You’ve probably seen her blog, Park Slope Street Photography. But now Lara Wechsler is showing her wonderful Coney Island pictures at 440 Gallery on at 440 Sixth Avenue between 9th and 10th Streets.

The show is called Coney Island: The Lost Horizon. It’s open until January 6th. Saturday and Sunday the gallery is open from 12-6 p.m.

I plan to check out the show today. I’ve walked by and was very impressed with the size of the prints that are in the window. She seems to be showing quite a few of my FAVE IMAGES.

I heard about this from the woman in charge of development for Issue Project Room,.

The group we started on myspace is called the Cultural Emergency Action Coalition and it can be found on my space at www.myspace.com/culturalemergency

If you take a look at our friends list, Michael Moore, Yoko Ono, Joan Baez, Lou Reed, Neil Young, and New Sounds are just a few of our new incredible friends.

The Cultural Emergency Action Coalition is committed to the principle that experimental arts in New York City are necessary to keep New York’s culture open and vital, and to the proposition that experimental work must be funded to the extent that it will not merely survive, but that it will thrive in this generation and those to follow. Given these commitments, our mission is to determine what resources are needed to achieve and sustain a critical mass of artists and presenters in both established and emerging art forms and to successfully make this case to New York’s political, cultural and economic leaders. In particular the committee will work to secure resources adequate to generate and sustain small and mid-sized presenting organizations that ultimately drive large-scale culture to spur New York City to work with the real-estate community to provide world-class housing for experimental arts organizations and artists, and to secure resources that provide livelihoods for artists and presenters whose activities have over the past forty years have fueled billions of dollars of economic development in the city. Our ambition is not simply to protect for a while our waning resources, but to fuel a profound revitalization of the experimental arts in the world’s wealthiest and most creative city.

LITERARY BROOKLYN: Award-winning authors, Paul Auster, Nicole Krauss and Rick Moody, who live and work in Brooklyn discuss the borough’s climate for writers and creativity.

Authors are interviewed by Bill Goldstein, founding editor of NYTimes.com/Books. For more information or to purchase advance tickets, which are $25 for each interview, please visit www.ArtsAndLeisureWeek.com

January 12th at noon at the new Times Center 41st Street between 7th and 8th Avenues in Manhattan.

Marianne Gunther, a friend and fave of OTBKB, is starting a divorce group that will combine support with art therapy exercises. Read all about it in this week’s PS I Love You column in the Brooklyn Paper by another friend and fave, Wendy Ponte.

According to Gunther, divorce is a true grief process and people who are going through it need to experience all the stages of grieving, just as if someone dear had died. Unfortunately, most people sidestep those feelings and translate them into anger or diffuse the feelings with litigation.

“How do you make your life about more than this?” asks Gunther. “I’m not going to spend the rest of my days reacting to my ex-husband, so how can I mourn the loss and move on?”

When Gunther herself divorced back in 2001, she belonged to a women’s support group in Park Slope that saved her sanity. That group, which met at the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, no longer exists. So she met with the director and offered to start up a new group.

This group will meet once a week at the Ethical Culture building on Prospect Park West, between First and Second streets. Women will get together and, guided by Gunther, support each other, get practical information and referrals, and use art-therapy techniques to both process and contain their feelings. The fee for each meeting is $25. If you are interested in joining this group, call (347) 628-9279 or e-mail listeningart@yahoo.com

Over here at OTBKB, we are switching to moderated comments. At the moment, I am not accepting comments as Hepcat makes this change. Comments will return soon.

Truthfully, I really enjoy and believe in an unsupervised comments area. It’s usually such fun to see what pops up there, to read what all of you have to say.

I don’t even mind the silly commercial spam or the sometimes sharp criticisms of the Park Slope 100, my spelling and screw-ups with HTML.

Differences of opinion are also really important and interesting.

I also love when readers fact check and proof read me (it’s such a big help as I’m working so quickly here). I’ve always felt very strongly about letting it all hang out. Until recently, that is.

Thanks for your patience.

This morning I got this email from Fonda at Zuzu’s Petals.

Take a breath,
put aside that gift list you are almost done with,
start thinking about that centerpiece for your Holiday Table, or the ones you want to send to your friends and neighbors.
Call us…we’re on it.

We  are fully stocked and taking orders for pick up or delivery .

For clarity’s sake below are some examples of what you might select.

Woodsy:
These arrangements come in a simple basket and are favored for their fragrant greens and texture. Combinations of Pines, Cedars, Junipers,Brunera,
Leucodendron can also include some seasonal color with a few Tabasco or Black Bacarra Roses.
$75.00 and up

Elegant in Glass:
For a simpler less outdoorsy look, we have some fabulous Amaryllis and Hydrangea complimented with a touch of seasonal filler.
$75.00 and up

The Hybrid:
A mix of Ornamental Cabbage, Roses, Leucodendron ,Brunera,
Pines, Junipers, and Cedars in basket or glass.
$75.00 and up

Just call one of the Zuzu’s.
The Big 718 638-0918
Little Zu 718 636-2022
open every day till christmas…

There’s construction work going on in the space where Inaka Sushi used to be (on Seventh Avenue between 4th and 5th Streets). Anyone know what’s going in there?

It also looks like they’ve divided the space where D’Agostino used to be. Wonder if a Bank of America is still going in there. What ever happened to rumors about Children’s Place.

Tempo Presto: They’re moving equipment out of there. In other words, they are officially closed. Word on the street says a full-service restaurant may be going in there. That means three corners of Third Street and Seventh Avenue will be restaurants (Miracle Grill, Sette, and ????

Speaking of Sette, sounds like there was a robbery in there after closing on December 9th. See the story at the Brooklyn Paper.

I got this funny email from a friend:

…you make tortillas for the 4th grade "Mexican fiesta!" and a
9-year-old girl asks you, "Is that organic beef?" and when you say no,
she doesn’t want one.

This from New York 1:

The New York Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission is expected
to discuss the possibility of tolls on East River bridges.

Some local politicians are taking exception to the renewed talk of
tolls. Queens Councilman David Weprin and Brooklyn Borough President
Marty Markowitz spoke out against the plan at City Hall yesterday.

Last week, the New York City Congestion Pricing Commission floated
the idea of simplifying the traffic plan by charging tolls on the
bridges rather than creating a network of traffic sensors within
Manhattan.

That would mean toll collection on the Brooklyn, Manhattan,
Williamsburg and Queensborough Bridges. But Weprin and Markowitz say
the tolls would amount to a tax New Yorkers who cannot afford it.

Read more here.

Brownstoner has the goods today about the 8th Avenue armory. I walk on 14th every so often  on my way to the Pavilion movie theater and I noticed that the interior lighting had changed.

They’ve also got really elaborate, fun holiday lighting out front.

Well, it turns out that the sports center is just about good to go. Brownstoner has a picture and a report. And boy, the track and field facility (and more) looks really nice.

You can bet that there’s going to be quite a political photo op over there when the place finally opens.

How many years did it take to happen?

The downstairs performance space at Union Hall, an intimate room with a bar in the back, is a very special place to hear writers reading. It was my first time down there and I can’t wait to see other performers there.

The room really does feel like the basement of a union hall in a small city somewhere. The Brooklyn Writer’s Space presented three excellent writers:

Sharon Guskin read a harrowing scene set on a train during the Second World War in Europe.

Honor Molloy read an uproarious, hallucinatory walk through the street of Dublin during Christmas.

Wendy Ponte read a story about a Portuguese immigrant family’s ill fated arrival on Ellis Island.

With green Christmas lights twinkling and the dark, vintage feeling of the room, it was an atmospheric night of fiction. The food, by the way, was very tasty. We ordered a platter of the mini-burgers Union Hall is famous for and some really good potstickers.

The special holiday edition of the Union Hall Spelling and Grammar Bee, hosted by David Witt, is on December 20th at 8 p.m.