Today kids and parents, who participate in local baseball leagues, will be out in full force on Seventh Avenue for the annual baseball parade, which starts at 10AM at Carroll Street and Seventh Avenue in Park Slope. As I remember, the teams meet up on the side streets about an hour earlier than the parade itself.

The  parade marks the beginning of the Brooklyn baseball season and it’s quite a site to see Seventh Avenue brimming with kids instead of cars from Carroll Street all the way to Ninth Street.

For many kids it’s their first time in uniform so it’s a pretty exciting day. I especially like to see the little kids — the cute 3,4,5 year olds in their gear.

The parade ends at the band shell in Prospect Park and many local politicians and officials will be on hand to celebrate the day. There will be lots of speeches and loads of cliches about sports, life and the nature of community. The Brooklyn Dodgers will be evoked again and again by some of the older speakers no doubt.

Ah yes, it brings back memories. My son played baseball with the 78th precinct from kindergarten until he was about 11. I’m amazed that he hung in there for so long as he’s not the sportiest guy. The outfield is a great place to dream until a ball comes your way and then it’s high drama.

There were many highs and lows during his baseball career and lots of trophies (because in Park Slope everyone gets a trophy). His kindergarten team was especially cute. The kids didn’t know you were supposed to run after they batted the ball and the parents would all yell “Run, run!”

The parents we met were pretty low key about the whole baseball thing. We didn’t experience the hyper-competitive, cut throat behavior we’d heard about.

It was Park Slope after all.

The parents I knew did a lot of socializing during the practices and games. Every so often they’d take a break from their conversations and ask, “Who’s winning?”

But there was joy in watching the kids improve and really learn the skills of the game. And don’t get me wrong: joy in winning. And when the kids lost a game we watched silently as they shook hands with the other team and tried to take it in stride.

And yeah: when my son hit a base run or a made a good outfield play we were ecstatic.

Ecstatic.

Brought to you by the Feldman Family from their local weather tower.

The Little League Parade is tomorrow. They may be little but there are a lot of them and it is one of the great sights to see ’em marching up Seventh Avenue and across 9th Street to the bandshell.

The 78^th Precinct is informing the community that the Little League parade route has changed this year (but I can’t find out exactly how the route has changed. I am looking into it).

Little Leaguers will gather on the morning of Saturday, April 10th, 2010 on First and Second Streets between 6^th and 8^th Avenues.

Maybe that’s the change: it’s not starting down by Carroll? Not sure yet.

If you live on those blocks, you may see lots of Little Leaguers tomorrow morning!

It’s one of those events that makes this part of Brooklyn so quaint and cute: Little Leaguers from all over Brooklyn march through Park Slope and Prospect Park to kick off the 2010 baseball and softball season.

The parade begins at  7th Avenue & 2nd Street at 10AM and ends with an event at the Bandshell. It’s all happening tomorrow on Saturday, April 10,  10 a.m. – 12:30 p.m, and it’s the day that marks Prospect Park’s official Opening Day, which means that there are great activities throughout the Park.

FYI: The 78^th Precinct is informing the community that the Little League parade route has changed this year. Little Leaguers will gather on Saturday morning on First and Second Streets between 6^th and 8^th Avenues.

If you live on those blocks, you may see lots of Little Leaguers tomorrow morning!

Brought to you by the Feldman Family from their local weather tower.

Marty Markowitz wants an Apple store in Brooklyn and he wrote Steve Jobs to tell him. Here’s the note he sent from his iPad.

Dear Mr. Jobs:

As you surely know, in the creative world, there’s no place hotter than Brooklyn , USA . Just like “Apple,” Brooklyn is now an international “brand,” signifying the coolest place on earth to live, work, play and create.

I know you’re always dreaming up the next big thing—here’s a suggestion: Hit the big time and bring an Apple store to Brooklyn !

As we speak, Manhattan ’s got four Apple stores, and our “suburb” of Staten Island ’s even got one. It’s time to bring the goods to the real market—the Mac-loving designers, writers, artists, bloggers, musicians, creative innovators and tech entrepreneurs in Brooklyn neighborhoods like Williamsburg and Greenpoint, Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, Park Slope and Carroll Gardens, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights, Prospect Heights, DUMBO, Red Hook and beyond.

Downtown Brooklyn is the third largest business hub in New York City —with more college students than Cambridge , Massachusetts . And these days, tourists visiting NYC are staying in Brooklyn hotels, dining at our renowned Brooklyn restaurants, hitting our clubs and cultural hot spots (and hey, if they want to take a day trip to Manhattan , that’s okay!).

One more thing…

As Brooklyn borough president, I invite you to come to Brooklyn for a meeting, tour our borough and explore possible sites. I will even visit you in Cupertino —one hour is all I ask—and make the pitch of a lifetime for the biggest retail launch of the decade.

Let’s make “Apple Brooklyn” the ultimate prototype store—one that changes the game yet again, with a retail experience that offers superior educational outreach and catalyzes entrepreneurial partnerships—a kind of “e-town square.”

This is my official invitation: Let’s make it happen! An Apple Store Grows in Brooklyn !

Sincerely,

Marty Markowitz

Sent from my iPad

It was a 34-year-old woman who jumped in front of a train at the Seventh Avenue station on Wednesday at 5:30 PM. Hugh Crawford happened to be there and took pictures of the rescue effort.

Thankfully, the woman survived with deep cuts.  She was taken to Kings County Hospital in Crown Heights for treatment.

Service was halted for 40 minutes while rescue workers pulled the woman from the tracks.

No Words arrived at the Seventh Avenue F Train station in Park Slope on his way to Manhattan to trade in some camera equipment when he noticed that a person was under a train on the Manhattan bound side. The police were talking with the person until rescue workers arrived and got him out. We don’t know the condition of the person who fell into the tracks or how he/she fell into the tracks. But No Words did take a number of pictures of the scene.

Photos now, details later, click the photo to see the entire series

St. Vincent’s, last RC hospital in NY, is broke,  closing. –news item

Where’d the money go,

Pedophile protection.

It is so gorgous I barely know what to do with myself. Has there ever been a more beautiful New York day? It’s absolutely sublime and even more sublime if you don’t have to be indoors today.

–I want to take my computer outside and write in the park or sitting at an outdoor cafe!

–I want to go running!

–I want to walk around the park with a friend!

–I want to take my bike out for a spin!

–I want to have a picnic under a tree in Prospect Park!

–I want to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge!

–I want to have my therapy appointment on my therapist’s stoop (not likely).

–I want to have a beer at The Gate at sundown.

–I want to open all our windows!

–I want it to be just like this for days!

Public school started back up again today after the Passover/Easter break. It felt like a long vacation but it was only one week and two days. OSFO didn’t do much. She spent time around the house, on the stoop, hanging out with her friends.

This morning the unbearably LOUD  alarm clock went off at 6AM in the morning and I went into OSFO’s room to wake her up.

“Come back in 10 minutes,” she said.

I returned in 10 minutes and she was still loathe to get out of bed but finally did. She went through two or three outfits before settling on the short-shorts and turquoise t-shirt and left the house around 8:05. I fell back asleep and had an unbelievably elaborate dream.

I dreamed that OSFO and about 20 friends returned to the apartment because they were cutting school. Kids were everywhere. On couches, under tables, in beds. I was furious and I furiously called their parents.

“Your child is cutting school,” I said into the phone to numerous parents.

It was quite a rancorous scene. OSFO disappeared so I spent much of the dream yelling at other people’s children to go back to school. Bit by bit, the children left the apartment; parents came; the kids returned to school. I guess I was pretty happy to have her back in school.

Unconsciously anyway.

Brought to you by the Feldman Family from their local weather tower.

Tupper Thomas, president of the Prospect Park Alliance, is set to announce her retirement int he next day or so. Today the New York Times ran an article saluting her magnificent efforts on behalf of the park we love. Here’s an excerpt from the Times’ article.

Drugs were sold at the carousel. Muggers used the cover provided by the park’s shrubs and foliage. One year, near the skating rink, a man was found shot to death, and another year, the acting supervisor of the zoo was arrested and charged with shooting animals.

Three decades later, Ms. Thomas, who plans to announce her retirement on Tuesday, has become a Brooklyn institution and is widely seen as the park’s indefatigable savior.

In the 1970s, Prospect Park in Brooklyn looked more like a crime scene than the pastoral refuge imagined a century earlier by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux.

As if to advertise the woeful state of the park, in 1976 Columbia, the figure driving atop the arch at Grand Army Plaza, fell over in her chariot, a victim of disrepair.

Four years later, perhaps not fully aware of the mess the park had become, a 35-year-old former city bureaucrat and urban planner named Tupper Thomas answered a newspaper ad for a job as the park’s administrator. She was from Minnesota, knew nothing about parks and even spelled Mr. Olmsted’s name wrong on her application.

“This apple-cheeked young woman came into my office,” said Gordon J. Davis, the former parks commissioner who hired Ms. Thomas. “She looked nothing like a New Yorker, and sounded nothing like someone from Brooklyn. She giggled the whole time. Tupper seemed to have come from the moon.”

Illegal dump site to be cleaned: Gerritsen Beach

“Metrosexual crap”: Sheepshead Bites

Zipcar expands into Bushwick: Bushwick BK

Pit Bull Myths: NY Shitty

Easter and Beautiful Hats: The Local

Kathleen is back in Carroll Park: Pardon Me for Asking

Thank you, Tupper Thomas: Ditmas Park Blog

Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn ventured out to Coney Island recently and was in for a surprise. Here’s an excerpt from his blog:

Despite the intermittent media coverage regarding pending development,   it was still a bit of a surprise, visiting Coney Island yesterday,  to see the huge swath of the Boardwalk, from Stillwell Avenue east, fenced off, shops closed, as reconstruction of the Boardwalk, and presumably further development, commences.

While it was still early in the season, only a couple of food stands were open, west of Stillwell. I didn’t realize that the impact of the development would be felt so soon, it seems clear that that the fenced off area precludes business in this section over the summer, if, as the sign indicates, work will be completed in Fall 2010.  While it is possible to walk the length of the shore, much of the trip to Brighton Beach would have to be made either on the street or on the sand, since the Boardwalk no longer serves as a thoroughfare…

Read more here

From time to time, McBrooklyn puts on its Headhunting gear and scouts out a handful of Brooklyn employment opportunities. He scours Craig’s List and Hot Jobs mostly and comes up with quite a list.  Go here to see his latest.

Brooklyn fears crime wave as nearly all precincts report spike in felonies. That’s a headline in the Daily News today and here’s an excerpt from the story:

Just three months into 2010 robberies, burglaries, grand larceny and car thefts are on the rise in much of the borough, especially in some traditionally safe neighborhoods, NYPD statistics show.

“It’s terrifying,” said Lauren Bousquet, 24, who just after midnight last Sunday was robbed at gunpoint along with two friends by a trio of young thugs on Joralemon St. in Brooklyn Heights.

“I don’t feel like we were doing anything that risky. It was fairly well-lit,” said Bousquet. “It was a reasonable time and in a safe neighborhood. How do you stay safe?”

Bousquet and her friends were mugged in Brooklyn’s sleepy 84th Precinct, where there was a 104% increase (from 24 to 49) in robberies through March 21.

Read more here

BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND!

At BAX on Fifth Avenue and 8th Street in Park Slope

Wednesdays | April 7, 14, 21, 28 | 7:30 – 9:30 PM

$50 for workshop | No drop-ins

Learn how to blog in a hands-on workshop covering technical, creative and conceptual issues. In this class we will discuss blog design, how to write a great blog post, top-ten tips for new bloggers, search engine optimization, social networking platforms and more. You don’t need to know a thing about blogging. All you need is the desire to blog!

Louise Crawford runs Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn and is the Smartmom columnist for the Brooklyn Paper. She produces the annual Brooklyn Blogfest and Brooklyn Reading Works, a montly literary reading series at the Old Stone House in Park Slope. A freelance writer her work has appeared in Newsweek, the Associated Press and BKLYN Magazine. She has taught How to Blog workshops at BAX, Adelphi University, Baruch College and at Writers-at-the-Beach in Rehobeth, Delaware.

Barclays’ Bob Diamond under the gun in the UK: Atlantic Yards Report

When will Obama address the disportionate color of unemployment?: City Limits

How many trucks and workers does it take DOT to repair a patch of Union Street: Pardon Me for Asking

Book review of The Battle for Gotham: No Land Grab

Jobs with the census: Ditmas Park Blog

Brooklyn has lowest census return rate: The Daily News

Beware there’s a horticultural thief in Park Slope and he or she is grabbing plants, flowers, buds and bulbs from local gardens and stoops. From the Brooklyn Paper:

A green-thumbed burglar is on the loose in Park Slope, striking fear in the roots of plants, and forcing owners to safeguard their property by any means necessary.

Victims say that the bandit has been stealing buds and bulbs for some time in and around an the area where Sixth, St. Marks and Flatbush avenues converge.

And the thief isn’t discriminating, snatching all manner of flora from stoops or front gardens, and forcing owners to tether their pots with sturdy cables, or even cement them firmly to the ground.

As you know, the city suspends alternate side parking (street cleaning) regulations, for both street cleaning purposes and traffic flow, on 34 legal and religious holidays and Passover is one of those holidays. So today and tomorrow (April 5&6, you can leave your car where it is).  This includes suspension of street cleaning regulations at metered spaces.

Brought to you by the Feldman Family from their local weather tower.

EASTER (with thanks to the Brooklyn Eagle)

–The Annual Brooklyn Heights Spring Egg Hunt takes place Saturday, April 3, 10 a.m. sharp at Pierrepont Playground (Columbia Heights and Pierrepont Streets on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade). Every spring, hundreds of little bunnies and their families turn out to participate. Candy, treats, balloons and good friends have made this a holiday tradition for many families. A bake sale will be held to benefit the Brooklyn Heights Playground Committee.

–Senator’s Easter Egg Hunt: Saturday, April 3, 2 to 4 p.m. in McKinley Park, Bay Ridge Parkway and Fort Hamilton Parkway. Participation is free; the egg hunt will feature music and prizes for the youngsters, who will be occupied searching for the over 1,000 candy-filled eggs. Also part of the fun will be races, face painting and entertainment provided by clowns. (Note: there are long lines and a limit of eggs per child.) For further information, call Senator Golden’s office at (718) 238-6044.

–Urban Meadow’s Second Annual Spring Egg Hunt: Red Hook, 11 a.m. for children 0-4; noon for children 5 and up. Face painting and a real bunny. Bring a basket. Corner of President and Van Brunt streets.

–Prospect Park Audubon Center’s Unscrambling the Egg, from 1 to 3 p.m. on Saturday, April 3, and Easter Sunday, April 4. Free. The event will feature crafts, games and special exhibits. Enter the park at Lincoln Road and Ocean Avenue, at Parkside and Ocean avenues, or at Flatbush Avenue and Empire Boulevard. 718-287-3400 or www.prospect park.org.

–Easter Egg Hunt and Party: Ms. J’s Gymnastics and Dance at 289 Kent Ave Brooklyn, Saturday, April 3, 4:30-6 p.m. Family Fun time after you find all the eggs; limit three eggs per child. (718) 218-7065. Free for registered families, $10 for non registered families.

–Sunday, April 4: Park Slope Parents All Volunteer Easter Egg Hunt: Meet at Third Street and Prospect Park West entrance. 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Greeters will send groups of up to 20 people into Prospect Park. Each group appoints a hiking leader, entertainers, egg-hiders, etc. The group will keep their kids occupied with music, tattoos (provided by PSP) or other activity. The last group will be sent off at 11:30. Bring: 1) a dozen or so plastic Easter eggs filled with goodies. 2) props (Easter books, guitar players, shakers, etc.) 3) lunch and a blanket if you want to enjoy the park afterward.

–Meet Your Neighbors Breakfast and Easter Egg Hunt: 10 a.m. Organized by the Friends of Underhill Playground group in Prospect Heights, this potluck breakfast of coffee and bagels will include an Easter egg hunt, rain or shine. Some eggs provided, but bring your own plus baskets. Free, just show up! For more information: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/underhillplayground/.

–Prospect Park Audubon Center’s Unscrambling the Egg, from 1 to 3 p.m. on Saturday, April 3, and Easter Sunday, April 4. Free: the event will feature crafts, games and special exhibits. Enter the park at Lincoln Road and Ocean Avenue, at Parkside and Ocean avenues.

Brought to you by the Feldman Family from their local weather tower.

I couldn’t resist this because I just love sock monkeys and I love Fresh Art, a NYC-based non-profit organization that provides opportunities for artists with special needs. This email came from Elisabet at Pink Olive, a whimsical boutique in Park Slope.

We are going to be collaborating with Classic Kids Photography and
Fresh Art for our “Adopt a Sock Monkey” event coming up April 24th.
We will be offering a complimentary photo shoot at the event with every sock monkey purchased. All sock monkeys are made by volunteers and 80% of the proceeds will go back the organization.

On April 22 from 4PM until 6PM St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights will host in its Maroney Theater (7th floor) readings by some of the contributors to Pain and Memory, edited by Anne Whitehouse. Dr. Timothy Houlihan, Academic Dean at St. Francis College had this to say about the book:

“Pain and Memory: Reflections on the Strength of the Human Spirit in Suffering . . . is a remarkable volume filled with small and large treasures. I especially enjoyed Anne Whitehouse’s Rose’s Dream. It captures the unreal nature of sadness after the death of a longtime companion, the enormous will we have to muster in order to bring ourselves through the suffering, and our surprise at finding we have the ability to go on. And Kathie Giorgio brilliantly sums up the way in which a loved one’s death changes our perspective, not just on ourselves, but on size and color and the place in which we live.”