Momasphere presents LUNAFEST at BAX.

Filled with stories of reflection and whimsy, hope and humor, grace and perseverance, LUNAFEST films are renowned for celebrating the talents and stories of women. Our films include many off the traditional “festival circuit.” Collectively, LUNAFEST films captivate audiences, compel dialogue and arm those who participate with both the knowledge and the motivation to make a difference in their communities.

From quirky animation to touching documentaries, this year’s 10 selected films are incredibly diverse in both style and subject matter, united by a common thread of exceptional storytelling by…for…about women.

Price: Tickets are $20 online and $30 cash at the door.

Space is limited so please RSVP by purchasing tickets online. Tickets at the door are cash only and available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Click Here for more on Momasphere and LUNAFEST Women’s Film Festival

This Sunday marks the 51st Annual Park Slope Civic Council House Tour.  The self-guided tour features seven beautiful homes, followed by a panel discussion on how to make your home more environmentally friendly (moderated by yours truly).
Tickets are $20 in advance, via the Civic Council’s web site or available through tomorrow from the following local businesses:

* Aguayo & Huebener, 138 7th Avenue
* Astoria Federal Savings, 110 7th Avenue
* Brenton Realty, 322 5th Avenue
* Brown Harris Stevens, 100 7th Avenue
* Dixon’s Bicycle Shop, 792 Union Street
* Dizzy’s Diner, 511 9th Street
* Ideal Properties Group, LLC, 78 7th Avenue
* tb shaw realty associates, 197 7th Avenue
* Warren Lewis Realty, 123A 7th Avenue
* Windsor Café, 220 Prospect Park West

Tickets can also be purchased on Sunday, for $25, at the tour’s starting point, the Poly Prep Lower School, at 50 Prospect Park West, near the corner of 1st Street.

All of the profits from the house tour are redistributed by the Park Slope Civic Council in the form of grants to local non-profit organizations.

Boy have I been asleep at the wheel. This Sunday, THIS SUNDAY May 16 is the Park Slope House Tour and I’ve said word 0 about it. My bad.

And the weird thing is this house tour is as old as me. Woo.

And it’s always a fun way to satisfy that voyeuristic impulse.

This Sunday marks the 51st Annual Park Slope Civic Council House Tour.  The self-guided tour features seven beautiful homes, followed by a panel discussion on how to make your home more environmentally friendly (moderated by yours truly).
Tickets are $20 in advance, via the Civic Council’s web site or available through tomorrow from the following local businesses:

* Aguayo & Huebener, 138 7th Avenue
* Astoria Federal Savings, 110 7th Avenue
* Brenton Realty, 322 5th Avenue
* Brown Harris Stevens, 100 7th Avenue
* Dixon’s Bicycle Shop, 792 Union Street
* Dizzy’s Diner, 511 9th Street
* Ideal Properties Group, LLC, 78 7th Avenue
* tb shaw realty associates, 197 7th Avenue
* Warren Lewis Realty, 123A 7th Avenue
* Windsor Café, 220 Prospect Park West

Tickets can also be purchased on Sunday, for $25, at the tour’s starting point, the Poly Prep Lower School, at 50 Prospect Park West, near the corner of 1st Street.

All of the profits from the house tour are redistributed by the Park Slope Civic Council in the form of grants to local non-profit organizations.  Click here for more information about the house tour; to purchase reserved tickets, click here.

This just in from Eric McClure of Park Slope Neighbors.

Officials with the New York City Department of Transportation late last month announced a significant makeover for Grand Army Plaza, which will make the plaza easier and safer for drivers to navigate, more accessible and safer for pedestrians to negotiate, and more logical and safer for cyclists to traverse.

Plans for the redesign were unveiled at a joint meeting of the Community Board 6 and Community Board 8 transportation committees on April 29th at the Brooklyn Public Library’s Central Branch.  Major changes include a physical barrier and new traffic signal for Park Slope-bound vehicles headed from the inner ring to Union Street and Prospect Park West, which will eliminate the need for drivers to jockey across a six-lane merge; enlarged medians and several additional crosswalks to enable easier pedestrian access to the Bailey Fountain and the Arch; an enlarged and bollard-protected Green Market space; and the conversion of the one-way, on-street Plaza Street bike lane to a two-way, physically separated bike path situated between the curb and parked cars.

You can have a look at a PDF of NYC DOT’s complete plan and presentation here: http://tinyurl.com/newGAP.

The project, which NYC DOT hopes to commence in August, should make Grand Army Plaza considerably more pleasant, and safer, for everyone using it.  With asphalt unused by cars reclaimed for pedestrians and cyclists, the entire experience of the Plaza should be significantly upgraded.

At the same meeting, NYC DOT reaffirmed that it will begin work on the Prospect Park West Bicycle Path and Traffic Calming project next month.  The project will remove one travel lane from Prospect Park West, and will replace it with a two-way, physically separated bike path along the park-side curb.  While aimed principally at increasing safety and slowing traffic on perpetually speeding-plagued PPW, the bike path will add an important north-south connection to the cycling network.  Details of the plan are available in a PDF here: http://tinyurl.com/PPW2010.

Taken together, these two important projects, which NYC DOT will accomplish without the need for any capital funds, will represent a significant leap forward in making our neighborhood’s streets calmer, more balanced, and most importantly, safer for all users.  Thanks to all of you who attended the meeting on the 29th to voice support for NYC DOT’s efforts.

City Council Member Brad Lander of the 39th district is glad that the City Council passed a “Small Business Owners Bill of Rights” this week.

The small, independently-owned businesses that line our commercial avenues are – as we so often say – a key part of what make our neighborhoods, well, real neighborhoods.

We are lucky to live in a place where we can walk to do so much of our weekly shopping, where we are likely to see neighbors, where we know the proprietors, where we have a choice to support local businesses instead of only global chains. Whether its 5th Ave, Court Street, Church Avenue, Prospect Park West, 7th Ave, Smith Street, Columbia Street, or Fort Hamilton Parkway, so many of you have talked with me about the importance of working to help strengthen and support small businesses.

Unfortunately, our small businesses face big challenges. Real estate, energy, and other costs of skyrocketed in recent years. Too many of us these days are doing more of our shopping online. And the economic downturn has been especially hard on those businesses without deep pockets or cash reserves.

Government can’t solve all of these problems, but we should do all we can to provide a level playing field. So I’ve been troubled when I’ve asked small business owners their biggest problem – and they’ve indicated it was agency inspectors who seemed bent on levying fines in order to raise revenue for the City, rather than attending to public health or safety, much less to help make our small businesses better and stronger.

So, I was proud this week when the City Council passed the “Small Business Owners Bill of Rights,” an important first step towards ensuring that small businesses in the city are able to survive and thrive in these difficult economic times. The new legislation requires inspectors, upon entering a business, to give owners a written bill of rights, that lets them know how they can contest a claim (which they will soon be able to do online) or make a complaint, and sets a standard for fair and consistent enforcement.
Continue reading Brad Lander on “Small Business Owners Bill of Rights” →

So what is an edgy mom? Based on the reading I’d have to say it’s a mom who questions authority and group-think, and who tells the truth, even if it’s shocking. Also, judging from the night’s readers, edgy moms are funny!
– Louise Sloan, author of Knock Yourself Up, A Tell All Guide to Becoming a Single Mom

Brooklyn Reading Works presents the Fourth Annual Edgy Mother’s Day on May 20, 2010 at 8PM at The Old Stone House in Park Slope. It’s motherhood without sanctimony and an evening  of maternal revelry, wisdom and irreverent fun.

This is not your mother’s Mother’s Day but a celebration of mommydom nonetheless that will shock, rock, and make you laugh ‘til your thongs snap!

Hear Brooklyn writers of non-fiction, fiction, memoir and poetry rant and rave about mothers and motherhood. They will shock, amuse, and entertain but won’t make you eat carrots before dessert.
Bring a friend. Or bring your mom.

Hosted by Louise Crawford and Sophia Romero, here’s the evening’s line-up:
–Marian Fontana, author of A Widow’s Walk
–Rosemary Moore, author of Side Street
–Martha Southgate, author of Third Girl From the Left
–Jill Eisenstadt, author of From Rockaway
–Wendy Ponte, author of Mothering Magazine’s Having a Baby Naturally
–Sophia Romero, blogger, The Shiksa from Manila and author of Always Hiding
–Yona Zeldis McDonough, author of Breaking the Bank
–Michele Madigan Somerville, poet and author of WISEGAL and Black Irish
–Allison Pennell, parenting journalist and writer for Effed in Park Slope
–Kathy Fine, educator

The Where and When
Date: May 20, 2010 at 8PM

Location:  The Old Stone House
Fifth Avenue between 3rd and 4th Streets
Phone:  718-768-3195

7:30 p.m.:  Open bar/Wine donated by Shawn Liquors

8:00 p.m.:  Reading
Suggested contribution:  $5 to benefit Old Stone House
Reading is open to all – not just mothers – though please leave children at home

I just heard about the Brooklyn Folk Festival at Jalopy (315 Columbia St. between Woodhull and Rapelye streets in Red Hook, (718) 395-3214) on May 21-23.

There will also be shows at  Cabrini Urban Meadow Park on President Street between Columbia and Van Brunt streets.

The festival will include an eclectic mix of old-timey music, blues,  jug band music, New Orleans jazz, folk, Greek, African and Mexican folk music.

“It’s not so much getting big acts for the festival, but about getting quality acts,” organizer Eli Smith told the Brooklyn Paper. . “That’s why the Mexican folk band, Radio Jarocho, Gambian kora player Salieu Suso and American blues and folk musician Blind Boy Paxton are highlights of the festival.”

Brought to you by The Feldman Family from their weather tower in Park Slope.

Oscar the Grouch once sang of his love of trash. Harmony Korine has consistently made films that seemed to celebrate that sentiment, but none as overtly as Trash Humpers, currently at Cinema Village.

Frankly, I thought the title would just be a non-sequitor, but the throughline of the piece is literally that, a group of outsiders gyrate against garbage bins.  To attempt further synopsis is ridiculous.  Korine, a truly original master who disappeared from the cinema for over a decade, returned last year with the wonderful Mister Lonely, a film considered by the critical masses to be deeply personal and void of the nonsense of Korine’s youth evident in the much maligned masterpiece Gummo. 

Trash Humpers is nothing but the nonsense. And like two Jean-Luc Godard works I recently revisited, La Chinoise or Le Gai Savoir, it is very much a what-does-one-say experience. If you think a movie about southern fringe dwellers wearing grotesque elderly masks getting it on with garbage sounds funny or interesting in some way, then take on a memorable experience. Or just revel in the attempt at a VHS quality look, complete with grain, tracking problems and cues such as PLAY or REW. When it’s done you can bask in it by imagining luxury designer Agnes B. who has produced Korine’s last two films, discussing the work with its maker.

I recently saw Kick-Ass, thinking it could be irritating and off-putting. Trash Humpers makes Kick-Ass or any movie for that matter look like Masterpiece Theater. When the show was over, three strangers stood in silence at our respective urinals in the Cinema Village men’s room. This standard moment became too uncomfortable to bear for one who finally said, “It’s like someone told a bad joke and no one’s laughing.”   That line, that moment sums up Trash Humpers better than any other description one could offer.

Who can forget last summer’s dumpster swimming pool in the Gowanus. That was created by David Bell, a local developer. This year he’s creating something called  “Glassphemyl,” an experiment in recylcing.

The installation set in a private space along the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, is a 20-foot-by-30-foot clear box, with high walls made of steel and bulletproof glass.

People will stand on a high platform at one end of the box and a low platform on the other so that they’ll be able to toss glass bottles into the box—and at each other though no once can get hurt thanks to the way its designed.

Sounds fun.

And there’s more: as the bottle smash,  lights flash, and no one is harmed.

According to the Brooklyn Paper, the NBA’s Board of Governors will let Bruce Ratner sell the Nets to Mikhail Prokhorov. The Russian mogul will be the first non-North American owner of a team.

Last year, Prokhorov made a deal with Ratner to buy 80-percent of the team, plus 45 percent of the lucrative Barclays Center arena, which is under construction at the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues.

Remember Doug Biviano?

Biv was the candidate from Brooklyn Heights, who ran an interesting campaign for city council in the 33rd district. I was impressed with him and endorsed him in the Democratic primary. So did Dennis Kucinich, who came to Brooklyn to give his support.

Well, Biv lost that race but now he’s entered the race for NY State Assembly. Brooklyn’s 52nd Assembly District includes Brooklyn Heights, Downtown Brooklyn, Boerum Hill, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, the Columbia Waterfront, DUMBO, Fulton Ferry Landing, Gowanus, Wyckoff, Red Hook, Park Slope, Prospect Heights, and Vinegar Hill.

The Democratic Primary for New York State Assembly is September 14th, 2010. Here’s his press release:

Political reformer and progressive Democrat Doug Biviano entered the race for New York State Assembly today in Brooklyn’s 52nd AD, declaring that the incumbent Joan Millman’s record of silence on the widespread corruption in Albany was too costly to ignore.

“We all know what’s going on in Albany,” said Biviano, who was voted one of the Top Ten People of 2009 by the Brooklyn Heights Blog for his bold campaign for City Council against the Brooklyn machine and boss Vito Lopez. “Every week, there’s another story about one of Millman’s colleagues in the Assembly or State Senate being arrested or under investigation for stealing millions of our taxpayer dollars. It’s no coincidence that this same State legislature has run up a $10 billion debt that they have no clue how to fix, except for borrowing billions more for our kids to repay and closing hospitals, token booths, senior centers, and schools. Well, unlike Joan Millman, when I see something, I say something. I won’t play that same cynical game up in Albany where politicians like Millman refuse to speak out against the corrupt system that is destroying our state, because it is that very same corrupt system that ensures they keep getting reelected.”

Even more outrageous than her silence, Joan Million is Chairman of the State Assembly’s Election Law Committee, the body that purposely does nothing to change the laws filled with legal traps that result in dozens of challengers to incumbents being thrown off the ballot each year by the Board of Elections and the courts. “Millman is in a unique position to introduce the reforms every good government group in this State says is imperative to end the dysfunctionalism in Albany and yet she hasn’t lifted a finger to fix our broken system. Why not?” Biviano wants Millman to answer.

A few weeks ago, Doug Biviano issued a press release demanding “A New Standard in Albany” and challenged Joan Millman to finally speak out against her colleagues’ crimes. Millman again said nothing. But Biviano received an outpouring of impassioned responses from residents across the district outraged at the dysfunction in Albany. It was the strength of this grassroots uprising that convinced him that after 13 years of Millman, the people of Brooklyn’s 52nd AD were ready for change. “I’ve spoken to my neighbors and they understand that if we’re going to end the culture of corruption ruling Albany, our only chance is to start the movement right here in Brooklyn.” This election is about a whole lot more than just whether you like your elected official. It’s about preserving our neighborhoods, saving our essential services, and making sure businesses and jobs do not leave the city.”

Brought to you by The Feldman Family from their weather tower in Park Slope.

Spent a few days with writer friends in the North Fork of Long Island. Just got back. Sorry for the late start. Thanks to No Words and Now I’ve Heard Everything for keeping the OTBKB light burning…

On May 13th from 6-8:30 PM at the Park Slope Armory (15th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues) representatives from over 95 organizations will be on hand to share information about the various volunteer opportunities available.

Find out where and how you can help, whether you’re a high school student, a retired person, and/or someone who wants to sharpen skills or develop new ones. Admission to the event is free and light refreshments will be provided.

“This is a chance for the community to meet representatives from over 95 local non-profits, including those that focus on the environment, recreation, youth, health, the arts, community service and the elderly,” said Assemblymember Jim Brennan. “No matter what your interest, you’ll find a rewarding opportunity to get involved and to give back to your community.”

“Volunteering is for everyone. We have made it a point to include opportunities for students on up to senior citizens,” said Assemblymember Joan Millman. “Volunteering is a worthwhile way to use your skills, develop new ones, and connect with other interesting, dedicated people.”

“A real measure of a neighborhood’s strength is the extent to which its residents share their time and talents in their community,” said Craig Hammerman, District Manager of Brooklyn Community Board 6. “Brooklyn offers a tremendous range of volunteer opportunities at organizations that depend on the energy and skills of volunteers.”

“Volunteers help us in so many ways and are an important link between us and our community. We are looking forward to this event as a great way to meet potential volunteers,” said Lyn Hill, Vice President for Communication and External Affairs at New York Methodist Hospital.

The event is sponsored by: Assemblymembers Jim Brennan  and Joan Millman, Councilmember Brad Lander, Senators Eric Adams and Velmanette Montgomery, District Attorney Charles Hynes, Brooklyn Community Boards 6 and 7, New York Methodist Hospital, Park Slope Civic Council, Park Slope Parents, Park Slope 5th Avenue BID and Prospect Park YMCA.

Brought to you by The Feldman Family from their weather tower in Park Slope

Here’s a chance to help influence the reshaping of the City’s Comprehensive Waterfront Plan by attending the Department of City Planning’s Brooklyn workshop and offering your ideas and suggestions…

BROOKLYN WORKSHOP 
May 17, 2010, 6-8:30 pm
Brooklyn Technical High School
Dekalb Ave. & S. Elliot Pl, Brooklyn

In addition to the Brooklyn Workshop, there’s a Blue Network Workshop which will focus more broadly on the City’s waterways and include important discussions on topics of greatly emerging importance such as climate change and sea level rise…

NOTE: Date Change! The Blue Network workshop will now be held on June 24, 2010, 6:30-9 pm, P.S. 234, The Independence School, 292 Greenwich St., Manhattan.  This workshop will focus on the city’s waterways themselves.  We will examine and discuss the opportunities to enhance the Blue Network’s use for recreation, transportation, and education. We will also discuss the ecology of the water bodies and increasing the city’s resilience to climate change and sea level rise.

Click here for the event flyer, or use the following link:
http://www.brooklyncb6.org/announcements/#16