpoint Food Market vendors, and Rickshaw Dumplings for the main event. For dessert, there’s almost too much to choose from, from Steve’s Key Lime Pie to Robicelli Cupcakes to Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream and the  Green Pirate Juice Truck.

arts and culture

OTBKB Music: Sister Sparrow to Start The Weekend

It’s the Memorial Day Weekend!  If you are staying in the city and would like to stay up late and celebrate the official unofficial beginning of summer, I can think of no better way to do that then with Sister Sparrow and The Dirty Birds who will be playing The Rockwood Music Hall Stage 2 (also affectionately known around here as The Rockwood Colosseum) Friday night into Saturday morning from midnight to 2am.  Details over at Now I’ve Heard Everything.

Looking past Memorial Day, June is shaping up to be quite a busy month musically.  It will include the return to performing (after a six month break) of singer-songwriter-pianist Leslie Mendelson.  To celebrate, there’s a video of Leslie playing Shine on Me here at Now I’ve Heard Everything.

–Eliot Wagner

arts and culture

Michele Madigan Somerville: Sex and the City of God

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Michele Madigan Somerville, a Park Slope poet/blogger/literary impresario has written a 3-part essay for the Huffington Post about the sexual abuse crisis within the Catholic Church. It is very much worth reading. Here’s an excerpt frm part 3 Homophobia and the War on Eros.

To say that Roman Catholic practice is sensual is an understatement. People with little interest in God travel great distances to sit within Catholic houses of worship so as to be moved by their beauty. It is not unusual for even poor Roman Catholics to worship in architectural masterpieces, in perfumed air, as colored beams descend in streams from leaded windows. At the fore of every Catholic church in the world, one beholds an image of Jesus spread open, nearly naked on a cross. Creamy angels and a God we eat. Could a religion be more carnal, more sensual? Almost every poem St. John of the Cross wrote in praise of God reads like an erotic poem. St. Therese of Lisieux is often characterized in art as being in an orgasmic state. Eros has its place in faith and religion. Tamping it down doesn’t eliminate it. Ignoring it doesn’t neutralize it. Our liturgies and temples are designed to arouse us, to bring the beauty of the created world into focus. But the Magisterium clamps down, ruling by fear when it should be guiding with love.

It is inevitable that the tension between Catholic sensuality and its hierarchy’s commitment to repression should give way to perversion. Why does the Catholic hierarchy devote so much ritual and design to awakening sensuality in us, only to clobber it out of out of us? How do we Catholics square naked cherubs in the Sistine Chapel with learning to bring a copy of the Yellow Pages to the high school dance in case the need to sit on a boy’s lap in the car arises (so to speak)?

Why does a religion so erotically charged condemn healthy sexuality in so many ways when it is entirely possible that sexual longing and ecstasy are the closest human beings ever truly get to experiencing the kind of desire and joy we are taught to feel for God? How did sex become more sinful than holy? And if Christ is love, as we Catholics are taught, why must so many women, gay Catholics, and victims of abuse continue to live as collateral damage in the Church hierarchy’s unholy war on Eros?

Civics and Urban Life

Introduction to Birdwatching

My father was a birdwatcher so I am fascinated not so much by birds as by the people who watch them. Truth be told, I was never any good at birdwatching, a pastime that requires a good deal of patience and steady hand/eye coordination. Even being the child of a birdwatcher required patience. From time to time in my Manhattan youth, my father would take me to the Ramble in Central Park where  I would, patiently, watch him birdwatch and talk to other “birders.”

Occasionally my father would try to teach me how find a bird through the binoculars. “Find the bird with your eye,” I remember him saying. “And then quickly lift the binoculars to your eye.”

Again and again I’d try it. Again and again the bird would fly away before I got to see it magnified in those fancy Zeiss lenses.

I’d grow frustrated. He’d grow eager to use his binoculars for the serious pursuit of a seasonal bird. It just never added up to a strong lesson in birding I guess.

Those birders were a strange breed to my child’s eyes. We’d run into others of this breed in Central Park and their conversations with my father seemed to go on forever.  Serious, somewhat dour, single-minded in their ways, they wore khaki vests and pants with black binoculars swinging from their necks.

But love it he did. My father was a birder through and through. That’s why this weekly class in birdwatching in Prospect Park caught my eye.

Maybe you’ll have more success than I did at the art of finding a bird. You can  tour and learn about the 250 species of birds that call Prospect Park home. Meet at the Audubon Center. They meet every Saturday at noon.

arts and culture

Lemon Anderson to Appear at Brooklyn Blogfest

I am honored to announce that Brooklyn based hip-hop artist and spoken word performer LEMON ANDERSON will be at the Fifth Annual Brooklyn Blogfest.

Wow.

Lemon appeared at the Public Theater in County of Kings, his one-man show, in which his voice moved seamlessly from hard-edged drama to urban poetry, creating a vivid portrait of his difficult yet at times humorous experiences growing up in New York City during the birth of hip-hop.

Lemon is a regular on HBO’s Def Poetry presented by Russell Simmons, an original cast member and writer of Stan Lathan’s TONY award winning Def Poetry Jam on Broadway and a Drama Desk Nominee. On the screen, Lemon appeared opposite Denzel Washington in Spike Lee’s Inside Man and is featured in the upcoming Dreamworks film The Soloist, starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr.

Trust me: you won’t want to miss his appearance at Blogfest.

And you thought SPIKE LEE, iconic Brooklyn filmmaker extraordinaire, was the only big surprise at Blogfest this year. And there are more..

So if you haven’t registered for the Fifth Annual Brooklyn Blogfest it might be a good idea. We’d love to have a sense of how many of you are coming to our fabulous free event.

Free? Yes free thanks to our fabulous sponsors: Absolut Vodka.

It all happens on June 8th at 7PM at the Brooklyn Lyceum in Park Slope.

Also featured: The Big Picture, a video tribute to the great photo bloggers of Brooklyn, Blogging Aloud: a performance of great blog writing and the panel: Create, Inspire, Blog, with award-winning radio journalist Andrea Bernstein as moderator and a table full of interesting bloggers.

How many bloggers does it take to fill the Brooklyn Lyceum? Come find out on June 8 at 7:00 PM when the borough’s most opinionated and dedicated bloggers (and surprise special guests) step away from their keyboards to sound off about how and why Brooklyn remains such a rich source of material and inspiration.

But forget about filling the room. Here’s the real question the Brooklyn Blogfest will answer: How many bloggers does it take to wrap their arms around New York’s most happening borough? So, whether you are a blogger, wannablogger, reader, or media maven, you’ll want to come see for yourself. And meet up with this year’s most tenaciously keen tribe of bloggers as they gather to celebrate all the reasons Brooklyn is such a potent source of runaway creativity.

Since it was founded in 2005, the Brooklyn Blogfest has established itself as the nexus of creativity, talent, and insight among the blogosphere’s brightest lights. This year will be no different as a panel of blogging’s best disect the unique brand of entrepreneurial creativity flourishing here. Also on tap: a video tribute to Brooklyn’s most visionary photo bloggers, special networking sessions for like-minded bloggers (i.e. Blogs of a Feather), the return of the ever-popular Shout-out, when bloggers are invited to share their blogs with the world, and a roof-raising after-party with ABSOLUT® VODKA cocktails, food and music.

“The borough of Brooklyn has always been front and center in the world of blogging,” says Louise Crawford, founder of the Brooklyn Blogfest and onlytheblogknowsbrooklyn.com. “Whether you live by a blog, blog to live, or live to blog, you’ll want to come out on June 8.”

The Brooklyn Lyceum

June 8th, 2010 at 7PM

227 Fourth Avenue at President Street in Park Slope Brooklyn

THIS EVENT IS FREE

arts and culture

The Weekend List: Green-Wood Concert, DanceAfrica, Parked

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FILM

Babies, Please Give and Sex & The City 2 at BAM; Iron Man 2, Sex & The City 2, Shrek Forever After at the Pavilion

MUSIC

Monday, May 31, 2010 at 2:30: A Memorial Day concert at Green-Wood Cemetery by the ISO Symphonic Band, featuring select compositions by Green-Wood Cemetery’s permanent residents Fred Ebb, Leonard Bernstein, Louis Moreau Gottschalk and Paul Jabara. Bring a folding chair, a blanket and a picnic lunch. Cookout food, snacks and drinks, as well as Historic Fund books and apparel will be for sale. Admission to this event is FREE. Location: The Grounds of Green-Wood Cemetery at The Gothic Arch of Green-Wood Cemetery.

THEATER

Sunday, May 30 at 7PM at Barbes: The Twenty-Five Cent Opera Company of San Francisco: theater slash performance slash entertainment brought to you once monthly. Featuring new works for the tiny stage by landscape artist Erin Courtney, theater architect Yelena Gluzman, & word contstruction worker Kristen Kosmas.

DANCE

It wouldn’t be Memorial Day Weekend in Brooklyn without DanceAfrica at BAM with troupes from Zambia, Dallas, Philadelphia and Brooklyn’s own BAM/Restoration DanceAfrica Ensemble will entertain at the Fort Greene venue, performing traditional dance and music to hip hop. The day will also feature film screenings, an art exhibition, and an outdoor bazaar, with nearly 300 vendors from around the world transforming the streets around BAM into a global marketplace offering African, Caribbean, and African-American food, crafts and fashion.

ART

Also part of DanceAfrica at BAM: May 27 – June 19 (open during BAMcafé hours and by appointment) an exhibition of works by artists Bara Diokhane, Duhirwe Rushemeza, Francis Simeni and Ezra Wube, who all originally hail from various nations on the African continent, will be featured. Each will choose a piece from their oeuvre and pair it with a piece from BAM’s own collection of predominantly American artists. Organized by BAMarts and MoCADA.

FOOD & FESTIVITY

The BKLYN Yard in Gowanus is sponsoring PARKED, a festival of the city’s best food trucks, including traveling pizza vendor Pizzamoto, selections from the Greenpoint Food Market vendors, and Rickshaw Dumplings for the main event. For dessert, there’s almost too much to choose from, from Steve’s Key Lime Pie to Robicelli Cupcakes to Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream and the  Green Pirate Juice Truck.

arts and culture

New Music for Aardvarks in Park Slope

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My daughter and I used to LOVE Music for Aardvarks. We attended classes in Manhattan with MFA founder, David Winestone.

The classes were fabulous. We also listened to the cassette tapes endlessly in the car.

Endlessly.

So I felt a stir of interest when I saw this on Park Slope Parents this morning. There seems to be a whole new Music for Aardvarks in Park Slope. The Group led by Sivan Vigder from Music for Brooklyn and Jo Solomon “are about to give Park Slope the Aardvarks Classes of their lives,” they write.

Happening first: outdoor summer classes in Prospect Park, in 3 locations. This happens July 5th to August 15th for 6 Weeks super Music for Aardvarks Fun.

Register: at www.MusicForBrooklyn.com<http://www.musicforbrooklyn.com/>

arts and culture

Are You Staying in Town for Memorial Day?

As usual I’ll be doing a Weekend List but here are some teasers of things to do Brooklyn style on the upcoming holiday weekend:

There’s Green-Wood’s 12th Annual Memorial Day Concert with compositions by Green-Wood Cemetery’s permanent residents — Fred Ebb, Leonard Bernstein, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, and Paul Jabara.

The BKLYN Yard in Gowanus is sponsoring a festival of the city’s best food trucks, including traveling pizza vendor Pizzamoto, selections from the Greenpoint Food Market vendors, and Rickshaw Dumplings for the main event. For dessert, there’s almost too much to choose from, from Steve’s Key Lime Pie to Robicelli Cupcakes to Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream and the  Green Pirate Juice Truck.

And it wouldn’t be Memorial Day in Brooklyn without DanceAfrica at BAM with troupes from Zambia, Dallas, Philadelphia and Brooklyn’s own BAM/Restoration DanceAfrica Ensemble will entertain at the Fort Greene venue, performing traditional dance and music to hip hop.

The day will also feature film screenings, an art exhibition, and an outdoor bazaar, with nearly 300 vendors from around the world transforming the streets around BAM into a global marketplace offering African, Caribbean, and African-American food, crafts and fashion.

arts and culture

Clang, Clang, Clang Went the Green-Wood Trolley

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Just so you know everything that is up with me: today I am going on the Green-wood Cemetery trolley with my relatives, who are in town from San Francisco.

A little sightseeing in Brooklyn.

Turns out that every Wednesday there is a new historic trolley tour at Green-wood. Who knew?

Tours last approximately two hours and feature the beauty of Green-Wood’s grounds, the Cemetery’s history, its bird life, the most fascinating tales of its permanent residents, views of Manhattan’s skyline, The Green-Wood Historic Fund’s Civil War Project and its preservation program, and more.

According to the website, the tour guide, Marge Raymond, fell in love with Green-Wood Cemetery 25 years ago as a birdwatcher and naturalist. She brings to her tours her enthusiasm and passion for Green-Wood’s famous residents, its history, trees and animals. Marge, a professional singer, has been a volunteer since 2002 with The Green-Wood Historic Fund’s Civil War Project and has helped to staff The Historic Fund’s information and sales cart since its inception. She has been known to break into an occasional song during her tours.

Starts at 1 PM.

Food and Drink

The Mystery of the Missing Martin: Solved

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I have fielded SO many questions about what happened to Martin O’Connell, the beloved (by some) barrista at Cafe Regular (on 11th Street just west of Fifth Avenue in Park Slope) and brother of the owner.

I knew there had been a falling out with his sister, when Cafe Regular did a swank redesign and added a north Slope location (on Berkeley Place off of Seventh Avenue).

Mystery solved. Sort of.

The storefront that used to house the Pink Pussycat on Fifth Avenue near 5th Street,  is now Cafe Martin, co-owned and operated by Martin.

arts and culture

Tonight: 5th Birthday Party for Swiss-Miss

swiss-miss.com, the popular design blog is turning 5! Tina Roth Eisenberg, who refers to herself as a “Swiss designer gone NYC”, started swissmiss in May of 2005 as a personal visual archive.

The blog receives 900,000 monthly visitors from all around the world. Based in Brooklyn, swissmiss broadcasts with an European viewpoint and a love for clean, Swiss functional design.

Tonight there’s a party in Dumbo at the Galapagos Art Space where Tina will give a very short presentation, looking back at the past 5 years and highlighting discoveries and insights that were had. She’ll also  talk about her eccentric aunt Hugi.

Galapagos Art Space

Wednesday, May 26

Doors open: 7:00 PM
Tix: $10.00

arts and culture

New Blog on the Block: Park Slope Parents

Get out the welcome wagon and bring ’em a tray of daqueris. There’s a brand new blog and it’s our old friends Park Slope Parents. This has been in the work for a long time and it was spearheaded by Nancy McDermott (the so-called Parenting Guru of Park Slope Parents) and Susan Fox (one of the visionary developers of that famous list-serve).

In case you didn’t know, Park Slope Parents (PSP) is the largest and most popular online parenting group in New York City (!). Today they announce the launch of a new local blog.

What’s next? World domination?

The blog will serve as a hyper-local magazine for area families, featuring original content from neighborhood contributors. The PSP Blog, like the Park Slope Parents lists, will be a supportive, fun resource for families in Park Slope and other Brooklyn neighborhoods. “Beyond that, we hope it will function as a point of connection for parents and the community at large,” says Nancy McDermott, the blog’s editor. “Our purpose isn’t to recreate the discussions that take place on our list but to develop and expand on some of the topics and themes relevant to a wider audience.”

The blog will place a strong emphasis on local events such as street fairs and concerts.  It will also tackle community issues such as supporting local businesses, crime prevention, and enriching neighborhood relationships. “We see this as a logical extension of the work Park Slope Parents does with other local institutions, such as the Park Slope Civic Council, the Fifth Avenue BID, the Prospect Park Alliance, the 78th Precinct and Community Board Six,” says Susan Fox, Park Slope Parents founder.

arts and culture

OTBKB Music: Misty Boyce Tonight; 19 New Album Streams

Singer-songwriter Misty Boyce plays The Living Room tonight at 9pm.  What you get with Misty is great songwriting, spirited playing and an energetic crowd.  See Now I’ve Heard Everything for the details.

Can’t get out?  Then try this: Spinner.com is streaming 19 new and soon to be released albums right now.  The artists available include Crystal Caves, Karen Elson, Far, Stone Temple Pilots, The Cure, Solvent, Toots and The Maytals, Betty LaVette, Tift Merritt, Mariana and The Diamonds, Glitch Mob, Peg Simone, Fyfe Dangerfield, Grovesnor, Widespread Panic, Peter Wolf Crier, Sara Jackson-Holman and John Prine.  A little something for everyone.

–Eliot Wagner

arts and culture

Spike Lee to Appear at Brooklyn Blogfest

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I am honored to announce that Spike Lee will be appearing at the Fifth Annual Brooklyn Blogfest on June 8th, 2010 at 7PM at the Brooklyn Lyceum.

Pre-register now.

Witness New York’s bloggiest borough come together to sound off about how and why Brooklyn remains such a rich source of material and inspiration.

Featuring iconic filmmaker Spike Lee and other top entrepreneurial creatives and bloggers thriving in Brooklyn.

There will also be a special performance by renaissance artist and Brooklyn native Lemon Anderson.

Since it was founded in 2005, the Brooklyn Blogfest has established itself as the nexus of creativity, talent, and insight among the blogosphere’s brightest lights. This year will be no different as a panel of blogging’s best disect the unique brand of entrepreneurial creativity flourishing here (moderated by award-winning WNYC radio journalist, Andrea Bernstein). Also on tap: The Big Picture, a video tribute to Brooklyn’s most visionary photo bloggers, special networking sessions for like-minded bloggers (i.e. Blogs of a Feather), Blogs Outloud, actors read from great blogs, and a roof-raising after-party with ABSOLUT® VODKA cocktails, food and music.

“The borough of Brooklyn has always been front and center in the world of blogging,” says Louise Crawford, founder of the Brooklyn Blogfest and onlytheblogknowsbrooklyn.com. “Whether you live by a blog, blog to live, or live to blog, you’ll want to come out on June 8.”

Tuesday, June 8, 2010 at 7:00 PM

The Brooklyn Lyceum

227 Fourth Avenue at President Street in Park Slope Brooklyn

THIS EVENT IS FREE

The 2010 BROOKLYN BLOGFEST is sponsored by ABSOLUT® VODKA

Civics and Urban Life

Today’s Brian Lehrer: Anecdotal Census About Brooklyn

The Brian Lehrer Show’s Brooklyn edition of YOUR ANECDOTAL CENSUS airs this morning, May 25th at 10am. Borough President MARTY MARKOWITZ will be on the show to answer residents’ questions and concerns.

Residents of Broolyn were invited to submit their stories about the county of Kings at http://beta.wnyc.org/shows/bl/blogs/scrapbook/2010/may/04/your-anecdotal-census-schedule/.

Today you have an opportunity to call in and be heard by the Brooklyn borough president on WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show airs on 93.9 FM, AM820 and www.wnyc.org.

arts and culture

Jonathan Lethem is Leaving Brookyn for California

From the New Yorker

Lethem is headed to California, where he will become the Roy Disney Chair of Creative Writing at Pomona College, a position held by David Foster Wallace until his death, in 2008. I asked Lethem how he felt about leaving a place that has shaped so much of his work. “I take a lot of pleasure in New York,” he said. “But I’m always kind of here in my mind. In a way, I need to be dreaming my way back here. The longing and exile are part of my relationship to writing about this place.”

A change of scenery has worked for Lethem in the past. “The way people respond to this news is ‘Oh no, what will this do to your writing about New York?,’ as though I have to be on the streets. I wrote most of ‘Fortress of Solitude’ when I was living in Toronto and most of ‘Motherless Brooklyn’ at Yaddo.” It may even be, he told me, that getting out of town was necessary to his development as a writer (he lived in Berkeley in his twenties): “There was something about working from the margin and not right under the shadow of the publishing industry. You should find a way to slow that down and dwell in your apprenticeship and take pleasure in being playful and unfinished while you can. Once you professionalize this activity, there’s no turning back.”

Civics and Urban Life

Happy Birthday Brooklyn Bridge

I looked at No Words Daily Pix and said to Hugh: “Why did you put a picture up of fireworks on the Brooklyn Bridge ?”

And he told me that 127 years ago today was the opening.

“It’s on all the other Brooklyn blogs,” he said.

Has it really been 27 years since my father had that great party in his apartment, which faces the Brooklyn Bridge to celebrate its 100th birthday?

That night the fireworks were unbelievably good — they poured off of the bridge itself like enormous streams of colored champagne. My father’s apartment was packed full of revelers, many of whom braved the subway to Brooklyn from Manhattan (the subway to Brooklyn!) to celebrate with my dad.

It’s hard to believe it was 27 years ago. Today is the 127th anniversary of the bridge that first connected Brooklyn to Manhattan.

The bridge’s designer, John Augustus Roebling, died during the bridge’s construction and  his his son, Washington Roebling, took over the project. He was then injured on the job but continued to work from his wheelchair.

Today’s No Words Daily Pix  picture was taken in 2008 during the 125th celebration. The apartment was filled with revelers on that day, too. It was just months before my father from cancer but he was in good spirits. You could see the fireworks right outside his window so we’d set up tall stools, drink wine and savor the private view.

We’d pretend on the Fourth of July (when there were also fireworks in New York Harbour) that it was his own private celebration. We joked on that night, too.

“When are you going to start the show,” we joked.

“Soon,” he said. “As soon as it’s dark enough.”

When the fireworks, spectacular as always, were over we’d thanked him profusely.

“We loved your show, dad,” I told him.

“Ah, it was nothing,” he said in return.

But it was wonderful. It really was.

arts and culture

OTBKB Music: Freebies and Videos

There’s lots of music to share with you today.  First, another free and legal download collection, this time from the folks at YepRock.  This  13-song sampler contains unreleased bonus tracks, b-sides and other material.  For more information and the download link, click here.

If you are not the downloading type, how about some music videos?  The first is from Kristin Diable,  a Louisiana native who lives down in New Orleans these days, but who resided in Greenpoint for about five years.  You can find her song, Lines on The Road here at Now I’ve Heard Everything.

The other music video is from Court Yard Hounds, the side project of Emily Robison and Martie Maguire, 2/3rds of The Dixie Chicks.  I saw them at SXSW earlier this year and enjoyed their set.  The Coast is the song in the video, which you can see by clicking here.

–Eliot Wagner