Yesterday I happened upon a new store on Fifth Street just East of Fifth Avenue (343 Fifth Street) called Urban Alchemist and it’s owned by five designers.  In addition to jewelry, they will also be selling vintage furniture, home goods, lamps, bags, and T-shirts.

There’s a a lot of great stuff in the shop already. I took a bunch of pictures, which I will post later. Here’s the word from co-owner Rebecca Shepherd, who is one of the jewelry designers, about this lovely new shop:

I would like to announce that I have opened a store in my beloved Park
Slope Brooklyn! We are called Urban Alchemist and are located at 343
5th street between 5th and 6th av. Our co-op is made up of 5 Brooklyn
Designers including my line, Esewara (my partner), Via Nativa,
Re-surface lighting and Loyalty&Blood. We welcome you to our design
studio! Come by for a glass of wine, coffee or tea. If your lucky,
you’ll come by on a day I bring homemade chocolate chip cookies!

Slope Sports sponsors two weekly runs for runners at all levels.

WEDNESDAY NIGHT FUN RUN

Meet us at the Grand Army Plaza entrance of Prospect Park at 7:15pm for one loop (3.35 miles) of the Park tonight. Run at your own pace – all paces welcome!

SATURDAY MORNING RUNNING GROUP

Come join Slope Sports and Prospect Park Track Club our free and fun group run at the Grand Army Plaza entrance of Prospect Park at 8:00am.

One group will run 6-8+ miles in and around Brooklyn . Another group will head into the Park to run 1 mile to 1 loop (3.35 miles).

All paces and distances welcome.

Sundance at BAM. Lots to see, lots to do. For the third straight year, Sundance is moving into BAM for eleven days to present 22 features and 36
short films from the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, music
concerts, Q&As with the artists, art installations, and special
events.

Here’s the trailer:

651 ARTS is producing a very ambitious program that runs through June 7th and includes a performance by my fave, Cassandra Wilson.  For schedule, tickets, and loads of information, pictures, and audio clips go here.

651 Arts is dedicating its entire annual season to the culture, artists and influence of the Mississippi Delta in The Mississippi Delta Heritage Project. While the history and impact of the Delta Blues tradition is undisputed, few are aware of the contemporary artistry that continues to thrive in the region. The Mississippi Delta Heritage Project provides a glimpse of this flourishing artistic culture to New York audiences. CASSANDRA WILSON, COREY HARRIS, T-MODEL FORD, JIMMY “DUCK” HOLMES, and LOBI TRAORÉ are among the many outstanding artists, either from or influenced by the Delta, who will be performing as part of this series. Have a look inside, we hope you join us in the celebration!

I just got this press release from de Blasio’s very busy publisicst, Jean Weinberg. There’s a press conference today at 5 p.m (see below).

Carroll Gardens—Councilmember Bill de Blasio will join community leaders at a press conference today calling on the Department of City Planning to ban the development of hotels in the rezoning of the Gowanus. De Blasio will make the announcement immediately prior to the City Planning Commission’s presentation of their latest version of the Gowanus Canal rezoning.

Councilmember de Blasio is calling on City Planning to ban hotels for several reasons: in predominately manufacturing areas, hotels will likely push out existing manufacturing uses, in areas that are predominately residential, hotel uses are disruptive because hotels are 24/7, often with taxis or cars idling outside, and while we are in the midst of a hotel boom, at some point that will taper off and some of these hotels will not make it or even worse, will turn into “hot sheet” motels in order to stay afloat.

Who: Councilmember de Blasio, community leaders, local elected officials and others.
When: 5pm—Thursday, May 29, 2008
Where: 372 Hoyt Street (Outside of P.S. 32 in Brooklyn)—between 2nd& 3rd Street.
** Take the F Train and get off at Carroll Street- exit near intersection of 2nd St and Smith Street. Head East on 2nd St towards Hoyt St.

I just got word from artists Kristin and Sean Eno that the Red Hook Open Studio Tour is right around the corner.

The Monarch Open Studio Tour is imminent. It’s just a week and a half away! Come see the land that time almost forgot, but then suddenly remembered. It’s part of a larger Red Hook open studios weekend, but our building is totally huge, so it has more art!

If you like art, daytime drinking, or invading people’s space to check out their belongings, then you’ll love it. Babies and art critics are welcome. Here’s what discerning folks are saying:

I went last year, and I had a good ol’ time! – John Shanchuk

I went two years ago and I was there for like TWELVE HOURS! – Cara McKenney

We look forward to seeing you. Information and directions below.

Monarch Luggage Building Open Studios
featuring 14 artists living and sometimes working therein, including
Kristin and Sean Eno, Studio 2U
Painting, Jewelry, Photography, Video; possibly with added tricks or gimmicks

14 Verona Street
June 7th and 8th
Noon – 6pm

The Brookyn Paper calls it an environmental triumph. Unlike OTBKB, BP’s editor Gersh Kuntzman stayed until the end of the meeting. So he got the scoop.

In one of the most lopsided votes since the re-election of Chairman Mao in 1954, members of Brooklyn’s famously progressive supermarket, the Park Slope Food Co-op, voted nearly unanimously on Tuesday night to stop making plastic shopping bags available at the checkout counter.

In doing so, the 14,000-member grocery store is now in good company with bag-banning locales like Rwanda, Uganda, Bangladesh, China, San Francisco and the Republic of Whole Foods.

It was the second environmental triumph for the Co-op in as many months; in April, the Union Street supermarket voted to stop selling bottled water.

In both cases, the well-being of the planet was cited as the motivation — like water bottles, plastic bags are made from petroleum — and the notion of customer convenience was dismissed.

(Full disclosure: I’m not only The Brooklyn Paper’s Park Slope Food Co-op beat reporter; I’m also a member.)

“I will be so happy to see the plastic bags gone, gone, gone!” said Jane Bayer, a 34-year member of the Co-op, using her allotted three minutes at the Tuesday night meeting to thunder against America’s “addiction” to the thin-plastic bags.

“We don’t need them. Some people say they reuse them, but how many times? Once, twice? That’s no big savings. It will be hard to give up plastic bags, but we can do it. We don’t need them! We can do it! It should be done. It must be done.”

It was a night of passion, persuasion and props.

I heard Julie Salamon, the author of this book, on Brian Lehrer this morning and it sounds like a very interesting book. She is also the author of “The Devil’s Candy” about the making of the film, Bonfire of the Vanities. Her new book is called, Hospital: Man, Woman, Birth, Death, Infinity, Plus Red Tape, Bad Behavior, Money, God andDiversity on Steroids. Here’s the blurb from Amazon.

Most people agree that there are complicated issues at play in the delivery of health care today, but those issues may not always be what we think they are. In 2005, Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn, New York, unveiled a new state-of-theart, multimillion-dollar cancer center. Determined to understand the whole spectrum of factors that determine what kind of medical care people receive in this country, bestselling author Julie Salamon spent one year tracking the progress of the center and getting to know the characters who make the hospital run. Located in a community where sixty-seven different languages are spoken, Maimonides is a case study for the particular kinds of concerns that arise in institutions that serve an increasingly multicultural American demographic. Granted an astonishing “warts and all” level of access by the hospital higher-ups, Salamon followed the doctors, patients, administrators, nurses, ambulance drivers, cooks, and cleaning staff. She explored not just the action on the ground—what happens between doctors and patients—but also the financial, ethical, technological, sociological, and cultural matters that the hospital community encounters every day.

My Sidewalk Chalk has some phone numbers you can use if you need help navigating the Department of Education.

Yikes, the Pre-K letters are coming in and from the anecdotal evidence on the yahoo neighborhood groups there are some in-zone families with siblings that are not getting their placements. This may be an indication of errors in the system. Just in case this isn’t a limited problem, I have listed a couple of contacts here to try and get answers. It would also be helpful to know when families start receiving acceptance letters…

There are new unconfirmed reports from the yahoo groups. Parents that contacted the Enrollment Office this afternoon said that if you come to the Office on or after June 23 you can receive an informational booklet that will contain a list of schools with remaining available seats and a new application. The new application will have a due date to go through the process all over for the remaining open seats.

I was at the general meeting tonight but I had to leave early. A lot of people came out for the meeting, which was at Congregation Beth Elohim; a number of people I spoke with acknowledged the historic nature of the vote. The Food Coop voting no on plastic bags would, like the vote on plastic water bottles, send a message loud and clear that they are serious about environmental issues.

I am not sure what the outcome of the vote at tonight’s meeting was but I am guessing that the membership present voted to ban plastic bags: an important move on the part of the Food Coop.

Brooklyn Heights Blog has the story and pix about the "demolition by dereliction" of a building on Monroe and Clark Street in Brooklyn Heights. Here’s an excerpt from this shocking story:

And it’s pretty certain that Penson has
deep enough pockets to have done the right thing and preserved this
structure. Clearly, Penson’s desire to rid 100 Clark of its renters is
most likely at the heart of this unforgivable act of destruction in one
of New York City’s best preserved neighborhoods

Brownstoner would be nuts not to be happy about his New York Magazine cover story. Still, he wishes the writer had focused on some of the more positive aspects of the culture over there. Here’s an excerpt from Mr. B’s reaction:

Our only major gripe was that it played up the importance of one
egomaniacal commenter over some of the more constructive aspects of the
community. In the end, though, it did include one belief of ours that
we’ve clung to from the beginning: That as messy as many of the threads
get, the tough issues that underlie much of the change that Brooklyn
has experienced in recent years—class, race, gentrification—are at
least getting discussed, and often among people who wouldn’t otherwise
be mingling offline. The conversations could be a lot more polite, but
at least they are happening.

Is it true that Park Slope kids get Webkinz or Shining Starts web stuffed animals for a tooth from the Tooth Fairy. Pricey, pricey. This morning on Park Slope Parents, one mom (aka tooth fairy) wonders what is the going rate for a tooth is these days?

What does the tooth fairy leave now a days? Quarters,silver dollars or a small gift? My
husband & I remember getting coins for each tooth left under the pillow, but my
daughter is under the impression that the fairy leaves webkinz or shining stars for
each tooth (which I’m afraid will get kind of expensive). So I’m wondering what is the
general consensus on tooth fairy gifts?

Photo and box by bewitched’s magic photostream

Subtitled "A mischevous online bogey man is haunting the dreams of new Brooklyn," the article is mostly about the tone of the discussion over at  Brownstoner—what writer Adam Sternbergh calls "the unique undertow of anger in Brownstoner comments."

The NY Mag story also focuses on a commenter named "The What" and his obsession with the coming Brooklyn apocalypse.

I can’t tell if this article will be of interest to anybody/everybody.

Snarky commenter, The What, is the real story here. But the article does talk about John Butler,  and his blog, the Brooklyn Flea and all the rest (Upper East Side childhood, Princeton education, MBA from NYU, Hedge funder, who blogged onthe side…) They sure do love Brownstoner over at New York Magazine.  Here’s an excerpt:

"Butler’s adopted borough has proved to be especially fertile soil
for blogs, as many of its recent transplants have, like Butler, been
eager to chronicle their experience in dispatches sent out to the
world, like homesteaders mailing letters back from a new frontier.
Among these sites, though, Brownstoner holds a distinct and exalted
position, thanks largely to Butler’s acumen in staking out the happy
middle ground between citywide Websites like Curbed and Gothamist and
the dozens of Brooklyn microblogs and message boards where people
gather to rant and rail and cheer and commiserate about the foibles and
frustrations of their neighborhoods. Brownstoner covers the whole
borough (although the objections here of residents of Bay Ridge,
Canarsie, and other outlying regions are duly noted), but it covers the
whole borough as though it were one big block, where everyone has
gathered to gossip on their stoops.

"As
such, Butler’s become not only a fairly well-known blogger (the site
draws 150,000 visitors a month, and he was introduced to the world in a
2007 Observer article headlined BROWNSTONER: IT’S ME!), but
also a kind of virtual developer, someone who doesn’t literally rebuild
neighborhoods but who has the power to shape the way those
neighborhoods are perceived. By uncovering derelict architectural gems
in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, or trumpeting the opening of an inviting
new bar in Crown Heights, Butler has introduced Brooklyn’s far-flung
neighborhoods to people who would otherwise never consider visiting
them, let alone buying a house and settling there. On Brownstoner, the
bridesmaid borough is now the bride. The site celebrates what’s
sometimes called New Brooklyn: a vision of the borough as a diverse and
lively enclave of flowering neighborhoods, all jammed with engaged
homeowners, reborn blocks, and gorgeous and stately and (by Manhattan
standards) bargain-priced real estate, waiting to be polished up under
a tasteful eye. Brownstoner didn’t create the Brooklyn renaissance, of
course, any more than a weatherman creates a storm. But, like a
watchful forecaster, the site has tracked the course of the weather
pattern—in this case, the vortex created by rising real-estate prices
that sucked in a fresh batch of hopeful residents, drawn by the promise
of more space and tree-lined blocks and safer streets and majestic
brownstones and ample sunlight and the borough’s sudden,
self-perpetuating cachet…"