A friend, a former Park Sloper who now lives in Staten Island in a beautiful old barn, had a fourth of July BBQ. Lucky us.

Even in the light rain, it was fun to leave the borough and celebrate the fourth with a bunch of Brooklynites in a countrified setting.

The section of Staten Island near Snug Harbor is beautiful and historic. My friend’s house, a barn, belonged to the large 1859 house next door. It was converted into a home by a sculptor, who had a great architectural sense. Double height living room, exposed beams, lots of windows. A street near my friend’s house has numerous Stanford White houses.

The guest list was made up mostly of Park Slopers and some from Kensington, Old Mill Basin, and other spots in Brooklyn. There were of course plenty of friends from Staten Island.

No skinny backyard for this former Park Sloper. My friend has an acre or more with a stream, a pergola, a hot tub and more.

The food, chicken, dogs, hamburgers, pasta, salad and more was delish. The host and hostess asked everyone to bring "bevvies." And there were a lot of those. Bottles and bottles of wine and beer.

Typical Park Sloper’s, we were nervous about leaving the borough. Would there be traffic? Would we find the way?  Would we get back to Brooklyn in time for the fireworks?

Teen Spirit and OSFO opted to stay on Third Street for our building’s BBQ. Two other friends piled into the car for the ROAD TRIP adventure to Staten Island. Before entering the party exit plans were discussed.

"We have to leave no later than 6:30," I said.
"Give me a half-hour warning," my friend said.

It was just like the old days when I would would venture to a party in Brooklyn terrified that I wouldn’t know how to get home to Manhattan. Were there cabs in Brooklyn? Is  anyone driving? Parties would empty out at 11 pm as Manhattanites raced out if someone had a car or had called a car service.

It was like the last transport out of Saigon. 

We left Staten Island around 7 p.m. Scott Elliot, director of the Brooklyn Writer’s Space and his son came with us back to Brooklyn.

"I want you to know that I get car sick," his son said.

We braced for the worse but he fell asleep crossing the Verrazano Bridge.

Scott told us about the Writer’s Space baseball team. They’ll be playing Paragraph, a Manhattan writer’s space sometime in July. He also mentioned  Room 58, his new workspace designed for journalists and other
research-based writers on 7th Street between 3rd and 4th Avenues in Park Slope/Gowanus. Soundsl ike a great space for those in need of work space (ahem: Hepcat: Can you hear me?).

Picture by Anonymous.

Mayor Bloomberg and his staff are moving to the city’s new Emergency Management Office in Brooklyn for two weeks while offices in City Hall are refurbished.

The New York TImes has the story of the avant garde violinist who lost his violin at the Clark Street station of the 2/3 train after playing a show with his quartet the Fluxus Quartet at Bargemusic, the floating performance space in Brooklyn Heights.

This is a Brooklyn story par excellance. The Times’ reports that the violin was found at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station.

Sometime after 10 p.m., Mr. Chiu said, he got a call from a transit
official at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station. “He asked if I
was missing something,” he said. “I described the contents of the
violin case. He said there were a bunch of bow ties in it and I knew it
was mine.”

The official, Mr. Chiu said, told him that the violin
had been sitting on a desk at the station for a while — perhaps days.
“He found something with my name and address on it inside the violin
case and figured it must mean something to somebody, so he called me.”

The
Coney Island station, however, does not house the Metropolitan
Transportation Authority’s official lost-and-found. “I think it’s for
things that were found on trains on all the lines that end there,” Mr.
Chiu said. The Clark Street station, where Mr. Chiu and the Scarampella
had last been together, is on the 2 and the 3 — which do not go to
Coney Island.

Park Slope novelist Rob Reuland used to be a prosecutor in the DA’s office in Brooklyn. That is, before his crime novel, Hollowpoint, was published in 2001.

In February 2001, Reuland was interviewed by New York Magazine about his first novel and was   quoted as saying, "Brooklyn is the best place to be a
homicide prosecutor. We’ve got more dead bodies per square inch than
anyplace else."

I remember the incident well because I used to rent studio space in Reuland’s brownstone, which I shared with another fiction writer and a quilter. My office was an adorable and rustic mud room that led to the garden. Unheated, it was a little cold in the winter. But hey, it was my rustic writing room in the woods of Park Slope. The others were in a larger room. Rob and his wife had a big, fancy office in a big room closer to the street.

After about a year, they decided to reclaim the back of their ground floor and we all moved out. But I knew Rueland had a crime novel in the works and I kept my eye out for it. Then I saw the interview in New York Magazine. I thought it was a good quote. There was definitely some poetic license there  — I wasn’t sure if it was statistically correct. But I was surprised a few weeks later when the whole thing blew up.

Then again. Maybe I wasn’t so surprised.

The quote got him into trouble with his boss, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes. According to an article in last week’s Village Voice, then State Senator Marty Markowitz wasn’t too pleased either.

Inveterate Brooklyn booster Marty Markowitz (then a state senator
and now borough president) demanded Reuland’s head. With Hynes out of
town, Reuland’s boss, Amy Feinstein (now Hynes’s top assistant)
summoned him, and Reuland told her he didn’t mean to piss anybody off.
He offered to write a letter to New York. Feinstein and another
boss in Hynes’s office edited Reuland’s meek missive, in which he
admitted "my hyperbolic remark" and said, "This was not intended to be,
nor is it, literally true. In fact Brooklyn’s murder rate has declined
more than 66 percent during the past decade." But Hynes wasn’t
mollified, taking Reuland’s comment as a personal attack on the crime
reduction that Hynes believed his office was instrumental in achieving.

Well, here it is six years later and Charles Hynes is promoting his new book, "Triple Homicide." In early June, he had a reading at the Park Slope Barnes and Noble. Here’s the Village Voice again:

[Hynes} started expounding about this and that," says Reuland, "and
I just couldn’t stomach it." No surprise there. Six years ago, Hynes
tossed Reuland out of his job as a prosecutor in the high-profile
Homicide Bureau for doing exactly what the district attorney is now
doing: hawking a book.

Reuland walked out. I wish I coulda been a fly on the wall. But the Village Voice was there and tells the tale.

Good blog. Good info. Especially this story about graffiti artist, Ellis G, an OTBKB fave.

Here’s OTBKB’s story about Ellis G. from 2005 (with pictures, too).

July 22nd is the second Brooklyn Blogade Roadshow. Come on board. The bloggers are going to Greenpoint. And Miss Heather of New York Shitty will be the hostess. I got this email from her. It sounds like fun. The last one at Vox Pop in Flatbush was tres fun. A great way to meet bloggers AND a great way to get to know a new Brooklyn nabe. You MUST RSVP to attend. You won’t want to miss this one. Here’s the missive from Miss Heather:

As some of you may be aware, I am coordinating this month’s blogger
meet-up which is to be held right here in the mighty Greenpoint. Here
are the deets.

When: July 22 (a Sunday) 2:00 to 5:00 p.m.

Where: Casa Mon Amour, 162 Franklin Street

What: There will be a $10.00 fee to attend. This
will cover the cost of Beatrice (Casa Mon Amour’s owner) opening the
restaurant on a Sunday, it will also purchase you as assortment of
tasty Dominican kibble to nibble on such as…

• Chimol (it’s pretty much the same thing as Pico de Gallo)
• Shrimp Ceviche
• Rice and beans
• Plantains
• Baked Chicken
• Mixed Green Salad with homemade vinaigrette

Who: Anyone who is interested in attending. You
need not be a Brooklyn blogger or blog about Brooklyn to attend. If
you, for example, blog about Long Island City, photoblog your kidney
stones— or both— you are more than welcome to attend. Kink and quirk
are perfectly acceptable; I want diversity. (Like I have any right to
pass judgment on someone’s eccentricities anyway…)

Kevin “The Man” Walsh
is scheduled to give a presentation about North Brooklyn to get
everyone in the Greenpoint spirit. I have a couple of surprises up my
sleeve as well. It should be a lot of fun.

Those of you who are interested in attending can R.S.V.P. via email at:

blogade.rsvp@gmail.com

Be sure to indicate in your email if you are interested in eating
shrimp, chicken or straight vegetarian fare so I can ensure there’s
enough of the right food for everybody.

Thanks!

Miss Heather

Check this out.

Reprinted from OTBKB  July 6, 2007:

They were just suitcases. But so much more. They caused the police
to close up streets in Park Slope for six hours on Monday while they
investigated the possibility that there were explosives inside.

Those suitcases belonged to a homeless man who goes by the name Mr.
G.. He is a familiar site with his white hair and his shopping cart
filled with Key Food bags, bottles and cans. Local legend has it that
he became homeless many years ago. Prior to that he lived in a rental
apartment on Union Street. Then he lost his job and his life took a
downward turn: he became homeless. 

An older woman on that block let him keep his belongings in the
basement of her brownstone. She was an old friend, someone who knew him
in better days. For years his belongings resided in her  basement. More
recently, he brought empty suitcases downstairs.

Chloe, the daughter-in-law of that woman, wanted to clean the
basement. She noticed that the suitcases were getting mildewed. She
left a note on Monday July 3rd for Mr. G. It was something along the
lines of: Please take your suitcases out of here by Friday.

Well, he did. He came by on Monday, sometime before 3 p.m., when no
one was looking and put some of the suitcases on the street in front of
the house where Chloe and her mother-in-law live. He may not have
wanted to leave all of them in front of their house, so he carried them
in his shopping cart and threw them out in garbage pails along Seventh
Avenue.

On Monday afternoon, Chloe did some errands on Seventh Avenue. When
she came back, she told her neighbor, Leah, that the police were
closing off traffic on Seventh Avenue. There was a bomb scare.

Leah and Chloe watched their sons, who are playmates, play together.
They watched as Union Street was closed off, as was 8th Avenue. There
were many police officers on the streets.

Chloe took a walk and caught sight of one of the suitcases and a
lamp. Those look like the suitcases Mr. G. removed from my basement,
she thought to herself, she told Leah.

So Chloe told the police officer who seemed to be in charge. A
little while later, more police and the FBI called on Chloe at her home
to verify her story.

This happened sometime after 7:00 p.m. on Monday. After that, the police closed the investigation down.

Leah did see Mr. G. on Monday he was pushing a shopping cart and
there was still a suitcase in it. She’s not sure if he knows, even now,
what he set in motion.

Here’s Peter on the Declaration of Independence:

Wouldn’t it indeed be something if we actually "held these truths to be
self-evident?" – "That all men (people) are created equal, that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that
among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to
secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving
their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any
Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right
of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new
Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its
powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their
Safety and Happiness."

What a radically wonderful and different country we would be living in
than this one. How did this happen? How did we stray so far from the
ideals set forth in this document? Were these always too high as
standards for us to live up to? Are we still just too insecure, greedy,
needy, narcissistic and ego-driven to honor by action the words of our
Founders? What is the lesson in the ironic fact that the people who
boistrously tout themelves to be true Americans the most are almost
always the ones who live furthest away from these ideals?

Finally, wouldn’t it be something if on this July 4th, we could just
take a brief break from the fireworks and hot dogs to reflect on the
state of our country, and perhaps marvel at the brilliance of these
words given to us as such a gift 231 years ago.

She left the house so early she didn’t have time to post anything. And she was out late last night. And she had to go to the dentist and…

TMI. You don’t need to know all that. Suffice it to say, sorry for neglecting the blog.

Philissa of the Brooklyn Food Group wrote to tell me that they’ve got an event coming up. Unfortunately I will be away for the Brooklyn Food Group’s two upcoming dinners on July 13 and 14th. 

She tells me that they got such a great response from OTBKB readers for their last dinner that they wanted OTBKB readers to be in the know about this new one.

Don’t miss an amazing summer menu. I assume there’s information on their blog: see below.
Dates: July 13, 8 p.m., July 14, 7 p.m., in Cobble Hill.

Tickets are $50 and can be reserved at brooklynfoodgroup.blogspot.com

The big weigh in: New York 1 reports that 17 contenders in the Nathan’s Hot Dog
Contest got weighed in today in Manhattan (Why Manhattan?).

Last year’s winner, Takeru Kobayashi of Japan, weighed in. He is ecovering from a jaw injury. He’s not sure if he’s going to compete and will decide tomorrow.

California’s Joey Chestnut, is the favorite. She weights 215 pounds and ercently set the world
record earlier this year by eating more then 59 hot dogs in 12 minutes.

Anne Pope, of Sustainable Flatbush, sent me word of this piece on Streetsblog .Thanks Ann

Well, not really. It’s just that he’s been studying it, using it, admiring it, net surfing with it, twirling it, showing it off, even answering the phone with it since he got it after midnight on Saturday morning: he just went to the Apple Store and bought it. No fuss. No muss.

Suffice it to say, he loves the thing and is most impressed with its touch screen capabilities and the way you can zoom in and out of whatever is on the screen.

I spent a lot of time doing it. I hope you’ll look at it. There’s some neat stuff on there.

OTBKB’S GUIDE TO SUMMER IN BROOKLYN

A reporter from WNBC called last week. He said they wanted to interview Hepcat about his incident with the Jackhammer guys on Third Street a few months ago. The time Hepcat complained about the NOISE and the crew’s lack of a noise jacket. The reporter mentioned that a new city noise code would go in effect on July 1. Well, it’s July 1. So QUIET, EVERYBODY. This from NY1:

The first changes to the city’s noise code in thirty years take effect today.

Under the new rules, noise jackets will be required on jackhammers,
Mister Softee trucks will have to turn off their music when they’re
stopped to serve ice cream and dog owners could face $175 fines if
their pets bark ten minutes straight or five minutes consecutively at
night.

Bars and restaurants could also be fined if their music can be heard more than 15 feet away.

That ban begins today. It means that all New York City restaurants have switch to oils that use
less than half a gram of trans-fat per serving for frying or in
spreads. Violators will be fined.

As for baked goods, prepared foods, and oils used for deep-frying dough, the restaurants have until next year to remove trans-fats. So don’t think that that donut or french fry you’re eating is trans-fat free.

Fast food and other chain restaurants are required to display the calorie content of a meal as prominently as its
price. But that’s only chain restaurants…

The Moondance Diner, the last free-standing diner in Manhattan, rife with my own personal history, will be history after this weekend. This from New York 1:

            
            
            
            
The Moondance Diner in SoHo will serve its final meal Sunday after 70 years in business.

The restaurant has been seen in several movies, including
“Spider-Man,” and television shows like “Sex and the City” and
“Friends.”

In a month, the diner will move to a museum in Pennsylvania – where it will be turned into an exhibit.

The restaurant’s owner says it will be missed by its workers, its patrons, and tourists.

"A lot of people, they get married here, they find they’re
girlfriends here,” said Sunny Sharma, owner of the Moondance Diner.
“They live in New Jersey, all over, but most the tourists here come
from Europe – Belgium, France, England – they all come here to see. Not
to see me, just to see the Moondance Diner, the sign of Moondance
Diner.”

OTBKB reader who liked the food at Elementi, the new and rather upscale Italian restaurant in the spot that was Snooky’s.

We just tried Elementi and were pleasantly surprised! price point is
certainly on Par. The veal tenderloin was perfect, excellent ambiance
and mood. i rate a restaurant on whether or not it was good enough to
go back to and i can tell you i will be back here soon.

OTBKB reader who, four months after the fact, is still lamenting Seventh Avenue’s loss:

Snooky’s was what it was – a regular folks bar with serviceable food.

I’ve been reading bad stuff in other blogs about the current restaurant
at that address — Elementi — scheduled to open Tuesday.

Good luck to them. And I hope to God the food is stellar. Guess all the real people stuff is now on 5th Avenue.

Info from Brooklyn Bridge Park website:

Grab your towel and shades for swimming, sunning, lounging, picnicing and playing in Brooklyn Bridge Park this summer.

Cost: FREE!

Hours:
Pool – 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.
Beach – 9 a.m. – 7 p.m.
7 days a week

What’s there to do? Take a dip in the 25 meter, 7 lane Floating Pool Lady,
a floating swimming pool moored in the East River. Run your toes
through the sand on the 40,000 square foot Brooklyn Bridge Park Beach.
Grab a burger, rent an umbrella and enjoy the spectacular views of New
York Harbor. Get your game on for pick-up beach volleyball and sand
soccer or contact MetroSoccer to sign up for leagues and clinics!

Where: In the future Brooklyn Bridge Park! Between
Piers 4 and 5 (Furman and Joralemon Streets), one block north of
Atlantic Avenue. Mapquest: 334 Furman Street.

How do I get there?

Patrick Kwan at Super Vegan says:

Via Gothamist and The Brooklyn Eagle, the word’s been leaked that Trader Joe’s will take over the vacant Independence Savings Bank building at the corner of Court and Atlantic in Downtown Brooklyn – at the juncture of Brooklyn Heights, Boerum Hill, and Cobble Hill.

At 10 p.m on Friday night, after seeing Pixar’s "Ratatouille," Hepcat drove to the Fifth Avenue Apple Store and shelled out more money into Steve Job’s pocket for an iPhone. He also bought one for Diaper Diva (who now owes him $599.00).

"If the phone is half asa good as Ratatouille was I’ll be very pleased," Hepcat said as he opened his new iPhone box.

"They’ve got a guy standing out in front and every time someone walks in he says" ‘Oooooh iPhone.’ Then he claps his hands every time a customer leaves the store with a phone."

Hepcat said the store wasn’t very crowded when he got there so he milled around and looked at  accessorries. Then 100 people walked in and he got on line and bought one for himself and DD.

It took Hepcat a long time to drive home to Brooklyn because there were check points on 18th Street and the Battery Tunnel related to increased security around the city because of the  London bomb plot. "Near Tiger Schumlman’s it took ten minutes to go one block," he says.

So far, Hepcat is quite enamoured of the packaging. "Very nice," he says. Now he’s reading the manual. "Do not use iPhone in rain, or near washbasins or others wet locations. Take care not to spill any food or liquid on iPhone. In case iPhone gets wet, unplug all cables…Do not attempt to dry iPhone with an external heat surces, such as a microwave oven or hair dryer."

The camera is very nice on it, Hepcat says. He checked the Internet on one of the phones at the store. "OTBKB has very, very tiny type when you try to look at it on the iPhone. We’ll have to do a special iPhone version for the iPhone I guess." 

The City Room reports that Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly has ordered the NYPD to step up its antiterrorism activities in New York, after the police
in London announced that they had defused a car bomb and closed down major thoroughfares across the city.

Check out OTBKB’S GUIDE TO SUMMER IN BROOKLYN. I am updating all the time and adding interesting things like the Floating Lady Pool on the 4th of July.

There’s an icon on the right hand side of the page…

Should I do August, too?

The Brooklyn Paper reports that Mayor Bloomberg doesn’t think Ratner needs he massive public subsidy handed to him
by the state Assembly last week. He
called for Gov. Spitzer to block the legislation.

In slamming the Assembly handout — which the mayor estimated would
cost taxpayers $300 million, not the $175 million originally estimated
by government watchdogs — Bloomberg has joined the chorus of advocates,
legislators and Atlantic Yards opponents condemning the amendment that
would give special treatment to the mega-developer.

“[The bill is] going to hurt the very people that everybody talks
about helping and gives some tax breaks to a developer that doesn’t
need them and which we didn’t have to do,” Bloomberg said on his weekly
WABC radio show on Friday morning. READ MORE AT THE BROOKLYN PAPER

No Words_Daily Pix will be weighing in on this story, reported by Gothamist, shortly. For now: go there.

We call it the Fun train. The F, that is. The train we know and love.

The F: it gets us where we need to go. Even if it is slow and always very, very crowded during rush hour.

And what a crush of cultures it is: Hasidim pray ocking as they read their prayer books; junior and high students goof and push; parents and children recite names of the stations like an urban alphabet, twenty-somethings to and fro rom jobs in Manhattan; tired office workers; artists, musicians; the same old subway beggers year in, year out…

An oh the places it goes: Park Slope, of course. Coney Island all the way to the last stop. The elevated platforms at Smith and Ninth for its sweeping panoramic views.

Carroll Gardens, downtown Brooklyn, DUMBO.

Chinatown, the Lower East Side, the East Village, the West Village, SoHo and Chelsea, where I used to work back when I had a job in the city. Up Sixth Avenue to Rockefeller Center. It even stops on the same block as my dentist.

Those are the places I need to be.

Before I moved here, a friend, who lived near Delancey Street, called the F-Train a "mail train" because, she said,  it makes sooooo many stops. And she didn’t even ride it all the way to Brooklyn.

Second Avenue, Delancey Street, East Broadway, York Street, Jay Street, Bergen, Carroll…

After September 11, when I developed subway anxiety, the F was the only train I could ride without heart palpatations. The 2,3 and 4 trains went past the World Trade Center and riding those trains I would brace myself in fear and grief until we were well past Lower Manhattan. I would clench again for Times Square or Grand Central, obvious targets for mass annihilation.

But I could ride on the F without fear. And when it rose above the city at Smith and Ninth and Fourth Avenue, I felt blessed by its symphonic views. Teetering on the elevated tracks, it was my daily roller coaster ride. Sometimes stopping for a breath, waiting for the G train ahead of us. Cell phones ringing — spouses, parents, friends, lovers checking in. Then down under again and home to Seventh Avenue.

The F. It’s taken me where I need to be since 1991 when we grudgingly made Park Slope our home, economic exiles from Manhattan. Over time, we grew to love our new borough and the train that took us there.

The F.  Let’s get an express. It’s a train problem we can do something about.

Awesome. Amazing variety of films. Talking ’bout a revolution in film, music, and art
united under the banner of black rebellion. This year, BAM’s festival focuses on Black Panthers, with a special art show in the llobby
featuring photographs and work from Pratt and lots of music at the BAM Cafe.

OTBKB’S SUMMER IN BROOKLYN GUIDE will keep you updated on highlights. Start with this today. A good overview. AND: a 21 minute interview with Basquiat!!

Afro-Punk
(2003) 116min

Fri, June 29 at 7pm*
Tue, July 3 at 4:30pm


› Buy Tickets

Directed by James Spooner
The film that started it all, Afro-Punk
explores race identity within the punk scene. Channeling the raw sound
of punk rock rebellion, this documentary tackles hard issues such as
loneliness, exile, interracial dating, and black power.
With Bad Brains Shorts, approx. 29min
Directed by Nicola L.
and A Conversation with Basquiat, 21min
Directed by Tamra Davis
Unseen for years, this portrait features some of the only known video of Basquiat working.
*Q&A with James Spooner

The Brooklyn Paper, as usual, chock full of interesting news, has a story about plans to fix the big- time traffic problems at Grand Army Plaza. Here’s an excerpt from Chris Cascarano’s story. Go to BP for the rest of the story and a map.

Grand Army Plaza could be transformed from an intimidating,
speeder-friendly highway in the center of Brooklyn to a calmer traffic
circle under a revolutionary plan that continues to gain speed of its
own.

At a meeting last week at the Brooklyn Public Library’s
Central branch, a citizens group presented its most fully drawn plan to
reconfigure the plaza and reconnect the landmark Soldiers’ and Sailors’
arch with the entrance to Prospect Park, creating a safe, car-free
walkway.