It’s easy to forget that we live near one of the great museums in the world what with our busy lives in Brooklyn.

But in the last few months I’ve been spending more time at the Met. Yesterday a friend, an ex-Park Sloper and I, walked around the museum for a few hours. There is, as always, so much to see. I strongly suggest a visit. Saturday night the museum is open until 8:30. Here’s what we saw:

The newly expanded and renovated gallery for 19th and early 20th century paintings is just filled with great work from Prud’hon to Picasso, by way of Delacroix, Corot, Courbet, Manet, Monet, Degas, Cézanne, Seurat and others.

The Age of Rembrandt is a knock out exhibition of the Metropolitan Museum’s 228 Dutch paintings (dating mostly from the 1600s).

Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor is an amazing survey of 17th-century European tapestry, a large show, is also quite incredible.

My favorite space in the museum right now is the Greek and Roman sculpture gallery that is in the space where the old cafeteria used to be. It is a glorious space to be in. The sculpture. The light. The feeling of the room.

ENJOY!

For weeks, Pastor Daniel Meeter has been preparing for the Christmas Eve service at Old First. I hear it’s quite the event with gorgeous music. He tells me that the church fills with over 300 people. He encouraged me to come. I wish I could go but I’m having my father and stepmother over for Christmas Eve. Here are the details if you’re looking for something to do on Christmas Eve:

The Christmas Eve service at Old First, 7:30 PM will include candlelight, Lessons and Carols,Dr. Daniel Meeter, preaching on The Gift of Peace, festive Music For Organ and Brass, the Great Hymns and Carols, and congregational singing. Featured performers: Aleeza Meir, organist, the “Akida” from the Torah, sung by Emma Goldberg Liu, Nathan Warner, trumpet, Anneke El Hassani, soprano, Julia Hurn, soprano, Brian Nesby, counter-tenor, and Jeff Spurgeon, baritone.

For $250,000 you can have an attractive Italian restaurant on 9th Street in Park Slope.

Spirito restaurant, a well-reviewed restaurant on 9th Street between 5th and 4th Avenues, seems to be for sale. An OTBKB reader sent me this tip. I walk by the restaurant often when I am on 9th Street and have been meaning to try it. Here’s what New York Magazine had to say about it.

What happens when three Italian expats (two of them restaurateurs, one a D.J.) get to know each other through their children’s school? They open a nice Italian restaurant, of course. That’s how Pierluigi Palazzo (owner of Gnocco and Perbacco in the East Village), Giovanni Caveggia (formerly a co-owner of Gradisca), and Mariano Franzese (one of the founders of Turntables on the Hudson) came to open Spirito in Park Slope. To keep it all in the (Italian) family, so to speak, they hooked up with Claudio Cristofoli of Cipriani Downtown to concoct a trattoria menu of classic and modern Italian dishes like bucatini all’amatriciana and prosciutto di Parma with fresh mango. There’s a piatti del giorno list, too, including Saturday’s polpettine (little meatballs with mashed potatoes), which must have been devised with the kids in mind. — Rob Patronite and Robin Raisfeld

Spirito for sale:

http://www.restaurants-for-sale.com/newsite/rro/listingview.asp?id=8980

I met Peter Loffredo for the first time yesterday in front of the Food Coop. He was with his partner, The Love We Make, who I know from another context.

I heard her say, "There’s Louise…"

I was standing there with my sister. Of course I recognized Peter’s face from the photo on his blog, Full Permission Living. It was really nice to meet him. But I wasn’t sure what to say standing out on the street in front of the Food Coop.

It’s always awkward to actually meet someone, whom you’ve been corresponding with but don’t know in person. At first, we smiled. I think we shook hands.

"Really nice to meet you," is what I hope I said. I know I said something like, "It’s been such fun…" What I meant: it’s fun to get your interesting emails and post them on the site.

I think I told  The Love We Make, that I love to link to her blog, as well. What I meant: I think your pieces are unusually thoughtful and lovely.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Seeing Green.  Loffredo and Seeing Green have had interesting and heated arguments on OTBKB comments.

Then I had a moment of panic. What if they start arguing right here on Union Street. I could tell that The Love We Make knew what I was thinking. But they’re both way more classy than that.

They shook hands. Peter said something like, "I’m the one with the big mouth." That seemed to neutralize any tension.

Peter and The Love We Make wished all of us a happy holiday and continued toward Seventh Avenue. Seeing Green went into the Coop with his snazzy little cart.

An OTBKB reader wrote in with the following request:

My Djembe drumming teacher is from Senegal and he is interested in providing for the children and adults of his community there.

He is requesting donations of clothing, household items, electronics, and toys, etc. that he would be able to ship back to Africa to help his community.

If you are interested, contact the Keur Djembe African Drum Shop to arrange a drop off at the store. The shop is located at 568A Union Street at Third Avenue. The phone number is 718-522-7324. www.keurdjembe.com

Here’s a little something from our pal Pete of Full Permission Living, who finds himself agreeing with the New York Times’s Op-Ed writer David Brooks more and more.

Wow! I’m having trouble with these occasional pieces by David Brooks that I really agree with. Today’s latest, called "The Obama-Clinton Issue," is not just a great assessment of Obama’s appeal, but of the essential ingredients that make for a good leader. [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/opinion/18brooks.html?ref=opinion]

Here are some excerpts from Brooks’ editorial:

– "With the presidency, character and self-knowledge matter more than even experience. "

– "Obama is an inner-directed man in a profession filled with insecure outer-directed ones. He was forged by the process of discovering his own identity from the scattered facts of his childhood."

– "He has a core, and was able to maintain his equipoise, for example, even as his campaign stagnated through the summer and fall."

– "Moreover, he has a worldview that precedes political positions."
– "In the course of this struggle to discover who he is, Obama clearly learned from the strain of pessimistic optimism that stretches back from Martin Luther King Jr. to Abraham Lincoln. This is a worldview that detests anger as a motivating force, that distrusts easy dichotomies between the parties of good and evil, believing instead that the crucial dichotomy runs between the good and bad within each individual."

– "Obama also has powers of observation that may mitigate his own inexperience and the isolating pressures of the White House."

– "Obama reveals glimpses of the ability to step outside his own ego and look at reality in uninhibited and honest ways."

I repeat – Wow! Imagine having a leader in the White House who is actually self-aware and able to follow something more than ego? I’d almost given up.

BONUS NOTE FROM PETER: At this time of year, when so many are stressed, exhausted, financially stretched, and desperately hoping for that bonus check, and in the coming weeks heading towards the New Year, inclined to re-evaluate their lifestyles, I thought that this article I wrote on working (and not working) would be timely. It was originally entitled "Full Permission Working." You can find it on my blog at: http://fullpermissionliving.blogspot.com/

Do you have favorite streets for viewing Christmas decorations? Are they in Carroll Gardens, Bay Ridge or Dyker Heights?

The Brooklyn Paper has names and addresses of some of the best in Dyker Heights. On 84th Street, the Spatas, the Polizzottos, and the Rizzutos top the list.

Read more here.

This from NY 1:

            
            
            
            Starting next week, many Number 7 and L-train riders will not have to wait as long for their next ride.

Expanded off-peak and weekend service on the L train takes effect Sunday.

New York City Transit is adding more trains to the line, and running them more frequently.

Increased weekday service on the 7 takes effect on Monday.

There will be more trains around the edges of the morning rush
hour, with express service from Main Street now beginning at 6:30 a.m.,
and additional trains from 8 p.m. to midnight.

Right in Bay Ridge, a blog dedicated to "covering aspects of life right in Bay Ridge" writes that  today is the neighborhood’s 154th birthday. It is also the 30th anniversary of the release of the film Saturday Night Fever.

Talk about "Stayin’ Alive."

The Brooklyn Paper’s Go Brooklyn section has the goods on some of the bars on Fourth Avenue that are fast becoming quite the night spots.

The block of Fourth Avenue between St. Marks Place and Bergen Street
now has 53 working taps — thanks to newcomers like Pacific Standard,
Fourth Avenue Pub and the Cherry Tree Tavern— sending suds down the bar
on any given night.

Convenient as it is to the Atlantic Avenue
trains, this burgeoning nightlife district is attracting scores of
visitors from all over the city, and with the big rigs roaring by
anyway, they can feel free to be as loud as they want. GO Brooklyn
spent a night on this stretch of Fourth Avenue and can report that the
hotspots below are packing in the crowds — not strollers! — and making
their mark on the neighborhood.

READ ALL ABOUT IT HERE.

Do you ever listen to This American Life? One of my favorite WNYC shows, it is on every Saturday at 11 am.

Sometimes the show just stops me in my tracks and I find myself sobbing while doing the dishes or making scrambled eggs.

The show is so brilliant and so unusual that it can be very hard to describe.  

Today (December 15, 2007) there was a story called, Ties That Bind,
about a girl named Sarah, who receives a heart transplant from a boy
her age. Her mother sets off to find out more about the kid who saved
her
daughter’s life.

I won’t say more but I found the story to be very moving. You can hear a pod cast of it here.

OTBKB friend and fave, Wendy Ponte, pens the PS I Love You column in the Brooklyn Paper. This week’s article is especially interesting:

Call it a holiday tree or call it a Christmas tree. Either way, that thing is potentially lethal.

And
expensive, too. Last year, given the choice between an $80 local tree
and a $40 one from Lowe’s, I chose the economy version. Within a week
it was as dry as a piece of pasta. I prayed to the fire gods that I
could make it through Christmas day without calling 911.

And therein lies a great Park Slope tale (albeit one from 1914).

Read the rest at PS I Love You (did you know there’s an upcoming Hilary Swank flick called PS I Love You. I’ve seen a lot of commercials about it?)

I read about this on Streetsblog. The top submissions will be exhibited at the Brooklyn Public Library in the summer of 2008.

The Grand Army Plaza Coalition (GAPCo) and the Design Trust for Public Space are launching an "Ideas Competition" called Reinventing Grand Army Plaza. Building on GAPCo’s on-going effort
to re-envision this historic Brooklyn crossroads, the Ideas Competition
will solicit new, creative proposals for Grand Army Plaza’s re-design.

Michele is one of the 2007 Park Slope 100 and a wonderful poet and a blogger. Here’s a poem called

CHRISTMAS DREAM by Michele Madigan Somerville

Last night I dreamed a skinny
Sinatra, a red velvet Saint Nick
hat upon his head and tux, crooned
in my direction as he fingered white Baby
Grand keys but maybe he wasn’t really
playing, maybe the piano was playing
itself, clean and sharp because
the percussion persisted well after
my circa Pal Joey Francis had raised
his digits from the keys and was
preparing to mount
the mirroring finish the expanse
the surface of the instrument enclosed
seductively arranging his boyish torso
into an erotic choreography designed
to ignite the dreamer
atop the piano’s pristine veneer,
imbuing each note of his three-quarter time
with angelic muscle, fluid and singular
only he can flex —
It’s that time of year
when the world falls in love —
This serenade as traces of blowsy Frank
the Republican slid off as if he had been made
clean by dint of new light, restored to
gamine bony Frank, young, blue-eyed and
lovely-as-a-baby reindeer
as he dangled a sprig of mistletoe
over my head and took
a step closer to deliver me
a Christmas kiss, more kiss than any
Bobby-soxer could ever want
for it was possessed of all the pink-
white coolness of peppermint
and silken heat to which a sugar plum
holds fast following a long steep
a long summer’s sleep long
as day in a small bowl
on a kitchen table
Where it has bathed
in the intense and generous
luxury the morning
star so promiscuously
lavishes.

Barbara Ensor, author of Cinderella (As If You Didn’t Already Know the Story) is impressive with paper and scissors. She will make a custom silhouette for you of anyone you want. She is also selling gorgeous ready made silhouettes at Brooklyn Mercantile.

Interested? email Barbara at barbara(at)barbaraensor(dot)com

Did the soggy snowflakes get in the way of the Snowflake Celebration? I’d love to hear from shoppers and shopkeepers about last night’s event.

Did people buy local, buy late despite the weather?

Did peope come out?

Any good stories out there?

A list of cool Brooklyn organizations that need money is a great idea and many thanks to Gowanus Lounge for doing it. Take a look…

We ran a version of this installment of our GL Brooklyn Holiday Gift Guide
last year and decided to update it and run it again. It includes a very
selective list of memberships in or donations to Brooklyn organizations
or Brooklyn-based groups that would make cool holiday gifts...go here for the list

Today, all day, is the Snowflake Celebration. Many stores are offering special discounts and special perks for shopping there.

More than 150 stores in Park Slope and Prospect Heights will stay open until 10 p.m. Join a celebratory night of holiday shopping and partying.

If you’re on Fifth Avenue, drop in at the Old Stone House for Brooklyn Reading Works, an evening of Jazz Writing with Roy Nathanson and Jason Weiss reading spoken word poetry, fiction and non-fiction.

Don’t let that snowstorm stop you…

Mulled cider, candy canes and cookies await. The Old Stone House sells lots of great stocking stuffers!

The Old Stone House
Fifth Avenue at 3rd Street (in JJ Byrne Park).
8-10 p.m.

The Brooklyn Tornado, Starrett City, Debbie Almontaser, the Lonely Planet Travel Guide’s listing of Brooklyn as a must see destination and the Floating Pool are included in New York 1’s 2007 Year in Review of Brooklyn.

News 12 Brooklyn came out to Park Slope yesterday to report on the Park Slope 100. Reporter Heather interviewed me in front of the Community Bookstore. Later she interviewed Catherine Bohne of the Buy in Brooklyn team, Angela the Crossing Guard, and actor Charlotte Maier.

The segment will air Wednesday evening at 5 p.m.

This from New York 1:

One of Brooklyn’s “sweetest” buildings has been granted landmark status.

The City Council gave the distinction to the Domino Sugar Refinery in Williamsburg by a unanimous vote.

The building was built back in 1884. At its peak, the factory produced nearly 3 million pound of sugar each day.

“We need to preserve that infrastructure, so that when people walk around the City of New York and live here they will not live just in the present, but they will live with an appreciate of the past that might the present so expansive and so wonderful in our city,” said City Council speaker Christine Quinn.

The landmark preservation commission designated the refinery as a landmark in September.

Brooklyn Reading Works presents Roy Nathanson and Jason Weiss in Jazz Writing, Writing Jazz on Thursday December 13th at 8 p.m.

ROY NATHANSON founded the Jazz Passengers and is a renowned jazz
artist, spoken word poet and teacher of music at the Institute for Collaborative Education.

JASON WEISS will read from a new novel, Faces By the Wayside.  He is
the author of Conversations with Steve Lacy and Writing At Risk:
Interviews in Paris with Uncommon Writers (University of Iowa Press,
1991).

Location: The Old Stone House
In JJ Byrne Park on Fifth Avenue and Third Street in Park Slope

$5 donation. Mulled cider, candy canes, refreshments, wine.

The Old Stone House gift shop will be open. A great spot for stocking stuffers.

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

Smartmom ran into Painter Mom at Starbucks on Seventh Avenue. While waiting for their lattes, they struck up a conversation.

“I’m not ready for this,” Painter Mom said, and for some reason Smartmom knew exactly what she meant — the holidays.

Painter Mom told Smartmom that back when her kids were little and she wasn’t working, she made a big, big deal of Christmas. The Martha Stewart tree. The twinkling lights. The cakes and pies on a table set with festive fabrics and candles. A real winter wonderland in their Park Slope brownstone.

“Now I’m stuck,” Painter Mom said. “The kids expect it.”

Painter Mom is busy now. She spends her days in her studio preparing for exhibitions, and her kids are now busy teenagers. Smartmom wondered, is it possible to modify some of their expectations about Christmas?
Naomi Village: In the heart of the Poconos

Then again, that could be tough. It would probably make them sad to go without. It might make them feel like the world is a cold, dark place without the light of their mother’s Christmas.

The conversation with Painter Mom made Smartmom think about Hepcat’s mother, Artsy Grandma, who has always created a picture perfect Christmas on the farm in Northern California, just like her mother did before her, complete with handmade ornaments, Advent calendars, Mexican crèches, mulled cider on the stove and almond roca.

It’s a labor-intensive affair. Artsy Grandma is up all night on Christmas Eve putting the final touches on her adult children’s stockings. She thought that if she didn’t do it, her children would be disappointed. And it would be disappointing because it’s so wonderful. But disappointment happens.

In recent years, Smartmom could tell that Hepcat’s mom was exhausted at Christmas time and that she had all kinds of other interesting and creative projects going on.

Christmas fantasy was starting to get in the way of her real life.

Two years ago, Smartmom and Hepcat decided to celebrate the holidays in Brooklyn instead of going out to California. It was the first Christmas that Hepcat didn’t spend at home. Ever.

He thought it would break his mother’s heart. He thought he might fall apart. Neither happened. To everyone’s surprise, Artsy Grandma and her daughter celebrated Christmas in San Francisco.

“We were like Jews,” she told Smartmom. “We went to the movies and had Chinese food. It was fun.”

Smartmom felt a surge of love and respect for Artsy Grandma, who had enjoyed the break with tradition by coming up with a creative alternative.

Surprising things happen when you break with tradition. It can be scary. It can be sad. It can feel lonely to go without one’s treasured rituals. But it can also be liberating and fun.

In Brooklyn, Smartmom and her interfaith family struggled to figure out how to celebrate the holidays in a meaningful way.

They spent Christmas Eve with Groovy Grandpa and Mima Cat; Hepcat made a tasty roast leg of lamb.

They had a lox and and bagel brunch with her Jewish relatives on Christmas day and then went out to see “Godzilla” at the Pavilion. They threw a party for the friends they never get to see during the year and had it catered by Hunan Delight.

They spent New Year’s Eve at the Liberty Heights Tap Room listening to Teen Spirit’s band, Cool and Unusual Punishment.

How was it? It was complicated. Hepcat was a bit blue. Smartmom felt a little guilty and very tired. Teen Spirit and the Oh So Feisty One seemed to enjoy being home. They talked about California a lot and what they were missing, but they also enjoyed this new flavor of Christmas.

Standing in Starbucks surrounded by shelves of Christmas merchandise, Smartmom wondered what she could do to reduce her holiday dread this year.

The family could do one holiday rather than two (Christmas or Hanukkah: pick one). They could skip the presents altogether (that’ll go over like a lead latke. OSFO has already posted her wish list on her bedroom door). They could skip the tree (sounds good) and skip the menorah (but the candles look so pretty…).

For a moment, Smartmom felt just as overwhelmed as Painter Mom. But then she had an idea: she should have a long talk with Hepcat, Teen Spirit and OSFO about realistic expectations and figure out what to do. Together.

Now that would be a Kodak moment.

Are you doing the Snowflake thing on Thursday? It’s the Snowflake Celebration sponsored by  Buy in Brooklyn, Stores will be open until 10 p.m. and there will be lots of festivities.

I’ll be doing the Snowflake thing at the Old Stone House.  Brooklyn Reading Works will be presenting Jazz Musician ROY NATHANSON reading his spoken word/jazz poetry. Author JASON WEISS will be on hand reading his fiction and excerpts from Conversations with Steve Lacy.

The show starts at 8 p.m. DROP IN WHENEVER YOU CAN.

Come for wine and hot cider and candy canes. Should be fun. The Old Stone House is located in JJ Byrne Park on Fifth Avenue and 3rd Street. $5 donation requested.

GET FRESH, the new food shop with the cute name that went into the space where the used appliance store on Fifth Avenue between 6th and 7th Streets used to be, looks very promising.

You can shop at the shop OR shop online and they DELIVER. How cool is that?

They’re right next door to the Brooklyn Superhero Store and they serve pre-prepared and ready-to-cook organic food. You’re probably wondering what I mean. 

Well, for $35 I got an order of Short Ribs that’ll serve 2-3 people. It came in a clear plastic box with the cooked short ribs, a red wine sauce, potatoes and veggies. Oh, cooking instructions were on the bottom of the box.

red wine braised short ribs
Cooking Intructions & Nutritional Info »
We
took our time with this one.  Succulent grassfed short ribs are
marinated 24 hours in red wine, then slow braised in an oven until the
beef is falling off the bone and practically melts in.

At home, I had to saute the short ribs, add the veggies and the gravy and simmer for 20 minutes in a dutch oven. Figuring out what a dutch oven is caused quite a circus around here.

Hepcat seemed to think it was a pot with a cover. So that’s what we used. Someone on Yelp has a pretty good description of the place.

You’ll purchase meals or recipes with the component parts all prepped
and almost ready. The final step, really, is your cooking the meal. In
as little as 5 minutes you can have a good, mostly organic, and most of
all, delicious meal after following the really easy instructions in the
package. The whole "ready to cook" philosophy is fantastic and such a
time saver, especially when you want to plan meals for a whole week and
they’ll help you out.

You know exactly what’s in the package,
too; nothing artificial or insanely chemical. Organic food, and whole.
An added bonus? All the packaging is completely biodegradable,
compostable and/or recyclable.

I also got an order of Mac and cheese, enough for about 4 people for a side dish. It was $14.

mac ‘n’ cheese

Cooking Intructions & Nutritional Info »
We
use four delicious artisanal cheeses in our version of mac ‘n’ cheese:
fontina, gruyere, parmesan and raw milk cheddar from the Hudson River
Valley.  A heat and serve…

I wasn’t that crazy about the short ribs because they were very fatty (but short ribs are often fatty). But the sauce and the veggies were very good. The mac ‘n’ cheese was delicious and very cheesy. Wickedly good. It was filled with cheese and more cheese. But really delicious.

There are definitely things on the menu that are lighter and more healthy. Maybe that’s why the short ribs and the Mac and Cheese were the only items left at 6:30 pm the day the shop was mentioned in the New York Times food section. The place was completely picked over.

"We even had people from Manhattan in here today," one of the people who works there told me.

I will definitely go back to Get Fresh and try some of the other entrees. They’re very big on local ingredients and I really want to try a lot of the offerings in there. They were giving out tastes of some incredibly delicious chocolate truffles. Get Fresh has been beautifully renovated. It’s definitely worth a visit.

Like Chandru at Seeing Green I enjoyed the film immensely. Read his post about the film for some compelling insights.

The movie Golden Compass has toned down the irreligiosity of the book
(the bad guys, for example, are the "Church" in the book, and merely
the "Magesterium" in the movie, still redolent of Christianity but
would probably not register with kids.) This group, by the way, is bent
on destroying the free will of the people and making them more docile,
understanding and "happy." The best conceit of the story is that the
embodiment of "free will" and/or the "spirit" appears as little animals
that accompany all humans and serve as conscience, sooth-sayer and
idea-bouncer. Makes for wonderful CGI graphics in the movie, but
animalizing a soul-equivalent is not calculated to win religious
hearts. And the Magisterium is bent on separating the little buggers
from the children.

READ MORE HERE.

This from NY Metro:

MANHATTAN. A bicyclist riding down Sixth Avenue died yesterday after
being struck by an open car door and then run over by a passing truck,
police said.

David Smith, 63, was thrown from his bike after striking the
door at about 9 a.m. in front of 989 Sixth Ave., near 36th Street.
Smith was pronounced dead at Bellevue Hospital.

“He was an avid cyclist and rode his bike to work every day,”
said Smith’s partner, Rev. John Moody, who has retired from Trinity
Church on Wall Street. “He had all sorts of lights and safety things on
his bike. When he’d ride home at night, people would sometimes say,
‘Hey lights,’ because he had so many lights on his bike.”

Moody said he and Smith, a recording engineer at Triton Sound on West 43rd Street, had been partners for 36 years.

See the list of businesses who will be participating in the Snowflake Celebration on December 13th. All stores will be open until 10 p.m.

Pass the word onto neighbors and friends. And stay tuned for a website listing participating merchants and promotions.

Participants To Date

3R Living
4PLAYBK
A. Cheng
Applewares
Applewood
Apropos Cafe
Area Kids
Artesana
Asha Veza
Aunt Suzie’s Restaurant
Bar Reis
Bierkraft
Big Nose Full Body
Big Zuzus Petals
Bird
Biscuit
Black Pearl
Bob & Judi’s Collectibles
Brooklyn Conservatory of Music
Brooklyn Frameworks
Brooklyn Industries
Bump Brooklyn
Buttercup’s PAW-tisserie
Canaille Bistro Francais
Chip Shop
Chocolate Girl
Cog & Pearl
Community Bookstore
Convivium Osteria
Diana Kane
D’mai urban spa
E Lingerie by Enelra
Eidolon
Element Beauty Lounge
Elementi Restaurant
Extraordinary
Fifth Eye Optix
Firefly
Flawless
Flirt
Ginza
Glowing Results of NY
Good Footing
GRAB Specialty Foods
Hand of Glory Tattoo
Honeybee & Me
J&R Electronics/Television
JackRabbit Sports
La Vedette
Leaf & Bean
Leaf-n-Bean
Lighthouse Tavern
Lily
Lion in the Sun
Little D. Eatery
Little Things Toy Store
Little Zuzus Petals
Lobo
Lolli
Long Tan
LuLu’s Cuts and Toys
Maggie’s Threads for Kids
Mandala Tibetan Store
Melt Restaurant
Memories Out of the Box
Miracle Grill
Miriam Restaurant
Music Matters
Naidre’s Café
Nana
North of New Orleans NoNo Kitchen
Oko Frozen Yogurt & Tea
Old Stone House
Orange Blossom
Otto
Park Slope Fitness Collective
Patio Lounge
Photofaction
Private Stock
Prospect Wine Shop
Razor
Romp
Root Stock & Quade
Rose Water
Salonbohemia
Second Helpings
Serene Rose
Sette
Shoe Mine
Sip
Slope Sports
Slope Suds
Sprout Kidz
Stitch Therapy
Sweet Charity
Sweet Melissa
Tabeel Aromatherapy Gifts and Salon
Tarzian True Value Hardware
The Artful Place
The Clay Pot
The Gate
The Lighthouse Tavern
The Treasure Chest
Top Dog Shop
Toy Space
Under The Pig Antiques & Collectibles
Visions
Voulez-Vous
Warren Lewis Realty
Willie’s Dawgs
Zilli

That’s the night you’re gonna shop til you drop on Seventh and/or Fifth Avenue in Park Slope. The stores will be open until 10 p.m.

BROOKLYN READING WORKS:
You’re also gonna stop in for wine, hot cider and some jazzy words from novelist Jason Weiss and jazz/spoken word artist, ROY NATHANSON.

It’s Brooklyn Reading Works at the Old Stone House. Fifth Avenue and 3rd Street at 8 p.m. Come for some or all of the show. It should be GREAT.

David Atkin/Brooklyn Painting Company painted my office a gorgeous shade of green. I love it so much. David is a fine arts painter and very good at COLOR.

He was recommended by someone on Park Slope Parents. He’s very careful, tidy, and reliable. And the room looks GREAT.  Here are the details:

David Atkin/ Brooklyn Painting Company

For more information and rates contact David Atkin  tel:347 432 5068
377 Hoyt Street Brooklyn, NY 11231