A living-room crusade via blogging (NY Times)
Cracks, falling cranes and new building inspectors (NY Times)
More on the hating Park Slope story (Brooklynometry)
Clarett’s "Contempo Collectiono ala Quarte" (Pardon Me For Asking)
Flatbush Food Coop just got bigger (Green Brooklyn)
Where to go dancing in Brooklyn (Brooklyn Based)
Crown Heights oversaturated with homeless services (AM Metro)
7th wedding anniversary (Midnight Cowgirls)
Photographer Richard Gin has great photos of The Mighty Handful and has helpfully put up a direct link for buying tickets for their next show, which is a battle of the bands at the Knitting Factory and could mean a trip to Ireland for an International battle of the bands.
Gin, who takes pictures of the band every chance he gets, thinks these kids are the next big thing. He’s urging all his grown up friends to go to this show. Here’s an excerpt from his blog. For more pictures go to his Flickr page linked below or his site.
"Greetings to those of you visiting through the Flickr back door. As part of my value-added content, I would like to point out that the additional photos of The Mighty Handful
from the 17th of May, 2008 are below. However I encourage you to read
the following notice to discover how you, the reader, might be able to
impact the life of a misguided youth for the better.
"With the
possible exceptions of cash paydays and booty calls, there’s very
little pleasure in finding something out on short notice, and with that
in mind I am happy to report to you (a week in advance!) that The Mighty Handful (my favoritest) are playing The Big Stage at the Knitting Factory
on Sunday the 25th. Now, the Knitting Factory — shitty lighting aside
— is a brand-name venue which leads to its own level of fun-ness.
Amplifying the fun-ness further is the fact that this show is a Battle
of the Bands. Great. Boosting the signal to tsunami-like levels is the
promise of a trip to Ireland for the winning group and an invitation to
an international battle of the bands.SO WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR YOU?
If
you care at all about the fate of these young turks (and you should at
this point, especially seeing as how I won’t shut up about them), then
you will purchase tickets, go to the show and support them with all
your might. For just ten (10) United States Dollars — that’s just
$1.68 USD a day from now until Sunday — you could change the life of a
poor, Park Slope youth whose debaucherous promise is held back by a
sensible Park Slope upbringing. If you have any questions regarding
this matter it is in your best interest to contact the band directly as my details are sketchy at best.Tickets are available through Ticketmaster, which is no longer an issue because the 90’s are over and Pearl Jam lost.
My stepmother told me that Thursday May 22 is the 125th birthday of the Brooklyn Bridge; there are going to be fireworks!
I got quite excited. The Bridge’s 100th birthday in 1983 was quite a celebration. And the fireworks were amazing.
In ’83, we watched from my father’s 27th floor apartment in the Heights. He has windows on New York Harbour and a great view of the bridge and lower Manhattan. We still talk about the waterfall- like effect of the fireworks streaming off the bridge; I’ve never seen anything quite like it.
This birthday bash will begin on May 22 with a performance by the Brooklyn Philharmonic at the Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park in Brooklyn, and a Grucci fireworks display.
An added bonus: the bridge will be lit up in an array of colored lights from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. from May 22 through Memorial Day.
Photo by Lab2112L www.flickr.com/photos/lab2112/
WNYC reports this morning that the Department of Buildings is hiring 63 new building inspectors at a time when construction accidents are at an all time high.
According to New York 1, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Acting Buildings Commissioner Robert
LiMandri said that $5 million was added to the
Department of Buildings’s budget to fund 63 new positions.
These new workers will implement the DOB’s Special
Enforcement Plan. Teams will monitor construction
programs, re-inspect sites with prior violations and check for sidewalk
shed electrical safety.
13 people have died this year construction accidents,
seven of whom were killed when a crane smashed into several buildings
in Turtle Bay in March.
On Park Slope Parents this morning:
We are looking for a couple with twins, who we met at Bash Bish Falls up in the Berkshires this weekend. They said they live in Park Slope on Third Street. We were supposed to leave our contact info on their car windshield after our hike and forgot. Thought this was the best hope we had for reaching them.
If you know this family leave a message here.
A man has been charged in the murder of a woman who owned a dry cleaning store in Windsor Terrace.
As reported in NY 1 the police charged a Brooklyn man Sunday night with the murder and robbery of a Queens woman in her dry cleaning store. Two days earlier, Kyung-Sook Woo, 52, was found dead in the bathroom of the Eden Dry Cleaners by her son. She was strangled.
I saw something about this in the New York Sun on Friday but forgot to post it. From Windsor Terrace Brooklyn, a blog dedicated to life between the big green spots on the Brooklyn map, comes this story about the dry cleaner in Windsor Terrace who was found dead last week. Here’s an excerpt.
Yes, it is true that our dear dry cleaner at Eden on 10th Avenue and
Windsor was found dead this morning. Most neighbors knew her as Linda;
she and her husband used to run their shop where the glass store is now
on Windsor before moving to the former toy store on 10th Avenue. She
has been robbed before, at both locations, and the store vandalized.
My son is working on an experiment for his high school neuroscience class to explore synesthesia in people and you can help. Please go to henrycrawford(dot)com and answer a few question about music and colors. It’ll only take 3 minutes or so. In his words:
"Synesthesia is when two or more senses intermingle with each other for
instance one might see colors while listening to a song.In my experiment subjects will listen to 30 second clips of 5 songs and then
pick from a choice of 5 colors (red, green, blue, yellow and grey).The experiment is running through midnight Monday May 19, 2008.
Richard Grayson, author of "Who Will Kiss the Pig: Sex Stories for Teens," "I Brake for Delmore Schwartz" and more was none too pleased by Peter Loffredo’s description on OTBKB of ethnic neighborhoods as "a bastion for clannish, homogeneous, xenophobic collections of
ethnic tribes holding onto their frozen identities…"
Whoa that was a mouthful and one I also found offensive (but published anyway). Here’s what Richard Grayson had to say:
Um, so Brooklyn neighborhoods filled with "Jamaicans" and "Russians" and "Polish" are xenophobic?
This is the kind of stuff that makes us native Brooklynites from the
non-brownstone neighborhoods quite annoyed. The writer needs to get out
more. Go to Bensonhurst or Canarsie or Sheepshead Bay or Homecrest or
Marine Park and you will see plenty of diversity and heterogenity.Pete, you have my permission to go on living…but you need to get out more…
Phyllis Bobb of Reclaimed Home hates Park Slope, or at least that’s what she told Lynn Harris, a freelance writer for the Times. Now Robb says she’ll never do an interview again. With the Times’ or anyone. That’s because she’s pissed off about her quotes in yesterday’s Where’s the Love? article in the Style section about Park Slope haters, which she says, with humor (I think) were coerced out of her.
I didn’t lie so much as I was coerced into confession and creative editing was used. My whole paragraph from the article: “Many
locals, and ex-locals, I talked to swore that something else has also
changed. Phyllis Bobb, 42, lived here from 1990 to 2002, when she moved
to Bed-Stuy because, she said, “there were too many yuppies moving in.”
People on her block stopped sitting on stoops; a guy in the park kicked
her dog. “It wasn’t a community anymore,” she said, and she’s still
steamed. “I feel like a jilted lover.”
She adds that the jilted lover comment is meant to describe the way she and Park Slope have changed and grown apart.
We’ve both moved on and
we’re in different relationships now. There was a time I loved Park
Slope, that was probably mid 80’s-2000. But I look at it now and I
can’t believe I lived there for so long.
Now Phyllis, did someone really kick your dog? Bobb says that it’s 100% true:
That happened ages ago, so I
don’t know how she got that out of me when I was talking about the
recent changes in the Slope. But it happened and I hope the guy read
the article and knows he will go down in eternity as “the dog kicker of
Park Slope”. The incident occured in Prospect Park one morning during
off leash hours. This schmuck walks right through the “doggy circle”
and gets knocked down by a running pack of dogs. Ok, gets knocked down
by MY dog. I tried to help him up, apologized, etc….and then he kicks
my dog! That would never happen in Bed Stuy! Because people are
terrified of my dogs there.
In a post on her blog today she really goes to town on Park Slope:
Not everyone wants to live in a suburbanized, homogenized
community overrun with kiddies. It’s not because we can’t afford to,
it’s because we simply don’t want to!
Nasty, nasty. But she’s got a point. She moved on. It’s not about jealousy at all. She moved to greener pastures—a house in Upstate New York and a nice house in Bed Stuy. You can find her Reclaimed Home shop at the Brooklyn Flea every Sunday.
Wow. Park Slope painter, Emily Berger, has a solo exhibition at the Painting Center opening on Thursday May 22nd.
Props to Emily Berger. I happen to LOVE her works on paper; dark expressive drawings that evoke architectural structures that are abstract and emotional drawn.
Both her abstract paintings and drawings are layered and formed and
disrupted by color, gesture, and sometimes a looping line that
introduces organic form to vertical and horizontal structure.
She was also invited to participate in the 183rd Annual: An Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary American Art. National Academy Museum. 1083 Fifth Avenue. New York, NY.
May 29 – September 7, 2008
www.nationalacademy.org
Emily Berger lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. A graduate
of Brown University, she received a MFA from Columbia and attended the
Skowhegan School. She has been a resident at the Millay Art Colony,
among others. She is a member of American Abstract Artists and curated
the exhibit “Nature Abstracted” at The Painting Center. She also takes
photographs, and considers her black and white photographs as source
material for painting and drawing as well as works in their own right.
Her work has been included in exhibits in the Northeast and in New
York, most recently at the Metaphor and Sideshow Galleries, as well as
at the Museum of Modern Art in Bogota, Colombia. She is participating
in The National Academy Museum’s Annual Invitational Exhibition of
Contemporary American Art on view concurrently with this show.
All morning it was sunny.
But when we got to the Fabulous Fifth Avenue Fair at 1:15 p.m. it started to rain. OSFO was impressed with the huge slide on Third Street. But the rain was annoying and cold and we wanted to go home. I did see Gowanus Lounge walking past the Gate on Fifth. Maybe he has some pictures over there.
We barely looked at any booths; we back hom on Third Street, where there were loads of stoop sales between 5th and 6th Avenues.
Don’t miss Bernette Rudolph’s open studio today!
Rudolph, a master wood sculptor, lives and works in a Third Street apartment at 357 Third Street between 6th and 7th Avenues. You’ll have the distinct pleasure of meeting her goddesses, wood wall sculptures celebrating the rich stories of women’s strength, power and perseverance.
Her apartment is filled with these sculptures, as well as her bold, graphic, and colorful prints. As a special treat, behold the power of Asphalta, the goddess of parking.
I think she is responsible for the gift of no alternate-side-of-the-street parking for the summer. Some said it was an act of God. Well, it was the work of a Third Street goddess.
All hail Asphalta! And Bernette Rudolph. She is a Park Slope treasure.
There’s an article in today’s New York Times Style section called, "Where is The Love?" about Park Slope hating as blood sport. No surprise, our pal Pete of Full Permission Living has some controversial thoughts on the topic.
As a regular interviewee of Lynn Harris’ articles on why people hate Park Slope, I have to make clear that one reason for any antipathy I might have for Park Slope is NOT that “Brooklyn was supposed to be different," according to some quoted in Lynn’s article. It continues: "Park Slope, to some, now represents everything that Brooklyn was not supposed to be. And if we lose Brooklyn, we lose everything."
Let me shout this out – Brooklyn, in many of its long-established neighborhoods outside of Park Slope and the surrounding "Heights", is still a bastion for clannish, homogeneous, xenophobic collections of ethnic tribes holding onto their frozen identities as Italians, Irish, Polish, Hasidic, Russian, Jamaican, etc., hold-outs who believe that surrendering to the melting pot that is New York City at its best is tantamount to selling their soul to the devil.
I do not hate Park Slope because it is ruining what the rest of Brooklyn is. If I hate Park Slope, it is because of what Park Slope pretends to be and isn’t – an enlightened enclave of modern parenting.
The Park Slope Open Studio tour is this weekend from 12-6 today. You can go in
and out of working artists’ studios and see what they’re up to.
Mad Arts Studios on 18th between 5th and 6th has a show up in their group gallery. You can also tour artist work spaces there, which is fun.
Hop on over to Fifth Avenue this Sunday for the Fabulous Fifth Avenue Fair.
That’s right, the action is on Fifth Avenue from Sterling to 12th St. 11 am – 7pm.
And what a day for this always fun event that still has a neighborhood vibe even if it has plenty of the generic street fair stuff (zeppole trucks, socks, weird brooms, etc).
But hey, that’s a NYC street fair.
I wouldn’t miss it for the world (and never have).
There’s lots of local character; and all the Fifth Avenue shops and restaurants we love. Best of all, it’s a great day for running into friends. You can imagine that I like that part of it.
Nancy Nancy, which will be closing on May 23rd will be sharing her wares in front of her shop (near Carroll Street) on Fifth. Say good bye to Mary, owner of Nancy Nancy and find out what she’s up to next. Or you can read her blog.
Thanks to Bob and Judi of Bob and Judi’s Coolectibles, those cool boosters and pioneers of Fifth Avenue.
Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the award-winning Brooklyn Paper.
Smartmom has so many mothers. This year, she sent cards to her
mother, her stepmother, her mother-in-law, her sister, and Beautiful
Smile, the housekeeper and so much more.
What would she do without all her mothers? Each one is unique; each one has something special to offer.
And
with good reason; there’s no need to get all your mothering from one
person. Spread it around and you get all kinds of mother-love from the
women in your life.
On Sunday, Manhattan Granny came out to Park
Slope for a brunch of smoked salmon, trout, whitefish salad and
pumpernickel bread from Blue Apron Foods.
Wearing an Agnes B.
T-shirt, white pants and an elegant designer jacket, Manhattan Granny
looked like a million bucks. She listened to Teen Spirit play a few of
his own songs on the guitar in the dining room.
“He’s Dylanesque,” Manhattan Granny told Smartmom. “I’m very proud of him.”
Diaper
Diva, Bro-in-law and Ducky joined them for brunch. Bro-in-law brought
bunches of peonies, roses, and lilacs for the moms in attendance.
Thoughtfully, Diaper Diva gave Smartmom a gift certificate for a Diva
manicure at the new Dashing Diva salon on Seventh Avenue.
Oops.
Smartmom forget to get Diaper Diva a gift. Sure, she’s not her mother.
But the sisters love to fete each other on Mother’s Day.
Even before she became a mother, Smartmom gave Diaper Diva Mother’s Day cards and gifts for her prowess as a world-class aunt.
After
brunch, Bro-in-law slept on the couch, Manhattan Granny shined
Smartmom’s wedding silver, Diaper Diva cleaned Smartmom’s kitchen.
What would Smartmom do without her moms?
Later
in the day, it was time to visit with her stepmom, MiMa Cat and Groovy
Grandpa at their 27th floor Brooklyn Heights apartment with the great
view of New York Harbor.
The Oh So Feisty One came up with the
name MiMa Cat when she was just 2-years-old because the beloved (now
deceased) cat, Rupert. Now they have a huge Striped Bengali named Raj.
MiMa
Cat showed Smartmom the pink flower arrangement that Smartmom and
Diaper Diva had sent from Park Florist. She seemed touched by their
gift.
Smartmom isn’t sure when she started recognizing her
stepmother on Mother’s Day. Ah, the seesaw life of the divorced child:
Smartmom used to think it was some kind of weird betrayal of her mother
to acknowledge her stepmother on Mother’s Day.
She wasn’t even
sure if MiMa Cat wanted to be acknowledged. But that was then, this is
now. Smartmom and MiMa Cat are closer than ever; stepmothers deserve to be honored on Mother’s Day.
When
Smartmom got home, Hepcat called his mother, Artsy Grandma, who lives
on a farm in Northern California. He caught her on her cellphone on her
way into San Francisco to spend the day with Hepcat’s sister and
brother-in-law.
They wished her a happy Mother’s Day, asked about her garden and her building projects and told her to come visit. Soon.
That
night, Smartmom called Beautiful Smile. She is the unconditional mother
everyone needs; the nurturing grandmother who soothes you when you’re
feeling down; and the caregiver that her children, even at age 11 and
16, love to be around. Her spirit of love and kindness infuses their
Third Street apartment like Buddhist air freshener.
She’d spent the day in Coney Island being honored and feted by her children, her grandchildren and other friends and family.
“Happy Mother’s Day,” Smartmom told her.
That
night when Smartmom got into her pajamas, she realized that her
Mother’s Day was mostly about everyone else — buying the brunch,
setting the table, shuttling to MiMa Cat’s, the cards, the gifts, the
phone calls. She’d told Hepcat not to buy her anything.
“I feel like we’re hemorrhaging money,” she’d said.
Teen Spirit apologized because he never got around to getting her a gift.
“Oh
that’s all right, I’m just glad you’re here,” she told him. OSFO gave
her a nice card. But everything was okay. She didn’t feel sad. Not at
all. She felt buoyed by the love of all the mothers in her life.
Mother’s Day is for the moms — all of them. It takes a mother to make a mother happy on Mother’s
Able Danger, a film directed by Paul Kirk, will be opening the Brooklyn International
Film Festival on Friday May 30th @ 8 pm at the Brooklyn Lyceum. A second showing will be on Friday June 6 @ 8 pm. The Brooklyn Lyceum is located at 227 Fourth Avenue at President Street just steps from the R train’s Union Street station.
Charles Libin, who was director of photography on Able Danger, wanted to share his thoughts about the film, which was shot in Victorian Flatbush.
I fell in love with Paul Krik’s screenplay for Able Danger, as it evokes
and sends-up the feverish tone of post-war noirs from the 1950’s such as
Aldrich’s "Kiss Me Deadly", Kubrick’s "Killer’s Kiss", Fuller’s "Pickup
on South Street", Lewis’ "Big Combo", and Ray’s "In a Lonely Place".Difference being that we are currently in a post-9/11 world with a
never-ending war we declared against "terror". The anti-communist
hysteria of the 50’s exposed similar ugly behavior among our politicians
and citizens. When Americans are (mis)led by fear-mongers, we tolerate
very Un-American activities.We have stood by like deer-in-the-headlights, allowing our government to set aside civil liberties and privatize our spy agencies. I felt simpatico with the
outraged indignation of Paul’s script. The Able Danger program did exist
and our government’s destruction of the mined data was ignored by the
9/11 Commission. Paul’s story is not much less plausible as that which
our leaders have put forth… RE: Project for the New American Century.Paul wanted to evoke the style of a classic noir, yet with an awareness
of the technological world in which we now live. Able Danger is in B&W,
with color seen only in several instances. We shot most of the film in
Victorian Flatbush, so I could ride my bike to the set.Some of the shots I did one-handed while riding alongside Adam Nee who plays a
bike-riding, left leaning owner of the Vox Pop Coffee bar on Cortelyou
Road. Elina Löwensohn as the dreamy femme-fatale has a timeless beauty
of the great faces of noir. Able tackles serious subjects of our time without taking itself too seriously…
Finally. They’ve had some wet Sundays thus far. But today is a gorgeous day—and there’s ton to do in Brooklyn. Sunshine at the Flea: what a concept. As expected, the Fleameisters are constantly tweaking and improving the mix of vendors. For those flea market afficionados, who didn’t think the Brooklyn flea enough on the first few weekends, it looks they may be getting it right.
Despite Friday’s downpours, the weather
is looking decent for Sunday’s Flea (knock on wood). As we continue to
cull and curate the mix, you should recognize a good number of regular
vendors as well as some exciting new blood–some of which is discusssed on the Flea Blog
today. In case you’re just tuning in, the Flea runs from 10 a.m. to 5
p.m. on Sunday and is located at 176 Lafayette Avenue in Brooklyn.
Closest trains are the C and G to Washington/Clinton. Or you can take
any of the number of trains that go to Atlantic Station and make the
10-minute stroll up Lafayette Avenue from there. This Sunday, consider
combining your visit to the Flea with the annual SONYA Studio Stroll; this year, over 100 artists throughout Clinton Hill and Wallabout will be opening their studios to the public. Fun, fun!
PUSH ‘N’ PRAY
Moms roll tots on pricey wheels
Down the religious streets,
A rite that’s been instilled in them
As one of status’s treats.
Every day is worship time
Both for joys and dolors
In the Park Slope Parish’s
Church of the Holy Strollers.
CYBERDANTE
Does anybody give a damn
About the sewer stuff in spam?
And yet it thrills me to the quick
Consigning it to hell with a click.
What else, I wonder, can be found
Nine circles down and underground.
Hop on over to Fifth Avenue this Sunday for the Fabulous Fifth Avenue Fair.
That’s right, the action begins on Sunday May 18 all along Fifth Avenue from Sterling to 12th St. 11 am – 7pm.
It’s a crazy, crazy crowded event that still has a great neighborhood vibe even if it has plenty of the generic street fair stuff (zepploe trucks, socks, weird brooms, etc). But hey, that’s a NYC street fair.
I wouldn’t miss it for the world (and never have).
There’s loads of local character and stands from all the great Fifth Avenue shops and restaurants we love. Best of all, it’s a great day for running into friends. So be there or be square. Here are some highlights.
Local Crafts & Artists (Berkeley to Third Streets)
Dine outside with Fabulous food from your favorite Fifth Avenue Restaurants, including Stone Park Cafe, Blue Ribbon, and others.
There’s the Puppetry Arts Theatre, where kids can make fun puppets ( 2nd & 3rd sts.) and that groovy Antique Car Show, where you can vote for your favorite (1st & Garfield)
This year there’s a M.S. 51 Flea Market & Talent Show ( 4th & 5th Sts.) and of course there are those kiddie rides between 3rd and 4th Streets.
Shop your favorite Stores for Antiques, Gifts, Apparel, Jewelry and more and enjoy live Music throughout.
Nancy Nancy, which will be closing on May 23rd will be sharing her wares in front of her shop (near Carroll Street) on Fifth. Say good bye to Mary, owner of Nancy Nancy and find out what she’s up to next. Or you can read her blog.
Thanks to Bob and Judi, those cool boosters and pioneers of Fifth Avenue for keeping in touch.
Hey, that article by freelance journalist Lynn Harris, who interviewed many of us two months ago for an article about Why People Hate Park Slope originally intended for New York Magazine, is in the Style section of the Times this Sunday.
Props to Harris: she did email to say that the piece would probably be in the Times this week. The great thing about Harris is that she stays in touch with those she interviews and lets them know what’s happening with the article she writes.
That’s a nice journalistic habit.
The Times’ piece, called Where is the Love, explores the hatred that Park Slope evokes in some:
When I moved to the neighborhood in 1994, I promise you, Manhattanites
did not think about Park Slope any longer than it took them to blow off
a party invitation. But today, you mention Park Slope on a blog or even
in conversation and, especially if the reference involves the word
“stroller,” the haters lunge like sharks at chum.How did it come to this? Most of the above could be said of just
about any other neighborhood in our tidied-up, child-rearing-friendly
New York City. Doesn’t the East Village have a Whole Foods? Hasn’t the
Upper West Side become Short Hills?
How did Slope Rage become a meme unto itself, even among people who won’t take the F train below East Broadway?
We
must take some hatred of Park Slope with a generous dash of salt
(organic, artisanal, hand-harvested). Much anti-Slope invective is
stirred up in comments on blogs, which are not known for universally
trenchant insight (“Puke Slope!”) or for their warm embrace of, well,
anything.
The article comes complete with a photo of a mom with a stroller taken at the Green Market at Grand Army Plaza. Quoted are many familiar names, including James Bernard (one of the Park Slope 100), who founded the magazine The Source and is on the board of the new Brooklyn Prospect charter school in Park Slope:
“This whole thing sounds like white people being
annoyed by and jealous of other white people, which I find kind of
funny,” said James Bernard, a union organizer and a member of the local
Community Board 6. “I live in the Slope. I love it. I talk about it as
much as anyone else does. But I founded a charter school near
Brownsville and I don’t hear anyone talking about Park Slope over
there.”
Also quoted are Slopers Suleiman Osman, an assistant professor of American Studies, who is writing a book about the history of gentrification in Brooklyn. Steven Berlin Johnson of Outside.In, and Josh Grinker of the Stone Park Cafe. No she didn’t use any quotes from me.
It’s an article about a strange cultural phenomenon: the demonization of a neighborhood in a city full of neighborhoods that are fun to make fun of. I guess Park Slope is the current "it neighborhood" to hate. And people love to hate. They really do.
In a world where there is so much to be angry about, it’s funny that Park Slope should absorb so much NYC rage. But hey, it’s got to go somewhere.
You are going to love this blog. It’s called Brooklyn Mabel and it captures the many moods of Mabel, who is funny and shy—but not that shy. She’s also introspective and oh-so-neurotic.
She even wrote about birthing the blog:
Push………………………..!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Puuuuuuuuuuuuuushhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!! Just
one more big push and she’s out!!! Congratulations, you’ve just given
birth to your first blog. Oh, my god, now what do I do? Do I have to
take care of it? Feed it? Pay attention to it when I’m tired and just
want to space out?Why do people write blogs anyway? As soon as
I made the decision to write this blog it started freaking everyone
out. My 10-year-old son Trevor was stressing out, "Are you going to
write negative things about me? If I get in trouble are you going to
post it on your blog?" Trevor asked in a worried voice. I think he’s
scared that the whole frigging world is going to know about his self
conscious prepubescent life.When I told my sister Wanda I was
writing a blog, she felt threatened. "That’s so selfish, why do people
write blogs? They should spend more time outside getting some exercise.
You’re just going to sit inside and be a shut in? What are you going to
write about? You want everyone to read about your life, your private
business? I hope this isn’t going to cut into our chatting time."
But Brooklyn Mabel is determined to blog. She comes from family of journalists and majored in journalism in college—and hated every minute of it. She even worked in public relations and advertising post college, which she detested.
But she’s a born writer and her blog covers many things, ncluding painful and honest stories about her mom, who has Alzheimers and lives in nursing home.
Most times when I visit Renaissance Gardens, my mother and the
other residents are in their wheelchairs in front of the television.
Their eyes are not looking at the screen, but at some random spot on
the rug or the arm of their wheelchairs.
Today when I walked
into the activity room next to the dining room, I scanned the back of
the heads of the patients to find my mother. One woman looked like her
and I had to stare at her a few times to make sure that my mother’s
appearance hadn’t changed drastically. No, that wasn’t my mother, just
someone who resembled her.I walked to her room, and she was laying in her bed. I thought she was asleep, but she wasn’t.
"Hi
Mom! Happy Birthday!" I said. "Happy Birthday!" my mother repeated. She
often mimics what is said to her and doesn’t initiate much conversation.
Vagina World, a post about her family’s visit to WACK!: Art and the Feminist Revolution at PS 1 (closed May 12th) is certainly worth a read
As I walked into the feminist art exhibit last week, there was a
painting of people entering an art show through a giant psychedelic
vagina. As you walked further down the hall, there was a huge piece of
red fabric resembling the vulva and clitoris. This was Vagina World.
My
son Trevor and husband Kevin were not really digging the exhibit. "I
guess I can’t really relate to it," they both chimed in together. Well,
they could still support female power even if they weren’t female.My
parents Ruth and Phil considered themselves liberated feminists. They
had a couples women’s lib party. They thumbtacked slogans written on
cardboard on the groovy corkboard wall in our living room. The only
saying I recall was, "Herstory not History." I remember my mother
wearing a purple psychedelic dress and holding a gin and tonic.
Brooklyn Mabel, welcome to the block. You can bet that we’ll be reading
In a column called, We Hate Your Kids, Gawker gawked the Edgy Moms reading this way:
How Did We Miss the Edgy Moms Reading
Seriously. It happened last night at the Montauk Club, and every edgy momwriter was there. There were gift bags from sex shop Babeland—that’s edgy! In attendance was the Sun‘s Lenore Skenazy, who wrote about leaving her kid in Bloomingdale’s to fend for himself on the subway (he wanted to!), Amy Benfer (Salon), and New York contributor/novelist Amy Sohn.
Her piece was about "trying to get her daughter into Brooklyn Heights
Montessori School and all the raw, competitive feelings that the New
York private school admission process rouses." (Sohn once said—jokingly, but still—"When I had a kid, it seemed natural to me to start exploiting it for material.") [Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn]
The comments are way nasty. Read with a thick skin…
Ed Levine of NY Eats is excited because the free IKEA ferry from Lower Manhattan to Red Hook means one thing and one thing only to him (hint: and it’s not about swedish meatballs).
It means: delicious food from the Mexican food stands in the Red Hook ball fields
That’s right. NY Eats is suggesting that starting June 18, New Yorkers ride the ferry, which will run from Pier 11 in Lower Manhattan every 40 minutes during the hours of 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., to the Red Hook ballfields on weekends and enjoy some tasty Mexican food from the vendors
Some consider it the best Mexican food in the city. The stands are open from 9 am until 10 pm Saturday and Sunday. Previously hard to access, this could be a huge boon for those vendors, who have had their existence threatened by the city on more than one occasion.
The ferry is operated by New York Water Taxi,
the boat will run seven days a week, so you’ll totally be able to hop
that ship on weekends. (The soccer taco stands operate from roughly 9
a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.)The ride is free, and it’s open to everyone, not just Ikea customers. The Red Hook Ikea store opens June 18, and the ferry holds 74 passengers.
Pier 11 is on the East River at the base of Wall Street; the nearest subway stations
Check out more info and maps at NY Eats.
My friend Ed Velandria has
been sketching people on the F-train for a long time now. It’s his
yoga, his meditation, his way of relaxing while riding the subway.
That time on the subway is his "in-between"; the limbo time between
his busy life at home with two kids and a wife and his busy life
running a web development company.
With his tablet and his pen, Ed gets to zone out and focus on 
the shapes, colors, textures, patterns expressions of people’s faces.
Not thinking, just drawing, the ride from Seventh Avenue in Brooklyn to Broadway Lafayette in SoHo just whizzes by.
He used to do it with pen and paper. Then he tried using his pocket
P.C. Even off the subway, Ed draws incessantly wherever he is on scrap
paper, a
napkin, a Post-It note. Now on the subway he uses a HP tablet called a
TC1100 with a Wacom pen, which he bought off of a high school student
on Craig’s List. The tablet has been discontinued and is only available
on Craig’s List or maybe ebay. The tablet is 
touch-sensitive and capable of different kinds of strokes. He uses a paint program he bought for $20. called Art Rage.
At first, Ed was very low key about the pictures. Just some
drawings I did on the subway he might say. But overtime, it was obvious
that he was quite serious about making these pictures — at least once
a day. It’s a habit now, or more precisely, a practice — a ritual to
capture the time.
Ed catches his subjects during their in-between time, too. Eyes down,
reading, sleeping, iPod listening, they are either going to work or
going home.
I love the titles of the sketches: Long Day, Not Really Listening, Goatee Guy, Red Hoody, Intense, Kind of a Mohawk:
It is life lived on the subway — day in, day out. The artist looking, noticing, sketching…honoring the faces before his eyes.
See more of Ed’s pictures on his Flickr website.
March 26, 2007 | Permalink
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