REGRANT APPLICATIONS: The BAC Community
Arts Regrant Program funds Brooklyn-based nonprofit organizations in
the area of crafts, dance, film and video, folk arts,
literature/writing, music, opera, photography, multi disciplinary arts,
theater and visual arts. The application seminar includes a detailed
explanation of the application process and the new online application,
a chance to meet the BAC Regrant Staff, and a question and answer
session. 6 pm to 8 pm. Pratt Institute, ARC Building, Room E2, 200
Willoughby Ave. (718) 625-0080. Free.

NOTE FROM OTBKB: Regrant doesn’t mean for those who have already been give a grant. It has to do with something else. Apply even if you’ve never applied for a grant before. For BAC, you don’t need to be affiliated with a non-profit organization in order to receive a grant. Brooklyn Reading Works received a grant a few years ago.

Diaper Diva was fit to be tied.

We stopped for lunch at the Clam Bar on the Montauk Highway. I noticed it first: note on the menu blackboard and in the menu as well that said: A condition of service at the Clam Bar: all children must stay in their seats.”

Frankly, it made sense to me. The Clam Bar is an outdoor restaurant with umbrella tables and a bar just off the Montauk Highway. There is no fence or any kind of partition between it and the highway. I figured that the stipulation had something to do with their insurance policy and the fear that a car might come barrelling into the dining area.

Ducky, Diaper Diva’s 3-year-old sat in her seat while we ordered a delicious array of lunch specialities — lobster salad served in a fresh tomato, grilled shrimp on greens, clam chowder — but while we waited for our food, Ducky got off her seat and played on the ground near the table.

Diaper Diva went to get something from the car and a young waitress came to the table and told me that “you better move your baby. The owner is here and he’ll have to throw you out…”

Nice.

I told her that my sister was on her way and she would put Ducky back on the chair. When Diaper Diva returned I told her to get Ducky.

“It says it right on the menu,” I said.

“Have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous? I’m sure there are fights here every day. Ducky wasn’t doing anything noisy or dangerous she was just sitting a few feet from the table playing with pebbles,” she told me.

Then Diaper Diva pointed at some other children who were walking around.

“What about them? Maybe they should be kicked out!!”

Personally, I thought she was going a little overboard. But she did have a point. When a waitress came by two more times to tell Diaper Diva to move Ducky, an argument ensued.

“It’s totally ridiculous. You have no right to tell me that my child has to sit in a chair.”

“It says so in the menu,” the waitress said.

“So what are you going to do?” my sister countered.

“We’ll have to throw you out.”

Diaper Diva was incredulous. While she ranted, I noticed that waitresses brought bowls of water for the many dogs that had accompanied patrons. But they seemed to have very little tolerance for kids. The note written on the menu sounded like legalize; a condition of their having insurance, perhaps.

It’s the first time I’ve ever encountered such a request at a restaurant. How about you? If the Clam Bar is doing it for safety reasons why don’t they say so in a nice way. If they’re doing it just to be child unfriendly…

They’d never tolerate it in Park Slope. That’s for sure.

This from New York 1:

Con Edison asked 81,000 residents and businesses in Brooklyn to turn off their lights Friday night.

The utility is scaling back the electricity by 5 percent in the areas of Crown Heights, Flatbush, East Flatbush, and Ocean Hill-Brownsville.

The move is so crews can make some necessary equipment repairs to three feeder cables.

Con Ed is asking customers to shut off all non-essential appliances like washers, air conditioners, fans, lights and televisions that are not being used.

One local resident NY1 spoke with said the utility is failing her yet again.

“It doesn’t seem like they’re prepared for these hot summers, which happen every year,” she said. “So, I’m not sure what they can do, but the need to step up to the plate. And you know, re-evaluate through out the year and see what can be done so they don’t have to make requests like this.”

The utility says complying with the request will prevent a power outage and help speed the repairs. The company insists the situation in Brooklyn will have no effect on the rest of the system.

Diaper Diva lost her camera. Yup. Her nifty digital camera. You’ve heard of the dropsies, when you keep dropping things. Well, she’s got the losies.

Diaper Diva has the losies.

And Diaper Diva is very hard on herself. “I lost everything I own during my vacation week in the Hamptons.”
The self-flaggelation continued.

“Maybe it fell off the roof of the car, too.”

We checked the car, all the beach bags, every inch of the house. It was just like the day before when we searched EVERYWHERE for her temporarily lost iPhone. In that case, a Good Samaritan found the iPhone on the side of the road and phoned Diaper Diva.

But last night, Diaper Diva was frantic to find her camera. Not just because she cares about her nifty Canon Power Shot. No, it’s not just about the camera.

It’s about the pictures, stupid. Diaper Diva took 50 priceless shots of Ducky and OSFO on the beach, at the pool, at the house, in the backyard.

Priceless photographic mnemonics of a lovely week. Smartmom is still mouring the loss of a camera and memory card she lost in Russia filled with incredible pictures of Ducky.

Smartmom tried to console her. Diaper Diva wouldn’t be consoled. Oy, that girl loves to feel sorry for herself, Smartmom thought. But Hepcat wisely said, “Let her mourn the loss of her camera.”

He may not have used the word “mourn” but it was something like that. Still, he understood (because he’s always losing his keys and other worldy pocessions. WHERE ARE MY…).

So Diaper Diva fumed. Hepcat was understanding. And Smartmom went into the bedroom with air conditioning and read an interview with Winona Ryder in Vogue.

This from the Picture New York website:

The Mayor’s Office of Film announced this afternoon that they are headed back to the drawing board with their regulations.

You spoke – they listened.

And did the right thing. Wonderful, right? We’ll be watching for the revised regulations, so we’ll have to get back to you on that. Tony Overman, president of the National Press Photographers Association really got it right: “We are offended at the notion that a city agency or police officer would have the power to keep a photographer from taking a picture or video on a public street. City property belongs to the citizens and the city has no right to limit safe, constitutionally protected behavior in a public venue.”

1010 reports on a “bizarre case of “marine mischief,” a Brooklyn artist manning a replica Revolutionary War submarine caused a scare Friday morning after police found the strange-looking vessel foundering in a security zone near the docked Queen Mary 2, authorities said.”

Pictures here.

Okay. So there was some weird shoplifting incident. Turns out she was on some kind of painkillers at the time that were making her feel weird. She didn’t mean to do it, doesn’t remember it, even left her credit card in the store.

And then she disappeared for five years.

Five years without a Winona Ryder movie. Turns out it was a self-imposed exile from the film biz. A chance to live in her Victorian house on Nob Hill in San Francisco, hang out with her cool parents, and figure out what she wanted to do with her life.

The star of “The Age of Innocence,” “Edward Scissorhands,” and “Heathers,” is back looking beautiful, talking smart and interesting, and starring in some new movies.

Read all about it in the August Vogue, great for beach reading.

Hey, Dr. Freud, a little help here, please.

Why do we lose some things and not others? What is it about cell phones, keys and eye glasses that make them so losable?

There are so many things you wish would get lost in life like that volume of Black’s Law Dictionary Hepcat found at a stoop sale that manages to find its way out of the garbage every time I throw it away.

He simply won’t let me “lose” it.

Or how about those Happy Meal toys from McDonald’s that seem to turn up everywhere? Why don’t they just disappea

But keys and cell phones. I’ve lost one Razr and one Nokia. And my eyeglasses that made me look like a hip architect are GONE. Lost about three months ago.

I looked everywhere. I thought I left them at Old First Church during one of OSFO’s piano lessons and checked there. I checked every where I went on that day. Retraced my steps. More than once. Scoured the apartment. Behind the bed, under the cushions of the couch, in the pockets of all my coats.

On and on. But they’re gone. And with it, my interesting look (Now I have to wear my old glasses which make me look so much less interesting. DAMN).

Keys are a constant lost item. Where are my keys. Have you seen my keys. What did I do with my keys.

The panic, the anger, the frustration, the pain. WHERE ARE MY KEYS? Hepcat is always losing his keys. He refuses to use the handy key rack from the Clay Pot I put on the wall near the door (a big help to chronic key losers, mind you).

“FOUND THEM,” OSFO says every time she finds his keys (or mine). Those are my favorite two words. Happily they usually show up somewhere (although that isn’t always the case). And life can resume. The keys have been found.

We can carry on.

These thoughts were racing through my mind as we searched for Diaper Diva’s lost iPhone yesterday. Where or where can it be. It simply disappeared into thin air.

Until it was found, that is. (See Good Samaritan in Montauk post below for more details).

In the wake of the Minneapolis bridge collapse, all cities are hoping checking their bridges. We’re hoping. The Daily News reports that the Brooklyn Bridge gets bad marks in the safety department.

The Brooklyn Bridge is one of 166 city bridges labeled “structurally deficient,” putting it in the same category as the one that collapsed into the Mississippi River.

In fact, under the the feds’ rating system, the Brooklyn Bridge scored dramatically lower than the doomed Minneapolis bridge – and the Willis Ave. Bridge, which connects East Harlem to the Bronx, was not much better.

The Brooklyn Bridge also got lousy marks from the state, which called it one of three city bridges in “poor” condition with rusting steel joints and deteriorating brick and mortar on its ramps.
The biggest problem was the roadway deck on the Manhattan and Brooklyn approaches

The New York Times’ reports that Mattel is recalling nearly one
million toys in the United States today because the products are
covered in lead paint.

According to Mattel, all the toys were made by a contract manufacturer in China.

The
recall, the second biggest this year involving toys, covers 83 products
made from April 19 to July 6. Many of them feature Sesame Street and
Nickelodeon characters — including the Elmo Tub Sub, the Dora the
Explorer Backpack, and the Giggle Gabber, a toy shaped like Elmo or
Cookie Monster that toddlers shake to hear giggles and funny noises.

Mattel
says it prevented more than two-thirds of the 967,000 affected toys
from reaching consumers by stopping the products in its distribution
centers and contacting retailers, like Wal-Mart, Target
and Toys ‘R’ Us, late last week. But more than 300,000 of the tainted
toys have been bought by consumers in the United States. According to
the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the toys may have a date code from 109-7LF to 187-7LF on the product or packaging.

A complete list can be found at nytimes.com, mattel.com or cpsc.gov.

We’re in Sag Harbor again for our annual one-week family vacation with my sister’s family, my mother and my family. I wrote this post last August (2006).

We love Sag Harbor; it’s the un-Hampton (remember the un-cola?).
You don’t have to use traffic-congested Montauk Highway to get there –
a real blessing. Nor do you have to deal with all the Ferrari-driving
rich that habitate in the Hamptons.  Sag is a real place with hilly
streets, perfectly scaled architecture,  a charming downtown, loads of
churches and bay beaches that make it a lovely place to be.

Ten of us (husband, kids, sister, bro-in-law, niece,
babysitterandsomuchmore, mother, friend of son) shared two houses on an
idyllic street in the heart of Sag. We call it a family vacation

Yup, a lot has changed in Sag since 1991 when I spent a week
photographing artifacts at the Sag Harbor Whaling Museum (for a
children’s film called Long Island Discovery). Back then the Paradise
Diner was a real, honest-to-goodness diner and there was a great
variety store. The variety store is still there – one of those now-rare
five and dimes where  you can get absolutely everything – almost. They
still have Old Gold Cigarette posters from the 1920’s and ’30’s hanging
on the wall. And the cashier has a real seen it all look on her face.

But the Paradise Diner is now an expensive bistro called the New
Paradise Restaurant, and there are one too many t-shirt shops and
high-end boutiques with hostess gifts and gifts for dogs. I used to
love to browse at Paradise Books (what the diner became before it
became the restaurant ). But that’s gone, too.

Still, Sag has a lot of charm, a lot of history and personal
history, too. This was our eighth summer renting there. Our first
summer, Teen Spirit was in second grade and OSFO was just a toddler. It
rained for most of the two weeks we were there but we still had fun.
This year, Teen Spirit brought a friend and they took long walks just
to get lost, went to the movies by themselves, jammed on their guitars
in the air conditioned bedroom, and spent hours in the ocean (when it
wasn’t too hot to go to the beach).

During the worst of the heat wave, a large grouping of us sat in the
air conditioned living room and moaned about how hot it was. "Ohhh,
it’s soooooo hot," someone would say. "Really, really hot."

In the back yard, we filled 2-year old Ducky’s inflatable swimming
pool with ice cold water. The boys had  water fights that devolved into
general mayhem. We took turns sitting in the tiny wading pool and
sprayed our heads with the hose. Anything to feel cool. Anything.
Thankfully, the refrigerator had one of those ice makers on the door.

Our haven for cooling off was Haven’s Beach, which we call the
Cheesy Beach, because it doesn’t have waves like Atlantic Beach. That’s
the Fancy Beach in Amagansett (they charge ten bucks to park but we
love it anyway). The Cheesy Beach, however, is an easy walk from the
house (when it’s not too hot to walk) and it has numerous charms; it’s
downright blissful at low tide when you  can walk a quarter mile out
without the water touching your knees.

One day at the Cheesy Beach, a group of teenage girls from Eastern
Europe in g-string bikinis that didn’t cover their buttocks at all,
chain smoked and took pictures of each other with disposable cameras.
They seemed to enjoy the stares they were getting from the boys
swimming in the bay.

A Brooklyn Life like the new wine bar on Hoyt and Union.

There is something very magical about visiting a neighborhood business
when it first opens. The wait staff is not only friendly but downright
lovable, each dish is prepared with care, each drink poured with love,
and everyone (guests and staff) is relaxed, happy and full of optimism.
I hope that Black Mountain Wine House continues to have all of these qualities because tonight it was truly charming.

I saw this on Chowhound LA, who says that this location in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles will soon be the first west coast branch of OTBKB fave Two Boots.

"The owners of this commercial building on the southside of Sunset Boulevard between Lemoyne St. and Glendale Blvd. recently exposed part of the metal facade to reveal some of the original brick walls and stone arches of the building.

The owners, who also run the popular Echo nightclub, recently won the backing of the EPHS to remove a section of the facade as they renovate part of the building for a pizza parlor.

They need a final OK from the city before they can take off the rest. They do not have immediate plans to restore the arched windows or the remainder of the facade but we would expect the results will have nearby residents asking them to take the rest of that cheesey metal siding off and let that building’s historic beauty shine through. We hope they listen."

Painter Lucy Mink has a show on August 11-12th at the Brooklyn Artist Gym  (168 7th Street in Park Slope. Between 3rd and 2nd Avenues). Here’s her own description of her work.

Over the years I have worked with various media including oil paint, wax, latex, porcelain, felt, cloth, hair, thread, and zippers. My paintings are mainly in oil but include layers of collage material and beeswax.

These paintings document the past four years of my life in my own abstract way. In 2003, I made the commitment to have children, which also meant putting oil painting on hold. My body was not my own for four years as I gave birth to and nursed my two children, Gigi and Nico. As of June 15th of this year, I have finally begun to paint again.

If I had to put words to my imagery I would say organic, swinging, sucking, stretching, repetitive, bodily, thick, light, soft, vaginal, and bulbous. I lean towards using glossy reds since it is one of the most powerful colors, meaning that you would never use it for your dining room – it’s for conveying a sense of the body. I start somewhere and I add and edit until I feel personally closer to the painting, as you would a good friend or a lover. — Lucy Mink

Got this email from the Bushwick Film Festival.

Friday, August 3, The Bushwick Film Festival is having
a festival fundraiser and a bring your "FILM PARTY."
This will be the last time that we will be accepting
films. 

The FILM PARTY will held at the McKibben artist lofts rooftop
in Bushwick.  248 McKibben St. 10 pm until sunrise.

Kweighbaye Kotee
Founder/Director
Bushwick Film Festival
bushwickfilmfestival.blogspot.com
(T) 917-459-9124

An OTBKB reader writes:

Anyone know anything about the cyclist who was run over by the white
van this morning 8/1/2007 on 7th Avenue at the corner of 1st Street at
about 9:40 a.m.? Is he OK?

Saw this in the Village Voice. It’s by Park Slope’s own Keith Greenberg (I think it’s our Keith):

Abe Beame never had a bobblehead. Nor did Donald Manes, Charles Barron, or Ruth Messinger. So what is it about Marty Markowitz?

"I wish I knew," says the 62-year-old Brooklyn borough president. Oh, he knows—anybody who describes himself as a "character," as Markowitz does, knows it’s no accident. Brooklynites run into him so often, he all but lives in their dreams. Here’s Markowitz with the Turkish consul general at the "Taste of Turkey" celebration. And there’s Markowitz presiding over a latke-eating competition. It’s green bagels, bagpipes, and Marty Markowitz at Borough Hall on St. Patrick’s Day. And is that Marty traipsing through the corridors of Long Island College Hospital to pay homage to Oladipupo Oluwagbemiga, Brooklyn’s first-born baby of the New Year?

READ THE REST HERE.

Eleanor from OTBKB fave,  Creative Times is selling 18 unused personal training sessions from The Fitness Collective.

One is located in Park Slope, the other in Cobble Hill. (Go to www.fitnesscollective.com for more info.)

She trained there for a while and has to forgo the remaining sessions due to some injuries (unrelated to working out!).

Eleanor loves working with the highly-skilled and super-encouraging trainers there, commenting
"They are incredible at what they do and completely changed my perception of what I could do with my body."

This is a great gift for you or a loved one who wants to get into shape.

She  would be happy to sell some portion of the 18 to you, or the whole lot.

Individual sessions there cost $75; she is selling each session for $65.

Just thought you might like to know. See today’s No Words_Daily Pix.

Park Slope businessman Harry Tarzian, whose hardware store is a fave of many joins the Advisory Board of Develop Don’t Destroy. Author and poet Phillip Lopate, another Brooklyn fave, is also on board. The DDDB press release fills in lots of biographical details on both.

BROOKLYN, NY — Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn is pleased to announce two outstanding additions to the 49-member DDDB Advisory Board — author Phillip Lopate and mom ‘n’ pop business success Harry Tarzian.

“I’ve decided to join the DDDB Advisory Board because DDDB is asking the right questions and demanding a more appropriate plan for Brooklyn than the over-scaled Atlantic Yards. I would like to support any effort that would send the project back to the drawing board to bring about a development over the Vanderbilt Yards that would most benefit the people and neighborhoods of Brooklyn,” said author Phillip Lopate.

Phillip Lopate, is a renowned essayist, novelist, poet, teacher and professor, editor, film and architecture critid. He is a Brooklyn native.

Mr. Lopate currently holds the John Cranford Adams Chair at Hofstra University, and he also teaches in the MFA graduate programs at Columbia, the New School and Bennington. His most recent book is an urban meditation titled, Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan. In addition to his writing, he’s an occasional guest on WNYC radio’s Leonard Lopate Show, whose host happens to be his brother.

Harry Tarzian may be best known to Brooklynites as the scion of the Tarzian family, Park Slope’s nearly century-old purveyor of hardware and housewares. But he’s also an acclaimed photographer, whose work is archived in both the Bibliotheque Nationale de France and the collection of the New York Historical Society.

Tarzian Hardware epitomizes the mom ‘n’ pop neighborhood stores that drive Brooklyn’s commerce — the types of stores glaringly absent from Forest City Ratner’s Atlantic Center and Atlantic Terminal malls. In business since Harry’s father and uncle founded the original Tarzian’s in 1921, the hardware store is a Brooklyn icon.

One of Harry’s favorite pastimes is wandering Brooklyn’s neighborhoods, photographically chronicling the unrivaled spirit and energy of his hometown. For a look at some of his visit:
http://www.harrytarzian.com

“We’re very proud to have Phillip Lopate and Harry Tarzian join our Advisory Board. They’re support means a lot to us, and is further evidence that the opposition to the Atlantic Yards project is deep and wide,” said Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn’s spokesman Daniel Goldstein. “Their support native Brooklynites and newer-comers alike believe that the Atlantic Yards project is not in the best interest of the community and the borough.”

World Breastfeeding Week starts today and there won’t be any formula in hospital gift bags in New York City hospitals.

This week, moms will get:
–a breast-milk bottle cooler
–disposable nursing pads
–breastfeeding tips
–a baby T-shirt with the slogan “I Eat at Mom’s” across the front.

World Breastfeeding Week is part of a worldwide plan “to help initiate breastfeeding within one hour of delivery.”

Hepcat and I used to watch Tom Snyder’s Tomorrow Show, which was replaced by Dave Letterman’s “The Late Show” on WNBC back in the 1980’s.

Tom Shales has a nice piece about Snyder in today’s Washington Post with this quote from a CBS colleague. “The big man is gone,” said CBS News Vice President Steve Friedman, 60, who knew Snyder for 37 years. “Tom used to say, ‘Writers write, producers produce, and stars star,’ ” Friedman said, “but he only said that to make us feel better — because he was a better writer than any of us, a better producer than any of us, and the biggest star in our universe.”

Dan Ackyroyd did a hysterical impersonation of the talk show host on SNL. He really got the Snyder’s cadences just right. According to Lorne Michaels, producer of SNL, Snyder loved it.

Snyder interviewed everyone: John Lennon, Spiro Agnew, Marlon Brando, Charles Manson and Johnny Rotton. Defending himself against charges of pomposity and abrasiveness he told the New York Times:

“I’m a human being, I have opinions and biases and beliefs and standards and I have to inject them into that program. Otherwise we might as well have an empty chair and give the gues a list of written questions.”

Picture New York Without Pictures of New York

Thousands of New Yorkers who love both their city and their cameras may face exactly that if the cumbersome, costly and unconstitutional regulations from the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater, and Broadcasting go into effect this August as scheduled.

Picture New York is an ad hoc coalition of working artists, filmmakers, and photographers who’ve joined together to fight the proposed rules. These rules can be seen not only as a blow against New York as a place that welcomes and inspires art-making and documentation, but are part of a broader continuum of attacks against civil liberties and free expression

They have set up an online e-action form to make it as easy as possible. Just click here to submit comments to the Office of Film and to the City Council Committee that oversees that office. There’s a sample letter there, and you can add your own comments, then hit send. Voila!

An OTBKB reader wrote in today about the dukcs:

Thanks for posting about the guinea fowl.

I know you linked to the piece about the Prospect Park Ducklings –
but I am still trying to figure out what happened to them. Would you consider running a photo?

Here is the full story:
http://luma.typepad.com/photos/hudsonjane/index.html

There are more photos at the Gallery at the bottom

This From New York 1:

Brooklyn Congresswoman Yvette Clarke announced Monday that she is taking a six-week medical leave from Capitol Hill.

Clarke’s staff told the New York Times she’s recovering from surgery to treat uterine fibroids.

Aides say Clarke will be back in Washington when Congress reconvenes in September.

The former city councilwoman was elected last year to the 11th Congressional District.

This from New York 1:

More than two dozen teams got their hands dirty Saturday for the 17th annual Sand Sculpting Contest.

Sculptors from across the city came out to build creations depicting everything from animals to Coney Island’s iconic Parachute Jump. The winner of the $200 top prize chose mermaids as his theme.

“They gave us some cash and we’re going to go have some hotdogs now,” said Tony Saunders, winner best solo adult sculptor. “And my sculpture was the sleepy mermaid. She’s still on the beach, and she had a hard night last night, so she’s sleeping today.”

“I like to put my hands in the sand and ground myself out and all the problems disappear,” said contestant Artie Knapp. “I’ve been doing it a long time, and it works. It makes me very happy, very calm, mellow.”

The city’s parks department delivered 50 mounds of sand for the event, which also included music and games.

Our pal Pete hasn’t written a book. But if he did write a book it would be called The Truth About Everything. And here’s why he’s going to write it. So here’s the book he’s thinking about writing.

I hold these truths (among others) to be self-evident: that sexual repression and emotional numbness are the roots of all evil; that neediness and greediness are flip-sides of the same psychological coin; that parents are the least qualified adults to raise children; that all opinions and beliefs are based on a lack of true knowledge; that self-sacrifice and commitment are the ruination of all relationships; that what you eat is less important to your health than how you eat it; that the body never lies; that there is no inherently self-destructive force in human beings; that being in-love is always mutual.

Introduction

I am going to say some things in this book that some people may find provocative, radical or outlandish at best, offensive, immoral or ludicrous at worst. I will say these things with no claim of moral authority. I will merely claim that the statements I make will be true on the face of it, in and of themselves. Although I have a bachelor’s degree in sociology, a master’s degree in social work, post-graduate clinical training in several different psychotherapies, and I am a board certified, licensed practitioner in my field, this is not going to be a professional book. I am not going to back up anything that I say in this book with scientific research or statistical studies of my own, nor am I going to reference or footnote those of others. You and I do not have time for that, and besides, after having read such studies voluminously myself, all I have encountered are a few “facts,” but rarely any truth.

In this book, I am simply going to tell the truth as I have learned it – as I have learned it not just from the nearly three decades I’ve worked as a psychotherapist exploring the inner lives of other people, people of all ages and backgrounds, not just from the over two decades of personal self-work, self-work of a deeply psychological, emotional and spiritual nature, not just from the five-plus decades of being alive here on Planet Earth. I will be telling the truth as I have learned it from gaining access… to the truth – access available to anyone willing to know it.

Continue reading WHY I WROTE THIS BOOK: PETER LOFFREDO →

Well, I’m doing it again. A guide to every day in August. (And I’m not even going to be here much in August.) Still, I toiled for OTBKB readers, wanting to bring them the best and the brightest events during those 31 HOT days.

Here are two great ideas for this week: Circus and Theater.

August 1: Cole Brothers Circus in Coney Island. Three shows per day. Check website for times and prices. Shows August 1-5.

August 2: Brave New World Repertory Theater: Crossing Brooklyn Ferry / Jenny Scheinman. The dynamic Brooklyn-based company follows last summer’s Bandshell production of “The Great White Hope” with an adaptation of Walt Whitman’s love song to the borough “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” that fuses poetry, projections, music, rap, and dance. Commissioned by Celebrate Brooklyn.

A. her name is Alice.

And she’s a very nice woman. I felt comfortable shopping in her shop. She designs clothing that fits me. Alice, the owner/designer has a nice way about her when she comments on how a customer looks in the clothing. She’s enthusiastic and helpful without being overbearing.

Everything in the shop is so, so pretty. The print fabrics, especially, are lovely. There’s a beautiful skirt with a bird print and a skirt with Andy Warhol-esque faces on it and a beautiful floral dress. The colors are unusual and striking.

Alice obviously likes prints for summer but she also does simple, more minimal looks as well.

It all feels very fresh, very well made, very smart. A. is obviously a talented designer.

And the jewelry is lovely, too. If you see something grab it. It may be one-of-a-kind. Or at least Alice only carries one of its kind. I saw a double-heart necklace that said “friendship” and I shoulda grabbed it last week. Somebody else did. : (

Alice has nice bags, shoes, and wallets, too. The shop looks great. Tres chic. Tres simple.

Check out her website. She’s been written up in Lucky, Real Simple, Teen Vogue, Nylon, WWD, InStyle, and Glamour and her clothing is carried in other stores, including Barney’s NY.

When I was leaving she said:

“Are you the one who writes the column?”

I was shocked that she knew about the column.

“I always read it,” she said. “It gives me little insights into things,” she said.

I love that she said that and it made me want to go back in and buy the denim skirt I tried on.

A.Cheng
152 Fifth Avenue
Park Slope
t.718–783–2826

In today’s Daily News, Mike Daly reacts to the recent brouhaha on Brownstoner when a Clinton Hill resident used paint on his brownstone. Daly, whose column I enjoy, has a good story on his hands. And some wonderful quotes from the longtime Clinton Hill resident, who DARED to use paint.

The photo was sent in response to an urgent posting by Brownstoner.com late Friday morning, a message right out of a Brooklyn yuppie’s nightmare.

“We just got a tip that someone just started painting one of the brownstones on Grand Avenue between Gates and Putnam white this morning. … If any readers are nearby, we’d appreciate a photo asap.”
The photo was posted minutes later, and sure enough the portal of the building was being painted white. As in not brown.

“ILLEGAL PAINT JOB ON LANDMARKED BLOCK OF CLINTON HILL,” the headline read.

The photo triggered 145 postings, the first of which was entirely reasonable.
11:38 a.m.: “Are you sure it’s not primer?”

Reason was joined by humor.
11:51 a.m.: “I hope it’s primer and they go with GOLD.”
12:09 p.m.: “Gold and fuchsia horizontal stripes.”

Then came sterner voices, ones that belong more to some gated suburb than to Brooklyn…

READ THE REST HERE