This illustration is called "The Girls Next Door" and it is part of a series created by Brooklyn artist & co-op member Cassandra Quinn.
Come for the Kissing Booth, stay for the amazing last minute Valentine's Day gift deals.
This Friday, the ladies of Urban Alchemist Design Collective host another sure-to-be memorable party with homemade Love Wine and chocolate treats galore.
What exactly is the kissing booth?
A Lift for a Lift
What goes up must surely come down,
Muzak acknowledges with a frown.
Fifty years it filled the air
Of each business elevatair
With a tamped-down mellow
sound
Seeping in once leaving the ground
So by the time you reached your floor
Sleep had slipped down to your core.
Soon the muzak will be stilled,
Many folks are bound to be thrilled.
Sappy rides will be a thing
Of the past–Give a shout,
give a ring!
Silence filling every lift,
Haters of noise will hug the gift.
Time to rejoice, a momentous matter–
Till replaced by cellphone chatter.
A note from Ian Marvy of Added Value in Red Hook arrived in my in box and I wanted to share it with readers of OTBKB
As part of last falls City Wide Garden-To-Cafeteria project, Kimberly
followed the harvest of food from Red Hook Community Farm to the table at
PS15. Along the way she captured the story of how a collaboration between
local school systems and local urban agriculture initiatives can transform
our lives and the world in which we live
For Kimberly, it was the culmination of her work as an educator, farm
worker, and documenter.
Please take the 3 minutes to watch Kimberly's video and vote! I you love it
please pass it on to friends and colleagues and encourage them to vote for
Kimi. http://www.farmtoschool.org/vote.php
Joy Askew and Pulse present Songs From the Hudson River.
Pulse is a New
York-based composers' federation dedicated to music that bursts through
categories, unconstrained by convention. Members Joseph C Phillips,
Darcy James Argue, Jamie Begian, JC Sanford, Joshua Shneider and Yumiko
Sunami have chosen as their latest project a song cycle in honor of the
Hudson River Quadricentennial Celebration going on throughout 2009.
Songs from the Hudson River features singer Joy Askew with a 6-person
Pulse chamber ensemble in a dynamic melding of singer-songwriter and
classical chamber music sensibilities. Each original song is inspired
by historical, fictional, and contemporary life and communities on and
around the Hudson River. Joy Askew is an accomplished singer-songwriter
who has performed with Peter Gabriel, Laurie Anderson, Joe Jackson,
Jack Bruce and others, and also leads her own band.
Dan Willis (woodwinds),
Lis Rubard (horn),
Julianne Carney (violin),
Will Martina (cello),
Dan Loomis (bass),
and Diana Herold (percussion)
And our own Jamie Begian on Guitar
For more information please visit pulsecomposers.typepad.com
Barbes
9th Street and 6th Avenue in Brooklyn
(F train to 7th Ave)
www.barbesbrooklyn.com
On Valentine's Day: Medgar Evers College students and faculty share poems of love gained, love lost, love imagined.
|
Central Library, Dweck Center |
|
| When: |
Saturday, Feb 14 4 PM |
| Audience: | For Adults |
Casacara, a fun new blog covers real estate, architecture, historic preservation and interior design in Brooklyn and elsewhere. Today she takes us on a trip inside a cool Park Slope parlor floor decorated by Zelda Victoria.
It was masterminded by decorator Linda Spector of Zelda Victoria, the longstanding, beloved fabric and wallcoverings shop on Fifth Avenue and Third Street, now closed.
I've passed that station a bunch of times lately, but I haven't stopped to look at the MoMA installation of more than 50 reproductions of MoMA's greatest hits including Gary Indianna's painting of the word LOVE and Warhol's Campbell Soup cans. I can't wait to get on over there.
I mean, I ride through there all the time but I'm hoping to get out of the train and browse in the subway museum.
It'll be up from Feb 10 until March 15.
I won't be getting a Valentine's Day card from my father this year. While that may sound pretty obvious because he died on September 7th, it just occurred to me yesterday as I was buying cards at Scaredy Kat in Park Slope.
My father never missed a Valentine's Day. Every year in the days before the big day, I would find a bright red (or white) envelope in my mail box.
Oh, how I loved my valentine from my dad. Sure, it was schmaltzy; that was de- rigeur. He may have been a UC Berkeley-educated intellectual but he was not adverse to a schmaltzy valentine.
And he'd always send a card thick with syrupy Hallmark sentiment. He never wrote his own. My dad, the award winning copywriter, author, lyricist, never wrote his own valentine to me.
I say that with regret but also love. I think he believed in schmaltzy valentine cards.
He did customize the card a bit. He'd write: "To My Dear Daughter" and sign off with an "I love you very very much" in his barely legible—but endearing—handwriting.
Those two verys meant the world to me.
I also looked forward to his tiny drawings on the envelope, where he doodled airplanes, elephants, hearts. Sometimes there were little jokes, exclamations or a make-believe postage stamp.
Already I am missing my valentine. I felt tears coming at Scaredy Kat talking to the nice owner. But I stopped myself. Not here. Not now. I wondered if a lot of customers spill their Valentine's Day-related grief at the card shop.
So no valentine from my dad this year. Just a mental image of him walking to the card shop, browsing through the Valentine's Day cards, searching for the perfect card for me, my son, my daughter, my sister. His quick script on the card and writing my address with care. The postage stamp; dropping the envelope in the post box.
Not this year. But in memory, I guess.
Brooklyn Reading Works
presents Cupid's Arrow: Writers on Love curated by Marian Fontana.
Another one of the great themed readings at Brooklyn Reading Works
curated by interesting writers.
Marian Fontana,
author of A Widow's Walk; A Memoir of 9/11 and the upcoming, The Middle of the Bed, has gathered together some
wonderful writers, including Elissa Schappell
author of Use Me and the upcoming Blueprints for Better Girls;
Novelist, poet and editor of Teachers and Writer Magazine, Susan Karwoska; and Poets Ellen Ferguson and Ira Goldstein
and memoirist, Mila Drumke. Marian will be reading an excerpt from her
upcoming book.
As
Marian writes: Join us two nights before Valentines as six talented
authors tackle the profound, challenging and even funny topic of love.
"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind." — Shakespeare
It should, as always, be a great night. These
themed group readings are fascinating as you see the subject matter
shift, the approach, and the language shift from author to author.
Alison, the owner of Paper Love, the
new card and stationery shop on Lincoln Place, will be selling
letter press Valentine's cards at the show. She happens to be a fiction
writer and was very excited to be part of this event.
The Where and When:
February 12th at 8 p.m.
Brooklyn Reading Works at the Old Stone House
Fifth Avenue between 3rd and 4th Streets (in Washington Park)
A $5 suggested donation includes light refreshments and wine.
There will most definitely be Valentine's chocolates and candy hearts.
There's an article about Cordula Volkening in the New York Times today, alongside this photograph by J.B. Reed and a video called "A Paintbrush and Nothing to Lose."
More than a year ago, I got an email from a friend about her Park Slope neighbor and friend, who had been diagnosed with stage 4 brain cancer.
Doctors told her she had three months to live.
What sounded like a terrible tragedy was actually a life affirming story of art triumphing over adversity. Despite the cancer, Cordula was devoting herself to her wild, expressionistic painting; she seemed to have an incredibly passionate attitude about the end of her life.
For obvious reasons, I included her on the Park Slope 100 for being the inspiring artist—and person—that she is.
Here's her Park Slope 100 blurb:
Cordula Volkening because with a diagnosis of stage 4 brain
cancer you decided to quit your job and devote yourself to your
painting. "Hey, I got advanced brain cancer – my system kicks me in the
butt and screams: Be your authentic self or you are going to die sooner
not later. Any questions?"
I wrote about her again in June 2008 because she was having a show called Would You Like an Invitation to My Destination? at the Brooklyn Artists Gym.
At the time I wrote:
Cordula is real hero in my
book, a wild, brave heart, for not letting her disease get in the way
of her desire to make paintings. Sadly, the tumor makes it impossible
for her to speak.
According to the article in the Times today she has undergone two rounds of brain surgery and is currently in an
experimental clinical trial. The tumor has impaired her ability to
speak, but it has not kept her from making great art.
Ms. Volkening even tried a special experimental study at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell
hospital, which involved spending her days with electrodes attached to
her head. But by last March, the tumor was back and doctors operated
again, which damaged her speech capacity, and last September, doctors
found a second, inoperable tumor and said that heavy chemotherapy could
give her a few more months but probably would leave her without the
energy to paint.
Reading the article in the Times today I was heartened by the fact that she's still alive—and that she's still painting.
After all, doctors told her she only had three months to live. Cordula had other ideas.
There's a new cafe on President Street just off Fifth Avenue in Park Slope. Scandinavian Grace, owned by Fredrik Larsson and James Anthony, is a charming and stylish shop, featuring coffee, pastries, as well as classic and contemporary design items from Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway. They also sell Scandinavian food products and condiments, including jams, olive oils, and mustards.
As they write on their website: "We love objects of artistic form
and practical function that become a vital enrichment to daily living
rather than mere status symbols."
The shop occupies the one-story building that used to be Oak, the pricey Williamsburg-based clothing and leather good store. There's a backyard that Larsson hopes to turn into an into an outdoor cafe.
The cafe/shop has been open for business for only three days. Cafe tables and a bench out front are forthcoming. And best of all, there's wireless.
Stop in and give a warm welcome to Fredrik, whose other shops are in Williamsburg (North 9th and Bedford) and in Woodstock, NY.
WEDNESDAY: Special events, coupons and restaurant prix fixes on Fifth Avenue.
WNYC Presents a silent film masterpiece The Golem with new music accompaniment. Wednesday,
February 11th at 7pm. World Financial Center.
.
THURSDAY: Brooklyn Reading Works presents: Cupid's Arrow: Writers on Love the Old Stone House curated by Marian Fontana. With Elissa Schappell
author of Use Me and the upcoming Blueprints for Better Girls;
novelist, poet and editor of Teachers and Writers Magazine, Susan
Karwoska; poets Ellen Ferguson and Ira Goldstein
and memoirist, Mila Drumke. Marian will be reading an excerpt from her
upcoming book.
Silent film masterpiece: Man With A Movie Camera
– Thursday, February 12th at 7pm.
World Financial Center. 220 Vesey Street. Battery Park City Directions
Special events, coupons and restaurant prix fixes on Fifth Avenue
FRIDAY: Joy Askew and Pulse present Songs from the Hudson River.
Pulse is a New York-based composers' federation dedicated to music that
bursts through categories, unconstrained by convention. Their latest
project is a song cycle in honor of the Hudson River Quadricentennial
Celebration going on throughout 2009, Songs from the Hudson River
features singer Joy Askew with a 6-person Pulse chamber ensemble in a
dynamic melding of singer-songwriter and classical chamber music
sensibilities. Each original song is inspired by historical, fictional,
and contemporary life and communities on and around the Hudson River.
Joy Askew is an accomplished singer-songwriter who has performed with
Peter Gabriel, Laurie Anderson, Joe Jackson, Jack Bruce and others, and
also leads her own band.
SATURDAY: Valentine's Day
Gifts: The Clay Pot, Brooklyn Mercantile, Urban Alchemist, Loom, Living on Seventh, Treasure Chest,
Cards: Paper Love, Scaredy Kat and A Lion in the Sun
Lunch: Sweet Melissa
Candy: Cocoa Bar, Chocolate Room, Neergard for large selection of Whitman's.
Cookies and Cup Cakes: Sweet Melissa Patisserie and Cousin
John's, International Taste has their homemade nuts, dried fruit and seeds in the shape of hears.
Sexy: Babeland and Diana Kane
Dinner: Stonehome in Ft. Greene. New Italian place on 4th Street and Fifth Avenue.
Movie: Two or Three Things I Know About Her by Jean Luc Godard at Film Forum.
All the year I heart New York
(Don't get me started)
And when flowers and candy flow,
I double-heart it.
An old friend, who now lives in California, wrote to say she saw the article in the Sunday Times about my sister. That's how she found out about my father's death; she wrote me a lovely email full of memories.
Am I the luckiest girl in the world that Scott Turner lets me publish these fabu emails he sends out to publicize the pub quiz at Rocky Sullivan's (see below). Happy Valentine's Day, Scott. And thanks.
Greetings, Pub Quiz Is For Lovers Sloganeers!
Love is, indeed in the air…
Well, maybe not — it's still chilly and wintry and the stimulus package, Chris Brown vs. Rihanna, A-Roid's problems. Chris and Rihanna are both up for NAACP Image Awards, and this Friday the University of Miami is still planning to to re-dedicate their baseball venue — wait for it — Alex Rodgriguez Stadium.
Ruh-roh…dead people are safer when it comes to honorifics.
Back to the matter at hand. It might be that for people who like astronomy questions with the answer "Uranus" (me), the "stimulus" package does mean there's love in the air.
This Thursday, February 12th, is one of the big nights on the Pub Quiz social calendar: Rocky Sullivan's Annual Love & Sex Pub Quiz.
It's a good first date, middle date, even last date — the right blend
of innocence and tawdry machinations run through with prizes, treats,
gaiety and old-fashioned good clean fun — depending, of course, on
your definition of "old-fashioned," "good," "clean" and most
particularly, "fun."
In celebration of the Valentine event before us, let us commemorate the Valentines who, unaided by anabolic steroids or dalliances with Madonna, rose to prominence as major-league baseball players: Bob, Bobby, Corky, Ellis, Fred, Joe and John. There have also been three Valentins: Javier, John and Jose — all of whom began their career in the '90s and ended in the '00s.
not, exactly, the type of Valentine photo spread you were expecting. We specifically fail to roll like that.
There's an incredible amount of preparation work involved with staging the Rocky Sullivan's Annual Love & Sex Pub Quiz.
"Love" and "sex" cover a lot of ground. They're everywhere in our
modern society. Just like cold, hate is simply an absence of love.
And sex..sex is just an absence of not having sex.
Here's part of the preparations: which of these do you like the best?
In these times of desperation, know that this Thursday evening,
there'll be a place filled with warmth, friendship, and a hundred
fluttering hearts — Rocky Sullivan's Annual Love & Sex Pub Quiz. Join us for a very special evening featuring Guest Round mastermind Lex Marsh and Guest Music Round masterDJ Heathah Josepowitz.
At Issue Project Room of course. 8 pm at the American Can Factory. 232 Third Street near Third Avenue.
The Text of Light group was formed in 1999 with the idea to perform
improvised music to the films of Stan Brakhage and other members of the
American Cinema avante garde of the 1950s-60s (Brakhage's film 'The
Text of Light' was the premiere performance and namesake of the group).
The original premise was to improvise (not 'illustrate') to films from
the American Avante-Garde (50s-60s etc), an under-known period of
American filmic poetics.
Lee Ranaldo and Alan Licht
(guitars/devices), Christian Marclay and DJ Olive (turntables), William
Hooker (drums/perc), Ulrich Krieger (sax/electronics), and most
recently Tim Barnes (drums/perc) are in the group.
The group has performed Brahkage's The Text of Light, Dog Star Man, Anticipation of the
Night, Songs; Harry Smith's
Mahagonny outtakes, Oz-The Approach to the Emerald City, and Late
Superimpositions.
On Wednesday February 11th they are performing with the group, Slouching Towards Gemorrah, with Matt Heyner o No Neck Blues Band, Malkuth and bassist for Thurston Moore teams up with Jim Thomson
drummer of Bio Ritmo, Gwar,
This is a real service to Brooklynites looking for work. Months ago I saw listings about Ikea and Trader Joe's at McBrooklyn and told a friend about it.
He is now happily working at Trader Joe's.
Thanks McBrooklyn. Hope these listings help someone out there:
So Ratner is lobbying to secure some bailout money to fund the Atlantic
Yards project. Is that what you call a shovel ready project?
This idea iis inciting major conflict in the Brooklyn community.
Atlantic Yards booster, Marty Markowitz, is all over it and supportive of the idea: he wants Forest City Ratner to receive a portion of the stimulus package to get the $4 BILLION moribund project going again.
Plans to build a Nets basketball arena and something like 17 apartments and office towers were recently scaled back due to the state of the economy.
Anxious to get things back on track, Ratner and Markowitz eager for government handouts. Markowitz told NY1 yesterday:
"It has all the earmarks of exactly all
the kinds of projects that Congress is looking for and President Obama
is looking for. It will put people to work immediately and it will
benefit the community at large," Markowitz told NY 1.
Critics of the plan like Daniel Goldstein of Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn think that federal bailout monies would be better used for affordable housing.
Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn sent out this email yesterday urging opponents of the plan to let their feelings be knowsn.
If you feel as outraged as we do that there is even the thought that it would
be appropriate to bail out private developer Forest City Ratner with stimulus
money, you can make your opinion known to our Congressional members. Let them
know this would be an obscene use of the federal stimulus funds, is unacceptable
and would undermine the stimulus plan. Also let them know that the provision that
prohibits stimulus funds for stadiums must explicitly include a prohibition on
arenas as well, which are equals in the boondoggle category:
Today Mark Green announced that he's putting his hat in—again—for the job of public advocate. The job is currently held by Betsy Gotbaum.
Other candidates in the race include civil liberties attorney Norman
Siegel and City Council members Eric Gioia, Bill de Blasio and John Liu. deBlasio sent out a statement this morning:
"I am running for Public Advocate
because I believe we need an independent presence in City Hall,
fighting for
all New Yorkers who do not have a voice. I have known Mark Green for
many years
and have a great deal of respect for him. I look forward to an engaging
debate with
all of the candidates over the next several months about the best ways
to ensure every New Yorker is heard in this time of economic crisis.
![BGT_splat[1]](http://onlytheblogknowsbrooklyn.com/pictures/6a00d8341c5fb353ef0105371db311970b-800wi.jpg)
I just heard from Amanda Gentile of the Brooklyn Green Team, a Brooklyn grassroots organization dedicated to reducing our environmental impact and inspiring others. She told me about their Yes We Can Volunteer Challenge.
Brooklyn Greenway Initiative
New York Restoration Project.
NRPA
is dedicated to protecting wetlands and beach's in New York City.
Volunteers clean coastal shorelines and wetlands and act as advocates
for protecting marine fish stocks.
Conference House Park
Conference House Park
volunteers remove invasive plant species, preventing their spread and
encouraging our native plant and animal community to recover. They
also prepare for planting, broadcast seeds, or mark plants with
flagging. The Nature Conservancy's mission works to preserve natural
communities. For volunteer opportunities, please call Cheri Brunault at (718) 390-8021, or email cheri.brunault@parks.nyc.gov.
Council on the Environment of New York City
Council on the Environment of New York City has a variety of volunteer opportunities at their website and you can apply online. Volunteer Coordinator 212-676-2081
The Nature Conservancy
New York ReLeaf
New York ReLeaf
creates partnerships between forestry professionals and dedicated
citizens, harnessing the financial resources of government and the
private sector. For more information, contact the New York ReLeaf Coordinator in Albany at 518-402-9425 or e-mail: lflands@gw.dec.state.ny.us.
Sign-up for the challenge by replying to this email and write YES WE CAN!
Let us know what you chose and we'll put you on our blog.
Know of more opportunities? Tell us and we'll post them.
A. O. Scott
writes of the film, which stars Joaquin Phoenix: “Like the melancholy descendant of an
early Philip Roth protagonist, he is caught between a nice,
mama-approved Jewish girl (Vinessa Shaw) and a willowy
blonde (Gwyneth Paltrow) from outside the tribe.”
Tonight at 7
p.m. at the Brooklyn
Academy of Music, the director, James Gray, will answer questions.
Walking through snow in Prospect Park,
Silvery trees glowing in the dark,
No one but us atop the hill,
Only birdsong amid the still,
When suddenly the fit began,
Sneezing as frequent as from a spray can–
I turned to my wife, with whom I have differences,
Specifically on the subject of snifferences,
And said, suspecting what was wrong,
"Somebody opened a window too long!"
TUESDAY: Reading of the Community Bookstore Writers Group. 7:30 p.m. at the Community Bookstore. Also: Special events, coupons and restaurant prix fixes on Fifth Avenue.
WEDNESDAY: Special events, coupons and restaurant prix fixes on Fifth Avenue.
THURSDAY: Brooklyn Reading Works presents: Cupid's Arrow: Writers on Love the Old Stone House curated by Marian Fontana. With Elissa Schappell
author of Use Me and the upcoming Blueprints for Better Girls;
novelist, poet and editor of Teachers and Writers Magazine, Susan
Karwoska; poets Ellen Ferguson and Ira Goldstein
and memoirist, Mila Drumke. Marian will be reading an excerpt from her
upcoming book.
FRIDAY: Joy Askew and Pulse present Songs from the Hudson River.
Pulse is a New York-based composers' federation dedicated to music that
bursts through categories, unconstrained by convention. Their latest
project is a song cycle in honor of the Hudson River Quadricentennial
Celebration going on throughout 2009, Songs from the Hudson River
features singer Joy Askew with a 6-person Pulse chamber ensemble in a
dynamic melding of singer-songwriter and classical chamber music
sensibilities. Each original song is inspired by historical, fictional,
and contemporary life and communities on and around the Hudson River.
Joy Askew is an accomplished singer-songwriter who has performed with
Peter Gabriel, Laurie Anderson, Joe Jackson, Jack Bruce and others, and
also leads her own band.
SATURDAY: Valentine's Day
A while back I mentioned that This Old House, the renovation reality show on PBS, was doing its first New York City renovation project ever. I met the contractor and the owners very briefly at Bar Reis, a Fifth Avenue bar. I even published the address of the house (because it was already on Brownstoner. But the next day the owners told me they were uncomfortable having their address on the Internet. So I removed it.
At my daughter's piano recitall recently, I spoke briefly to the house's owner, Karen Shen. She told me that the episodes are already running on PBS. Her house, a 104-year-old row house in Prospect Heights was designed in the Renaissance
Revival style by architect Axel Hedman
The house is currently under
consideration for designation by the city's Landmarks Preservation
Commission.
According to the This Old House website:
Karen blogs about the project on the Old House My House blog. She includes all kinds of interesting details about why certain practical and design decisions were made and what kinds of problems were encountered along the way. One of the posts is about the installation of th cast iron staircase Karen and her husband bought on Brownstoner.com eve before they'd ever seen the house.
Mike Hale in his New York Times review wrote that watching the NYC version of the real estate and renovation reality show is an exercise in schadenfreude for jealous New Yorkers, who'd love to live in a house that big and gorgeous:
Check listings for when the show is on.
Tonight at the Community Bookstore, your favorite local, independent bookstore:
Tuesday, February 10th @ 7:00 p.m.
It has been said that tragedy is when you slip on a banana peel.
And comedy is when it happens to someone else.
Please join the resident writer's group of our own Community Bookstore
for an evening of appallingly amusing memoirs.
Featured readers:
Vinnie Collazzo
Donna Minkowitz
Matt Mitler
The resident writers group of the Community Bookstore have been meeting regularly for over two years.They work on fiction, non-fiction, plays, screenplays, essays, poetry, and memoir.