Eight more days and I will be celebrating a major milestone. Here is my thought for today:

Turning forty, as I recall, was more about: Where am I in my life? What have I accomplished? Who am I?

Turning fifty is more about: health, mortality, big questions of time and space.
It’s bracing and REAL.

My forties were about getting comfortable in my own skin, in my own life, in my own way of thinking.

At almost fifty, I feel fierce and determined. I feel ready for anything. I feel strong, excited, and a little bit scared.

The New York Observer has this piece about Sunset Park, between
3rd Avenue and Upper New York Bay, which is now home to a thriving gallery, a
weekly film series, and a growing number of artist studios. Here’s an excerpt.

“Three years ago, the words ‘Sunset Park’ weren’t even on anyone’s radar,” says Jospeh Anastasi, who opened the Tabla Rasa Gallery on 48th Street in 2005 with his wife Audrey. “It was like ‘Field of Dreams’—if you build it they will come.”

The Anastasis say their gallery is becoming a “destination” on the
city’s art circuit, and they’re seeing more artists nowadays in the
neighborhood.

“I see people walking down the streets all the time with Pearl Paint
bags,” says Audrey Anastasis, who has a studio in the rear of the
gallery.

Relatively cheap space is what drew painter Griselda Healy to the studio she rents on 36th Street about a year and a half ago.

“The rents are certainly much more attractive than they are in Red
Hook, Dumbo or Long Island City,” says Healy, who pays $1,000 a month
for her work space. “An artists community is evolving here because
artists enjoy being in quiet places, and there are no distractions
here.”

Yup. It’s all over the airwaves and the Blogosphere. I heard it from WNBC’s Sue Simmon’s herself. The two headed turtle has been stolen Sean Casey’s pet shop in Kensington. He urges whomever stole the exotic turtle to BRING IT BACK.

That turtle needs special care.

In just nine days I will be celebrating a major milestone. Here is my thought for today.

I’m not really dreading it anymore. I guess I’m settling into the idea of being fifty. And fifty can mean whatever I want it to mean, right?

I was inspired watching 41-year-old Dara Torres win the silver medal for the 50 mm freestyle. Afterwards a reporter asked what she would tell her 2-year-old daughter about this:  "Don’t put an age limit on your dreams," she said.

But she’s only 41!

Still, no age limit on your dreams is a great message. There’s nothing any of us can do about the  passage of time. But we can make our lives as full and interesting as possible.

Catchup

You’ve had your summertime in the sun,
Turned blazing, crimson red,
Applied the recommended wet
Washcloth and gone to bed.

You’ve listened to Beethoven and Bach
And John Zorn on the lawn
And gotten bitten by hungry bugs
And look like  a savaged fawn.

You’ve driven winding country roads
That always leave you a mess
And having failed to learn a thing
Still have no G.P.S.

But now you’re home, it’s catchup day,
A bloody collection of thrills!
A hundred messages and a pile
Of magazines and  bills.

In ten days, on August 28th, I will turn fifty. It’s a milestone, alright. A half century. I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. But here is my thought for the day:

On my birthday, Senator Barack Obama will accept the Democratic nomination for
President of the United States at Denver’s INVESCO Field at Mile High with 75,000 people in attendance. That’s kind of exciting.

August 28th was also the day that Martin Luther King made his "I Have A Dream" speech at the 1963 March on Washington. I haven’t figured out what I’m doing to celebrate the day. But I definitely want to be near a television.

Park Slope’s Andrea Bernstein, the political director of WNYC’s The Takeaway and Producer Adam Hirsch are traveling west to the Democratic National Convention in Denver, through swing
states Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio,
Indiana…You can hear her reports in the mornings on The Takeaway (8-10 a.m on WNCY AM), as well as blogging here.

Message for the day — ambivalence. We heard lots and lots of "a pox on
both their houses," and "I’ll be voting for the lesser of two evils."
Who’s that? Well, Republican John McCain’s a war hero, but also a
"warmonger" one 85-year-old retiree told us. But still, nothing could
convince her that Democrat Barack Obama wasn’t too young for the job,
though she wasn’t thrilled about electing long-time AARP member McCain.
On the other hand, another retiree who said she’s voted for George W.
Bush twice felt Obama was less threatening — she told us the
Republicans had botched the economy. One retired social worker who
voted for Senator Hillary Clinton said she’d opt for Obama — "What
choice do I have?"

On September 11th, Eric Bogosian and Elliott Sharp Mark will perform In the Shadow of No Towers (After Art Spiegelman) at ISSUE Project Room on September 11, 2008.

An animated film and graphic menagerie based on Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel In The Shadow of No Towers, in which relates his personal experiences during the September 11th attacks, this multifaceted piece will be accompanied by a live experimental soundtrack interwoven with spoken word.

Inspired by the compassion, light and irony evoked in Spiegelman’s book, Syntax Error’s Anne Rothshild, Maria Isabel Gouverneur and Marco Cappelli transposed and transformed the account into a video piece, paired with nuanced compositions that sweep through various musical vernaculars rooted in kaleidoscopic improvisation. One of two special guests joining the ensemble for this premier will be renowned multi-instrumentalist, composer, and performer Elliott Sharp, who will contribute guitar, bass clarinet and live electronic elements. The other is acclaimed actor, monologist and Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright Eric Bogosian, who will lend his distinctive, minimalist style as narrator of the piece.

ISSUE Project Room is in the American Can Factory at Third Street and Third Avenue. Go to Issue Project Room for more ‘tails.

As reported on WNYC and in the NY Daily News: there’s a two-headed turtle at Sean Casey Animal Rescue, a rescue shelter, which specializes in exotic animals.

That sure is exotic.

According to the Daily News, Casey got the two-headed turtle from a man in Florida, who rescued a bunch of eggs from a female killed by a car. Casey nursed it back to health at his Kensington pet shop, Hamilton Dog House on East Third Street.

from the Daily News."He feeds each head by hand, because otherwise they fight over the little pellets.

The
water in the tank is shallow because if the turtle overturns, the two
heads can’t always agree on the best way to flip back – a drowning
hazard.

"It’s like they argue," Casey said."

Another pair in a long line of bickering Brooklyn house mates, maybe they should be named Ralph and Alice

Daily at 2, 4:30, 7:10, 9:20pm at BAM (and check out their new website), Man on a Wire, is on my must-see list.

Film documents Phillippe Petit’s crossing of a wire suspended 1,350 feet above the ground between the Twin
Towers of the World Trade Center.

He is subsequently arrested for the
"artistic crime of the century." Award-winning documentary filmmaker
James Marsh investigates the clandestine plotting of Petit’s walk with
the suspense of a heist film. Marsh uncovers archival footage, candid
interviews from Petit and his team, and delightful visual effects to
astonish audiences with an adventure story from the past set against
the visceral presence of a post-9/11 backdrop. Winner of the World
Cinema Jury Prize Documentary and the World Cinema Audience Award for
Documentary at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.

Richard Grayson, author of Summer in Brooklyn and Who Will Kiss the Pig: Sex Stories for Teens heard Pete Hamill read from his new novel, North River, at the Park Slope branch of Barnes and Noble last week. He files this report.

Dr. Bob Wolk, the psychologist whose office in Concord Village we used to go to every week in our late teens, once told us he’d appeared on a TV talk show with someone he described as "a fine young man" – at least that’s what we wrote in our 1970 diary.

One of the first stories we ever wrote that got published (in Transatlantic Review) begins with these four words: "Somebody like Pete Hamill. . ."

Except there’s nobody quite like Pete Hamill.

Pete Hamill is still a fine young man, as well as an amazing writer whose early career was a touchstone for us growing up. We devoured his newspaper columns, magazine articles and everything else we could find by him. Pete Hamill provided proof to us that, yeah, you could grow up in Brooklyn and be a writer someday.

Last night we were lucky enough to have enough sense to go out in the rain to see Pete Hamill at the Park Slope Barnes & Noble. He’s promoting the paperback of his Depression-era novel North River, which we already read in hardcover. We didn’t buy it but got it at the library, and we think that probably would be okay with Pete, who began by saying how great it was to be back in "the neighborhood that shaped me" and talking about the local libraries which had nourished him.

Hamill said that around the country, people will ask him what it was like to grow up poor in Brooklyn during hard times, and he sometimes will answer that he wasn’t poor, because he had companions like Edmond Dantes in The Count of Monte Cristo and Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island. And he got them from the public library.

Discussing the Prospect branch library on 9th Street (its name gentrified in 1975 to the Park Slope branch), Hamill said he still saw lots of kids in there, reading, getting tutored, and making the kind of discoveries he did as a boy. At Grand Army Plaza’s central library, there are "immigrant kids at every table, reading their way into America."

Hamill said that Andrew Carnegie is his favorite American millionaire, because he created 1,600 libraries across America (and we love them all, from our Leonard branch library two blocks away to the Carnegie library in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, which we visited every day when we lived there in 2001). As an immigrant kid from Scotland, Hamill said, Carnegie went into the only library in Pittsburgh, a private library, and they looked at his clothes and heard his funny accent and told him to go home, it wasn’t a place for him.

The Brooklyn public libraries were definitely a place for the young Pete Hamill.

Last night he talked about recently passing by the corner of 11th Street at Seventh Avenue, where he recalled reading The Count of Monte Cristo, borrowed from the library, perched on a cellarboard. And he talked with passion about reading, about making sense out of symbols on a page, a more active form of entertainment than the TV that would come later.

Hamill discussed New York in general and Park Slope in particular in the bygone eras he writes about in North River and other novels. On V-J Day in August 1945, he said, Seventh Avenue in the Slope erupted in pure joy and confidence as people poured out into the street to celebrate, to the sounds of foghorns and church bells, the end not just of the long war but of 15 years of sacrifice and hard times, starting with the Great Depression.

He read an excerpt from the novel, a story about a World War I (Great War then, of course) field doctor, James Delaney, now a West Village GP with an office hard by the North River, which is what New Yorkers still called the Hudson back then. When Delaney’s 3-year-old grandson Carlito is left on his doorstep, Delaney has to deal with his internal depression, his frustrations toward his daughter, and the loss of his wife, who’d run off after he returned from Europe. Delaney hires Rosa, a Sicilian immigrant, to care for Carlito when he’s at work. As a doctor, Delaney has connections to all the neighborhood, including the Mafia.

As the story unfolds, Delaney and Rosa grow closer, and the passage Hamill read has him taking her first to Times Square and then for her long-hoped-for night of dancing at Roseland, where a skinny Italian-American singer [Hamill explained that the ethnic slur wop came from "without papers," though we’ve heard other possible origins] performs such classic 30s songs – meaningful to people going through such hard times – as "You Made Me Love You," "Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries" and the melancholy anthem "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?"

Hamill reads well, and his evocation of the period, from the movie marquees and billboards in nighttime Times Square and the two-cent-apple lady singing "Mother McCree" to the skee-ball parlors and framed photos of FDR by newsstands awaiting the bulldog editions of the Mirror and Daily News are well-crafted.

It’s all nostalgia, of course – something Hamill later said New York City is particularly prone to – and it skirts sentimentality, but we bought it when we read it and we bought it listening to the words last night.

Hamill patiently took lots of questions and told lots of good stories, like about whiling away rainy or wintry Saturday mornings at the Minerva theater on Seventh Avenue and 14th Street, when admission was 12 cents before noon, and how the time a local street gang, the Tigers, surreptitiously used screwdrivers to unscrew a bunch of seats and walked out of the movies with the whole row attached.

The crowd at the bookstore was so large we spent most of the reading unable to see Hamill as the only space was behind a row of biology and physics books. As you might expect for a book that recalls S. Klein on the Square (Union Square for you hipsters) and the fox trot, a lot of the crowd were older, but there were people of all ages, including some twentysomethings standing in the row of books with us. Eventually we found an open space where we could see Mr. Hamill in his signature black t-shirt under a sport jacket.

In response to one of maybe twenty questions people asked, Hamill recalled his famous New York Magazine cover story from July 1969 about growing up in Brooklyn and touting the borough’s charms in a time when few tastemakers were looking at Brooklyn with anything but contempt and amusement. We remember getting that issue in the mail and nodding our head as we read it on our bedroom floor.

So, Hamill joked, maybe he’s responsible for the current Brooklyn boom and all its attendant pleasures and pains: "the incredible velocity of change." Maybe he is. He may lament the loss of community feeling engendered by the Depression and WWII – how Tammany bosses and neighbors would come to the aid of families struggling with particular hard times – but he celebrates the loss of that sense of menace from rougher days and he sees immigrant Dominicans, Chinese and Mexicans following the same paths as earlier Irish, Italian and Jewish immigrants, "making us feel better about ourselves as a people."

Hamill said a lot more – about his writing habits (he starts every book in longhand for that tactile connection), about comic books and comic strips being great training for creating narratives, about music and New York and education and journalism (he teaches it at NYU).

And Hamill was much more interesting than what we can convey here, but there’s one story he told that stuck with us, which related to how he approached being a newspaperman and particularly a columnist writing about ordinary New Yorkers:

He was about 8 and his brother Tommy about 6 and they were going to Pier 88 to watch the wreck of the Normandie as it continued to sink during the final years of World War II. There was a homeless bum begging on the corner, and the boys started making fun of him. Their mom got very angry and yelled at them for ridiculing the man, finally telling her sons, "Don’t ever look down on anyone!"

Pete Hamill said those words resonated with him his whole life. He thought of them when he wrote one of his first newspaper stories, about a guy and his family being evicted from their apartment because he’d lost his job and couldn’t pay the rent. The day his story appeared in the paper, people called in with job offers and ways to save the furniture on the street from getting wet or ruined.

That sense that the lives of "ordinary" people are worth caring about and writing about is what makes Pete Hamill a terrific writer in North River and his other books.

Once again the city learns, in disbelief, that a child has been fatally beaten by one of her parents. She was only 3-years-old and her name was Ginelis Jimenez.

How could this happen? There are usually signs: at day care, in the apartment building, in the neighborhood? Did Child Services know the case? Didn’t anyone notice? Why wasn’t something done about this long this little girl lost her life?

Councilmember Bill de Blasio, chair of the Council’s General Welfare Committee, shares this frustration. On Friday he released this statement about the death of Ginelis Jimenez. He is calling on the public to say something if they see something that looks like child abuse. Call 311 and you can help save a child.

"I am horrified by the reports detailing the abuse Ginelis Jimenez suffered at the hands of her parents. It is impossible to understand how a child’s parents could be capable of such maltreatment and abuse. I am working with the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) to determine whether they had previous contact with the family and what, if anything, could have prevented this from happening."

De Blasio added, "this tragedy is a sad reminder that anyone who sees or hears any possible signs of abuse should report these instances immediately to 311 or ACS. By reporting abuse, you may help save a child’s life."

It’s a known fact that there are quite a few flyer-removers in Park Slope. On Park Slope Parents this week members have been talking about one person in particular. But this has been going on for years by a number of different people.

It is my understanding that flyer-removers are sticklers for flyer-free lamp posts (a flyer-free Park Slope). These people go around "cleaning" lamp posts of stoop sale signs and the like.

The flyer removers mostly focus on Seventh Avenue. I think flyers have a longer lamp-life on Fifth Avenue. There are flyer-removers on Sixth Avenue as well but they don’t work as quickly.

Jackie Connor, the late great Park Sloper who used to sit on the steps of Old First Church (and did many positive things for the neighborhood behind the scenes) was a flyer-remover, I am told, because she thought flyers on lamp posts were ugly. She did it, like she did many things, out of civic pride and a deep concern for the neighborhood she loved. The corner of Carroll Street and Seventh Avenue is officially named "Jackie Connor’s Corner."

However, some flyer -removers are crazy.

The other day I saw a crazy looking man taking flyers off of lamp posts in the South Slope. I said to myself: Ah Ha, a flyer-remover. But he is just one of a few.

Over the years I’ve learned not to even bother putting flyers on lamp posts on Seventh Avenue because they will be removed within hours. It’s just not worth the trouble. These flyer-removers work very quickly.

I guess the flyer-removers have won.

It has just come to my attention that the Brooklyn Paper has this story, too. In fact, they had it first.

Like 19th-century London, a mysterious ripper is roaming through
Park Slope, committing what some believe is a crime almost as bad as
saucy Jack’s: he’s tearing down stoop sale, lost pet and house-cleaning
fliers.

Unlike his historic counterpart, the Park Slope Ripper operates in
broad daylight. Of course, he has good reason to conduct his mission in
the open: it is illegal to hang fliers on public property like
lampposts.

But that hasn’t ensured the Ripper’s popularity

Hero or villain? He’s a villain!,” said Heidi, who declined to give
her last name. “Those signs are put up by parents who want to get rid
of stuff or people having a stoop sale. They don’t mean any harm.”

I read this on Rabbi Andy Bachman’s blog. It is a letter from the Park Slope chapter of Hadassah. The woman in need of blood is Andy’s aunt. You can get more information on Rabbi Andy’s blog.

Dear Friends,

I know you are all used to being asked to reach
for your checkbooks for donations, but today I have a request that
won’t cost you a penny.

A woman from our Chapter, is
going into Sloan-Kettering for transfusions tomorrow. She will need
blood for surgery in the very near future after that, once her counts
go up. I am asking for blood to be donated specifically for her, Type
A+.

Vouchers for parking in Memorial Sloan-Kettering’s parking garage are available to donors at the time of donation.

If you can, please forward this email to whoever you feel may be able to help.

An OTBKB reader sent in this recollection of the blackout of ’03. She has a swimming pool in the backyard of her brownstone. Ooh La La.

    I have a swimming pool in my backyard & I invited a bunch of neighbors over for a midnight swim.  We lit candles around the perimeter and all sat having cocktails (had to use up the ice before it melted, right?) & cooling off.  It was a lovely evening.

The number 6 train to Brooklyn Bridge stops suddenly, shy of the station. Passengers in the new, blue, computerized, air-conditioned subway car glance up and at each other. You don’t hold the gaze. That would register concern, and it is not cool to register concern at the normal jerkings, clickings and idiosyncrasies of the New York subway system. You could care less. On the outside, at any rate. After a minute of no movement I look up from my book again. We’re near the station, because already the walls on the one side of the track are tiled. Tunnels are just dark, with blue lights at intervals. Stations are tiled. The intercom comes to life and we are told to move to the first subway car and exit. In typical subway-intercom fashion the rest of the message sounds like popcorn shooting the lid of a pot. Well, this is different, we think. Instantly we become stoic New Yorkers. Grumble-grumble, but we’re interested now, without showing it, of course. We squeeze through one half of a pried-open door in the first car, the only one to have reached the platform.

The light is weird. Brooklyn Bridge station is a significant subway hub, with local trains meeting express. It is the embarkation point for those from Brooklyn wanting to go uptown in Manhattan, or from Manhattan to Brooklyn, the largest New York borough. Above ground are court houses, a park and the beginning of the beautiful Brooklyn Bridge. The lights in the station are humming and flickering.  It is as hot as hell. On several tracks trains are arrested. Tail-lights glow red in the tunnel. After five minutes of waiting for power to be restored I give up and surface.

The day is beautiful and hot, the trees in the park green and cooling over the people beginning to gather. I consider my options. Get a cab and go over the bridge. But I need money, so begin to walk towards a likely place for an ATM. Ah, but the traffic lights are not working. It’s affecting several blocks, this power thing. Ahead of me lies the inviting wide arch of the Brooklyn Bridge. Why not? I think. My feet provide the answer. “ Are you crazy? We are wearing your most expensive pair of little clippity-clop shoes and you know that they will bite us after more than a few blocks.” I have just come from a job interview, dressed sensibly in cargo pants and white top, but the shoes were for my ego. My heavy portfolio and wicker handbag have a short conversation with the feet. “Look, we have no money, just plastic, and we all want to go home. Just do it.” So off we go. It feels like an adventure.

Pedestrians cross the Brooklyn Bridge above the traffic, on a wide central boardwalk of worn-smooth wood. Really smooth. So I take off the expensive clippity-clops and put them into the wicker handbag. And we walk. The sky is blue. The bridge is already packed. The East River lies silver far below and ferries throw up high white wakes. A puff of smoke rises incongruously from the vicinity of the Fourteenth Street substation. “These terrorists,” I’m thinking, “they really are very clever.” In the sunlight, with the whole city on the move together, with the glittering skyline behind us, it is impossible to forget that this is a replay of 9/11, this bridge the conduit for the dazed, ash-obscured faces that left Lower Manhattan in a silent throng. Today there is nothing tumbling down behind us. It is very hot and very quiet. Half way across the sirens start, and all belong to unmarked black SUV’s.  Once down on the Brooklyn side, we are packed tight and have to walk carefully. I put my shoes back on. News from the radios in stuck cars reaches us. No power in the city. We don’t know why or how. A Rastafarian offers to carry me. A man missing two teeth says he’s had to abandon his truck in the city because he could not move for humans.

Through the downtown streets of Brooklyn we go, each with our homing instincts steering us. I have never seen so many people.  Intersections look like cartoon-clichés of gridlock. Drivers are angry. Inside stores, employees are preparing to close, to erect barricades. Brooklyn has no power. People are gathered around portable radios held to the ear. More news filters into the crowd. Canada, someone said. Impossible. Later, Ohio. The first clutch of fear. Really, really clever, these terrorists.

It takes an hour and a half from my Manhattan subway exit to my front door. The last blocks are long. Large ladies waving Puerto Rican flags are directing traffic. My feet, sore and blistered by now, have been bitten by the shoes, as predicted, but I am home. My head is hot. My arms and neck will be burned and I am very thirsty. Thousands of people continue their trek past my door to their homes.

First chore is to go out again, as soon as I’ve stood under a cold shower, to buy food for my cat. This finds me rooting for change, as the money-thing dawns on me. I still don’t have cash. Also very little food, as I’m a daily shopper. With $3 in quarters I visit the local deli run by two Palestinian brothers who are letting customers in two at a time and guiding them with torches on personalized shopping trips around the small store. Still sunny outside, it is pitch dark in the windowless space. I buy tuna in water for the cat. I come back later for candles but they are sold out.  I’ll have to make do with torch and tea lights.

My downstairs neighbour, Constanza, is waiting for me when I get back. Her husband is still missing. So 9/11. My boyfriend is somewhere, but where? My apartment seems dead, with no computer, no TV, no dial tone, no radio. We assess our situation. We still do not know what has happened. No one does. An inventory of fridges and cupboards yields enough liquor to see us through a weekend. But I ate my post 9/11 emergency rations a year ago. I mix up a fortifying Blackout Cocktail: three parts cognac, one part fresh lime juice, a teaspoon of powdered sugar, mint from the pot on the windowsill, stirred, crushed and topped with soda water and five ice cubes. Armed, we sit at her kitchen table and talk. For hours. We light two candles as the twilight turns dark. We get to know each other pretty well, even though we have lived above-below for three years. At 9pm her husband arrives, weary, guilty. Before embarking on his walk to Brooklyn he’d had a little pub-crawl. He then walked for two and a half hours. Outside, in the dark, people still stream past. The whistles of police directing traffic rhythmically split the night. Buses, packed with sitting and standing passengers, stay marooned in the street, going nowhere.

Continue reading Blackout ’03: The City That Disappeared →

Found in Brooklyn decided to clean out a big walk-in closet and found all kinds of photographs, including pictures of the plane crash in Park Slope. I’m not sure if these are photos that FIB collected once and forgot about. Or if they were hidden in her closet by a previous tenant.

Last month I found a bunch of amazing old photos in my closet, amongst them was is this test strip of images of the Park Slope Plane Crash of 1960!! Yup, two planes crashed down right on 7th Avenue in Park Slope.

A Brooklyn group is designing a 20-30 unit communal co-housing community. Sort of like a kibbutz without the farming or factory. Members live in their own apartments but there are shared spaces like a common kitchen, guest rooms, a children’s playroom and a community room,

It’s a big undertaking but the group, which is growing, seems to be moving along. Its a participatory model of community life, using consensus as a way to make group decisions. Not for the loner who likes to do everything his or her way.

To read more about it go to their website: brooklyncohousing.org

If you are interested, the next orientation meeting is on August 27th, 2008 at the Belarusian Church on the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Bond Street

Imagine my surprise when I saw a picture of my son in today’s Style section of the New York Times. There are also pictures of members of Radiates and Fiasco and a host of other band members. The story is called, Life is a Runway: Lots to Say With Just A T and it’s about various styles of dress found at a Knitting Factory show.

I am without the ability to put pictures up on the blog here in Sag Harbor but here is the link to the slide show. 

Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of the Blackout of 2003. Do you have a great story about that day?  Send it in to OTBKB. I’d love to read it and post it. Send to louise_crawford(at)yahoo(dot)com.

My story isn’t that great: I wasn’t even in town. We were on the farm in California as we usually are and I had the most terrible toothache. We walked into a dentist’s office in Modesto and the dentist said ominously: "Come see what’s happening in New York City."

My heart sunk and I imagined another 9/11. But then he told us that it was a blackout.

The television was on in the examination room and I saw images of people walking through NYC subway tracks. I worried about family and friends there. But my mouth really hurt.

The dentist proceeded with the root canal.

Just got this note from Lois Wingerson, who has been the force behind Club Loco, a monthly event for teens at Old First Church on Seventh Avenue in Park Slope

We just wanted to send you and update about this Fall: Club Loco will
not host any events this Fall, and we will keep you posted about plans
for Spring 09.

We have worked to recruit volunteers from the
larger Park Slope community, and at this point we still lack the
long-term committed leadership which Club Loco needs in order to
continue operations.

The consistory (governing board) of Old First Reformed Church,
who host Club Loco, called a meeting of committed volunteers, who are
advising that we step back and look at Club Loco’s mission and how best
to carry it forward.

CL would be happy to hear from you if you have any thoughts on its
growth, mission, or interest in supporting this process of discernment. You can always find us online at myspace.com/clubxloco.

Thanks so much for your generous support of CL the last two years, and as we look ahead.

As many of you know, I’m a big fan of Neil Feldman’s Not Only Brooklyn, a thrice-weekly, discriminating list of free cultural events in Brooklyn and elsewhere.

While it is a free service it is a labor of love by Feldman and he needs funds in order to improve NOB. That’s why he’s asking subscribers to donate even a small amount every month

For the record, when a barely getting by artist, writer or performer without a regular paycheck contributes $20 or even less, I am grateful and humbled. And many small contributions will add up. You can also write a check to Fractured Atlas, specifying NOB Arts in the memo space, and mail it to me. Anyway you find most convenient to make your tax deductible charitable contribution to keep NOB going is much appreciated. And necessary–NOB just cannot continue without the support of you, who receive it for free every 1-3 days. 

Sadly, Neil is not getting the volume of contributions that would make it possible to hire the technical expertise necessary to transform NOB into a user friendly interactive and searchable website.

There would be no need to put a long email together; events would be readable and searchable as soon as they were written and posted. Existing technology could alert you to events that interested you, whether by artist, type, or location.  Instead of you needing to read through all of NOB to find your particular interests, however you define them.

These improvements would bring NOB to another level and be a huge resource for Brooklynites and culture vultures.

I am one of those people who enjoys NOB without making a contribution and I intend to do something about that soon. If you do  not yet receive NOB, send an email to arbrunr(at)aol(dot)com with the message "Subscribe to NOB" and your first and last name, so it is legal to add you to the subscription list.

Beth Elohim’s Rabbi Andy Bachman was in Prospect Park along with nearly 7,000 others to catch Bob Dylan’s first show in NYC in five years. It was his first show ever in Brooklyn. Here are some of the Rabbi’s observations:

Interesting sightings: certain people’s dancing styles indicating
they clearly got into Dylan during their own exploration of the
Grateful Dead; yeshiva boys smoking up a storm and acting cool; Police
Commish Ray Kelly moving through the crowd checking on his officers;
the NYFD chilling and watching the show. The faces of those
disappointed that Dylan live sounds NOTHING like Dylan on records. The
weird blue light coming up on people’s faces while they text friends
reports of each song. Damn our digitized world sometimes.

And of course, hanging with my lady, watching an artist do his thing. 

That
he sang of love and war in our age with his own at 67, as Chinen put
it, was true testimony of his own bittersweet longevity.

This just in from food blogger Danielle Sucher of Habeas Brulee: "I looked back into my private journal for my blackout story, and here’s what I wrote then:"

Highs and Lows of a Blackout by Danielle Sucher

Best moment: Standing on the Brooklyn Bridge. One guy has a cell 
phone that works. The crowd moves a little. He says into his phone, 
"Can you hear me now?" Everyone around him on the bridge follow up 
with, "Good." And then giggle. And I suddenly realize that the 
hundreds and thousands of people walking across that bridge all sit 
alone in their living rooms at night and watch that same stupid 
commercial.

Worst moment: Getting nauseous because of either sunstroke from 
standing in the sun without water for an hour and a half while the 
crowd on the bridge wasn’t moving at all, or perhaps from something 
I’d eaten earlier in the day, and throwing up even all the water I 
tried to drink and was thus unable to hydrate myself for the entire 
walk home. Worst sunstroke of my life. (Never had any reaction to sun 
before. So probably something else started the nausea, and then my 
inability to hydrate myself simply made it all worse.)

Other moments:

My boss went north. We don’t know what happened to him. He lives in 
Westchester. He says he was just hoping to get to the oyster bar 
before all the ice melted.

Called Dave from the one functional phone in the office to make him 
go online and get news for us.

Parties everywhere. It was a carnival atmosphere, of course. People 
were nice and great and I had various companions for different legs 
of the trip.

Mom and David thought I was an idiot who would be unable to find my 
way home. Dad knew better. Of course I was able to find my way home. 
Grr. It just took me a while, with all the nausea.

Considered just heading to Max’s mother’s apartment. But didn’t think 
of it until I was across the bridge, and when I did think of it I 
realized (a) I wanted to be with Dad, and (b) I couldn’t call home 
and my family would be terrified if I simply didn’t show up.

Dad had barbecue and candlelight waiting for me when I got home.

My cell phone still isn’t working. The power still isn’t back on at 
my house. The subways still aren’t working. Power isn’t back on at my 
office, either. I wanted to stay home and relax and read for once, 
but then Dad called us a cab and we went to his office to get work 
done. What a waste. But the thing is – if I can do work, I have to do 
work. Sigh. So I’m in Brooklyn Heights now, working and sulking. I 
really do enjoy my work. I just wish I could do something else, too.

Was going to spin after work last night. So I walked home with a 
liter of lamp oil and wicks in my bag. Once it got dark I was 
strongly tempted to dip and burn one just for the light, but then 
decided I didn’t really want that much attention.

And here’s more of the story, that I never wrote up:

I hitchhiked a bit. I was waiting at a bus stop with a few other 
people vainly hoping, and a man in an SUV drove up and offered all of 
us a ride for part of the way. I took him up on it, as did a few of 
the others.

I almost convinced some firefighters to drive me home in their 
firetruck, but then their chief noticed and ordered them not to.

I ended up walking the last few blocks home, past all the block 
parties and the dark, my firespinning gear in my bag, in the company 
of a middle-aged woman who turned out to actually be named Lolita.

And here’s what I wrote on August 15, 2003:

Vayehi or!

Power just now came back on in my neighborhood.

I forgot one of the funniest things about the blackout! One of the 
partners at my firm was at the MCC, the jail in Brooklyn, when it 
happened. We still don’t know if he ever got out.

An OTBKB reader wrote in with this:

I’m wondering if you’ve heard anything about Lyme in the Slope. A good
friend from PS was just diagnosed, and she apparently contracted the
illness from a tick bite in her Center Slope garden.

The Village Voice calls Pinataland "Brooklyn’s finest dark-old-world-weird-history orchestrette."
They will be at the Old Stone House this Saturday August 16th from 7pm-8:30pm
The Old Stone House is in JJ Byrne Park in Park Slope Brooklyn. That’s on Fifth Avenue between
3rd and 4th Streets). The event is FREE.

In these troubled times, do we need a band that puts the chaos of
history in perspective, one that finds the silver lining in the dark
stories of the past? Perhaps, but Pinataland is not that band,
choosing instead to plunge the listener into a strange, bygone world
of failed utopias, crackpot dreamers and bizarre obsessions.

This Saturday August 16th the band will be celebrating the release of
their second collection of songs about obscure historical events,
"Songs for the Forgotten Future Vol. 2", featuring tunes about drunken
cliff jumpers, failed artists that created 3-mile long paintings of
the Mississippi, murderous Mormons, 19th century robot-building
spiritualists, and pre 1609 Manhattan. Conjuring all this to life will
be musicians playing tuba, pedal steel guitar, accordion, piano, drums
and lots of pretty harmonizing vocals.

They’ll also be performing some choice covers like John Quincy Adam’s
campaign song from 1827 ("Satan’s coming / if John Quincy not be
coming!") all against the backdrop of the lovely and historic Old
Stone House, a renovated Revoluitionary-era building.

So please join us as the sun goes down on Brooklyn and history
struggles to life through music. This event is both all-ages and free
to all.

Listen to tunes at myspace.com/pinataland

Thanks to Brooklyn Beat, who thanks Boblinks, here is the partial set list of last night’s Dylan show at the Celebrate Brooklyn bandshell in Prospect Park. What a list of great songs. I see he opened the show with the words: "They stone you when you’re trying to be so good…" Sorry I wasn’t there but I did get a call from Teen Spirit mid-show. Just a lot of noise over the cell phone.

1.     Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 (Bob on keyboard)
2.     Lay, Lady, Lay (Bob on keybo ard)
3.     Lonesome Day Blues (Bob on keyboard)
4.     Girl Of The North Country (Bob on keyboard)
5.     The Levee’s Gonna Break (Bob on keyboard)
6.     Spirit On The Water (Bob on keyboard)
7.     Honest With Me (Bob on keyboard)
8.     John Brown (Bob on keyboard)
9.     Highway 6 1 Revisited (Bob on keyboard)
10.    Beyond The Horizon (Bob on keyboard)
11.    It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) (Bob on keyboard)
12.    Nettie Moore (Bob on keyboard)
13.    Summer Days (Bob on keyboard)
14.    Masters Of War (Bob on keyboard)

Encores:

15.     Like A Rolling Stone (Bob on keyboard)
16.     Thunder On The Mountain (Bob on keyboard)
17.     Blowin’ In The Wind (Bob on keyboard)
       (thanks – www.Boblinks.com)

Gersh Kuntzman’s review of the Prospect Park Dylan show in the Brooklyn Paper got me laughing out loud here in Sag Harbor.

It didn’t take long for even the casual Dylanologist to see that Bob
Dylan’s performance at the Prospect Park Bandshell on Tuesday night was
going to serve up that classic Dickensian schism.

For me, the moment came during the second song, a garbled, growling
version of “Lay Lady Lay” that turned the classic from a coy come-on
into an old man’s futile plea.

I know the words refer to a big brass bed, but the way Dylan was
mumbling and twitching, the only bed I could picture anyone laying
across was a hospital bed.

I know what he’s saying. I’ve heard Dylan many times in person and on TV and it’s often a game of "Name That Tune" trying to figure out what great classic he’s singing. Here’s Gersh on Dylan’s somewhat diminished vocal skills:

Dylan’s best ballads become dirges. His best lyrics become lost in
garble. His best phrasing becomes run-on sentences. An artist who
crafted some of the greatest lyrics in rock history spits them out like
they’re throwaway B-sides. On Tuesday night, “Masters of War,” the
perfect song in a time of seemingly endless war, lost all the power
that Dylan’s angry rasp once gave it.

Still Gersh thought that at least half the show was pretty great. And he paints a vivid picture of the scene last night in Prospect Park:

The concert was a classic Brooklyn event, which brought out a crowd of
pols (Borough President Markowitz and Councilman Bill DeBlasio), fellow
musical legends (bluesman Danny Kalb was in the third row) and plenty
of regular folk. … Thousands of people heard (but didn’t see) the show
for free, laying out a blanket on the outside of the perimeter fence,
which had been covered to prevent a good view. … There was so much
pot-smoking in the Port-o-Potties that they should have been called
Port-o-Parties. … Dylan’s only acknowledgement that he was in Brooklyn
came during the encore when, apropos of nothing, he said, “Man, I wish
the Dodgers were still in Brooklyn.”

An OTBKB reader wrote in to lament the stinky, smelly and messy food garbage outside of restaurants around the Slope. I couldn’t agree with him more. The Slope is sometimes a very STINKY place.

I was wondering if you’ve ever posted or heard
from other people about the deplorable food waste problems in front of some
Slope restaurants.  I live on 6^th
  Street and walk up Fifth Avenue to the Y most
mornings and far too often find nasty food waste strewn on the sidewalk. 

Coco
Roco is the worst, though hardly the only, offender.  I don’t see this as
a problem of the carting company as it looks like the restaurants are the ones
poorly bagging the waste.  In any event, it makes my morning walk a nasty
obstacle course and makes me wonder about the charms of our neighborhood.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Rachel’s, which
is out many mornings soaping and scrubbing their stretch of sidewalk.

I wrote him back to say that Mondays are often the worst. He said that he is generally shocked by the amount of litter strewn around particularly on Monday mornings in his section of the Slope (between Fourth and Fifth Avenues). "But the food waste is the most disgusting and stinky. I called 311 this morning to complain," he wrote.