Here’s our pal Pete on the Park Slope Food Coop and why he quit and took the fair way.

Well, count me among those who just recently left the co-op. After 3 years, I finally had enough of the Soviet-style Communism masquerading as socialism (which OTBKB commenter Michael reminded us is rooted in the philosophy: to each according to their needs, from each according to their means).

The PSFC’s “love us or get out” attitude is hardly exemplary of anything resembling cooperative. I have been a supporter of sustainable agriculture for two decades. One of my best friends was executive director of the largest activist organization in the country for sustainable agriculture and even she told me that the PSFC hard-core were notoriously known as the Co-op Nazi’s – even in those liberal circles!

And oh yeah, on Fairway, first of all, you totally DON’T need a car – the F train to Smith and 9th and the 77 bus is a quick and easy route, and with no long lines AND FREE home delivery for orders over a hundred dollars, we have saved hours over the co-op life every week, AND don’t let anyone lie to you, the prices are totally comparable to the co-op’s, in some cases significantly cheaper, and they have ever-expanding organic sections, including beautiful organic meats and chicken. By adding the two local greenmarkets in Prospect Park on Wednesday and Saturday to our bi-monthly trips to Fairway, our food-shopping life has once again become pleasurable.

The bottom line is this: like most fascist regimes, the PSFC’s dogma has ended up superceeding its original mission, which in this case was to help local, small, organic farmers stay in business and help consumers obtain healthy food. I believe in sustainable agriculture as a way of life. I’m also very busy as a psychotherapist, writer and parent of two kids. Most other serious food co-ops in the country today allow members the option to work at the co-op and pay lower prices, or not work and pay higher prices. Who does that hurt? Reall

If you were at Hal Willner’s Doc Pomus Project at Celebrate Brooklyn featuring Lou Reed / Ben E. King / Howard Tate / Teddy Thompson / Shannon McNally / Steven Bernstein / Robin Holcomb / Joel Dorn / Mocean Worker / Pete Guralnick and Laurie Anderson on Saturday night do tell.

His multi-artist concept shows (and albums) are simply the greatest. At Celebrate Brooklyn, he’s done: Leonard Cohen (2003) and Neil Young (2004). Send pix if you have them.

Did anyone see Odetta on Friday night at CB? She was subbing for the Bobbie Blue Band which cancelled due to illness.

On Saturday night it was all about Doc Pomus, the great Williamsburg born songwriter and author of classics like “Lonely Avenue” and “Youngblood.”

If you were at the Siren Festival in Coney Island. Do tell. Or send pix. I know a bunch of Teen Spirit’s friends were there and I am hoping one of the photographers he knows got some pix.

And let’s not forget the great Dan Zanes performed his Ezra Jack Keats songs at Celebrate Brooklyn at 5 p.m. on Sunday. It looked like a BIG crowd of little ones and their parents, all who love the GREAT DAN.

I sat next to this blogger at the Blogade Roadshow in Greenpoint. Her blog, the-queries.com is an interview blog.

It looks really interesting. She mostly interviews artists, I think. I plan to visit often to see what’s up.

I was just checking on directions for Casa Mon Amour, where we’re having today’s Brooklyn Blogade Roadshow and I couldn’t help but notice all the rave review it has gotten from Yelpers. I can’t wait for lunch today. Everyone seems to love the owner, Beatrice.

I’m still not sure which G train stop to get off on. Can anyone help?

162 Franklin Street
(between Huron St & India St)
Brooklyn, NY 11222 (718) 349-1529

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

The Oh So Feisty One has been away at summer camp for more than a week and Smartmom hasn’t received a letter.

Not one friggin’ letter.

Frankly, Smartmom is worried and a little hurt. It would not be an understatement to say that she is the throes of a curiosity-induced cardiac arrest. She wishes she could be a fly on the wall of OSFO’s open-air cabin and get a firsthand look at her 10-year-old woodswoman — mosquito bites and all.

Smartmom knows that OSFO is probably not miserable. At the orientation, the friendly camp directors said that if a camper is terribly homesick for more than a day two, there will be a phone call home.

And that’s a call you don’t want to get on your iPhone. That’s for sure.

Fortunately no call came. But neither did a delightful little missive from OSFO gushing about her adventures in the woods of Vermont. Worse, Smartmom’s friend, whose daughter is at the very same camp, already got a detailed letter from her daughter that was practically Proustian in scope.

Smartmom wanted to scream with envy.

And it’s not because OSFO doesn’t have stationery or postage stamps.

Far from it. Before she left, Smartmom and OSFO addressed well over 30 stamped postcards and envelopes to friends and family.

“I think I’m going to be bored, so I’ll probably write a lot,” OSFO told Smartmom.

Clearly, this was OSFO’s way of battling her fear of going away from home for the first time. With these hand-addressed cards in her trunk, she could sustain a connection with those she loves.

Smartmom certainly didn’t expect OSFO to use all 20 of the Ugly Doll postcards or all 10 of the cheery yellow note cards with the handy multiple choice questions.

But one lousy note card. Is that so difficult?

So it’s been over a week without contact of any kind. And Indian Brook is not one of those camps that lets the kids send e-mails or gives parents access to a hidden camera.

“Unplugged and unforgettable,” that’s the camp’s motto and it also means rural and rustic. A wilderness camping experience, Indian Brook encourages simple living.

There’s even a non-sectarian Quaker element, which means that all campers and staff participate in a Meeting for Worship that is, according to the camp’s brochure, a time to reflect, pray, enjoy the birds, think about your parents…

It all sounds pretty great, right? So why has Smartmom heard nothing?

The first few days of camp, Smartmom certainly didn’t expect to get a letter. She and Hepcat dropped off their precious girl on a Sunday in beautiful Plymouth, Vermont. She was pretty tight lipped in the car but the night before the drive she’d let her apprehensions hang out to dry.

“What happens if I get homesick?” she asked Smartmom.

“You can talk to your counselors about it. If it’s really bad you can give us a call,” Smartmom said comfortingly.

“What happens if I hate it,” OSFO asked.

“We’ll come get you,” Smartmom told her.

“You know, I never really wanted to go to camp in the first place,” OSFO was getting worked up. “I said I was interested, that doesn’t mean I wanted you to SIGN ME UP FOR SOME CAMP.”

Her anger was mounting.

“I don’t even like sleep-over dates and now you’ve got me going away for two whole weeks,” OSFO snarled.

Smartmom assured her that Indian Brook is a very special place. She lulled her to sleep reading the Parents Handbook for the umpteenth time.

Knowledge is power and it seemed to bring some modicum of comfort to her frightened girl.

Smartmom made a point of not mentioning her own Alan (“Hello Mutha, Hello Fatha”) Shermanesque experience when she went to that hippy camp in Copake, New York. It was the summer of Woodstock and on the days of the festival, all the counselors abandoned the camp for some fun and frolic.

Smartmom wrote her parents a letter-a-day full of sturm und drang.

“I hate camp! Please come get me!”

Manhattan Granny recalls the sheer panic and gastric pain she felt when she got Smartmom’s pencil scratching.

“It felt like a note put in a bottle by a desperate prisoner,” Manhattan Granny remembers.

By the time she got Smartmom on the phone, things had improved. But Manhattan Granny was still a basket case.

So maybe it’s a blessing that Smartmom hasn’t heard from OSFO. Still, Smartmom has a laundry list of questions she’d like an answer to:

Have you gotten used to the composting outhouses (knows as “kybos”)?

Has the pregnant rabbit had her babies, yet?

Do you like your counselor?

Are you missing Teen Spirit, Ducky, Diaper Diva, your dad or even your mom?

Smartmom will just have to wait to get the news. Maybe today will be the day. Or tomorrow.

Then again, OSFO will be back in just four days. Smartmom can ask her all about camp as soon as gets off the bus on West 33rd Street in Manhattan.

Smartmom can hardly wait.

UPDATED 10:40 Friday night.

A large crowd of adults and children, some dressed as wizards, are lining up outside of the Community Bookstore in Park Slope waiting for the festivities to begin. Some are sitting on lawn chairs and some are reading Harry Potter books.

Hepcat reports that David Yassky is there dressed in a blond wig. "I don’t know if he is dressed as a wizard or he is just in drag," Hepcat says.  "The horses are going back forth. The riders are dressed as vikings or construction workers, I can’t quite tell. Helmets and hoods. That sort of thing."

Hepcat got a shot of Yassky and his family, as well as dozens of others. He set up his portable photography studio in from of the bookstore. Community Bookstore owner, Catherine, is in her owl costume.

OSFO just back from sleepaway camp is fast asleep on the couch in our living room. "You’re missing quite a show Hepcat said.

The store will open at midnight to sell the book. Advance tickets are required because the store has limited capacity. The owner and her staff have been working for weeks to create a magical party atmosphere. There is much theatricality planned, including two riders on horseback.

Tonight will be a big revenue night for the Community Bookstore, and other local bookstores. The store has been struggling financially in recent years. Things were beginning to look up even before this event, when many in the community banded together to create a viable business plan that would help the store survive in the longterm.

Tonight should be a much needed windfall for the store, which was featured in an article about local Harry Potter celebrations in today’s New York Times.

Hugh Crawford (AKA No Words_Daily Pix) will be taking pictures outside of the store of wizards and muggles alike. 

This from New York 1:

A new treatment center geared to help HIV-positive homeless women opened in Downtown Brooklyn Friday.

The Housing Works facility will offer day treatment, primary care, and dental services to patients free of charge.

Organizers and patients say that the center will help to improve the lives of underprivileged New Yorkers living with HIV.
“When the team came together we said we need to provide a top-notch place where women can feel at home,” said Dr. Marcelo Venegas of Housing Works. “So we really designed it to be a place that didn’t have that institutional feel.”

“As you know, Brooklyn is the epicenter of women of color and we are here to be their provider, their oasis, their safe haven,” said Rosalie Canosa of Housing Works. “It’s incredibly important.”

Hepcat and I wandered onto the grounds of the new Hotel Le Bleu on Fourth Avenue. A security guard named Wiley came out and in a very friendly way asked us what we were doing there.

He told us that the 48-room hotel will be open in a few days. He said it will be very nice and that the rooms are large. And there’s a restaurant and bar, too, He told us that the hotel is owned by a man from India. 

But boy is it pricey. It has nightly rates from $280.00 to $359.00.

I don’t envy Wiley sitting in that dark hotel all night on security duty. Hepcat took a great picture of the hotel. Maybe he’ll run it today.

Here’s a description of the hotel, which has a great view of the new apartment building on Fourth Avenue between 4th and 5th Streets. You may even be able to see MS 51 in the distance.

Experience the art of boutique hospitality at this all-new 48-room New York hotel located in the heart of Brooklyn? Just minutes from Manhattan, a haven of peace and privacy with luxuriously appointed guest rooms with modern features demanded of, by discerning travelers and globetrotters? comes hotel le blue.The compelling stark lines of hotel le blue are the perfect counterpoise to the hustle and bustle of the Big Apple. Making a bold dramatic statement of refined elegance, world class luxury, and crowned with the trendy restaurant and bar "Vue" on the roof which offers some of New York’s finest cuisines and spectacular views.hotel le blue? is the hallmark of luxury, style and glamour where guests are pampered to an extreme with specially designed ergonomic beds, orthopedic mattresses and topped with allergen free goose down comforters and Egyptian linens, for a perfect, restful sleep.

Funny story.

I met author Rudy Delson last night at a super fun apartment-without-a-garden-garden-party on Fourth Avenue. The building does have two hibiscus plants on their front stoop.

Rudy Delson’s novel, Maynard and Jennical, is coming out in the fall and he will be the featured author at the first Brooklyn Reading Works of the new season on Thursday, September 19th at 8 p.m.

We started talking and he told me a funny Gersh Kuntzman story. And since I love Gersh Kuntzman, editor of the Brooklyn Paper, and I love a good Gersh Kuntzman story, here goes. There are three chapters.

CHAPTER ONE

Rudy Gelson writes,

I once met Gersh Kuntzman. It was years ago, at the Park Slope Food Coop. He was working at the check-out register, and he bruised my bananas. I am certain however that he doesn’t remember me.

Rudy told me last night that when he complained to Gersh that he’d bruised his bananas Gersh said, “I like bruised bananas.”

CHAPTER TWO

About a year and a half ago, Rudy noticed that Gersh was the editor of the Brooklyn Paper. He enjoyed reading Gersh’s articles but he took issue with the fact that Gersh mentioned his book, Chrismakah. frequently in the Brooklyn Paper. Rudy wrote an email to Gersh, which Gersh insisted on publishing as a letter to the editor, lambasting him for his shamless self-promotion.

Okay.

CHAPTER THREE

More recently, Gersh used a woman in a bikini photograph to illustrate a story on new books by Brooklyn authors. The article listed Maynard and Jennica. Rudy had to chuckle. Now he was the one who was being shamelessly promoted in the Brooklyn Paper. With a woman in a bikini shot, no less. He writes: “Who but Gersh could put a bikini shot into the book review section of a free neighborhood weekly? Perhaps you, Boris Kachka?”

The widow of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter kidnapped, tortured, and killed five years ago, filed a lawsuit against Pakistan’s largest bank in Brooklyn federal court Wednesday.

In the suit, Marianne Pearl blames the company and more then a dozen alleged terrorists for her husband’s killing.

Read more at New York 1.

Get a sampler of the new book, Walking Brooklyn, on a Bay Ridge walk this Saturday with author and OTBKB guest blogger Adrienne Onofri.

I have not yet begun to walk.

This Saturday, July 21, at 11 a.m., I will be leading a walk in Bay Ridge that commences at the park beneath the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge named for naval hero John Paul Jones, famous for saying and shouting, probably “I have not yet begun to fight!”

He never made it to Brooklyn, as far as I know, but I guess a naval theme was appropriate for a park facing the entrance to New York Harbor and situated just a block from still-active Fort Hamilton.

The walk is one of several offered this weekend as part of Lighten Up Brooklyn, Borough President Marty Markowitz’s health and fitness initiative. (You gotta love the logo: a tape measure around a bloated Brooklyn Bridge.) Other walks during the weekend tour Coney Island, Hasidic Crown Heights, the Marine Park nature area and more. Go to brooklyn-usa.org for further information.

There’s no charge, and everyone—Brooklynite or otherwise—is invited to participate. For the Bay Ridge walk, we’ll start by going around John Paul Jones Park to see its various monuments (military and otherwise), then head down to the biking/walking path beside the bay. This is one of New York’s great places for a stroll. You’ve got views of that tremendous bridge, the Statue of Liberty, Manhattan’s skyscrapers, even the rides of Coney Island and you can smell the sea air!

When I was writing Walking Brooklyn last year, I had to sidestep some barriers on this path, but the restoration is now complete on the Bay Ridge portion, so walking there is even more of a pleasure.

After a fitness walk of about a mile and a half, we’ll cross over the Belt Parkway (don’t worry: a pedestrian bridge is provided) and go in and out some residential streets of Bay Ridge. Much of this part of the walk is waterfront, if not waterside. We’ll see mansions old and new and visit Brooklyn’s other botanic garden on our way to the photo-oppy 69th St. pier.

Please join us! You’ll even receive a flyer good for a discount on Walking Brooklyn at the Community Bookstore and other shops. To get to the walk’s starting point, take the R to 95th St. or, from Park Slope, the B63 bus on 5th Ave. Enter John Paul Jones Park on 4th Ave. at 101st St. or Shore Rd.

Here’s our pal Pete responding to this week’s Smartmom in the Brooklyn Paper.

Hi Louise – I just read your column in the Brooklyn Paper about not hearing from OSFO since she’s been at sleepaway camp, and all I can say is – Congratulations! If your 10-year old is successfully on her way towards healthy separation and individuation, then you have done your job as a mother. When we are at our best as parents, we are temporary custodians of those developing beings we call children, and from day one, our job is to help them to be more and more able to live without us in the world – to make their own friends, establish their own values, express their own unique gifts their way. Fear not, Louise, and remember, having just spent a week alone on Block Island yourself, blissfully separated and individuated from your kids, co-dependency is not love, or as Sting said: “If you love someone, set them free.”
Peter Loffredo

 
Hugh Crawford (AKA No Words_Daily Pix and Hepcat) and his traveling photo studio will be
set up outside of the Community
Bookstore tonight taking his FABULOUS
portraits of Harry Potter revelers. Wizards and muggles welcome.

He was there two years ago and those unforgettable pictures will be on display, as well. Prints of  pictures can be easily ordered.

 
  See you on Seventh Avenue between Garfield and Carroll.  If you’d like to see the pictures from two years ago,  go here.

My friend who runs the C is for Cupid website has great news to share about C is for Cupid, the new dating service for people whose lives have been affected by cancer. Founded by survivors, the goal is to provide a comfortable and confidential environment for members to connect with compatible singles and friends.

There is a brief mention of C is for Cupid in this week’s Newsweek
article about another dating website for people with different
medical issues.

My membership has doubled in two days. Many younger
people are signing up who have/had cancer.

I’ve been dying to try Moim, the new restaurant in a space that used to be a Chinese laundry on Garfield just east of Seventh Avenue.

I happen to love Korean food and frequent an inexpensive Korean lunch place near Union Square called Manna.

I was eager to see how Moim’s cooking compared to the food I enjoy over there. I was also dying of curiosity about the beautifully designed restaurant that quietly sprung up a couple of months ago.

I’d peeked in few times and it looked very intriguing.

Well, something very special has come to Park Slope and it has an interesting Park Slope twist to it.

Moim is owned by a Korean couple who live in Park Slope. He is a CFO of a Queens hospital and she is the restaurant’s chef. They bought the brownstone that Moim is in and did a MAJOR renovation to the space where the Chinese laundry used to be.

But that’s not all. The owners dug a new foundation in the former backyard and added an elegant back room for the restaurant and a patio for dining alfresco. The addition also houses the wife’s high tech kitchen.

Not only did this couple put an enormous amount of money into the restaurant but also real architectural elegance and Asian style. For the extensive renovation, they hired a well know Tribeca architect and he did an incredible job.

Stone, black brick, Asian screens: beautiful architectural touches abound. Moim, which means "gathering" Korean is an exceedingly nice place to be.

Enough about the decor. The food and service were very good. The moderately priced menu is a a mysterious collection of Korean classics and what I think must be new Korean cuisine.

We had a delicious crab salad as an appetizer but we smelled spare ribs and other delicious smelling small plates going to a table near us.

I throughly enjoyed my Dol Sot Bi Bim Bop, vegetables, meat and rice served in a steaming hot stone rice bowl. The food continues to cook while you eat. Unlike Manna, Moim stirs in a spicy red sauce and other condiments that you must add at the lunch place. I sensed that what I was eating was an authentic but slightly more sophisticated interpretation of what is basically Korean homecooking.

Hepcat had O Lee Gui duck breast with goji berry and asian vegetables. He didn’t give me a bite and it disappeared quickly. Usually a sign that he’s enjoying his food.

According to New York Magazine, "Chef-owner Saeri Uyoo Park has cooked at Spice Market, Café Gray, and
the Modern, but here she mines her own Korean background for dishes
like kimchee stir-fry with pork and tofu, and steak tartare with Asian
pear and pine nut."

The restaurant was lightly attended when we got there around 8 p.m. But at around 9 pm a group of about 20 mom friends gathered for a "mom’s night out" were sitting at a very large table near the front. The restaurant was quite full by the time we left.

Moim is still waiting for their liquor license but will have wine and cocktails. There’s a lovely bar near the front. The kitchen closes at 11 p.m., remarkably late for a Seventh Avenue eatery.

On so many levels, Moim may be one of the most sophisticated restaurants ever on Seventh Avenue. It’s bringing a cuisine unfamiliar to many in Brooklyn, lots of new flavors, new tastes, new textures.

I have nothing but high praise and high hopes for this lovely effort by locals to bring something so elegantly new to Park Slope’s main street with moderate prices and excellent food.

Moim is located at 206 Garfield Pl.,
Brooklyn, NY 11215

Just east of Seventh Ave.

718-499-8092

It’s not the quickest way to get from point A to point B.

I know.

Readers, I’m married to one. A photographer, that is. Last night after Rescue Dawn at BAM, we slowly walked home after midnight. It was a night that said: take pictures of me. And Hepcat obliged.

It took forever.

Hepcat was stirred by the new buildings around BAM and the way the moon, the way the streetlights lit the scene.

Click click. He looked up at the sky…

Blue night sky, street light blur. Click. Click. Traffic. Color. Light. Click. Click.

Sometimes I get tired of waiting. I mean, COME ON: LET’S GET GOING ALREADY.  Often I am a half a block ahead by the time I realize he has stopped to take a picture.

This is our life.

We walked up Fourth Avenue and then traversed to Fifth. Past midnight, Fifth was quiet and dark for much of the way to Third Street. 

"Wait till you get to the number streets," Hepcat said knowingly.

Sure enough, at First Street Fifth Avenue livens up considerably with Bonnie’s Grill, Blue Ribbon Sushi, Blue Ribbon, Puppets, and other late-night spots.

Click. Click. Click. Hepcat clicked away. He walks, he looks, he takes pictures. That’s the photographer’s life.

Stop and go. Come on already. Impatiently standing on streetcorners. That’s the life of the  photographer’s spouse. My life.

That’s my life.   

The City Room reports that Con Ed ssued a statement at 7:38 a.m. “urging all
customers in the East Midtown area of Manhattan to discontinue their
use of non-essential electrical appliances and equipment until problems
on electrical cables can be resolved following yesterday’s steam-main
rupture.” The steam-main rupture killed one person and injured 30. 

Although there are no power failures reported yet, the utility is reporting strains on its electrical system.

The area affected includes roughly 14,000 customers — a term that
includes businesses and apartment buildings as well as households —
from East 39th to 57th Streets and from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive
to Park Avenue.

The utility said it had asked managers of big commercial buildings
to reduce their power consumption. Con Edison is asking residents in
the area not to use washers, dryers, air conditioners “and other
energy-intensive equipment” during peak hours of 1 p.m. to 6 p.m and to
turn off lights and televisions when not in use.

MORE AT THE CITY ROOM

A friend wrote to tell me about Myra Klockenbrink, a Holistic Health and Wellness Therapist, who leads prouduce tours around the Park Slope Food Coop. She also  writes a heath and wellness newsletter that you can subscribe to (718-858-0238).

Here is one of her poems:

Dinner is done
the birds chortle as they settle in
and the squirrels have ceased their scrambling
and gone — where is it they go?
here and there fireflies signal to one another
incandescent even with the moon shining huge
and improbable over the rooftops

Seize a reason to be outside
invent a cause, fulfill a fantasy
make a profit if you must
   but find a way out

Take your desk to the stoop
shower in the downpours
pull out a mattress
reinstate the constitutional
and walk in the evening
with someone you love
tell them what lies in your heart

It’s easy to cook out of doors
after dinner while the grill is still hot
lay some apricot halves on foil
and dot them with butter and
cane juice crystals

let them cook until the sugar bubbles
serve them with sheep’s milk yogurt
maybe a spoon of granola

You can feel the night grow still
the birds have stopped
the trees themselves seem to rest
talk about the meaning of this life
now is as good a time as ever

Hepcat used his iPhone to look for what movies are playing in town but we still couldn’t get excited about much that’s out there.

We considered Ocean’s 13.

We were curious about tear fest, Evening, based on the Susan Minot novel and starring Vanessa Redgrave, Meryl Street, Glenn Close and every major female actress you can think of and her daughter.

The reviews were mostly awful.

There’s something called Meet the Dwights about a female comedian with English actress Brenda Bleythen.

Finally we noticed something about Rescue Dawn in this week’s Entertainment Weekly. It was number one on The Must List: 10 Things We Love This Week. Directed by Werner Herzog it stars Christian Bale and Steve Zahn in a gripping drama about Viet Nam era POW’s.

All I can say is WOW. This film gripped me from the get-go. A masterful portrayal of the eccentric POW Dieter Dengler and the relationship that develops with fellow POW Duane, played by Zahn, I was in "shock and awe" for much of the film, which has disturbing scenes of torture, worms, snakes, leaches, and human cruelty that is hard to take. 

Here’s what the Times’ critic had to say.

Mr. Herzog’s movie reimagines his 1997 documentary, “Little Dieter Needs to Fly,”
as a drama of imprisonment, survival and perseverance. Although
financed independently, it superficially resembles the likes of “Papillon” and “The Great Escape.”
With its straightforward narrative, which observes Dengler being shot
down during his first mission over Laos; surviving torture, isolation,
confinement and starvation; and hatching a daring breakout, “Rescue
Dawn” seems a departure from Mr. Herzog’s “Aguirre, The Wrath of God,”
“Fitzcarraldo,” “Grizzly Man” and other cautionary tales of visionary madmen.

Caution. Don’t spend eight days alone on Block Island at the idyllic Sea Breeze Inn with its sunrise view of the ocean and salt ponds, a hammock, and a delicious breakfast of fresh fruit and muffins, if you ever plan on coming home.

Re-entry is pretty brutal.

The manager, Gaby, had to peel me out of there.

"Should I call you a cab," she said when it was time for me to go to the ferry.

"I guess," I said wanting her to do anything but.

Maybe I’ll miss the boat. Maybe I’ll have to spend another night. Maybe…

But it wasn’t to be. The driver showed up promptly and delivered me to the New London high-speed ferry at the docks.

The ferry ride is a perfect decompression zone. Out on the top deck, the wind blew my hair in all  directions and no one could tell that the tears in my eyes were tears of regret for having to leave my island paradise.

The Amtrak station in New London is just steps from the ferry and on the meditative train ride, I slept and read and thought back on my week spent finishing a new draft of my novel, eating delicious fish at the island’s best restaurants Eli’s and Harry’s), taking my rented Raleigh bicycle for a spin up and down the hills of the island, running 2 miles and back to the Southeast Lighthouse, writing daily postcards to OSFO at camp, and reading (The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud and Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirosky) sitting on an Adirondack chair at the Sea Breeze.

The cab I took from Penn Station with my big suitcase, computer, and bag of gifts for the family, took longer than the train ride from say, Bridgeport to Penn Station. First I thought the cabbie was purposely taking the longest and stupidest route to Brooklyn:

He went across some side street in the 20’s to the FDR and down to the Brooklyn Bridge. He said he was doing it because there was too much traffic on 7th Avenue and Broadway.

Duh, there was congestion a-plenty on the FDR and we were literally stopped dead in our tracks while a work crew on the Brooklyn Bridge packed up.

Finally got home an hour after leaving Penn. The meter read: $36.00, an unheard of fare from Penn Station to Park Slope. I mean, have you ever paid so much?

I tried to be very Zen about the ride, tried very hard not to lose it and say to the driver: serves you right for taking the FDR.

All of that did not bode well for my re-entry, which was pretty rocky. Things got worse before they got better. But seeing Hepcat and Teen Spirit (OSFO is still away at camp) and a glass of wine with Mrs. Kravitz at the Third Street Cafe, helped a bit.

A walk down Seventh Avenue. Dinner. The outdoor film in JJ Byrne Park. Slowly I got my  bearings.

Block Island is feeling farther and farther away. 

I stayed at the Sea Breeze, an idyllic inn on Block Island, in their one "group house," five rooms with two shared bathrooms.

It’s an absolutely lovely place and the shared bathrooms keep the price down.

It’s fun, too because breakfast is a nice social time at 8:30 or so when the guests come down to a a colorful buffet of fresh cantaloupe, blueberries, nectarines, strawberries, and kiwi, delicious coffee, and muffins, croissants, and bagels (with butter, jam, cream cheese).

And the breakfast even has a Brooklyn buzz: the Sea Breeze uses Claireware coffee cups!

Guests gather at the picnic table or Adirondack chairs in the outside area that faces the ocean. Need I say more?

The other morning, a nice woman came downstairs from the second floor. I had seen her husband a couple of days earlier. He had an urban vibe; a distinctly New York look. She was packing up, getting ready to leave after a week on the island.

"The party’s over," she said. "Time to get back."

Where do you live, I asked her.

I could feel it:  Brooklyn, she said. 

"I live in Brooklyn, too." I said excitedly. "Which part?"

Williamsburg, she said.

We talked a bit about re-entry. She said it’s hard to re-adjust to Williamsburg after Block Island. Quite a contrast.

"Williamsburg is fun, isn’t it?" I said.

"Williamsburg is basically a construction site these days," she said.

I know what she means.

Continue reading YOU CAN’T GET TOO FAR FROM BROOKLYN: WHERE ARE YOU FROM? →

Once again, Richard Grayson takes us on a wild ride on a bus line in Brooklyn.

One of the weirdest bus routes in Brooklyn stops around the corner from
me.  It’s the B24, officially the Greenpoint/Kingsland Avenue route,
and it’s the only bus line that connects two adjoining Brooklyn
neighborhoods with an incredibly roundabout route through Queens over
an interstate highway.  It’s a pretty short ride from its beginning in
Williamsburg to its end in

Greenpoint, about 35 minutes – and today I discovered that I can
actually walk it faster because the bus route resembles a boomerang.

When I got on at the Williamsburg Bridge Plaza bus station on Broadway,
I asked the driver if anyone in their right mind actually takes this
bus from here to Manhattan Avenue.
He smiled and said, “Yeah, you can get there much more directly if you
just transfer for the B43, but some people do prefer the scenic route.”

"Okay,” I said.  “I just didn’t want you to think I was crazy.”
I needn’t have worried, because that role was taken by one of the other
passengers who got on at the first stop: a group of about fifteen
middle-aged whites and Hispanics, with one young Hasidic man.  We had
barely gone up the few blocks of Rodney Street, along one side of the
highway where Moses parted Williamsburg when a male voice shouted out:
“FUCK DISNEY!”

After we turned on Metropolitan Avenue, the same voice shouted out: “FUCK THE DEMOCRATS!”
I couldn’t discern who it was and braced for the next shout, wondering
who else would be singled out for opprobrium.  But it never came.
Whoever it was – and I thought the Hasidic man was staring at me as if
he assumed I was the theme park-hating Republican – for the rest of the
ride this person remained as quiet as a mouse (presumably not Mickey).

Continue reading EXPLORING BROOKLYN BY BUS: THE B-24, THE BROOKLYN BOOMERANG →

Jason Cusato,  Brooklyn filmmaker
and founder of Park Slope
Films, is a finalist in
the Independent Features Film
Festival. 

The
Independent Features Film Festival, the first hybrid online/theatrical film
festival of its kind, started with over 200 films online, where film fans from
across the world voted on for their favorite films. The finalists, including
Cusato’s film and 20 other finalists, will be screened at a theatrical festival
taking place at Tribeca Cinemas from July 27-29. At the festival, attendees
will have a chance to vote on which of the 20 films they think is the best.
The winner (along with online winner- Alleyball) will receive a
theatrical distribution in several independent movie theaters across the
nation.

Here
is some info on Cusato’s film and the time it will premiere:

Friday,
July 27, 2007

7:30
pm-  When
Broom Sticks Were Kings (27 min) Directed by Jason Cusato

Stickball,
A sport born on the streets of Brooklyn, Street teams competing only for glory
and bragging rights.

“When
Broomsticks were King” is a tribute to Brooklyn Stickball and the
hero’s who played. Told in a documentary style, this comedic tribute
relives this forgotten sport in all its glory.

Got this from my friend Pastor Tom Martinez:

Hey Friends,

We’ve started an "Open Mic with a Soul," which is open to everyone 
with a poem or a song or a comment
that touches on spirituality or has a justice message.  Everyone’s 
welcome.
We hold it at my little house church (All Souls Bethlehem Church, 
www.asbc.org), which is located at
566 E. 7th St. between Cortelyou Rd. and Ditmas Ave (also between the 
Q train and F trains).
Call if you want more info.
And please help spread the word.
We’d love more interfaith energy!
Peace,
Tom
718-915-2600

The first day I was on Block Island I had to kill an hour before checking into my room. So I wandered around the historic, touristy section of town and went looking for lunch.

I went into a cool shop call Lucky Fish and right up front on display there were beautiful plates and bowls by Park Slope’s own Claireware.

It warmed my heart. Claire’s work is unmistakable, colorful. She calls it urban folk pottery. I almost wrote urban fold poetry.

"I know the woman who makes those," I said proudly.

"Some friends of her came in here once and told us about her," the shopkeeper said. "We have other work by RISD artists."

Oh, that’s the connection. She probably went to the Rhode Island School of Design. And I’m in Rhode Island.

I wandered around the shop and admired many things.

"Hey, I love your taste in things," I told the shopkeeper. "Where should I have lunch?"

She told me about a place called Froozies. Order the Pond-something sandwich. It’s great, she said. I’m getting hungry just thinking about it…"

I did. And it was soooo tasty.

The next morning at my Inn, in the breakfast breakfast, there it was, again. A Claireware mug.

You can’t get too far from Brooklyn

Why not? If Brooklyn has a PL, shouldn’t Park Slope?

We’re entitled, right?

He’s Leon Freilich, who waxes poetic this week in the Brooklyn Paper, which is finally back from vacation, with a poem  based on the song, The Sidewalks of New York. 

Read it here.

This from NY1:

A tanker carrying nearly half a million
barrels of low sulphur fuel oil and aground in the Ambrose Channel
about two miles off Coney Island Thursday morning.

The Coast Guard says the ship is not leaking and no one has been hurt.

Officials say "The White Sea" has deployed a boom to contain any
oil that leaks out. The Coast Guard says something went wrong with the
steering and the 800 foot long tanker got stuck in the channel’s sandy
bottom.

The boat was moved to the side where tug boats are now working to free it.

Super BRAVO! to Judith Warner on this one today. Some excerpts follow from her Domestic Disturbances column in today’s NY Times called: "Visiting Day."

By the way, as a psychotherapist and parent, I have been screaming about the over-involvement of parents in their kids’ lives, especially in places like Park Slope, and lazy and unrealistic collusion of local schools in the problem by insisting in excessive parental involvement in school activities (not to mention homework!). Here’s Judith:

  "I’ve had it with a culture that willfully refuses to face up to the fact that almost 80 percent of mothers with children beyond pre-school age – and, of course, a much greater percentage of fathers – work. This refusal to face facts, coupled with the ideology of “parental involvement” as a panacea for all social ills, has created a situation in which not only guilt-ridden parents, but children are needlessly suffering.

"It doesn’t need to be this way. It only takes a quick look across the Atlantic to see that many other countries have done what’s necessary to grow up and embrace the 21st century. They provide kids with a longer school year, a longer school day and subsidized summer activities.

"We need to push back against the trend toward excessive and inappropriate parental involvement that weighs so heavily upon families in certain [middle class] communities. We should start by requesting – ever so politely – that school events requiring parental participation be scheduled in the evening. Or on weekends. And not too often at that.

"Let’s get parents out of their school-aged kids’ 9-to-3 lives. It’s a cost-free solution to one of the major sources of family angst today. And, more globally, let’s grow up as a culture and face reality – so that our kids can grow up less stressfully."

     Yes!
Peter Loffredo

I love this. Just love it. Longtime Brooklynite, Richard Grayson, a born and bred, Brooklyn boy puts something on my blog. It gets read by his 8th grade English and homeroom teacher from Meyer Levin Junior High School, Mr. Berger. He writes into OTBKB and Grayson reads it. VOILA: This from Richard Grayson, author of "I Break for Delmore Schwartz" "And To Think He Kissed Him On Lorimar Street," and more.

My old eighth grade English and homeroom teacher from Meyer Levin JHS! 

Having just taught "Twelfth Night" last week to college students who
said it was too hard for them to read, I told them, "Well, we read it
in Mr. Berger’s class in eighth grade back in 1964 when I was twelve."

I remember once seeing you outside the classroom for the first time.
On Saturday morning my father took us to get haircuts at George’s
Barbershop and Beauty Salon (men in front, women in back) on Church and
Troy Avenues. And while George was cutting my hair, you — wearing not
a shirt and tie but a sweatshirt, jeans and sneakers like me — sat
down in the next chair with Jack, who I recall asked you if you thought
"Catcher in the Rye" was too dirty for his son in high school to read.
You said no, of course.

It was a wonder in those days to see our
sainted teachers outside the school in normal clothing, as we assumed
you just disappeared into the blackboard after 3 pm and reappeared at
8:30 am the next day. After my haircut, I met Billy and Eugene
Lefkowitz, also from 8SPE, at Buddy’s Fairyland arcade and fast food
place a few blocks from my house at the intersection of Flatbush,
Fillmore and Utica. I excited told them, "I saw Mr. Berger getting a
haircut! Like a regular person does!" We had burgers and fries, played
skeeball, and when I refused to go on the roller coaster, Billy said I
was a neurotic scaredycat. He threw up twice walking the seven blocks
to my house.

Mr. Berger was one of the greatest English teachers I ever had.  Certainly a lot better one than I’ve ever been.

Since the Supreme Blogger is out of town, doing the opposite of
hibernating (summering?-simmering, cooking up those succulent scoops
she ladles into the ethernet) at the Oracle’s cave on Blog Island, I
jumped at the chance to put up a post or two…then I jumped back.

What
on earth was I thinking? This blogging business takes: 1. time, 2. the
ability to sit and type your thoughts fluently on the glowing screen,
3. a lot of gathered information, or heartfelt musings, or just plain
something to say to the next unsuspecting straggler into the blog…

The next thought was "What the heck, it’s going to be buried shortly in
the long scroll of daily info, people can skip boring bits and find the
exciting headlines that Hepcat will strategically place next to
his on-the-mark photos"

The first thing that reminded me why this OTBKB blog is so vital, is
that some of our favorite things about Park Slope are changing, as they
are wont to do, and LC, AKA Smartmom, is usually one of the first
people to pick up on the significance of these ongoing transformations
and events, and bring them to our notice.

Walking down Ninth Street from
an early morning workout at the Y, I saw that the nearly-secret
discount clothing store Scene, has finally finished it’s going out of
business sale…

I for one will miss the colorful skirts and funky
window displays on headless mannequinns… and that the Paris bakery is
still having its show-down with the overly cranky city HD.

Thank
goodness it’s still possible to pop into Perch for a little bit of
heaven on earth–the awesome Veggie Reuben…for avocado and sauerkraut
fans everywhere.

Originally I was thinking to describe how when my boyfriend/husband and
I moved (back, for me) to Brooklyn from Manhattan 19 years ago, we felt
like we had arrived in adult summer camp: walking down Seventh Avenue
in shorts and sandals in the summer, stopping in at Soundtracks to hear
Thom or Carlos play the latest records then cds…and seeing everyone
out strolling, eating, biking, doing whatever it is Slopers do in the
summer.

It was all we could do not to look for the camp counselor to
see if we could get candy from the canteen.

Now our son is doing the camping-enjoying the awesome Berkeley Carroll
summer camp run for the 25th year by the amazing Marlene Clary–how
does she keep this thing getting better year after year???

And Kim
Maier, at the Old Stone House in J.J. Byrne Park, hosting plays, films,
concerts, speeches, blogfests… how did we get so lucky, to have so
many fantastic people contributing so much to one little
neighborhood-OTBKB’s top 100 must have been so hard to put
together-where do you set the limit for the list?

O.K. time to jump back to the real world….Louise, your blogging shoes are way, way big, or as Webster’s now has it–ginormous!

Love, Gilly Youner