HAPPY BIRTHDAY PARK SLOPE PARENTS! Believe it or not, the parenting list-serve is four years old.

"Over the past 4 years, our Park Slope Parents community has grown
tremendously to include more than 4,500 families, two Yahoo Groups and a website. We’ve discussed strollers, schools, breastfeeding, parking, babysitters, restaurants, religion, discipline, values and so much more (not to mention swinging and lost blue hats!)." 

To help celebrate PSP’s 4th BIRTHDAY, PSP is asking members to donate to support the website.

“With success comes growing pains: Given limited website resources, some of the valuable information on the website is increasingly being exchanged "off-line" between individuals. Some topics are frequently repeated ("What holiday bonus is appropriate for a nanny?" "Can I take a car seat on a plane?") because the website isn’t constantly updated.

PSP is confident that member donations will help them revamp the website without instituting  advertising on the website.  Monies are needed for software, design, and implementation, project management, editors and programmers.

"We are recommending $40-less than one latte or video rental each month for a year. We appreciate anything you can give and hope those who are able will give more. "

PSP is hoping to build a NEW IMPROVED website with:
–Continuously updated content such as Preschool/Daycare and Summer
Camp information

–Better navigation and organization

–Calendars

–Better search functionality on the site as well as the ability to
search all the former yahoo messages without trying to navigate the Yahoo
site and search.

Click here to make a contribution

The Parachute Jump on the boardwalk in Coney Island, a city landmark, will be lit up as of Friday night. Engineers successfully tested the new lights Wednesday night.

The Parachute Jump, which is 277-foot tall, will be lit throughout the year with six different color themes just like the Empire State Building and Brooklyn Borough Hall.

On Friday night, there will be an official lighting ceremony. Afterwards: A fireworks show.

I knew of Ralph Ginzburg and Eros Magazine because I went to elementary school with his son. My sixth grade class wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times in support of him.  He died yesterday. This is from his obituary in today’s New York Times.  No surprise, Ginzburg was born in Brooklyn.

Ralph Ginzburg, a taboo-busting editor and publisher who helped set off
the sexual revolution in the 1960’s with Eros magazine and was
imprisoned for sending it through the United States mail in a case
decided by the Supreme Court, died on July 6 in the Riverdale section
of the Bronx. He was 76.

Ralph Ginzburg wore handcuffs outside the federal building in
Lewisburg, Pa., in 1972 as he was being taken to federal prison.

The cause was multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bones, said Shoshana Ginzburg, his wife and collaborator of 49 years.

First published in 1962, Eros was a stunningly designed hardcover
"magbook" devoted to eroticism. While Playboy and other men’s magazines
of the time catered mostly to male fantasies, Eros (named for the Greek
god of love and desire) covered a wide swath of sexuality in history,
politics, art and literature. Mr. Ginzburg valued good writing, and his
contributors included Nat Hentoff, Arthur Herzog and Albert Ellis. – New York Times Obit

Continue reading RALPH GINZBURG, EDITOR OF EROS DIES →

The Times’ has a profile of Rosie Perez, the actress who starred in "Do the Right Thing. She just may be one of Brooklyn’s coolest celebs. She talks about her involvement with Working Playground, an arts education program in Brooklyn. Here, from their website, is how Working Playground describes itself:

By supporting underserved schools and communities Working Playground inspires, enlivens, and enriches students’ educational experiences with the in-depth study of an art form. Through a dynamic range of programs including theater, playwriting, animated video production, documentary and film, instrument building, science cartooning, dance performance and spoken word, Working Playground empowers youth to develop the creative and analytic impulses that will serve them as students, professionals and citizens.

Rosieis also one of the new celebrity members of the board of Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn:

"She is more than willing to vent about the multibillion-dollar Atlantic Yards project that is, she frets, threatening to change her eclectic home borough into, horrors, "a mini-Manhattan." Just call her Citizen Rosie." – NY Times.

Citizen Rosie lives in a Victorian house in Ft. Greene and she has every intention of being at the July 16 rally against the Atlantic Yards project:

"It’s awfully ugly and so out of character for Brooklyn. I’m all for progress and I’m all for development, but I’m not for the betterment of the filthy rich. If that eyesore comes to Brooklyn with the Nets, it’s over, it’s done. But why give in and let Bruce Ratner take over? My nabe was like my private Mayberry."  – Rosie Perez

Tonight at Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park, THE WIZARD OF OZ opens the Movies With a View annual film series.

The movie starts at sundown. According to Brooklyn Record, RICE
provides dinners on site and Transportation Alternatives provides free
bike valet parking.

On Tuesday July 11 at 8:30 p.m. come to Brooklyn Film Works. Movies Alfresco in JJ Byrne Park (Fifth Ave. and 3rd Street). Coney Island: The American Experience. A documentary by Ric Burns. Plus Buster Keaton shorts. The last screening, Little Fugitive, was fantastic. Food concession by Stone Park Cafe (last time: tamales, cup cakes, great lemonade). This series made possible with the financial and in-kind support of Showman Fabricators, Scharf Weissberg, Greg’s Rubbage Removal, and Methodist Hospital.

They were just suitcases. But so much more. They caused the police to close up streets in Park Slope for six hours on Monday while they investigated the possibility that there were explosives inside.

Those suitcases belonged to a homeless man who goes by the name Mr. G.. He is a familiar site with his white hair and his shopping cart filled with Key Food bags, bottles and cans. Local legend has it that he became homeless many years ago. Prior to that he lived in a rental apartment on Union Street. Then he lost his job and his life took a downward turn: he became homeless. 

An older woman on that block let him keep his belongings in the basement of her brownstone. She was an old friend, someone who knew him in better days. For years his belongings resided in her  basement. More recently, he brought empty suitcases downstairs.

Chloe, the daughter-in-law of that woman, wanted to clean the basement. She noticed that the suitcases were getting mildewed. She left a note on Monday July 3rd for Mr. G. It was something along the lines of: Please take your suitcases out of here by Friday.

Well, he did. He came by on Monday, sometime before 3 p.m., when no one was looking and put some of the suitcases on the street in front of the house where Chloe and her mother-in-law live. He may not have wanted to leave all of them in front of their house, so he carried them in his shopping cart and threw them out in garbage pails along Seventh Avenue.

On Monday afternoon, Chloe did some errands on Seventh Avenue. When she came back, she told her neighbor, Leah, that the police were closing off traffic on Seventh Avenue. There was a bomb scare.

Leah and Chloe watched their sons, who are playmates, play together. They watched as Union Street was closed off, as was 8th Avenue. There were many police officers on the streets.

Chloe took a walk and caught sight of one of the suitcases and a lamp. Those look like the suitcases Mr. G. removed from my basement, she thought to herself, she told Leah.

So Chloe told the police officer who seemed to be in charge. A little while later, more police and the FBI called on Chloe at her home to verify her story.

This happened sometime after 7:00 p.m. on Monday. After that, the police closed the investigation down.

Leah did see Mr. G. on Monday he was pushing a shopping cart and there was still a suitcase in it. She’s not sure if he knows, even now, what he set in motion.

Looks like the New York Sun wants to improve their coverage of Brooklyn. This summer they’ve got a Harvard student, Leon Neyfakh, walking the Brooklyn beat.

Yesterday (July 5) he had an article in the Sun about the demise of "glossy" Brooklyn Magazines. True, BKLYN Magazine folded a few months ago and it was a glossy. But some of the other mags he mentions ain’t so glossy. Still, he got this quote from the publisher of BKLYN:

"We saw ourselves not only as a Brooklyn magazine, but a vehicle for
high-end advertisers in Manhattan," he said. "But people don’t
understand the value of the market out here."

At its peak, BKLYN was being mailed to 80,000 high-income households,
Mr. McCarthy said, but advertisers were nevertheless reluctant to
advertise.

"We had a publisher visit from a large city in the Midwest who
publishes a city magazine, and he came out and looked at Brooklyn, and
it just blew him away," he said. "But he asked me, ‘Where’s the high
end mall?’ I pointed across the East River and said, ‘It’s over there.’
Advertising really is local."

The Brooklynite, which folded last month  was hardly a glossy. But it was on the verge of being noticed on a larger scale by locals. I wish they could have hung in there a little longer because it was a smart, interesting magazine. Daniel Tremaine, its editor and publisher, said this to Neyfakh:

"Brooklyn deserves a magazine whose editorial interests are as wide as the diverse spectrum of the people who live here: newcomers, natives, and immigrants. That’s what the Brooklynite tried to be."

Also in the graveyard of dead magazines is one I never heard of called NRG. The only surviving magazine is The Brooklyn Rail, which is supported by various grants. It’s a very interesting, specialized mag more along the lines of The New York Review of Books. Quite erudite and not the least bit afraid of being esoteric or unpopular, it’s more of a cultural/intellectual magazine than a Brooklyn-focussed one. Poetry by Jonas Mekas, letters between Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers.

Neyfakh did mention that Daniel Tremain announced the demise of The Brooklynite at last month’s blogfest, which I organized at the Old Stone House.

Mr. Treiman disclosed the end
of the Brooklynite at last weekend’s Brooklyn Blogfest, an event
dedicated to the borough’s blossoming local blogosphere. His
announcement had been reported first on a blog. But according to Mr.
Treiman, who lost thousands of dollars with every issue, it was not
blogs that sank his ship, but Brooklyn itself.

I know Neyfakh was not at the blogfest which was on a Thursday night not on a weekend. But Gary Shapiro, reporter for the Sun’s Knickerbocker column was there. He arrived after it was over, while people were hanging out. He interviewed various bloggers and said he was going to give me a call. Maybe he passed along the Brooklynite announcement to Neyfakh. Maybe Daniel Treiman told him about it. Thanks for mentioning it Neyfakh!

The Third Street Cafe is in full summer swing. This year it’s hop hop hopping. Maybe it’s the colorful umbrella someone found. Or the brand new Weber we split with the Kravitzes.

Most nights now, we can be found downstairs sitting at the green plastic table in the green plastic chairs drinking wine, chatting up the neighbors, dodging frisbees, disciplining our children as they vroom down the street on bikes, skates, scooters. We even discipline the children from neighboring buildings who seem to love our yard and wreak havoc.

Takes a street to raise a child, I guess. Third Street.

Ravi, the 13-year-old boy who lives downstairs, plays sitar sitting on a beautiful Indian cloth on the stoop. He even burns incense. He and his mother went to Queens and bought him a beautiful brown and gold silk robe and Indian pants.

He looks like an Indian prince. Sitar is fast becoming the soundtrack of this summer.

Other friends make our Third Street Cafe a fun place to be. Fofolle and her boyfriend Jack Twist, so named for his spot-on imitation of the Jake Gyllenhall character in Brokeback Mountain,  joined us at the cafe.

"I can’t quit you, Ennis." Is fast becoming the quote of the summer.

Sunday, Fofolle was selling skirts in front of the Third Street Cafe. It got so hot, I splurged for four six-packs of Corona beer and limes to cool us all off. Spent the day trying to sell skirts, handing out cards, cheering her on. Drinking Corona beer.

That night, my next door neighbor hosted a barbecue for friends and graciously invited everyone in the building to join in. There was so much food: lobster tails, steaks, hot dogs, hamburgers. "We don’t usually have such fancy barbecue," Teen Spirit said.

Food. Much of the weekend was about food. Namely: barbecue.  On the fourth of July, there was another barbecue. The Kravitzes, Mr. Kravitz’s mom and dad, Phized, Ravi and family, Fofolle, Jack Twist: they were all there.

Mr. Kravitz’s father is a master at the barbecue and he mans the grill. Steak, salmon, turkey burgers, corn. More food, more festivity. Jack Twist made sure everyone had enough beer and entertained the kids with puppet shows and rides on his shoulders. He also let them paint his fingernails.

Come summer, we live on the street. There’s no air conditioning at the Third Street Cafe. You have to go back to your apartment every now and again to cool off in frosty air conditioner air. Hot, humid, sweaty, we park ourselves on our chairs…

That’s life at the Third Street Cafe.

A friend sent me this email: the real story behind the Park Slope bomb scare on Monday.

I live on Union which was corded off for several hours because of the bomb scare — a cop said to me they had found multiple suitcases.  The kids (Cole and Timmy) were having a great time playing on the street.

The Moms  and neighbors hanging out on the stoops. —  joking that the suitcases belonged to the homeless man Mr. G  since he walked by with a suitcase similar to the one on the corner — well that was the case.

Cole’s grandmother helps out Mr. G from time to time and lets him store stuff in their basement.  He left a lot of suitcases there that had gotten moldy so Chloe, Cole’s Mom left him a note to get rid of them.  Well he must have  taken them and left them on the street. 

Several hours into the bomb scare Chloe was walking near President and recognized a lamp and suitcase that Mr. G had dumped. Sure enough when she and Timmy and Cole checked the basement many of the suitcases were gone.  She informed a policeman and soon the FBI, detectives and police  had surrounded her house to confirm the story. 

Meanwhile Mr. G had quietly been walking up and down Union during this whole charade. Timmy and Cole are proudly claiming they solved the story. Chloe and I opened a bottle of red wine.  This morning I passed Mr. G shuffling through the garbage collecting bottles.

Apparently he’s lived on Union over 10 years ago, and lost his job. Cole’s grandmother used him as a handyman and helps him out sometimes.  I wonder if he knows he paralyzed Park Slope for several hours.

NOTE: OTBKB changed the names in this story at my friend’s request.

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people
to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another
and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal
station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a
decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should
declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted
among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
— That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these
ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to
institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and
organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely
to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate
that Governments long established should not be changed for light and
transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that
mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to
right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably
the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute
Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such
Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such
has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the
necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of
Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a
history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct
object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To
prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

Continue reading WHEN IN THE COURSE OF HUMAN EVENTS →

1. What constitutes a suspicious package? People in my building were joking that there’s all kinds of weird stuff (old trunks, computers, boxes, furniture) on the streets of Park Slope that in the garbage, on the street abandoned after a stoop sale. How does the NYPD define it?

2. Why was there no coverage of this incident yesterday afternoon. The incident began at 3 p.m. and I was checking on-line all afternoon. NY1, NY Daily News, etc.

Reader Zorki writes: "The NYPD is probably supressing news coverage out of embarrassment.
Nothing on NY1, NYTIMEs.com and the Brooklyn news channel (number 12
something) – and this in the land that celebrates its freedom today. So
I came to Only… thinking there must be something about that bomb
threat on the blog. Still, it’s a good thing people are becoming more vigilant about packages etc. like in London."

Reader Mig had this to say: Even Prospect Park West was blocked off when we walked by. Police only
said that "suspicious packages" had been found. They weren’t evacuating
homes, just not allowing people back to their block, a somewhat curious
mixed message."

10:25 a.m. Tuesday: The Daily News Reports: "Cops are investigating whether a slew of
unattended bags found around Brooklyn yesterday afternoon was a hoax,
police sources said.

About 3 p.m., police started spotting suspicious briefcases, luggage
and duffel bags in Park Slope. A grid search of the area turned up bags
on Eighth Ave. and Carroll St. as well as spots on Union St.,
Montgomery Place and Berkeley Place. About nine bags had been found as
of last night. "The more we’re investigating them, the more we are
seeing them," a police source said.

The bags were all empty or, in at least one case, contained another
empty bag inside of it, sources said. So far, none of the bags
contained anything hazardous."

7:00 p.m. Monday

Standing in front Haggen Dazs on Seventh Avenue and President, I could see that Seventh Avenue from President to Berkeley was closed off. There was a rumor that more suitcases were found on Seventh Avenue or Union Street.

The bomb squad checked out the suitcases on Eighth Avenue and found nothing. They started open the streets but then more suitcases were found.

The whole thing was probably a hoax. Still, the police treated it very seriously and people on Carroll Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenue were not allowed on their street or into their buildings.

Anyone know more.  Not much in the way of news coverae at the moment.

6:30 p.m. Monday

A suspicious suitcase was found on Eighth Avenue near Carroll
Street. The police have closed off many streets between Seventh and
Eighth Avenues. Dozens of police are in the neighborhood. Helicopters
flying overhead. Traffic has been congested on Seventh Avenue for
hours.

It’s the 4th of July: Independence Day and Louis Armstrong’s birthday.

Don’t miss the 24-hour Louis Armstrong marathon on WKCR, Columbia University’s legendary radio station, all day on 89.9 FM.

Check out Dope on the Slope’s WKCR discoveries on his blog, including their Wikipedia entry.