Good question. And it’s an interesting thread on Brooklynian. Here’s one response. I can’t vouch for its accuracy. But the person who wrote it does seem to know a lot.

The answer is Neergard. But it’s interesting to
talk about the other old places. O’Connors bar has an awning which says
"Since 1931," although that would mean it opened during Prohibition. I
remember a NY Times article saying that the O’Connor patriarch came
over from Ireland to start up his bar in 1933. Triangle goes back to
the ’40s – but didn’t it used to sell dry goods? The Mega Glass space
has been a glass shop under different names since at least the 1930s.
Steve Belsito & Sons (plumbing/heating) claims "Est. 1925," but I
don’t think they’ve been in the neighborhood all that time. Great
Western Fine Foods goes back to the 1930s at least. Leopoldi Hardware
goes back to 1966 but before then it was Fazio Bros. Hardware (check
out the art deco "hardware" sign on the second floor). A&S claim to
go back to 1942. Jackie’s 5th is a relatively recent name, but the bar
was Costello’s in the 1940s and numerous other names in between.
Tarzian is very old indeed – 1920s at the latest. Smith’s Tavern has
been in business under that name since the 1930s, probably right after
Prohibition ended. Same goes for Farrell’s. Garry jewelers opened in
1951 according to their sign. Lenny’s Pizza (5th Ave. & Prospect
Ave.) dates back to 1954. I believe the oldest continuously open
restaurant in the Slope is El Viejo Yayo on 5th Ave. near Dean,
although it used to be called Blanco’s and it was owned by a Cuban
family before a Dominican family bought it; it supposedly opened in
1963.

 
In terms of owned-and-operated by the same person, we should
mention Tony at the Record & Tape Center on 5th Ave. & 9th St.
He’s been running that place since 1972 and it had a former incarnation
up the street a few blocks in 1968-1972.

I remember this movie (but not much about it). I think I saw it in 1972 when it came out. It’s playing as part of the BAMcinematek Paul Newman series on Mon, Dec 8 at 6:50pm

Directed by Paul Newman
With Joanne Woodward

(1972) 100min

“Newman
has gotten it all together here as a director, letting the story and
the players unfold with simplicity, restraint and discernment.” —Variety

Newman
helmed this adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Paul
Zindel about a dysfunctional family struggling to get by on the bottom
rung of society. Joanne Woodward (Newman’s wife) plays Beatrice, a
self-destructive and abusive mother bent on destroying any chances her
two daughters might have to succeed. Despite this, the imaginative and
spirited Tillie, determined to overcome her mother’s tyranny, doggedly
pursues a love of science and stakes out her own identity

There’s just so much interesting stuff at Brooklynometry I think you just need to go over there to read the following:

Blank keys: "This is not exactly a Key Party at Brooklyn Hardware Supply. The maiden
keys you see in the window are on extra good behavior like orphans
hoping to secure surveying parents, waiting for the grinder’s peaks and
valleys to make them unique, wondering what locks they’ll lock and what
cylinders they’ll roll."

Prospect Park acorns: "It’s a relief to have proof that at least some of our Brooklyn oaks
have produced abundant acorns this season after what I’ve been hearing
about the conditions in Arlington, Va (my home town) and other areas, where there’s some really hungry squirrels."

Chekhov at Lefferts House:  "On December 11, 12, 13, 18, 19, 21, the Rebellious Subjects Theatre in collaboration with Lefferts Historic
House & the Prospect Park Alliance presents an unexpected
production of Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters. Erin Gilmore directs Paul
Schmidt’s distinctly American translation, infusing both the play and
the house with the zeitgeist of the American 1950s."

Saturday December 6th: Don’t miss the Park Slope 5th Avenue BID Tree Lighting ceremony featuring the MS 51 Chorus and Opera on Tap & Goodies for All! It all happens in Washington Park at 3rd Street and Fifth Avenue.
3rd Street @ 5th Avenue at 5 p.m.

Afterwards: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens read byy Kevin Hogan at the Old Stone House.
appropriate for ages 12 and up. 7 pm.  $10 suggested donation includes snacks & drinks.

I just found out about this obit for my dad in the the Glens Falls Post Star

A legendary copywriter, creative director, author, songwriter and connoisseur
of the arts from Brooklyn has left a lasting imprint on his adopted
hometown of Glens Falls.

Monte Ghertler died Sept. 7 at the age of 79 at his home in Brooklyn Heights. His obituary, which appeared Sept. 10 in The New York Times,
ended with a line saying that in lieu of flowers, the family requests
donations be made in his memory to Crandall Public Library.

On
the blog, "Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn," his daughter, Louise
Crawford, writes lovingly of her father and especially his love of
literature. In one entry last month, she urged those who knew her
father to contribute to the Glens Falls library.

"The Crandall
is a small, vibrant library that my father loved; he always had loads
of books out from there when he was spending extended periods of time
upstate," she wrote. "I hope you’ll consider sending a donation in the
spirit of Monte Ghertler, a man who devoured books and loved libraries.
He was so pleased to have a decent library near his upstate home. A
great community needs a great library. This is especially true in small
town America, where resources are sometimes limited. In Glens Falls,
they’ve got the Crandall."

— Mark Mahoney

What a group of good movies at the BAM Rose Cinema. I am so there for Milk and Slumdog Millionarie. I already saw Synecdoche, New York and loved it (Hepcat saw it twice).

Milk
Starts Fri, Dec 5! / Fri, Dec 5—Sun, Dec 7 at 1:30, 4, 6:40, 9:30pm

Synecdoche, New York
Mon, Dec 1—Thu, Dec 4 at 4:30, 7, 9:30pm / Fri, Dec 5—Sun, Dec 7 at 1:30, 4, 6:45, 9:20pm

Slumdog Millionaire
Starts Fri, Dec 5! / Fri, Dec 5—Sun, Dec 7 at 1:40, 4:15, 7, 9:45pm

Brooklynology is the blog of the Brooklyn Public Library. This week they have an interesting piece about architect Axel Hedman. Here’s an excerpt:

The streetscapes of Brooklyn are shaped by the work of countless
builders and architects, some famous, some obscure.  Some deserve their
obscurity. But there are many too who may not have achieved fame, but
whose fine work continues to anchor neighborhoods and arouse interest
in passers-by.

Axel Hedman is a name known to people who like to read guides to
architecture and Landmark Designation Reports. Hedman’s buildings are
dotted through several Brooklyn neighborhoods. Born in Norrkoping,
Sweden, in 1861, Hedman immigrated to the U.S.  in 1880. He was
naturalized in 1901 and lived in Brooklyn until his death in 1943.
Barbara Hedman-Kettell, Hedman’s great-granddaughter, has been
researching her ancestor’s buildings in preparation for a celebratory
family tour, and is creating a list of his work gathered from various
sources including the Brooklyn Collection. Domestic architecture
predominates, but the list also includes some familiar public buildings
in Brooklyn and other parts of the city.

Read more at Brooklynology.

A great gift idea from the Brooklyn Paper that shows the history of life according to Darwin:

Most people don’t want to take the Christ out of Christmas. But one
former Brooklynite wants God to share some space in the toy chest.

To do so, Kate Miller started Charlie’s Playhouse, which sells
evolution toys and fills the black hole between the Noah’s Ark toys and
dinosaurs.

I was looking for toys for my kids,” said Miller, who now lives in
Providence, R.I. “There were dinosaurs, but there was nothing that
showed the history of life on Earth. So I had to start the company.”

Miller’s central product is an 18-foot-long, heavy-duty,
creature-covered timeline (pictured, $49), a journey that spans 12
geologic epochs, six mass extinctions and 600 million years.

Charlie’s Playhouse — the company name is a reference to Darwin —
also sells creature cards ($19) and T-shirts (“Product of Natural
Selection” is the big seller).

Thursday morning was an interesting morning on the Brian Lehrer show (hosted by Andrea Bernstein). I was listening but must have lowered the volume during all the following excitement. Luckily my pal, David Bukszpan,  publicist at WNYC, sent me this transcript and a note:

So here it is: Marty Markowitz, Tom Suozzi, Kate Slevin & Caller Rosie Perez on the first segment of today’s The Brian Lehrer Show, guest-hosted by WNYC’s Political Director Andrea Bernstein

Highlights:

    * Perez: bridge toll will “kill the commerce in downtown Manhattan, not Brooklyn”
    * Perez & Slevin get into it on who’s more of a Brooklynite
    * Suozzi: “It wasn’t me” who greeted Gov. Paterson outside a fundraising event, angling for Clinton’s Senate seat

Audio at http://www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/episodes/2008/12/04 (embeddable)

Here’s the transcript:

Andrea Bernstein: We have calling us Brooklynite, Rosie Perez. Are you taking it on the chin?

Rosie Perez: Um yes I am. You know, people say how can you talk because you know you make a lot of money, blah blah blah. Listen, just like the previous callers said, I have a lot of family members that have to drive into Manhattan. They do not, they’re not able physically to take the train so they have to drive back and forth to Manhattan. If you do the math, the drive in $5, they drive in and back $5. That’s $10 a day.

There are people…the woman who was saying she’s a Brooklynite, I would love to know how long she’s lived in Brooklyn. Because most new people in Brooklyn live in the downtown area and have no idea what it means to live in Red Hook – have no idea what it means to live in East New York in the Flatlands. In what Marty Markowitz was commenting on. And I can’t believe agreeing with Marty Markowitz here, but there is a transportation problem in Brooklyn where the trains don’t go to, the busses don’t go to. And every time they say they’re going to raise the prices on the MTA, and they’re going to benefit the boroughs, they don’t. So, here’s the problem.

And also – for the people that do make a lot of money in Brooklyn, what are you going to do at night when the taxis won’t bring you back because they don’t want to pay the toll. They’ll pay the toll coming into Brooklyn but they’ll charge you for the toll back. That means they’re going to be responsible for the toll back. It’s going to kill the nightlife, it’s going to kill the commerce in downtown Manhattan, not in Brooklyn. And people need to be aware of this. But also what really bothers me is what Marty Markowitz does say. Is that – why is the entire burden, well not the entire burden, excuse me. The majority of the burden is going to be replaced by Brooklynites. It’s not fair. And all these crazy people that have moved to Brooklyn say, Oh well I take the train, well I take the train. A lot of people do not take the train and do not live in the downtown area where a train ride is only going to be 20 minutes.

KS: well wait a second. You’re making assumptions about me that aren’t…I mean….

AB: Okay – Kate Slevin.

KS: I’ve lived in Brooklyn 10 years – I live in Flatbush – that’s a long time.

RP: I’ve lived in Brooklyn all my life.

KS: Okay that’s fine, that’s great. [lots of indiscernible voices]

AB: Okay I live in Brooklyn too, you know, so ah….A lot of people calling in live in Brooklyn

KS: I’m going off of the statistics which are that 57% of households in Brooklyn do not own a car. That means that they are on our transportation system. Households without a vehicle in Brooklyn make $32,000 a year versus households with a vehicle make over double that. That means that from an equity standpoint, tolling the East River bridges to reduce the fare hike is a smart thing to do.

AB: Hang on a second. Rosie Perez – if you can stay with us for just one sec, I know that Nassau County executive has to leave us, so I just want to see if you have any final response to Rosie Perez. Rosie Perez, if you can stay with us, I’d like to get back to you in one second. But what about what she said about killing the nightlife in lower Manhattan. Tom Suozzi.

Tom Suozzi: I don’t think that that’s a possibility. I think it’s so much of a draw that they’ll continue to be nightlife in downtown Manhattan.

RP: If you’re coming home at 3 o’clock in the morning, you’re not going to take the train.

AB: Okay hang on. Rosie Perez, let’s just let Tom Suozzi cause he has to jump off the phone. So we’ll get right back to you.

TS: There’s one thing I want to challenge about Rosie’s saying. The idea that the majority of the burden is going to rest with Brooklyn residents. Of course, I don’t have the statistic in front of me, the report is not out yet, but I’m reasonably certain that the majority of the burden is not going to fall on Brooklyn residents. It’s going to be equitably distributed based upon the fact that the corporate payroll tax has been proposed, based upon the fact that people use these bridges – all the bridges that are going to be tolled – from different parts of the region to enter into Manhattan. And we’ve got to distribute the burden. And right now, if you do think of it, we do have congestion pricing now in that people who take the midtown tunnel, and people who take the Triborough Bridge, must pay a toll. So they’re getting congestion pricing currently. And this will create a more equitable system that each of the different thoroughfares are treated equitably

Tonight beginning at 7 p.m. is part 1 of the second annual Snowflake Celebration, sponsored by  Buy in Brooklyn. December 11 is part 2.

Y’know those snowflakes hanging from the street lights on Seventh Avenue. That’s why this event is called the Snowflake Celebration.

Oh yeah.

And the Community Bookstore will have a snowflake machine out in front tonight.

Cool.

Once again, local merchants throw open their doors to stay open late
and create a holiday atmosphere, enabling the people Park
Slope, to do their holiday shopping . . . here!

Each participating
business will 1). Stay open until 10pm, and 2). Offer some special
promotion – Could be a sale, could be a giveaway, raffle, carolers,
snow machine (it’s been done!), mulled wine, special hors d’oeuvres,
etc. etc. The listings of participants grows daily!!!

Last
year there were 150 participating businesses — who knows what will happen
this year!?! In the current and impending economic climate, it’s more
important than ever to keep our local economy strong and healthy, so
let’s get together and Keep it Local!

Just heard from my friend Kathy Malone about a benefit the Brooklyn Indie Market is doing for St. John’s Bread and Life,the largest provider of emergency food services in this area. THey are one of the designated charities of the "Give Where You LIve Campaign."

Brooklyn Indie Market, a collective of fashion and product
designers based in Brooklyn, will donate 15- 20% of its proceeds from
sales (which will be doubled by a matching grant from Independence
Community Foundation) during the weekend of December 20th and 21st,
11-7pm.  St. John’s Bread and Life is Brooklyn’s largest emergency food
provider.  Members of the market gather to sell items each weekend at
Smith and Union Streets in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.

The shopping event will be part of Bread and Life’s "Give Where You
Live Campaign," which seeks to involve the local Brooklyn community in
charitable programs.  The organization provides meals to more than
1,500 people each day both at its location on Lexington Avenue in
Bedford Stuyvesant and via its Mobile Soup Kitchen which makes
deliveries throughout Brooklyn and Queens.  In addition to sales at the
market, local designers, artists and merchants have donated prizes to
be raffled off during the December 20/21 weekend, including designer
clothing and accessories, art, dinners and bottles of wine.  Donations
will help Bread and Life reduce poverty and hunger, which affects one
in five of every New Yorker.

Info about Brooklyn Indie Market
Brooklyn Indie Market is a collective of
fashion and product designers. Emerging Designers converge weekends
under the red and white striped tent on Smith & Union Street,
offering the public a first glimpse of the many new names in fashion
and product design. Visit Brooklyn Indie Market at www.brooklynindiemarket.com.

Info about St. John’s Bread and Life
Besides
serving more than 1,500 meals daily, Bread and Life also provides an
array of social services, including nutrition counseling, housing
referral services, medical support, education, support groups and a
legal clinic.  You can learn more about St. John’s unique Digital Food
Pantry and other innovations by visiting Bread & Life online at www.breadandlife.org or calling a real person at 718-574-0058, ext 145 to speak with Dorothy Kellogg.

Photograph by Rudolph Vernaz-Colas

Hey everybody: the annual 2008 PS 321 Holiday Craft Fair Park Slope is this Saturday. That’s right. It’s this Saturday!!!

I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

–Over 80 artists of
–Extraordinary hand crafted creative gifts and d
–Decorations for the holiday season
–Family fun –
–Gourmet food –
–Kids make-your-own craft area to
keep the little ones entertained while the big people shop
–indoors rain or shine
–Free admission

The Where and When

The 2008 PS 321 Holiday Crafts Fair
Saturday, December 6
11am-4pm
180 Seventh Avenue @ 1st Street
Park Slope, Brooklyn 11215
Contact tel: 347-446-8254
Closest subways:  B/Q to Seventh Avenue, 2/ 3 to Grand Army Plaza, F to Seventh Avenue

I just heard from Joseph M. McCarthy, the development director of  Irondale Ensemble Project, an innovative theater group now located in the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Fort Greene, Yesterday he sent out an email requesting donations for the theater but he created a bad link. He sent this follow-up email.

Ugh. I hate when I do this.  It has come to my attention that the "donate"
link in yesterday’s email doesn’t work.

Here’s one that does…
http://www.nycharities.org/donate/c_donate.asp?CharityCode=2260. Sorry
about that.

Also, I heard from a friend that when she told another friend she was
going to see London Cries, the response was, "Oh, the one at
Joe McCarthy’s theater? We want to see that."

I want to disabuse you of that locution.  You can’t look it up in the Times
or The New Yorker or Time Out or New York.  It
is the Irondale Center – and the company is the Irondale
Ensemble Project – much as I would like to have a theater named
after myself!

Another installment of Michael Nolan’s Brooklyn memoir. This one, written 4 years ago, is about his daughter, who lives in Williamsburg.

Took the L Train to the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn yesterday.
Walked along Graham Avenue, where my daughter Rosy now lives, to Lola’s
Cafe where she works the counter. It’s her "living room." Young artists
and musicians like herself drop by for coffee, some breakfast, a bit of
neighborhood chatter, and today to meet Rosy’s Dad. On the surrounding
streets, alongside her young creative crowd lives, works and prays a
devoted Italian Catholic community with their chapel to St. Mary of the
Snow, men’s fraternal associations and card clubs, bakeries, grocery
stores, funeral parlors and annual patron saint processions.

Rosanna
Lowery Nolan turns 26 this Friday. She was destined to live in my
hometown of Brooklyn, I muse. Among the staff of midwives at the
Alternative Birth Center at San Francisco General Hospital in the
summer of ’78 was a handsome African American woman, pregnant herself
at the time, named Sharon Robinson. It was Jackie Robinson’s daughter. The
prospect of having my daughter’s birth guided by the daughter of legendary Brookyn Dodger’s player was exhilarating. In the end, she was not on duty at
the time and the glory of Rosy’s birth trumped everything anyway.

Last
year, I ran into Sharon Robinson at a book signing at Stacey’s on Market Street
in San Francisco. We had a delightful chat about both our children born
in the same year. Sharon now works for the Major League Baseball
Commissioner in New York.

Rosy is named after her paternal Irish
great-grandmother who also lived in Brooklyn on E. 2nd Street and gave
birth to 13 children, only 6 of whom survived. Blessedly one of them
included Harold Francis Aloysius Nolan, her grandfather.

This
Friday is also the birthday of our Jewish cousin, Lena Eisenson
Koblentz, who at 94 exhibits extraordinary good health and mental
acuity. I publish her reminiscences of growing up on the Lower East
Side and distribute them to the "gansa mishpuchah" via our family
website. On Monday, I sought out the address of her home birthplace,
listed in the birth certificate she sent me. The building still stands
at 122 Allen Street, between Delancey & Rivington. A recently
discovered draft card from 1918 showed that her father lived at 530 E.
11th Street. That building survives as well between Avenues A & B,
next to a former public bath house, now serving as a film studio.

Later
Lena’s family moved to The Bronx and then Williamsburg where her father
operated a candy store. The Rosy Nolan Band’s most frequent venue is a
"Billy Burg" club named Pete’s Candy Store on Lorimer Street. Who knew?
Just might be the same place.

Commuters on a Manhattan-bound Staten Island Ferry taking advantage
of slightly warming temps. 

Lights in the sky reveal that this shot was
taken on the inside of the glass doors/windows leading to the ferry’s outer deck.

Photo by Tom Martinez

WFMU’s Webhamster, Henry Lowengard, offers his annual list of the Top 10 Imaginary Sound Events of 2008. He writes:

Hello Music Lovers!

It’s that time again – time to imagine what I could have been listening to (or composing) in 2008!

http://www.wfmu.org/~jhhl/Best/

All previous years’ lists are also there for your imaginary listening pleasure.

1. Blow This End! (Winded: 2008)
   A bouquet of experimental wind instrument solos and duets by "P. J.
   Lapmar" and "Kenny H." None of the instruments (flute, alto sax,
   horn…) are blown in the proper embouchure, and in some cases, new
   holes were drilled into their bodies.
2. Oil You Need is Love (ESAS Records: 2008)
   A quickly made techno-y single, from Environmentally Shaken and
   Stirred, featuring synth waveforms based on the erratic price of oil in
   2008.
3. Your Call May Be Monitored For Quality Control (CommunicationBiz Training Tapes: 2008)
   Ever wonder about that little phrase you hear when you finally get to a human agent in an IVR call tree?
   Here’s an audio guidebook for supervisors to critique the agent’s performance, with real recorded examples.
4. Synching of You (ZZZ: 2008)
   A catchy pop tune, featuring a little riff based on the GSM synch noise
   an iPhone makes every once in a while when it’s near a speaker.
   Makes your pals whip out and turn off their iPhones in embarrassment.
5. C-r T-lk (Cl-k-n-Cl-k: mp3 2008)
   "Language Removal Service" –
   like work done on the Magliozzi brothers of Car Talk fame: only the
   guffaws and chuckles remain. A great companion to the WFMU "Shemp
   Meditation Tapes" put together by Dave the Spazz.
6. "Fly Me to the Moon" and Other Hits of the ISS (NASA Media: 2007)
   What do they sing in the International Space Station? These monitor recordings tell you!
7. Paleo News Supplement Vol. XXXVII (Journals of Expensive Science: 2008)
   Ancient
   Mammals: giant sloths, mastodons, titanotheres — what did they sound
   like?
   In this special supplement, Dr. Cornelia Leonard and Dr. Misha Verbena
   recreate the sound of vanished mammals by modeling the internal spaces
   in their fossilized skulls.
8. Semiotics of Palintology: I Don’t Know – Alaska! (ThesisGal08@myDissertations.com: 2008)
   In the best tradition of backward masking "decoding," we have here a
   deep dissection of every word, every nuance, every possible meaning of
   the sum total of all publicly available speeches of Sarah Palin from
   the announcement of her vice Presidential candidacy to election day.
   Annotated video by "ThesisGal".
9. My Lobster Is Grinning, Barbara Jane, Barbara Jane b/w [Tacit] (1-2-3-4-5-6-7": 2008)
   I
   sincerely hope this hypnotic collection of tuned syllables gets some
   airplay somewhere. I can’t decide which side is better. I can’t even
   tell them apart since the disk has no label. Not only is "Lobster" cut
   with 12 intersecting elliptical lock grooves, [Tacit] on the B side has
   a hard to count number of partial drone tracks of various lengths,
   almost literally "cuts", which end abruptly — forcing a jump to some nearby groove or other.
10. Bow Brass Bars and Bosses (Polarity Recordings: 2008)
    C. P. Ohrfeiger spent a lot of time in the forges of the Far East and
    came back with ideas and time tested formulas for building a better
    gong. Each of her gongs is a sandwich of denser metal over thin,
    flexible laminated steel. After she learned how to grind away the
    nodes, she found she could make a gong in any shape and have its sound
    evolve through time with a long sustain. By carefully combining rows of
    these metal plates over resonators and bowing them, the sound space in
    this 5.1 quintaural recording breaks open and then nestles into your
    head.

Kristin Goode is so good at her job as about.com’s Brooklyn corespondent. She always knows the coolest stuff.

Now she’s gone ahead and put together a selective list of things to do in Brooklyn in December.

It’s December, the holidays have officially arrived, and there are
plenty of ways to celebrate in Brooklyn. Below I’ve tried to give you
at least one great event for nearly every day of the month.

Check it out here.  And here’s just one cool event she has listed. I’ve never gone.

Thursday, December 11
A Brooklyn Nutcracker

A Brooklyn holiday favorite
for ten years, this show’s cast is almost completely made up of
children. Tickets are $20 for adults and $10 for kids. Show runs
through Sunday.

7pm at The Brooklyn Music School, 126 St. Felix Street

(718) 638-5660

Here’s what Rosewater Restaurant is doing to celebrate the Snowflake Celebration, as part of the Buy Local, Buy Late event on December 4 & 11: Free gift certificates!

This holiday season the Buy in Brooklyn campaign is once again sponsoring the support-yer-local-biz Snowflake Celebration here in Park Slope. Many local shops and restaurants will be offering promotions on the first two Thursdays in December. It’s worth having a peek at who’s doing what on their website.

This year, in an effort to break away from the "free cup of mulled wine" approach and offer up something that would get you off the couch on a chilly Thursday in hard times, we’ve hatched the following excellent idea in the hope that you’ll come keep us company later on this Winter…

Visit us this Thursday the 4th, or next Thursday the 11th. Have dinner, or buy a Holiday Gift Certificate, and receive a BONUS Gift Certificate for you (or anyone else) to use between January 2 and March 22. Spend $50 or more, and receive a GC for $25. Spend $100 and we’ll give you a GC for $50. (The only black-out date is February 14.)

There’s no limit. Spend $300 and get a GC for $150. Use it for Brunch. Use it for Dinner. Use it to rent out the restaurant for your Inauguration Party! The excellent possibilities are endless!

Call us if you have any questions. 718.783.3800

Brooklyn ’s Independence
Community Foundation has created Brooklyn Gives to
encourage Brookynites to give where they live.

There are so many things to love about Brooklyn: our neighborhoods, our parks, our culture, and most importantly our people. But you may not realize it is the creativity, attitude and heart of our nonprofit community that really make a big Brooklyn difference in the lives of so many people and institutions. You can help these great organizations provide emergency food, care for the homeless, build affordable housing, educate our young people, green our neighborhoods, bring pleasure and insight through culture, and so much more.

As you consider your holiday and end-of year charitable giving, why not include a few of the outstanding non-profits working in and for Brooklyn.

Want to know more? Check out www.brooklyngives.org for a sample list of groups working to build a better Brooklyn for ALL of us.

Give where you live Brooklyn, and happy holidays to all.

Claireware Holiday Craft Show with Guest Artists:

Susan Steinbrock, Handpainted silk scarves (pictured left) and
Rebecca Rothman, Jewelry

The Where and When

Claireware
543 Union Street, 1st floort
Saturday, December 6th, 10-6
Sunday, December 7th, 11-5

More from Michael Nolan’s Brooklyn Memoir.

I notice that one of the things that drew President-Elect Obama to
choose Timothy Geithner as his Secretary of Treasury was their common
experience of growing up in various parts of the world. For Geithner,
it was Zimbabwe, India and Thailand. Timothy’s birth in polyethnic
Brooklyn in 1961 might have been a contributing factor, too.

"Foreignness"
can be a wonderful thing growing up, seeing people who look different
and talk funny. I was raised in Brooklyn with Yiddish spoken in my
home. It was my mom’s "mama loshen" or mother tongue. Just to say,
"mama loshen" warms "mein hartz". No wonder so much Yiddish endures in
English today. I smile with appreciation when my "goyishe" friends say
"chutzpah" or "kvetch" (it’s one syllable, denks, not two.)

I
heard a lot of numbers in Yiddish – "finniff und fertzik" —
eavesdropping from the top of the stairs as my Grandma Yidis, Aunt Etta
and my mom would argue about money.

My Tante Yitka, Yidis’
younger sister, moved from the Lower East Side to Bridgeport, CT, and
gained a certain Yankee inflection to her Yinglish. I stayed at her
home on Wayne Street during the summer. "Michael, you vant piece
vaterMalone?" she would say, offering me a piece of fruit.

Her
husband, my Uncle Herman Ostrofsky, was a Ukrainian-born cattleman and
butcher who would take me to his place of business. In a legendary
postcard, I wrote home to my mother about visiting the "shlaughter
house" with Uncle Herman. Must be why I’m such a superior speller today.

The
highest and best usage of Yiddish in my boyhood was my Mom’s uncanny
ability to translate popular American tunes into Yiddish and make them
rhyme. My Irish-American Dad had a great ear for languages and with his
lilting tenor would deliver these songs at Jewish family reunions and
bring the house down. They are etched in my memory. Ask me, and I’ll
sing for you, "Si du a kretchma en dem shtetl" ("There is a Tavern in
the Town") or "Oy, Kim a Heim, Bill Bailey."

I’m grateful for my bilingual upbringing and the study of English as a Yiddish dialect.

Here is a snapshot of the sustainability issues that faced the borough and city this past November.
The links were compiled by Rebeccah Welch, Senior Associate Director of
Communications at the Center for the Urban Environment (CUE). To learn
more about CUE, visit  www.thecue.org.

Bird Fight Paths in Prospect Park [AYITP]

The Great White Way Tries to Turn Green [New York Times]

New Bike Lanes for the Willy-B [Streetsblog]

Center for Urban Future’s Report On Coney Island ‘Visions" [Kinetic Carnival]

Now, City Wants Red Hook to Follow ‘Maritime Roots’ to Revinention [NY Times]

Blue Plate Special: Bay Ridge Bluefish, Yummy or Deadly? [Gowanus Lounge]

How Trash Becomes Green Space [New York Magazine]

Yes, Virginia, There Are Parrots in South Slope [Brownstoner]

Environmental Movement’s Grandchild, Environmental Justice and Sustainability, Grows Up, Turns 30 in Brooklyn [Huffington Post]

Bushwick Looms as the ‘Next Big Place’ for Art [Washington Post]

Bloomberg to Push for Infrastructure Investment [Am New York]

Blue-Lit Cranes Near Ikea [Fading Ad Blog]

Red Hook Bike-Friendly Design Competition Winner & Finalists [Gowanus Lounge]

Next Victim in Crashing Market: Affordable Housing [Brownstoner]

State Says Concrete Company Polluted Newtown Creek [Queens Courier]

It’s Not Easy Being Green [New York Times]

Locals Want BQE Covered Over [Brooklyn Papers]

Cash-Strapped City Cancels Leaf Collection Program [Flatbush Life]

City Proposes Bike Parking Rules for New Buildings [Associated Press]

Saving Jamaica Bay’s Disappearing Marshes [City Limits]

City Reaches Agreement With State on Sewage [NY Times]

New Bike Share Program Coming to New York University [AM New York]

Q&A With CUE’s Director Sandi Franklin [Gowanus Lounge]

I was reading Old First, Reverend Doctor Daniel Meeter’s blog, and came across this post by Heather Johnston about Karen  Rothman-Fried’s memorial service at Beth Elohim on November 19th. Here is an excerpt:

A young 3rd grade teacher at 321, Karen Rothman-Fried, died
suddenly on Sunday of what might have been a cerebral aneurism (note: an autopsy revealed that it was not an aneurism). She was
6 months pregnant and her unborn son died as well.

PS
321, with Principal Liz Phillips at the helm, responded beautifully.
Should you ever doubt the spirit and leadership of that school, don’t.
It is an extraordinary community I am proud to be part of.

I
attended the service at Temple Beth Elohim today (November 19). She
never taught my girls, but because it is a small world, my mother is
quite friendly with Karen’s mother in Florida. They play bridge several
times a week. Mrs. Rothman was so excited about her daughter’s recent
marriage and pregnancy, they were over the moon with joy. I just wanted
to share how perfect I thought the service was.

Your
collegue, the rabbi of Beth Elohim, did a wonderful job in sheparding
the family and the mourners. As a Christian, I found the service
particularly comforting. It’s a wonderful thing to feel comforted by
another’s tradition. We are all connected. When her brother-in-law
raged at the injustice of her death and then pivoted so quickly to the
meaning of her life, I felt so gratified.

Karen was a passionate, free spirit and committed teacher. He
reminded us to honor her memory the next time we are offered the
blessing to do something spontaneous.

Karen’s
husband, Andrew Fried, was devastated at the service. This was the love
of his life, and his first child. He comes from a strong and good
family, as does she. They will need each other. But when Andrew Fried,
broken and in tears, delivered the W.H. Auden poem, Stop All The Clocks, at the end of the service, it was a moment like I’ve never seen.

Times are tough, ladies and gents, but such as times are, we’re
all in ’em together.  So lets keep it close to home, and enjoy it all
together, too.

 

Stay tuned for more news. And yes, Virginia, the bookstore will have snow machines again.

 

Lotsa love,

Catherine.

 

PS.  Don’t forget the Tree Lighting ceremony on Saturday December
6th, 5 pm at J.J. Byrne Park (aka:  Old Stone House, corner of 3rd
Street and 5th Avenue), which threatens to feature yours truly and Tod,
dressed as elves (or, to be strictly truthful, Elf and elf-dog).
Festivities and refreshments abounding!

A sad and disturbing incident on the B46 bus in Bed-Stuy. Edwin Thomas was the first bus driver murdered in NYC in more than 27 years. Here’s an excerpt from the story in the New York Times:

A New York City bus driver was fatally stabbed in Brooklyn on Monday after refusing to give a transfer to his assailant, who had not paid his fare, the police said. Witnesses said the killer jumped off the bus, slipped the hood of his black sweatshirt over his head and ran away.

New York City Transit officials said it was the first slaying of a city bus driver in more than 27 years, although from time to time subway token-booth attendants have been attacked, some viciously. It was also the 476th homicide of the year in New York, 29 more than at this time last year. In 1981, there were more then 1,820 killings.

Investigators said the victim, Edwin Thomas, 46, driving the B46 route, was attacked at a bus stop on Malcolm X Boulevard at Gates Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant shortly after 12:30 p.m. by a tall, thin black man about 35, who had boarded the northbound bus about half a mile away.

The police said the man inserted an invalid MetroCard into the fare box two or three times, and, despite its rejection, walked back and took a seat beside a woman. The driver, following rules to avoid confrontations, said nothing. But when the man came forward and asked for a transfer at Gates Avenue, the driver refused, saying he had not paid his fare and was not entitled to one.

Enraged, the assailant punched Mr. Thomas twice in the head, witnesses said. He then stepped off the bus. The driver was about to close the door behind him when the man suddenly turned, stepped back onto the bus, pulled out a knife with a slashing motion and drove the blade repeatedly into the driver’s chest and torso.

Issue Project Room presents a free preview reading by Elliott Sharp and Jack Womack of Binibon

Deborah Harry, William Gibson, Robert Longo, Tony Conrad, Toni Dove,
Jonathan Lethem and ISSUE Project Room invite you to a special free
reading of excerpts of BINIBON, the new music-theater piece by Elliott
Sharp with text by Jack Womack and direction by Tea Alagic that will
premiere at The Kitchen in May 2009.

BINIBON is a work of both musical theater and alternative history based on
the 1981 murder by Jack Henry Abbott of Richard Adan. Richard was a waiter
and the night manager at the Binibon, a cafe and 24-hour hangout on 2nd
Avenue at 5th Street in the East Village, a nexus for artists,
musicians,neighborhood characters and bohemians true and faux. It was a
place that E# spent many an hour drinking bottomless cups of terrible
coffee during 1979-81.

The Where and When

December 9 at 8 p.m.
Free
Issue Project Room
232 3rd Street
Brooklyn, NY

.

Participants marking World AIDS Day process through the West
Village to Judson Memorial Church as part of an event titled, "Out of
the Darkness."

Photo by Tom Martinez

I’ve been hearing about this Brooklyn co-housing group for quite a while. I’ve even announced info sessions on this blog. Well, it sounds like they’ve made a lot of progress in a fairly short amount of time.

So what is co-housing? A group of utopian Brooklynites have pooled their money and bought a nice piece of real estate in Fort Greene (a former church that was set to be transformed into condos). They plan to turn that property into a cooperative housing situation sort of like a kibbutz. Actually, it’s more like Food Coop but it’s a life coop—a village where neighbors share meals and hang out together and let their children roam  wild and free. They also have to make decisions about just about everything together. This will be the first co-housing project in NYC. Here’s an excerpt from the NY Times:

They envision an
arrangement called “cohousing,” a place where neighbors sit down to
share meals several times a week, where children roam freely from home
to home, and where grown-ups can hang out in a communal living room.
They plan, in short, to create a village within a single development,
and their chosen site is in the middle of a tree-lined brownstone block
in Fort Greene.

The group, which has been incorporated as
Brooklyn Cohousing L.L.C., is in contract to buy an unfinished project
known as Carlton Mews, whose developers had planned 40 high-end
condominiums. The developers drew up plans for apartments surrounding a
common courtyard, with the units to be built in an long-abandoned
Episcopal church, its former rectory and a new building with a facade
that mimics the stately town houses on the block.

Brooklyn
Cohousing has bought the rights to the site, the plans and all the city
approvals that the developers spent two years amassing, including a
go-ahead from the Landmarks Preservation Commission. The group hasn’t
settled on a project name yet, but it plans to build more modest
apartments than the original developers intended and to fill them with
families whose lives revolve around the courtyard and 6,000 square feet
of common space where residents can cook together, play together, do
woodworking or take an art class together.

In the following letter, New York Methodist Hospital responds to a discussion on
Park Slope Parents about the quality of care in their emergency room,
as well as the attitude of some staff members.  The Park Slope Advisory
Board shared these posts with a representative from Methodist and invited a response.

In the following letter, Methodist Hospital responds to a discussion on Park Slope Parents about the quality of care in their emergency room, as well as the attitude of some staff members.  The Park Slope Advisory Board shared these posts with Methodist and invited their response.

December 1, 2008

Dear Park Slope Parents:

We at New York Methodist Hospital understand that there has been a recent discussion
about the service in the Emergency Department at NYM on the PSP listserv and that
several people have posted messages that express significant concern about the care they
have received and/or the attitude of the staff.

The Hospital has been invited to respond by the PSP Advisory Board and we are grateful
for the opportunity.  We take community comments very seriously and were especially
disturbed that, in many cases, there was a sense that the staff of the Emergency
Department did not seem to care about the feelings of the patients or their family
members.  That is inexcusable and, to the extent that it is the case, we will make every
effort to address it.

In the past few years, partially in response to a flurry of postings on the PSP listserv in
2005, we have made many changes in our ED.  Chief among these was the renovation
and expansion of the entire facility, which opened last year.  The new ED has a dedicated
Pediatric Emergency Room and a private suite for women with obstetric or gynecological
problems and is 50 percent larger than the previous ED.

We also added ED physicians and ED staff in our Patient Relations Department and
implemented an ED patient survey, administered and analyzed by an independent market
research organization.  This has allowed us to focus on specific complaints and to
monitor our progress.  When letters of complaint come in to me or to the director of
patient relations, the chairman of emergency medicine or the senior vice president for
nursing, they are shared with all involved and thoroughly discussed before a response
(both in the form of an answer to the letter-writer and a possible change in policy,
procedures and/or counseling of an individual staff member) is determined.

That said, the readers of this listserv need to be aware that emergency rooms, especially
those in a city like New York, do best when the care needed is for a condition that is truly
emergent—life threatening.  We have had some wonderful letters of thanks from
individuals whose lives were saved in our ED.  Often, those lives are saved because
doctors and nurses divert their attention from other patients, some of who may be
extremely uncomfortable, but who are not in life-threatening situations.

This kind of
decision is often necessary and appropriate in an emergency room.  Judging an
emergency room by the amount of time that you wait on any particular visit may do it a
great injustice.

Sometimes we don’t know whether our symptoms are life threatening.  Or, we know that
an acutely painful condition is not life threatening, but still go to the ER because no other
medical care is available.  The ER is there for cases like this as well, but anyone not in an
emergent condition needs to understand that, while we try to avoid long waits, they do
sometimes occur.   

It may also be helpful for you to know that alternative help may be available and
accessible—for example, it may be much more expeditious to take a child with a need for
stitches on the chin or forehead to a neighborhood plastic surgeon or to take one who may
have a broken foot directly to an orthopedic surgeon.  However, because of liability
issues, once you come to an ED, neither the triage nurse, nor any other staff member can
direct you out of that ED to a private doctor.

A physician referral service (accessible by area of specialty) is available at 718 499-
CARE or at www.nym.org.  In addition, we have a pediatric urgent care center, staffed by
a pediatrician, that is available weekday evenings between 6 and 11 p.m., at 263 Seventh
Avenue (between Fifth and Sixth Streets).   

In the fall of 2005, the Hospital hosted a session for interested parents at which members
of the ED staff (in particular, our chief of pediatric emergency medicine) spoke about the NYM Emergency Department, and at which parents had the opportunity to ask questions,

voice concerns and tour the ED.  Clearly it is time for us to schedule another meeting at
which the Hospital and interested community members can come together to listen to
each other.  We will schedule our “listening session” shortly after the holidays.

In the meantime, I hope that you will feel free to contact me (lhill@nym.org) if there is
any way in which I can assist you or if you have any questions you would like to ask.
You may also want to contact Joanne Lagnese, Director of Patient Relations, at
jor9006@nyp.org.

Sincerely,

Lyn S. Hill
Vice President of Communication and External Affairs
and Mother of two children who grew up in Park Slope (one born at NYM!)