Oshima, on Seventh Avenue near Berkeley, is one of my favorite sushi places for lunch. It closed recently for renovation. Last night I walked by and finally looked in.

There are purple curtains in the window, brick walls, and a whole new layout to the restaurant. I had to walk by quickly but I did see the couple who own the place standing in the window and I gave them a thumbs-up.

She has a beautiful smile; the two of them looked very pleased.

Slope Scope, a blog I have completely lost track of has a story about the renovation, too. He isn’t nearly as impressed as me. Maybe he hasn’t seen it at night. Here’s what Slope Scope had to say:

They are open again now, that the changes are pretty drastic but not anything to write home about. The interior has been rearranged, with the sushi bar moved to the back. This arguably created more seating inside. The main feature though is floor to ceiling glass windows at the front of the store, ala the Santa Fe Grill. The old exterior (still featured on their website) was a little closed off, and hopefully this new look will get more people in the door.

OTBKB is so pleased that Lara Wechsler has agreed to come on board and present a daily post called, Photography by Lara Wechsler.

I have been an admirer of Lara’s work for quite some time. In December she showed her  Coney Island work at 404 Gallery, and I was wowed seeing them in large print form.

Lara has her own blog called Park Slope Street Photography and these images will be culled from there. As I told Lara, this is a self-curated photo show and I want her to do whatever she wants to do with it.

Here is an artist’s statement from Lara’s website:

I consider myself a street photographer; my camera is always on hand and I shoot at anything that strikes my interest in public places. I constantly pay attention to people, composition and lighting.

My love for New York City has always motivated me. The city offers a plethora of visual stimuli and my goal is to capture this visual bounty. I have had a strong commitment to street photography since 1988. I capture reality – by using a wide-angle lens and avoiding postcard compositions. I seek the raw, claustrophobic crowd and congestion of the city, not just with people, but also inanimate objects. I relish people or objects that get in the way of the otherwise "perfect" shot.

Over the years, I have developed a style that combines the finesse of fine art with the grit of street photography. Unusual captures, composition and angles burst through my city scenes.

Currently I am a cooperative member of a small jewel box artist run gallery
440 Gallery in which my photographs along with all the other members’ art work is hangin in the members’ part of the gallery. I am also a member of the Brooklyn Arts Council.

You’ve heard me mention Regina McBride’s amazing writing workshops, Inner Lives, Developing Characters.

Some of the best writers I know take her workshops.

That’s why Brooklyn Reading Works is presenting a reading of work from these workshops called Inner Lives Out Loud on Thursday March 27th at 8 pm at the Old Stone House. Fifth Avenue @ 3rd Street in Park Slope.

I will be reading an excerpt from my new novel, "The Last Sublet," at this reading!

During these workshops, relaxation, sense memory, and emotional memory (Stanislavski
acting techniques transformed for the writer)exercises are offered to enable the writer to find a deeper, richer
connection to the character he or she is creating.

Exercises are ollowed by writing periods, and opportunities for
people to read and share their work. The atmosphere is safe, with
the focus on exploration.

Come to the reading and hear writer read work generated in these amazing workshops.

Join me and Brooklyn Based for cocktails at Sidecar, the acclaimed new bar and comfort food eatery in the South Slope.

That’s one week from today: Wednesday March 26th from 6:30 to 9 at Sidecar . You’ll get two  free sample cocktails
made with milagro tequila (and non-alcoholic beverages too, for moms to
be/non-drinkers).

By "sample" it simply means that the drinks are not
full drinks–they’re basically half cocktails, which the bartenders can
prepare in advance and place on the bar so people can easily "sample"
them.

I’m excited for a bunch of reasons:

1. It will be fun to meet and socialize with readers of OTBKB. Come one, come all!

2. It will be fun to go to Sidecar @ 560 Fifth Avenue between 15th and 16th Streets. It looks great.

3. It will be fun to hang out with Brooklyn Based, a really cool Brooklyn blogger.

SEVENTH AVENUE VIEWS

Yogo Monster
Good taste demands you ban
The window garbage can;
Otherwise, Monster,
You may become a gonster.

Bank of America
You win the prize and more
For having the dirtiest floor,
Suggesting your money too
Is dirty through and through.

Prospect Gardens Pharma
What do shower heads
Have to do with meds?
Don’t toys and games and such
Seem a bit too much?

Santa Fe Grill
Singles at the bar,
Families seated not far;
Oldest avenue eatery
Deserving its popularity.

Ozzie’s
Stroller spillout from
Tea Lounge baby scrum
Leads to parking woes
As entrance traffic slows.

Sometimes life intervenes.

It’s official. We’re having the 3rd Annual Brooklyn Blogfest at the Brooklyn Lyceum (Fourth Avenue and President) on May 8th at 8 p.m.

This year’s theme: Place Matters; Blogging My World

The Blogfest, an annual gathering of Brooklyn Bloggers, is for everyone. Bloggers and non-bloggers alike.

What happens at the Blogfest? Lots of bloggers, non-bloggers, media, and others show up. A formal presentation with speakers and video will be followed by a shout-out and then some social time.

It should be quite a get-together and I’m very excited about the new venue.

And let’s not forget about the refreshments and spirits. Last year,  Partida Tequila sponsored the event and threw a great party with 100% organic agave margaritas and Mexican food from Rachels.

This year, we’re looking for a liquor or wine sponsor. But there will be Mexican
food from Maria’s Mexican Bistro on Union Street will be supplying some
of the eats.

Come one, come all. There’s tons of room at the Brooklyn Lyceum;
this year we won’t have to turn people away unless more than 300
people show up.

The program hasn’t been worked out yet but there will be quite a few
surprises. And there will, of course, be a shout-out.

That means if you
started a blog since the last Blogfest you get to come up on the
stage and shout out about it. Tell us what it’s about, where you are,
and what you’re  doing.

Progress continues in the renovation of the space formerly known as Tempo Presto. An OTBKB reader had this to share:

Well, not the whole scoop. BUT they’re putting up awning/tent/canopy, whatever you call it. Red. AND the name of the restaurant is on the edge of the canopy. The name i,s drumroll please… Barrio.

Cute

Why Governor Paterson should appoint a state commission on eminent domain (Atlantic Yards Report)

Brooklyn  becoming a college town (NY Daily News)

Dragonette and Dragonetti (Brooklynometry)

Brooklyn’s Bear Stearns’ employees (McBrooklyn)

Ed Lenci gets shorn (Self-absorbed Boomer)

Brooklyn for Peace (Brooklyn Optimist)

Scottaditto for brunch (Brooklyn Skeptic)

So Care Bears on Fire and Fiasco were at SXSW this weekend. CBOF played something like four shows. I’m not sure how many Fiasco played. I wonder how it went for all of them. We were rooting for them here in Park Slope. Cheering all the way to Austin, Texas, the go-to place for all alt, indie and now Park Slope teen bands.

The Mighty Handful and the great Dulaney Banks played at South Paw. I wasn’t there but Richard Gin, a really good professional photographer was there and it looked quite exuberant. He’s head over heels for Dulaney Banks, too.

Club Loco’s March 15th show was cancelled because a couple of bands bagged out. That was the news on the local wire too but the monthly shows at Old First Church will be back on April 12th.

Brooklyn’s Sweet Melissa has a recipe for Irish Soda Bread in her new book Sweet Melissa Baking Book. That probably means that she’s sure to be serving it today. There are probably plenty of places in Brooklyn to get it, too. Anyone know the go-to Brooklyn place for Irish Soda Bread?

Here’s was Melissa writes about her soda bread:

Irish soda bread is so yummy it’s a shame we tend to make it only once a year. I developed this recipe to be so easy that there is no excuse not to make it every day (just kidding). Of course this bread is delicious with all ikinds of boiled meat dinners, not just corned beef. My favortie way to eat it? Toasted, spread with butter and strawberry jam, served alongside a cup of hot tea.

Where does she work out?

Here is this week’s Smartmom from the award-winning Brooklyn Paper.

On Wednesday, while New Yorkers waited to hear from their new
governor, Smartmom wondered if she would be singing Tammy Wynette’s
most-famous song if Hepcat ever did anything as stupid as Eliot Spitzer.

Luckily,
Smartmom doesn’t think Hepcat would ever do anything as hypocritical or
embarrassing as getting elected to office as a reformer and then being
caught hiring prostitutes.

For one thing, it would be so out of
character. Smartmom can’t imagine why Hepcat would spend all that money
for a woman he doesn’t even know when he could be spending it on the
love of his life: his little orange Porsche 914 he inherited from his
Uncle John.

First, Smartmom’s heart goes out to all the political
wives who’ve been put in this position. It’s gotta be a woman’s worst
nightmare to be married to, take your pick, Jim McGreevey, Bill
Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, Larry Craig, etc. etc, and find out your
husband has been cheating on you. Seconds later, there you are,
standing in front of millions of people trying to not look humiliated
when, of course, you are.

Imagine what Silda Wall Spitzer is
going through right now: It’s bad enough that her husband — the
so-called “Sherrif of Wall Street,” aka “Eliot Ness” — has been shown
to be a world-class hypocrite who launders money (allegedly!) to pay
for expensive prostitutes. He did more than betray progressives
everywhere — he betrayed her.

But Smartmom didn’t marry Spitzer.
Luckily, she got Hepcat, a smart, handsome, loyal and well-meaning guy.
He’d never do anything stupid like the love gov.

Would he?

In
the end, it doesn’t matter. Smartmom believes that if you expect your
spouse to be there for you when you screw up, it stands to reason that
you have to be there when he screws up. Even if that means standing
next to him at a press conference as he apologizes for the way he
violated his — and any (nicely done, Eliot) — sense of right and wrong.

That’s
because Smartmom bought the unconditional marriage package. On her
wedding day, she promised to do this thing for better or worse, for
richer or poorer, in sickness and in heath — ’till death do they part.

But it never happens. Why? Because she’s like Michael Corleone in “Godfather III”: Something. Always. Pulls. Her. Back. In.

It must be love.

But it does raise the question: what would it take for Smartmom to boot Hepcat out the door?

Hard
times wouldn’t do it — because marriage is hard, and some tension is
part of the package. More than once, they’ve sighed together and said,
“Maybe this is just too difficult.”

But Hepcat grew up on a farm and life is supposed to be tough — you have a bad crop one year and a good one the next.

That’s his philosophy. And it’s become Smartmom’s mantra, too.

But
what about an extramarital affair? Smartmom could forgive seeing a
prostitute. Sex is just sex. But an affair means you’re whispering
sweet nothings into someone else’s ear or ordering Chinese food
together or watching “Scrubs” late at night in the bedroom.

An
affair would be the deal-breaker. Smartmom is too jealous and couldn’t
stand the thought of sharing her Hepcat with anyone else.

So that
decides it. If Hepcat ever has an affair, it’s over. No press
conferences, no second chances. She wouldn’t be thrilled if he was
paying for sex with high-end prostitutes, either. But that’s about as
likely as Hepcat emptying the dishwasher.

After Spitzer finally resigned on Wednesday, Hepcat put it all in perspective.

“You
know, Silda Spitzer will have a pretty deep pile of karma chips if they
stay together,” Hepcat told Smartmom. “All she’ll have to do is say is
‘Hey, Client 9, would you please clear the clutter in the living room.’
He’ll do whatever she tells him to do.” Hepcat said.

Smartmom loved the sound of that.

I can always count on McBrooklyn for news of Brooklyn Heights and beyond.  Today he’s got quite a bit to look out. Thanks McBrooklyn for your bloggy stamina and your daily reporting. Check out these words and pictures:

Brooklyn Urban Outfitters Opens

Fifth anniversary of Iraq War: Protests in Brooklyn and Manhattan

My friend, Marian Fontana, and I are making our yearly pilgrimage to "Writers at the
Beach: Pure Sea Glass", a  writer’s conference in Rehoboth, Maryland, founded by Maribeth Fischer, author of The Language of Good Bye and The Life You Longed For.

The conference is also a benefit for a very worthy cause: 100% of the net proceeds from this event are donated to Mitochondrial
Disease Research in honor of two of Fisher’s nephews, who died of the disease.

Here in Fisher’s own words are her reasons for this conference:

Hosted by the Rehoboth Beach Writers’ Guild, a 501 c (3)
association, "Writers at the Beach: Pure Sea Glass" was founded in 2005
to raise money for, and awareness of, a little known disease that
affects as many as 1 in 2000 children. Mitochondrial disease.

At
our inaugural conference in March 2005 we hung posters throughout the
conference facility with pictures of children and teens all of whom had
this disease. "The Faces of Mitochondrial Disease" the poster said at
the top. Over twenty children were shown, posing at Disney world, arms
outstretched and standing in front of a lake, sitting before a
Christmas tree, hugging a teddy bear. All were smiling, laughing,
living.

Over half of those children have since died.
        Two of them are my nephews, Sam and Zachary.

Still, why a writers’ conference?

Because
unless this story gets told—and heard—the money for a cure will never
be raised. Because we all have stories like this that need to get told
for whatever reason. "Writers at the Beach" is about helping others to
tell their stories.
         
In the last three years,
thanks to the writers, agents, editors, publishers and songwriters who
VOLUNTEER their time to this event, thanks to the web-designers and
photographers, to Celia Pearson, whose sea glass images we use each
year, our local restaurants who help make the author dinners possible,
the local and national companies who donate products, and the many many
participants who donate an extra ten or fifty or one hundred dollars to
this event, "Writers at the Beach:Pure Sea Glass" has donated over
$35,000 dollars to the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation in honor
of Sam and Zach Juhlman.

In
addition to raising money for mitochondrial disease, "Writers at the
Beach" is Delaware’s largest writing conference, bringing to Rehoboth
nationally-known writers from across the US, as well as participants
from nearly two-dozen states. In addition to what the authors do for
the conference, they also volunteer to go into our local schools, offer
free workshops for young writers, and serve as judges in our annual
Young Writers Contest.

  LAISSEZ FREEZE

As our economy sinks,

George Bush digs in and clucks,

"Why, nothing needs to be done."

He’s Herbert Hoover redux.

It was fun to be on this panel called Marketing Boot Camp with web designer and branding consultant Franklin Parrish, novelist Leslie Pietrzyk, and moderator, Lauren Mosko, who is an editor at Writers Digest Books.

195,000 books are published each year, only about 1700 get reviewed (a
number that is growing smaller), and most books have a shelf life that
is, as one editor commented, shorter than the shelf life of milk.
Getting publicity for your work is often the most difficult and
discouraging thing a writer has to do. Whether you are self-published,
published by a large commercial press, or about to be published, you
must, as a writer, know how to market your own work. This involves much
more than giving readings or making oneself available for book
signings. Marketing your book often being begins with marketing
yourself and starts long before the release date. It involves such
things as creating a "brand," having a website, blogging, sending out
mailings, designing your own advertising, writing press releases and
more. In this workshop learn what you must do in order to survive in
the publishing world.

Franklin Parrish of M19 Media talked about the importance of branding and creating a memorable and consistent impression of yourself in print, on the web, and in every contact you have with the public. He also offered some great advice for the design of web pages and told the group that advertising on buses isn’t as expensive as you think. I thought that was such a cool idea. Makes me want to advertise something on a bus.

Leslie Pietrzyk, the well-reviewed author of two works of literary fiction and a teacher of creative writing, discussed how much of the publicity for a book is left to the author. Pietrzyk has become at pro at promoting her work in a variety of creative ways including a blog, printed cards, readings, panels, and handouts.

Editor Lauren Mosko addressed legal and practical issues and cautioned against posting unpublished manuscripts on blogs and websites.

I talked about the importance of blogging and what I’ve learned about the publishing business in my role as  curator of Brooklyn Reading Works.

We all agreed that there is great ambivalence among writers, and artists in general, about self-promotion. There’s the feeling that generating publicity is crass, shameless and just plain yucky.

I’d rather be writing is the way a lot of writers feel.

But it is essential that writers get out there and grab their audience. If they want their books to sell and to build an audience of devoted readers.

Spring (break) comes to Flatbush (Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn)

Upstate for under $100K (Reclaimed Home)

Parent/Teacher Conferences (Midnight Cowgirl)

Thursday night at Develop Don’t Destroy meeting (Atlantic Yards Report)

Don’t forget the free UO tote (Racked)

Scenes from a morning walk through Dumbo (Self-Absorbed Boomer)

Brooklyn school name change (McBrooklyn)

Brooklyn assemblywoman implicates councilwoman in bribery trial (NY Daily News)

Full Permission Loving (Full Permission Living)

Shooting The Closer in the Heights (McBrooklyn)

A little overextended. Helping with my daughter’s fifth grade yearbook at PS 321 (anyone want to advertise in there? let me know).

Met my good friend for our weekly meditation. Yeah, meditation. It helps.

Getting ready to go to Writers at the Beach this weekend in Rehobeth, Maryland where I am doing a blogging workshop and various panels.

Should be fun.

Kind of burned out from yesterday’s Spitzermania. Onward and upward, folks.

So says the Reverend Daniel Meeter on his Old First Blog and I thank him for the heads-up.

The grackles are back in the Park. They’re not as popular as robins, of
course, nor as tuneful. They’re blackbirds, after all, from which we
stand off a bit.

What’s an occasional restaurant you might ask? I might as well let the inventors of Jack, explain their unusual concept:

Jack is an occasional restaurant, by which we mean that it is only
occasionally in existence. We are open for one seating per night at 7
pm on Saturday nights, every other week or so. Our fixed multi-course
tasting menu changes each time. Menus and dates are posted in advance on this site, BYOB, and reservations are absolutely required. Our cuisine is eclectic, innovative, and very tasty.

Apples Doused in Cardamom Wine

Jack is held at the Brooklyn Lyceum
in Park Slope, a miscellaneous arts space in what used to be Public
Bath #7, which now houses theatre, opera, a batting cage, gallery
space, aerial silk and yoga classes, and more.

Dinner begins at 7 pm and runs until approximately 10 pm. On some
nights, movies may be shown at the Lyceum after dinner. For more
information about other events in the building, check the Brooklyn Lyceum calendar.

Client 9 from Outer Space (Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn)

The desire for humiliation (Full Permission Living)

Whither Spitzer (Self-Absorbed Boomer)

Another Moralist Bites the Dust (Brooklyn Optimist)

Spitzer’s immaculate fall from grace (Brooklyn Junction)

Busy opening at Target (Brooklyn Junction)

Laundrette on 9th Street (Brooklynometry)

Truck fencing (Brooklynometry)

Public Scoping Meeting on Toll Brothers Development in Gowanus (Found in Brooklyn)

Story Time (Luna Park Gazette)

I get emails from these folks every month about their monthly meet up at the Commonwealth Bar:

Greetings Park Slope Liberal Drinkers:

So until yesterday the talking agenda was limited to the race for the White House and the Democrats’ mutually assured destruction.

In light of today’s events, we might just have to turn our attentions towards Albany.

Come on out to our first meeting since Super Tuesday. New faces. Old faces.

Drinking Liberally, Park Slope
Wednesday March 12
7:30-10pm
Commonwealth Bar
12th St and 5th Ave
Park Slope

Chime in onto the ever-present question: should politicians serve as our moral exemplars?

See you Wednesday,

Anthony, Emilie and John

Eleanor Traubman of Creative Times hasn’t missed one of the Sunday brunches. Today she read about cookie baker, Phil Solomita:

I had the good fortune of meeting Pete while performing my monthly duties as a cart walker at the Park Slope Food Coop. While escorting Pete and his full shopping cart to his car (so that I could take the empty cart back to the store), I thought to myself: “This guy seems like an artist.”

So I asked him what he did for work. “I’m a baker,” he replied. “I make cookies and sell them to restaurants and cafes.” “Oh, wow,” I said, trying to think of venues for his goods. “Do you know about the cookies they sell at Naidre’s [a Brooklyn café]?” I asked.

“Yeah, those are my cookies – Little Buddy cookies.” What! I couldn’t believe it! My favorite neighborhood cookies came from this guy.

Tune in to Brian Lehrer NOW on WNYC Radio. He’s doing a segment about the Park Slope Food Coop. This should be FUN.

Colin Beavan, ‘No Impact Man,’ tells us how to avoid using plastic water bottles in day-to-day life. Joe Holtz, general manager and a founding member of the Park Slope Food Co-op, speaks about the Co-op and the vote to remove water bottles from the shelves.

    BIRDWOMAN OF PARK SLOPE

With dogs and babies safely in tow,
Cappuccino sippers enjoy the flow
Of pensive consultants and rushing commuters,
Schoolchildren with backpacks and shiny scooters
Going by Connecticut Muffin’s area,
A favorite Park Slope bencheteria
On shop-filled Seventh Avenue,
Where beer was once the favorite brew.
And often a curious kaffeeklatscher
Turns into a fascinated watcher,
Eyes fixed on the building opposite
And a window open just a bit.
A mini-flock of pigeons is feeding,
At the fourth-floor sill, with one succeeding
In grabbing more than a tiny morsel
By batting its wings so that the force’ll
Knock back its rivals from the prize.
At this point the window starts to rise
And a wild-haired woman, head held back,
Extends an arm and gives a whack
Dispersing all the birds except
The grey-black champion, most adept
At taking care of No. 1.
As it feasts alone, the woman’s begun
To envelop the champ and slowly, slowly
To ease it in, now part-way, now wholly.
Down comes the window, and feathers fly
As the flock seeks another crumb supply.
The kaffeeklatscher chats with a friend,
Then reads the Times to the lengthy end
Intrigued enough to wonder when
The swept-in bird’ll come out again.
But in it stays.   Apartment-bound
Or possibly down underground,
Its fate seems likely to be unsound.
Did the feeding woman snare the pigeon
To bring some light to a flat that’s stygian?
To fill a role in a cult or religion?
To turn into a pie in the kigeon,
Partaking of it smidgen by smidgen?
Or is the woman, full of anguish,
Instructing it in pidgin Angluish?
As sure as there’s a landmark bridge in
Brooklyn, something’s up with that pigeon
Which  drains the caffeine scene of hope
For avian mercy in the Slope.
A feather–no more–remains on the ridge in
The neighborhood that’s down one pigeon.
On the positive side: Birdwoman, did you rob
Some Frenchy of a future squab?

photo by Kessiye

It was great to finally meet Brooklynometry. She read this piece about tunafish at C-town:

At C-Town this morning I noticed a brand of Tuna called Dolores. Such a strange name for Tuna. The name derives from a word meaning sad, but it doesn’t make me sad because it reminds me of my wonderful aunt. Well, it is sad that she passed away but I like to think she’s still around, joking, guiding me to stumble across a brand of tuna bearing her name. Just like I once wound up driving behind a car with plates that read AUNTDODO, which is what we all called her. While she was alive, she collected dolls and had a husband so sensitive he cried when he listened to Segovia play the guitar. It was very hard for a man like that to recover from losing his true love, but he did it.

I was three quarters down the aisle when I backtracked a little to look at an old man whose profile reminded me of my father’s father. He was talking to a woman about his health, telling her he has been in tears for the last two weeks with some health problem. He blamed her, he said it was because of her damn ouija board. That’s when I decided to continue eavesdropping. He said that the board talked to everyone but him, so he challenged it and shoved it under his bed. The next day he tore his achilles tendon which is not a good thing when you live in a 5 story walkup.

Self-Absorbed Boomer read this piece about one of his favorite authors whom he almost got to meet.

One evening about fifteen years ago, I was where my bride had learned to expect me to be more often than she wished, which was at the bar of the Lion’s Head, in Greenwich Village. After a few beers, I felt the inevitable (my maternal grandmother used to say, “Know why beer goes through you so fast? It doesn’t have to stop to change color.”) need to visit the room a few steps from where I was seated. Having spent thirty seconds or so reading the superurinary graffiti (“God made Shakespeare, then broke the mold. God broke the mold, then made Jacqueline Susann. Mailer will advise God what molds he’s trying on.”) and doing the obligatory manual ablution, I swung the door open and saw a man with disheveled hair and a sallow complexion, wearing a rumpled sport jacket, sitting on the barstool I had temporarily vacated. Tommy Butler, the bartender, spotted me and tapped the man on the shoulder, saying, “Hey! That’s his place. You’ll have to move.” The man cast a plaintive glance at me as he slid off the stool and began to walk away. He seemed frail, and I wanted to say, “Wait. It’s OK. You sit; I’ll stand for a while.” Tommy, though, tended bar with an iron hand, and would brook no challenge to any of his orders, even from their putative beneficiaries. So I retook my seat and got another beer. After a few minutes, when Tommy was out of earshot, I mentioned to a friend sitting next to me that I felt bad about the man who’d been ousted from my place. “Oh, yeah,” my friend said, “that was Fred Exley.“

Another participant at the Brooklyn Blogade brunch at the Old Brick Cafe in Kensington was David from Blue Barn Pictures in DUMBO, who brought some terrific webvideo with him for everyone’s viewing pleasure.

Blue Barn Pictures, an International Multimedia Production Company, headquartered in New York City.

At the heart of Blue Barn is a production staff of creative professionals dedicated to delivering your concept with the style and intelligence your vision deserves.

Blue Barn has traveled around the world, from Miami to London, San Francisco to Barcelona, to produce commercial and independent projects.

This from New York 1:

Clocks move forward one hour this weekend for Daylight Saving Time, which kicks in Sunday at 2 a.m.

This is the second straight year that Daylight Saving Time is starting in March instead of April.

The extra hour of daylight in the evening is expected to help conserve energy.

The Fire Department says Daylight Saving Time is also a good time to check that the batteries in your smoke detectors are in good working order.

Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the award winning Brooklyn Paper:

Can we please just end the Babeland controversy before it even begins?

For the record: Smartmom can’t wait for the May opening of Babeland, the woman-friendly sex toys shop on Bergen Street off Fifth Avenue.

And so are plenty of Park Slopers.

Of course, that didn’t prevent the New York Post from oozing out of the Murdochian slime to dis the neighborhood with its story this week on the coming sex shop, “Sex Toy Shop Has Bad Vibes in Park Slope,” the paper of right-wing record stated — and, naturally, found a few prudes that it could use as proxies for a sexless, repressed neighborhood.

“I don’t think it’s the ideal location for a provocative business,” Bruce Osborne told the Post, which was no doubt looking for yet another “Park Slopers are idiots” story (versions of which seem to be keeping every writer in town well occupied lately).

A 32-year-old stay-at-home mom added, “I don’t think it’s a great idea.”

You know where this is headed.

We all remember what happened in 2002, when the Pink Pussycat Boutique — the dildo and vibrator emporium — opened across from MS 51 on Fifth Avenue between Fourth and Fifth streets.

Plenty of middle-school parents were aghast at having a sex shop across the street from their children’s middle school. Councilman Bill DeBlasio (D–Park Slope) came to a PTA meeting fully prepared to advocate for the parents against the store.

But that didn’t turn out to be necessary. In the end, the PTA voted to ask the shop to lock its door during school hours and to refrain from overly sexual window displays.

So the store is still stands and everybody seems happy. There are way more important things to worry about than a shop that sells lubricants and edible underwear — like the math program for instance, or the behavior of the kids at lunchtime.

A few weeks after the PTA meeting, Teen Spirit’s filmmaking class thought about making a video documentary about the whole controversy. Smartmom felt vindicated. Even a divisive topic could be a valuable learning experience for a bunch of Park Slope kids.

So why not welcome Babeland? For one thing it sounds like they’ll have an incredible selection of dildos in many sizes, shapes and colors. And while this neighborhood is rife with good restaurants, children’s clothing stores and real-estate offices, there’s a dearth of sex toys shops.

Yes, a dearth. Just because Park Slope is a child-obsessed neighborhood doesn’t meant that the grownups can’t have sex. I mean, kids are evidence that parents do have sex once in a while. At least they once did.

The deep dark secret of life in Park Slope is that parents don’t spend ENOUGH time doing it. In fact, it’s probably the one activity that they’re not highly motivated about.

If parents in Park Slope spent a little less time hovering over their children, worrying about middle school admissions, SAT scores and extracurricular activities, and more time engaging in sensual activities, maybe everyone would be a little bit happier.

Which isn’t to say that Smartmom and Hepcat aren’t happy. It’s just that their family-centered lifestyle and too-small apartment doesn’t leave enough time for canoodling. And Smartmom is sick and tired of hearing about the sex lives of her divorced friends who have recently met the loves of their lives and seem to be spending inordinate amounts of time in bed.

It’s not like Smartmom is jealous or anything. She knows that Hepcat is the best catch in the sea. But finding the time to get intimate is harder than getting a spot at one of the neighborhood’s prestigious private schools.

So, Smartmom can’t imagine a better store. Specializing in sex toys for mature adults, the bestselling items on the Babeland Web site include the Form 6, an upscale rechargeable vibrator for $175, the Hitachi, described as the Cadillac of vibrators, for $84 and the $165 Delight, a snake-like device that “practically guides itself to your favorite pleasure points.”

What a perfect destination for “date night” — Park Slope slang for a night when couples force themselves to do something fun together and promise not to talk about their children. How about dinner, a movie and a prolonged stop at Babeland to pick up something to spice things up in the bedroom?

Now don’t be embarrassed; it’s not like you’re a middle-schooler. You’re a consenting adult and you can shop at Babeland anytime you want.

And want you should.

The only question, as one poster on Brownstoner asked, “Will Babeland allow strollers?”