The following memo was sent to me by Craig Hammerman, District Manager of Community Board 6. He received this memo from Whole Foods' Mark Mobley today. It's an update on Whole Foods Market's plan in Brooklyn. He says: "Reports of our demise have been greatly exaggerated." 

I
am writing with just a quick update to let you know that recent reports
of Whole Foods Market's demise in Brooklyn seem to have been greatly
exaggerated!  As you may have seen, the Brooklyn Paper published a
story this week that inaccurately suggests we have definitively decided
not to pursue the development of a store on our property at 3rd Street and 3rd
Avenue and further that we are planning to sell the property.  This is
simply not true and we have sent a letter to the Brooklyn Paper editor
clarifying our position and requesting a correction.

 You
may recall that last Fall I sent you a memo explaining that Whole Foods
Market had begun re-evaluating our plans for our property and that we
would be working to identify potential development partners for a
Brooklyn store.  That is exactly what we have been doing in recent
months and we are continuing these efforts in hopes of arriving at a
potential development scenario that will enable us to finally come to
Brooklyn .

 Therefore,
while nothing has yet been finalized and we are still not in a position
to be able to share any additional information, please be assured that
we will be back in touch as soon as we are able to provide more details
about our plans.

Vox Pop shareholder and manager Debbie Ryan dressed the part of Lady
Liberty after she was stolen to call attention to the crime. 

The very
disturbing video posted to Youtube has generated widespread media
attention and inspired the community to hold a fundraiser this Saturday at Vox Pop to replace the stolen and desecrated statue.

Vox Pop Coffee Shop (1022 Cortelyou Road at 8 p.m.)

Photo by Tom Martinez

 Brooklyn may be in the throes of trying to select a new Poet Laureate to replace Ken Seligman who died last month but the de facto poet laureate of Brooklyn on Tuesday night was Katha Pollitt, poet, essayist and columnist for The Nation, who read and signed her new book, The Mind-Body Problem at Bookcourt in Cobble Hill.

Pollitt may not be a regular visitor to Brooklyn these days but she grew up on Sidney Place in Brooklyn Heights and attended Packer Collegiate Institute, where she studied Latin with a Miss Rose Smith and translated Virgil as a teenager. She lived on Garden Place in the 1970's where, she says, "she could lie in bed
and see the harbor with the Staten Island ferry."

A reading by Katha Pollitt is an enjoyable exercise in lateral thinking. Her poems are at once fiercely intellectual but also personal and highly accessible. They convey a wide swath of knowledge about literature, politics and religion but are also full of sensory images that pop in the mind. As the owner of Bookcourt said in his introduction, "Pollitt's poems are subversive modern parables that are profound and accessible; they put her in the first rank of modern American poets."

I enjoyed Pollitt's patter between poems almost as much as the poems themselves. Complimenting the bookstore's recent expansion Pollitt remarked, "I plan to buy a lot of books. Not my own. I already have enough of those."

She introduced the poem, "Lives of the Nineteenth Century Poetesses" with: "I've said that I don't like political poetry. But this is a feminist poem."

"As girls they were awkward and peculiar,
wept in church or refused to go at all.
Their mother saw right away no man would marry them.
So must live at the sufferance of others,
timid and queer as governesses out of Chekhov,"

Introducing a poem about walking around the city and seeing what isn't there anymore (a topic dear to the heart of this native New Yorker) she said. "Someone asked why all of my poems are so sad. But I don't think they're just about loss and sadness, they're about a love of things."

Introducing another standout poem called "Mandarin Oranges," which was first published in the New Yorker, Pollitt recalled her time at  Packer, where, she says, she was miserable. They did, however, serve mandarin oranges as "a special treat of our high-school lunchroom."

A section of her new book is devoted to a series of poems based on the Old Testament, which Pollitt said she prefers to its sequel. Introducing a poem about Martha, the sister of Lazarus and Mary, Pollitt called her the "patron saint of housewives."

    "Well, did he think the food would cook itself?
    Naturally, he preferred the sexy one,
    the one who leaned forward with velvet eyes…"

A poem called "Silent Letter" brilliantly riffs on words like wriggle and writhe where you don't hear the W.

After the reading, Pollitt called for questions from the crowd of fifty or so friends and admirers and the discussion was illuminating. One person asked about  "the anxiety of influence regarding Philip Larkin, who's political views are starkly different from yours."

Pollitt, whose ability to wax fluidly intellectual on the spot is non pareil, jumped in with:  "Chekhov said: you can't ask a writer to come up with answers; they come up with the questions. With Larkin, I sift past the things that I don't like. He was conservative, racist and reactionary.  But the way he describes modern life, isolation and the dissolving connection with history is brilliant."

Another audience member compared Pollitt's work to the poetry of C.V. Cavafy (1863-1933), a modern Greek poet who lived in Egypt, which led Pollitt to say, "I might as well die and go to heaven now to be compared to Larken and Cavafy."

Pollitt reminisced about being a 14-year-old at sleep-away camp when her mother sent her a Cavafy poem cut out of Vogue Magazine. "How times have changed. I don't think Anna Wintour will be publishing poetry anytime soon."

Whole Foods has decided against a site near the Gowanus Canal on Third Street and near Third Avenue. The Brooklyn Paper had the story first (I think).

The grocery chain, known for its high-end food and prices to match,
said on Wednesday that it does still hope to come to Brooklyn, but it
won’t be at its polluted parcel at the corner of Third Street.

“Whole Foods does not have immediate plans to open in Brooklyn,”
said company spokeswoman Mara Engel Weleck, who suggested that the land
would be sold.

Whole Foods would have become part of a growing gourmet movement in
Brooklyn, joining such big-time grocers as Fairway and Trader Joe’s to
hawk expensive edibles to the borough’s well-heeled consumers.

But its proposed site between tony Park Slope and Carroll Gardens
was contentious from the start, not only because of the toxicity of the
canal-zone location, but also because of the inclusion of a 420-space
parking lot, which some critics pointed out was bigger than many
suburban stores.

 Late start today because I was having coffee with Truth and Rocket Science blogger, John Guidry. Read his latest posts about Robert McNamara, who died last week. Guidry and I had a great conversation and, hey, he paid for my coffee at Sweet Melissa. Not bad.

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz has granted $1,133,000 to Issue Project Room's capital campaign to renovate 110 Livington Street. Here is their response:

We are humbled, honored, and inspired to have been selected as grant
recipients for capital support.  This award provides us with critical
funding towards the $1.725 million necessary to complete a first phase of construction designed
to:  bring the jewel box theater space to code;
install the necessary systems for soundproofing and performance; make renovations; and begin presenting as early as Fall 2010.

Once
renovated, the new space at 110 will be home to more than 4,000
programs reaching more than 1,000,000 people across the next two
decades.  We are overjoyed at being so close to realizing this historic opportunity.

I was out in Coney Island again yesterday visiting my friend at the rehab hospital on 29th Street and Surf Avenue. The more time I spend out there the more attached I get to that incredible part of Brooklyn.

At Amusing the Zillion, a blog started by "a former carny kid who casts an insider's eye on the amusement business, Coney Island, and fun places in between" also has the story of Dick Zigun's video. That blogger also wrote to say that the deadline for changes to the the city's plan is Monday,
July 13 and she's trying to get the word out to as many Brooklyn blogs as possible. Go to Amusing the Zillion for more information about how to contact your local councilmember.

“The City came up with an acceptable master plan, but at the same time, a private developer, Thor Equities,
came in and purchased most of the property on the south side of Surf
Avenue,” Zigun says in the video. “Thor Equities started lobbying and
pressuring the city, and suddenly, the plan changed…there are some
things in there that are frankly no good, and that’s the plan that’s
going to be voted on at the end of July.”

Zigun’s recommendations include moving the 27-story high rises north
of Surf Avenue, a change endorsed by the Borough President and
Community Board; expanding the acreage for outdoor rides and
amusements; and protecting Coney Island’s historic structures instead
of creating financial incentives for tearing them down.

Debi Ryan, manager of Vox Pop, posted her reaction to the desecration of the coffee shop's Statue of Liberty statue on Facebook:

I was over at Noticing New York and saw that he has a video from Dick Zigun, the unofficial but de-facto mayor of Coney Island.

The missing Vox Pop Coffee Shop Statue of Liberty story takes a gruesome turn.

A video was sent to the NY Daily News on July 4th. Later it was released on YouTube, showing the beheading and smashing of the statue. On the screen appear slogans like "We don't want
your freedom" and "Death to America."

"I'm scared. I'm hoping I don't have to fear for my life, but I feel very nervous," Debi Ryan, manager of the Vox Pop told the Daily News. Debi Ryan, manager of Vox Pop, a cafe and performance space known for its progressive politics posted this on her Facebook page: "In
spite of what you may have read, I am not in fear for my life, I do not
feel personally targeted and I don't believe it was trying to shut us
up. If they were targeting what we represent, then I guess they were
targeting community. Because, to me, that is what Vox Pop represents.
And I for one will not let this incident change that." She did tell the Daily News: "This was clearly politically motivated. Whoever did this is trying to shut us up. They were targeting what we represent," she said.

Tom Martinez, pastor of the All Souls Bethlehem Church viewed the video on a computer at Vox Pop. "The violence against the statue and the way it was carried out is deeply disturbing," Martinez told me in a phone interview.  "The smashing of the severed head after the beheading: I watched it thinking does this look like a prank or something more serious. To me it looks like  something more serious."

It is unknown as to who is responsible for this and why. The NYPD, the FBI and Homeland Security are on the case. "Whoever did it created a background created a background that makes it difficult to tell where it was taped.  It looks like the body of a grown adult carrying out the action. You have to remember the statue is pretty large and very heavy," Martinez said.

The 8-foot fiberglass figure was stolen from the sidewalk in
front of the Cortelyou Road coffeehouse in the early morning hours of July 21. A reward of $250 was offered.

Check out Brooklyn Based list of outdoor fun for July 8th through 14th. Here's a sample. But there's lots more over at BB.

Stay tuned for Breakfast-of-Candidates profiles with mayoral candidates City Councilman Tony Avella and Comptroller William C. Thompson.

OTBKB is also trying to schedule a breakfast with Reverend Billy, who is running for mayor on the Green Party ticket.

This sounds fun. And now that the G train stops on Seventh Avenue in Park Slope and goes to Williamsburg (Lorimar Street if I am correct) this event is too easy to get to to miss.

It's a big week at the Old Stone House: Brooklyn Film Works presents: Dr. Strangelove outdoors on Wednesday at 8:30 pm;

And the Piper Theater's production of Hamlet opens July 9, 10, 11 at 8:00 pm and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead opens on July 12 at 8:00 pm.

It's all happening this summer at the field in front of the Old Stone House on Fifth Avenue and Third Street.