In this city of eight million people, I encounter a certain few with unusual frequency. Perhaps our habits fall into sync for a time.
Liz Starin is an illustrator based in Brooklyn. She doesn’t believe in fate, but she does believe in probability. You can see more of her work at lizstarin.com.
Tune into to OTBKB tomorrow for the next installment of What Are the Chances?
Bernette Rudolph, the elder goddess of the Park Slope art scene, just sent me a map that she made of the Park Slope artists participating in the Go Brooklyn Art Open Studio weekend September 8-9.
On September 8–9, 2012, from 11:00 am to 7:00 pm, nearly 2000 artists across Brooklyn will open their studio doors, so that you can decide who will be featured in an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum.
There are 80 participating artists in Park Slope. If you want a copy of this map, start your Go Tour at Bernette’s at #103 and you can get a map with a key of artist’s names.
For starters:
#3 is Simon Dinnerstein
#28 is Jonathan Blum’s storefront
# 35 is Hugh Crawford
# 103 is Bernette Rudolph
Standing behind artist Simon Dinnerstein in line at the Park Slope Copy Shop, we fell into a conversation about the fact that he’d been married twice.
“Oh?” I said.
“Twice to the same woman,” he told me.
“Ah,” I said with obvious interest. I added that I knew the date of one of his anniversaries because I’d once run into Simon and his wife Renee at Belleville Bistro. It was on August 28, 2005 when they were celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary and my twin sister and I were celebrating our 47th birthday.
“August 28th,” I said.
“Yes, that’s right,” he said.
He went on to tell an interesting story about what happened on August 26th in 1965. But first a little history…
The Vietnam War was in full swing in August of 1965 and 35,000 men were being called up each month. President Lyndon Johnson had decided to escalate US involvement. More soldiers needed to be found. The Department of Defense suggested that the President reverse an old policy which allowed married men a draft deferment. Thus, it was decided that the US would draft married men without children.
According to ABC News: “On Aug. 26, without any advance notice, President Johnson made it law. Anyone who was married before midnight that night would still be eligible for a deferment.”
August 26, 19655 happened to be two days before Simon and Renee’s planned wedding. The two spent the day painting their new apartment and returned to Renee’s parent’s apartment in Sheepshead Bay when they heard the news.
Once Simon and Renee heard the news that LBJ was going to change the draft policy, they decided to get married on the 26th so that Simon would still be ineligible for the draft. It was a no-brainer: either get married or risk being drafted to Vietnam, a hugely unpopular war. Panic ensued as they tried to find someone to marry them.
“I don’t care if it’s a Catholic Priest,” Simon told Renee. The comment apparently aggravated her Jewish parents, who were “not thrilled” with the “crazy artist” she was about to marry in two days. Finally, Simon called the rabbi who was going to marry them on the 28th and he agreed to marry them on the 26th.
Because they’d just come from painting their apartment “we were covered in splotches of paint! Simon did borrow a suit and squeeky shoes. I wore the veil from my bride doll. my mother got a migraine headache!” writes Renee in a comment to OTBKB. A few hours later they were standing in front of the rabbi (they already had their marriage license and blood test so they were good to go).
“It was a big thing. Lots of people got married that day as word spread,” Simon told me. According to ABC News, 30,000 people got married that day.
Two days later, they were married again by the very same rabbi at the fancy wedding planned by Renee’s parents. “By the way, the rabbi got paid. Twice,” Simon told me.
Darius, who runs the mailing department at Park Slope Copy (brilliantly, I might add) listened to Simon’s story.
“So according to the government you were officially married on August 26th,” he asked.
“Yes, that’s right,” Simon said.
“Otherwise you would have served in Vietnam,” Darius said.
“Yes, you’re right,” Simon said.
“August 28th, 1965 is my birthday. When you were starting your life, I was starting my life,” said Darius, who was born in Queens Hospital. He grew up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Simon was absolutely shocked by this information. As was I. Three people with connections to August 28th standing together at Park Slope Copy. What are the chances?
“We should all come back on the 28th and celebrate,” I said.
“I’m not going to be working on my birthday,” he said. “You know Martin Luther King’s I Had a Dream Speech was also on the 28th in 1963″ Darius said.
“Yes,” said Simon. “And I was there.”
“You were there?”
“I was in Washington listening to his speech,” Simon said.
Dinnerstein’s The Fullbright Tryptich (pictured above) will be on display at the German Consulate in Manhattan through 2014. Roberta Smith wrote in the New York Times: “This crackling, obsessive showboat of a painting, dreamed up during a decade when the medium supposedly teetered on the brink of death, is a three-panel autobiographical allegory of life, love and art that measures 14 feet across.”
I received this informative email from Anne-Katrin, who lives in Brooklyn, and keeps many abreast of the West Nile Virus mosquto problem in our midst. I am quite sure that she got this information from the Department of Health. She is very concerned about West Nile Virus and believes that it is time to take precautions (see below):
According to the Department of Health, two test positive for West Nile Virus in Brooklyn announced this afternoon.
For the fourth straight week, West Nile Virus detected in Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Windsor Terrace, Greenwood Heights.
What do these neighborhoods have in common?
They border the stagnant pools and swampy pits (“Female mosquitoes prefer to lay eggs on water that may be described as aged, stagnant and putrid.”) at Prospect Park where the West Nile Virus mosquito surveillance traps were placed by the Department of Health.
“Now is the time to take personal precautions to prevent mosquito bites.”
Eliminate any standing water that collects on your property.
Remind or help neighbors to eliminate standing water on their
properties.
Call 311 to report standing water.
I was waiting for the bus at Bartel-Pritchard Square-that-is-really-a-circle, when I saw her. Again.
Tune in tomorrow for the next installment of What are the Chances? Liz Starin is an illustrator based in Brooklyn. She doesn’t believe in fate, but she does believe in probability. You can see more of her work at lizstarin.com.
The Go Brooklyn Art open studio weekend, a Brooklyn-wide open studio event sponsored by the Brooklyn Museum, is just over a week away and Go is hosting a series of meetups to talk about the project, answer questions, and generally just say hello.
GO staff will be on hand and the meetups. You are welcome at any of these, regardless of neighborhood!
–Prospect Heights: Tue 8/28 6pm at The Way Station (683 Washington Avenue)
–Coney Island, Brighton & Manhattan Beach: Tue 8/28 6:30pm at Gambrinus Bar & Restaurant (3100 Ocean Parkway)
— Boreum Hill, Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens: Tue 8/28 7pm at 61 Local (61 Bergen Street)
–Gowanus: Wed 8/29 7pm at Lavender Lake (383 Carroll Street)
–Prospect Lefferts Gardens: Fri 8/31 7:30pm at Lincoln Park Tavern (49 Lincoln Road)
Sadly, I wasn’t at the Patti Smith reading curated by the Community Bookstore at Brooklyn Bridge Park (as part of the Books Beneath the Bridge series curated by Brooklyn’s independent bookstore). I was on Block Island that August day so I missed it.
Today, I received a sweet reminisence of that event in the Bookstore’s montly e-newsletter, which I’d love to share with you. It was written by Ezra Goldstein, co-owner of Park Slope’s landmark bookshop and it provides a flavor of that event which was attended by 500 people. Here it is:
“When Patti Smith started cracking jokes at Brooklyn Bridge Park; when she paused in reading from her poetry and prose to turn and wave at a passing tugboat and 500 people waved with her; when she read or chanted or sang lines that reminded us of times and people long gone but also of feelings that never go away; when she mimicked Vanilla Fudge on acid, we began to breathe again, figuring things were going to be okay. Better than okay, because that August evening felt a whole lot like what Patti writes inWoolgathering:
“And a sum of us
will flicker
just a bit of dust, hardly noticed
but it fills the air with substance.
The immortal dream…”
The Brooklyn Ink, a blog which is affiliated with the Columbia School of Journalism, has an article about Congregation Beth Elohim and their use of social media and crowd sourcing to raise funds for the preservation of their synagogue.
“Last spring, several leaders at Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope heard about a competition for a $250,000 grant being offered by Partners in Preservation, the first-ever citywide conservation campaign determined by online voting. The Reform temple indeed needed money to refurbish its 103-year-old stained glass windows. The chance of a congregation made up of 800 families winning seemed to be a long shot.
“But, following the example of their tech-savvy rabbi, Andy Bachman, the congregants launched a social-media campaign. One vote per person was allowed daily, leading the members to use Facebook to reach family in Florida or Twitter to remind their followers to vote for the synagogue. And in May, Beth Elohim was awarded the $250,000 grant, after gaining eight percent of the popular vote.”
File this under weird statistic of no particular value.
Brooklyn was ranked the #5 city of sleepless singles by some weird national ranking released today from Chemistry.com “that examined where its millions of single online members were most active during late night hours.”
Chemistry.com’s new ranking specifically shows the top 10 cities where singles are using late nights to find love online between the hours of 12:00 am to 6:00 am in each of the nation’s six time zones.
The Top 10 Sleepless Single Cities in the U.S.
1. Honolulu, HI
2. Virginia Beach, VA
3. Nashville, TN
4. Scottsdale, AZ
5. Brooklyn, NY
6. Long Beach, CA
7. Las Vegas, NV
8. Henderson, NV
9. Fresno, CA
10. Mesa, AZ
According to the New York Times, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo added his voice on Sunday to a chorus of voices calling for the resignation of Vito J. Lopez, a powerful Brooklyn politician, who is facing allegations of sexually abusing female staff members. Lopez is the leader of the Brooklyn Democratic Party.
The Assembly’s ethics committee censured the Assemblyman who is accused of verbally harassing, groping and kissing two staff members.
The New Kings Democrats, a North Brooklyn progressive, grassroots political organization committed founded by veterans of the Obama campaign, is especially vocal about calling for Lopez’s resination:
“New Kings Democrats demands the immediate resignation of Assemblyman Vito J. Lopez as Chairman of the Democratic Party of Kings County. Lopez was censured and dismissed from his position as Assembly Housing Chair by Speaker Sheldon Silver due to credible allegations that Lopez sexually harassed two female members of his staff.
“Yet again, Vito Lopez has embarrassed Brooklyn and the Democratic Party. We have long been used to stories about his corruption, cronyism and nepotism,” said Alex Low, president of NKD. “Today’s news marks a new low. Vito’s time has come. We encourage other leaders to join us in demanding his resignation and calling for fresh leadership.”
File this under: The gloves are off.
Jake Dobkin, publisher of the Gothamist, tried to interview Amy Sohn, author of the new book Motherland. But all of his questions, which I’m assuming he submitted via email, went unanswered.
Admittedly, he did come on strong. Still, I don’t understand why Sohn didn’t answer. She seems pretty tough. Can’t she take it? She’s pretty merciless when it comes to her satire of Park Slope and its inhabitants.
Jake Dobkin: I read your Awl piece. My first reaction was that some of the stuff you described, like doing “body shots”, partying with your mommy friends till 3 a.m., and blowing guys you aren’t married to, didn’t really happen, or only happened once- like you’re making it up just to troll internet commenters, or you imagined it, like in Fight Club, where the other mommys in your “Hookers, Sluts, and Drug Addicts” club are really just in your head and you’re actually sitting at home alone with one glass of wine most nights. That’s true, right?
Sohn refused to answer any of his questions and gave this reason: “I can’t answer these questions. Even for a writer who bares a lot and writes about her personal life, they’re too invasive and too hostile. And I’m not sure that all of them are really questions.”
Fair enough.
Check out Dobkin’s interview: A Short Interview With Park Slope Author Amy Sohn, Who Didn’t Answer Any Of Our Questions
I did love this question that Dobkin lobbed Amy Sohn’s way:
Dobdin: As you know, I was raised by radical Stalinists in Park Slope in the 1980s. What really galls me is how the values that I was raised with, which were all about community, sacrificing for others, and avoiding consumption, have given way to the world described in your book- militant materialism, especially around real estate, and the celebration of toxic values like celebrity and fame- here I’m thinking of your obsession with Maggie Gyllenhaal and her husband. Is it true that if you give a liberal a piece of property and twenty years, they always turn conservative? Why has Park Slope turned its back on the leftist values of the past?
No response.
Comedy Tonight
Friday, August 24: Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival Fundraiser at the Bell House. Bring a checkbook for silent auction if you’re feeling generous (and flush). Cocktails at 7PM. Show at 8:30 PM.
Music
Friday, August 24 at 9PM: At Sycamore on Cortelyou Road, Mary of Egypt makes “classical and pop perspectives sound so natural together, it’s as if they were never separate” (NYpress). This ensemble, the brainchild of pianist/composer Julia Hatamyar, was established in 2009 and is made up of Eastman School of Music graduates, who perform her hand-notated scores. Incorporating a vast range of musical idioms, including classical, jazz, rock, electronica, musical theatre, and folk.
Saturday and Sunday, August 24-25: The 2012 Afro-Punk festival with Erykah Badu, Gym Class Heroes, Janelle Monae, Das Racist, Toro Y Moi, Reggie Watts, Spank Rock, Ninjasonik, The Memorials, Bad Rabbits, Gordon Voidwell, Cerebral Ballzy, Phony Ppl, Body Language, and more to be added! Plus a street skate competition. Last year the festival was cancelled because of Hurricane Irene. Remember Hurricane Irene? There will be food trucks at the festival with yummy food.
Film
All weekend at the Park Slope Pavilion: Paranorman, the latest 3D stop-motion film from LAIKA, makers of Coraline
All Weekend: Lots of Great Events Commemorating the 236th Anniversary of the Battle of Brooklyn
Go to The Old Stone House for more information
–Saturday, August 25, 10 am sharp
Prison Ships Martyrs Memorial Ceremony at the Prison Ships Martyrs Monument, Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn
Information: (718) 499-7600
–Saturday, August 25, 2 pm – 5 pm
The Great Escape with Reenactors from General John Glover’s Marblehead Regiment at Main Street/Brooklyn Bridge Park.
Join reenactors for an historic depiction of many aspects of maritime history, camp life and community, and the role of Fulton Ferry Landing. www.brooklynbridgepark.org/718-768-3195
–Sunday, August 26
Battle of Brooklyn Commemoration at The Green-Wood Cemetery
5th Avenue at 25th Street
(718) 768-7300 for reservations and more information
And you thought Lance Armstrong was the only one stripped of his privileges today. Nope, Vito Lopez was, too.
Assemblyman Vito J. Lopez, the Brooklyn Democratic leader, considered the kingmaker of Brooklyn politics, has been stripped of his committee chairmanship, barred from employing young people, and censured because an assembly committee determined that he did sexual harass two female employees this summer.
What is wrong with this guy?
Speaker Silver shared these findings with the public via the New York Times: “There were multiple incidents of unwelcome physical conduct toward one complainant, wherein you put your hand on her leg, she removed your hand, and you then put your hand between her upper thighs, putting your hand as far up between her legs as you could go,” Mr. Silver wrote.
What a perv.
According to the New York Times, Speaker Sheldon Silver, Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, United States Representative Jerrold Nadler; and Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer all called for him to quit.
Lopez said that he would not.
This morning OTBKB reader Brooke Dramer sent me a note that The Landlord is playing at BAM.
So I looked it up and sure enough, on Monday, August 27, The Landlord, a 1970 film filmed in Park Slope is playing at BAM.
And guess what it’s about: Yup, you guessed it. Gentrification.
WASP-y rich kid Elgar Enders played by a handsome Beau Bridges (did you see him in The Descendants?) buys an apartment building in Park Slope back when it was a grittier, less gentrified neighborhood. He plans to evict the current residents and turn the building into a nice home for himself.
When the black tenents refuse to move out, Enders embarks on a comic adventure that results in a personal turnaround on matters of life and race.
The film, directed by Hal Ashby is a comedy about gentrification and, says BAM, “presents a nuanced, daring exploration of race relations inAmericathat is surprisingly ahead of its time.”
I asked Dramer to say something about the film. Here’s her reply:
“This is an e-mail volley between me and Ken Byrne, who has seen even more cult films than I have. Ken can’t recall any quotes from The Landlord–which means, just give up, because no one else would relate to a Landlord quote in the headline.” – Brooke
Brooke: Susan Anspach was pretty calm during The Landlord, walking around smoking a joint and casually spraying air freshener after each exhalation. But Idon’t remember what she said. Or what Beau Bridges said. I just remember the expression on his face–especially when he ran about 1/4 mile while carrying a potted rhododendron in his arms.
Ken: The Landlord…hmm…It was filmed on Prospect Place btw 6th & 7th in 1969…You get to see a young Beau Bridges, a young Lou Gosset Jr. (Yes, he once was young!), Pearl Bailey, also youngish, and Susan Anspach, before she was in the insane Swedish classic, Montenegro. And whatever happened to the lovely Marki Bey?
A great, wise, sad, funny film
There are 1,814 artists participating in the Go Brooklyn Arts massive open studio weekend on September 8-9, 2012. Eighty of them are in Park Slope.
That’s a bigger number than I expected. There are a lot of artists in and around Park Slope but most of them don’t have their studios in Park Slope, a neighborhood made up mostly of apartment buildings and brownstones. We don’t have much in the way of loft or industrial buildings.
Go Art Brooklyn is a crowd -curated, crowd-sourced open studio extravaganza backed by the Brooklyn Museum. As an art appreciator, you can sign on as a visitor and actually vote for the artists you like best during your studio visits.
Of the eighty Park Slope artists, I know a few including my husband Hugh Crawford, who will open his photography studio right here on Third Street. “The last few years I have been making photographs I describe as “tangles”. They are of rose bushes, ocean waves, the banks of the Gowanus Canal, amusement park rides, trees, and distressed ground. What I am trying to capture is “the act of seeing.” Since mid-2011, my work is multiple exposures reassembled into single compositions with some of the work printed as large as 20 feet long,” he writes in his Go artist statement.
Also, Bernette Rudolph (above), whom I consider the elder goddess of Park Slope artists, will be showing her prints and mixed-media work in her Third Street studio, as she’s been doing since 1985. “I work in my art studio with music or silence depending on what I am creating. I have been a working artist over fifty years exhibiting in museums and art galleries thru the United States. My current inspiration is photographing the people I see on the streets of New York City and the vast variety of people who ride the New York subways. I use photo shop to turn the photos into works of art,” she writes in her Go artist statement.
Continue reading 80 Park Slope Artists Participating in Go Brooklyn
In conjunction with GO Brooklyn Art, the huge open studio event sponsored by the Brooklyn Museum, on September 8, 2012, ArtOnBrighton, a multidisciplinary festival will celebrate the creative energies of POST-SOVIET IMMIGRANTS of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn and beyond.
Daytime visitors are encouraged to explore Open Artist Studios in and around Brighton Beach, as part of the Brooklyn Museum GO project. The organizers are warning “that you will likely encounter rather interesting sights and characters along the way.”
Sweet.
An evening program will be comprised of live music, art, and comedy presented at the NY Aquarium, followed by a DJ-spun dance party out on the adjacent beach, where a large-scale site-specific art installation, “Brighton is Cool, Ocean is Hot,” made up of 36 WORKING AIR CONDITIONERS (i.e. the poster) will be set up.
Also, there will be the Amazing Water art exhibit, bar and snacks, video projection art and live performances by artists, including Y-Love, The Clox, Lady Aye, Alina Simone, Emperor Norton’s Stationary Marching Band, and Amour Obscur. The host for the evening is the outrageous comedian Kira Soltanovich, as seen on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Jimmy Kimmel Live.
Out on the beach, DJ Spinach will be spinning a dance party into the night. Watch out for the fire dancers!
Tickets are $10 in advance or $15 at the door. Visit www.ArtOnBrighton.org for tickets and detailed program information. RSVP on Facebook for updates and invite your friends. https://www.facebook.com/events/342869892463772/
The NYC taxi logo redesign is big news for design geeks and NYC wonks; people who obsess over those sorts of things. Indeed, the logos and signage of our urban environment are part of the landscape of our lives. And when they change, well, we are bound to have an opinion about it.
And a healthy curiosity.
I asked David Yassky, the commissioner of the New York Taxi and Limo Commission, why the change and this is what he had to say. Yassky used to be one of the City Council members in Park Slope.
“The logo redesign project started in conjunction with the “Taxi of Tomorrow” project — figured it was time for a “freshening” — prior iteration has two different fonts for the “NYC” and the “TAXI” and TLC felt that was visually jarring — also, the new vehicle created opportunity for logo designed specifically to look good on that vehicle.
“Reason for deploying now is that with recent fare increase, taxi owners were going to have to change the decals anyway, so figured we might as well roll out the new version.”
Brooklyn Reading Works is pleased to present Young Writers Night at the Old Stone House (a Brooklyn Book Festival Bookend Event).
How cool is that? And how cool is this poster, a painting by AJ Burkle?
Come one and all to this celebration of fiction, poetry and song by young writers between the ages of 13-19, curated by Hannah Frishberg (a senior at Bard High School Early College). The event will be introduced by Brooklyn Poet Laureate Tina Chang and an editor from One Teen Story will be on hand to distribute FREE copies of the first issue of One Teen Story
The Brooklyn Book Festival (on Sunday, September 23rd outside at Brooklyn Borough Hall) is the largest free literary event in New York City, presenting an array of national and international literary stars and emerging authors, readings and a lively literary marketplace.
Young Writers Night happens on Thursday, September 20th at 7PM at The Old Stone House, 336 Third Street in Park Slope ( between 4th and 5th Avenues).
I used to think “dog days” referred to the hot, panting dog breath type feeling of New York City in August. Alas, I was incorrect.
According to Ms. Wikipedia (if she is to believed, and I choose to believe her): “The name comes from the ancient belief that Sirius, also called the Dog Star, in proximity to the sun was responsible for the hot weather.”
Oh.
One Story, the acclaimed pocket-sized literary magazine featuring one story per issue and mailed out 18 times a year, is published in the Park Slope/Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn by publisher Maribeth Batcha and editor Hannah Tinti.
Batcha is set to launch One Teen Story, a great idea if I ever heard one. One Teen Story, as described by the publisher, will be for young adult readers of every age. Each issue will feature one amazing short story about the teen experience.
The first story to be published in the upcoming first issue of One Teen Story is Gayle Forman’s “The Deadline.”
Today they are launching a Kickstarter campaign to cover the costs of printing One Teen Story. Indeed, they are committed to making One Teen Story a print magazine. That said, print bills are high and really difficult for a startup to cover.
They’re calling out to YA readers everywhere to make a tax-deductible donation at Kickstarter. They’ve got great rewards for donations as low as $10!
Posting this picture of all the Celebrate Brooklyn staff is my way of saying thank you for all the joy you bring to our lives in the summer.
And what a season it was (Lyle Lovett, Jimmy Cliff, Wilco, Angelique Kidjo, The Muppets, Balkan Beat Box, The Head and the Heart…)
Leaf & Bean recently relocated to Lincoln Place and guess who’s taking their old spot? Subway Sandwich, the ubiquitous hero sandwich shop (five dollar footlongs and all that).
There goes the neighborhood for the dozenth time. Just saying.
According to Dan at Here’s Park Slope, the king of what’s in, what’s out in retail Park Slope, the old Leaf & Bean storefront can’t be dismantled because of Landmark designation. Let’s hope Subway keeps it contextual when designing their storefront.
Does that mean they have to take those cute Leaf & Bean letters and respell them as Subway. Let’s see there’s an A, a B, another a…
Reminds me of when there was middle eastern restaurant with huge red letters for signage on the Upper West Side called Cleopatra back in the 1970’s. When a new place, more of a bistro, went in they used the old letters to spell At Our Place .
By email, I did a group-interview with the members of the folk trio, The Tres Amigos. The guys are just back from a 14-state, cross-country tour. Considered one of New York City’s hottest folk acts, they are all about three-part harmony, virtuosic musicianship and catchy self-penned songs.
Who could ask for anything more?
The Tres Amigos are Sam Reider, Justin Poindexter, and Eddie Barbash. You can find them at their September residency at The Living Room. 9/3, 9/10, 9/17, and 9/28. Each week will feature special guests ranging from New York bluegrass mainstay Jon Sholle to Hudson River blues singer/saxophonist Jay Collins (the Levon Helm Band and the Allman Brothers Band).
I’ve included with this post, a music video of The Tres Amigos doing a cover of Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land, in honor of the July 2012 centennial of Guthrie’s birth. Their new music video, I Want to Get Drunk, shows Brooklyn kids running wild in a Crown Heights candy store. Love it.
Where’s your favorite place for the band to play?
Our #1 favorite place to play is in people’s living rooms. We’re an intimate band and we like to be as close to our audience as possible. Also we’re big fans of cheeses, cured meat, and spicy salsa, so house concerts always add fuel to the fire.
In terms of traditional music venues, we happily return time after time to Marlboro, New Yorks’ The Falcon. This is a beautiful converted barn space on the Hudson, about an hour’s drive away from the city. Tony Falco, the owner, is beloved by a large portion of the New York music community—he has created a space and a business model that supports the music and encourages his local community to support it as well.
A little closer to home we enjoy the Jalopy in Red Hook, and The Living Room in the Lower East Side, where we’ll be doing a Monday night residency every Monday of September. (Details here: http://www.thetresamigos.net)
What are the best places to eat in your nabe? Or elsewhere
Chavela’s—a Mexican place on Franklin and Sterling Pl. is one of Amigo Sam’s regular haunts. Two dollar tacos for happy hour every day, but he usually orders the cheese enchiladas with molé.
The Candy Rush (as seen in the video) for all sweet things (including a great morning donut + coffee subway deal). Roscoe’s Pizzeria which just opened down the street does justice to the cheap slice without any frills or pretentious toppings.
Best places to shop for music, if you shop for music, or instruments, etc.
Amigo Justin: Main Drag Music in Williamsburg has our favorite guitar guru, Mark Dobbyn. He’s always got some wild projects going on at the shop and plays the best music.
Amigo Sam: Always have a great time at The Thing in Greenpoint—hundreds of thousands of used LPs stacked 6 crates high and 6 crates deep. I think they all sell for $1 a piece? You could you lose years of your life in there…
Favorite books?
Moby Dick
Amigo Sam: Music is My Mistress by Duke Ellington
Best weeknight activity?
Learning scary jazz and country songs that only the older cats know.
Best weekend activity?
Learning scary gospel songs that only the older church ladies know.
Best place to be alone?
Amigo Sam: At home with my accordion. That’s when I get free.
Amigo Justin: At a modern dance performance.
Amigo Eddie: I hate being alone.
Best place to write a song?
Often the best songs appear on the bus or the train. Something about the bleak desperation of that underground tunnel between the 2 3 and Port Authority puts you in the mood to write—especially once you’re in your seat and on the highway. You overhear all sorts of great fodder for lyrics while your on the bus.
That’s usually enough to get the framework of a song together. But when it comes to arrangement, nothing’s holy in a Tres Amigos rehearsal. We push and pull and bicker until we’ve arrived at some sort of tangled impossible arrangement of a tune—then we try to learn to actually play it!
Yesterday I came across With A Brooklyn Accent, a blog written by Mark Naison, a Professor of African-American Studies and History at Fordham University and Director of Fordham’s Urban Studies Program. He lives in Park Slope, where he raised his children.
According to Naison’s biography on his Blogspot blog, he is the author of three books and over 100 articles on African-American History, urban history, and the history of sports. Interestingly and despite the name of his blog, his area of expertise is the Bronx and The Bronx African-American History Project, is Dr Naison’s most recent venture. It was launched collaboratively with the Bronx Historical Society in the Fall of 2002. Here he writes about The Park Slope My Children Grew Up In:
“I would not trade the Park Slope my children grew up in—which was not always ‘safe,” which was diverse in race and class, where new residents, many of them political activists, worked inside local churches with longtime residents as well as building their own institutions; where Catholic school and public school kids came together in local sports programs; where there were almost no upscale restaurants and a big treat was having a family night out in places like “Snooky’s” or “Circles,” and where housing was affordable enough so that you could buy a brownstone on two teachers salaries- for any neighborhood in the country. I could not think of a better place to bring up two children as athletes, as caring people, and citizens of a multiracial society who had in depth exposure to people of different backgrounds in school, on the streets and in the sports programs they participated in.”
Naison is a serious man and With a Brooklyn Accent is a serious blog that he’s consistently updated since 2008. Subject matter includes the Bronx, education, urban history, Stop and Frisk, school reform, politics and more. The following is a post called Things About Me As a Teacher My Students Can Count On:
“1. I will be there for my students whenever they need me, whether they are in my class or not, and throughout the course of their adult lives. Once my student, always my student. 2. I will stay at the job I love until I am no longer able to function. My students will always know where to find me. 3. I will stand up for my students, my colleagues, and the principles I believe in whether my school administration supports me or not, and whether or not my actions make my out of tune with the current political fashion in the nation.”
Do you need to be introduced to the complex and arcane ways of the New York art world by someone very “in the know?” Wouldn’t it be keen if that person was Krista Saunders, aka The Bespoke Curator, who created the G Train Salon.
Then you just might find Saunder’s Introduction to the New York Art World panel at 3rd Ward (195 Morgan Ave, Brooklyn) on Wednesday, August 29, 2012 at 7:30 to be very interesting—and illuminating .
Indeed, New York is an international hub for the art world. But how to break in? Well, you just might learn a thing or two at this panel, where you’ll hear from a diverse panel of art world professionals as they shed light on how to begin and sustain a career.
Moderated by Saunders, the panel will consist of informal conversation with the panelists Brendan Carroll, Kianga Ellis, Laura Pinello, and Henry Chung + Robert Walden of Robert Henry Contemporary.
RSVP : http://www.3rdward.com/rsvp
Few people probably know the name of the designers who designed the subway map many of us look at every day. Few imagine ever getting a chance to hear them speak.
But on on September 12th, Massimo Vignelli and his design partners Beatriz Cifuentes and Yoshi Waterhouse will speak at the New York Transit Museum with Michael Beirut about their famous and controversial 1972 New York City subway diagram and its new appearance in the MTA’s Weekender.
At this special Transit Museum event, Beirut will lead a discussion with Vignelli, Cifuentes and Waterhouse. This will be followed by a brief Q and A. Signed and numbered subway diagrams (limited edition of 1,000) will be available for purchase for $500 each. You can get tickets here.
This promises to be an interesting and exciting discussion with a design team respected worldwide and hugely influential on the city of New York .
In 2008 and 2012, Vignelli updated his diagram to account for changes in station names and toned down the color scheme, adopting uniform colors for each line Vignelli will discuss this in addition to change she made to the map in response to one of the largest criticisms leveled at the 1972 diagram and that was the deceiving square shape of Central Park.
Vignelli simplified the new version by removing parks entirely. Take that.
For fun, I decided to interview Lauren Ruff, whose web comedy series Big City was featured on OTBKB yesterday. She lives and works in the South Slope and films her web series all over the borough.
Fave Food:
“Hands down, Lot 2. (and no, not just because I worked there for two years). Because, the food there is like being in mom’s kitchen. Small menu, all prepared with care and love. Fantastic drinks. Definitely a staple for me.
“I also love Giuseppina’s for Pizza. They are the sister to Lucali in Carroll Gardens. Fonda for Mexican is fantastic, especially for outside dining in the summer. If you want a beer, Beer Table is also a staple. so freaking cute and every beer you could imagine. Also the popular Talde is becoming a favorite, on off nights when the wait is less crazy.”
Fave stores:
Hmmm, well there really aren’t too many stores for shopping in South Slope, sadly. But there is a new little shoe store I found that I really like called A Shoe Grows in Brooklyn. I recently splurged and bought two pair there. (Unheard of for me.)
There is a great cheese and wine shop on 7th that used to be called Grab and is now called The Ploughman. Also Big Nose Full Body and Slope Cellars are two awesome wine stores.
Fave books:
Books. My roommate handed me this great book called Penelope by Rebecca Harrington. I loved it! It’s about a girl who goes to Harvard and doesn’t seem to “fit in” but we quickly learn that she is normal and everyone she meets at Harvard is bat shit crazy. (truth? I wouldn’t know. I went to liberal arts school…..)
Fave weeknight activity:
Lately my favorite weeknight activities are the movies down in Dumbo on Thursdays. Those are reallllly fun. Also Nitehawk in Williamsburg is fantastic for movie watching and food eating.
Fave weekend activity:
Weekends I love picnicking in Prospect Park with friends and sitting right outside of the Celebrate Brooklyn Bandshell. It’s a great spot to hear the music and watch fireflies without dealing with the masses of people. Heading out to Rockaway for some Tacos and beach action is on the top of my list if I can get away. Also the taco trucks in Red Hook at the ballfields on weekends are bomb. I like tacos a lot.
Face Place to film:
Favorite filming spot? Hmm, I think filming under the BQE was pretty neat. Dodging cars and all. I also filmed something once on South 6th in Williamsburg, which was really neat because of the views of the bridge.
Fave secret spot:
Best secret spot for being alone. I like to sit on the bench outside of Southside Coffee. Its perfect for sunning, texting, talking on the phone and saying hello to neighbors like an old lady would. Also the dumbo waterfront is great for quiet time. And honestly, I also enjoy riding my bike around the loop in Prospect park. Nothing better on a quiet morning.
I really enjoyed this video (and the music) by The Tres Amigos. Some orthodox Park Slope parents may find it very un-PC but I love it. Warning: This video features images of kids drinking Mountain Dew, eating candy and lip synching “I wanna get drunk.”
You’ve been warned.
It follows the adventures of three kids who escape from a sleeping baby sitter and and run wild through Prospect Heights, spending pizza money at Franklin Avenue’s colorful Candy Rush (733 Franklin Avenue near Sterling Place) before collapsing in Prospect Park.
“I Wanna Get Drunk” is the lead single from the band’s self-titled debut album, a rousing, eclectic eight song set that showcases the Amigos’ great playing and catchy songwriting.