Reclaimed Home wants to know why I haven’t been there yet. Because our cousins from Baltimore are in town and they wanted to go so we’re meeting them for breakfast at Tom’s and then we’re off to the Flea. Afterwards they want to catch the Murakami at the Brooklyn Museum.

How’s that for a plan?

Here’s the word from Signor Flea about this weekend’s Flea:

We can’t seem to buy any sunshine at The Flea, but there’s a ton of things you can buy from the 175-odd vendors who set up every weekend in the 40,000-square-foot school yard at the Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School in Fort Greene. Last weekend saw the arrival of a ton of new furniture dealers (see above); this weekend there’s a whole ‘nuther wave of vendors (including A&J 20th Century Design, formerly of Lafayette Street in Manhattan!). For more details check out yesterday’s post on the Brooklyn Flea blog. The market is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and is located at 176 Lafayette Avenue. Closet 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.

Join ruckus rousing NY Sun Columnist, Lenore Skenazy, Amy Sohn, the controversial sex and mating columnist for NY Magazine, and the Brooklyn Paper’s tell-it-like-it-really-is Smartmom and others, who will will shock, amuse, and entertain you, and they won’t make you eat your vegetables before you get dessert.

Come to this reading/cocktail party (cash bar) at the Montauk Club in Park Slope on May 15th at 7:00 pm.

Deom single moms to sexy moms to moms who let their kids ride the MTA alone, these writers will shock, amuse, and entertain you, and they won’t make you eat your vegetables before you get dessert.

Readers include:
Lenore Skenazy (New York Sun writer, who let her 9-year-old take the subway alone),
Christen Clifford (writer/ performer of Off-Broadway’s hit show Baby Love, true stories about sex and motherhood),
Louise Sloan (author of Knock Yourself Up: A Tell-All Guide to Becoming a
Single Mom)
Amy Sohn (author of Run Catch Kiss and former columnist at New York magazine)
Louise Crawford (AKA Smartmom and OTBKB)

Location: 25 8th Avenue between Lincoln and St. John in Park Slope, Brooklyn
Date: Thursday May 15th
7 p.m. Cash bar for cocktails
7:30: The reading begins
Admission free

Nicholas Pekearo, an auxiliary cop, was murdered last year, at the age of 19, on the streets of Greenwich Village. A writer, Nicholas worked at Crawford Doyle Booksellers in Manhattan and lived in Park Slope.

Today, the United States Department of Justice announced on Thursday that the families of Nicholas T. Pekearo and Yevgeniy Marshalik, unarmed auxiliary police officers were entitled to federal death benefits. This is a reversal of past rulings which aroused public protest.

According to the New York Times:

The department said it would award about $300,000 each to the families of the officers, Nicholas T. Pekearo and Yevgeniy Marshalik, under the Public Safety Officers’ Benefits Program, which is intended to compensate the survivors of police officers and firefighters across the nation who are killed in the line of duty.

Officers Pekearo, 28, and Marshalik, 19, were fatally shot on the evening of March 14, 2007, in a confrontation with David R. Garvin, who had fatally shot a bartender in a pizza restaurant. Evan Peterson, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said on Thursday that the decision to award death benefits reflected “the extraordinary efforts” of the officers.

A friend is looking for a 2 or 3 bedroom apartment to rent and wants to spend about $2,000. That’s why she’s hoping to find something in Kensington, Flatbush or Ditmas Park.

Contact louise_crawford(at)yahoo(dot)com

A woman from Bushwick sent this note to me:

I work for Make the Road NY in Bushwick, and this year we’re starting up a Community Supported Agriculture program. We currently have spaces in the program available, and are recruiting members.

What is a CSA?

It’s basically when a farmer and a neighborhood partner up; the community members pay for a share of the harvest in advance, and then weekly (for 22 weeks in our case) from June ‘til Nov. the farmer brings vegetable boxes to each CSA customer.

Our farmer is Sergio Nolasco, of Nolasco Farms in Hackenstown NJ .

Info Session:

We’re also having an info session with the farmer – a potluck and meeting – this Monday April 28th from 6p-8p at the Make the Road office at 301 Grove Street , Brooklyn NY 11237 .

I’ll be signing up members after the meeting. We only have about 40 spots left.

It’s also a fundraiser. But I like the terminology.

And if you like Inside Schools as much as I do you might want to meet the people behind Inside Schools and contribute some much needed funds to what is an indispensable resource for NYC parents, who send their kids to public school.

The event is on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 from 7:00 – 9:00 p.m. at the home of Nancy Bruni
435 Clinton Avenue, Brooklyn

At this event you get to meet the smart people behind Insideschools.org and its parent organization, Advocates for Children of NY, and learn how they’re helping to make the city’s public schools better for all our children:

Pamela Wheaton, Director of Insideschools.org
Kim Sweet, Executive Director, Advocates for Children
Clara Hemphill, Founding Director of Insideschools.org and
author of “NYC’s Best Public Schools” books

The suggested *minimum* donation for this event is $35.00 and wine and light hors d’ouevres will be served

If you can’t attend, but you’d like to support Insideschools.org, please click this link to make a secure online donation:
https://insideschools.org/home/membership/donate_now.php
(your donation to Insideschools.org is fully tax-deductable to the extent allowable by law)

Please RSVP by April 20, 2008
to Yung-Mi Lee at 917-544-9889 or
yungmil@yahoo.com

City Councilmember, Bill de Blasio, who is running for the Borough presidency is sponsoring: Plan For The Future Forum: The Gowanus

Co-Sponsors include, Community Board 6, Gowanus Dredgers, Gowanus Canal
Development Corporation and the Gowanus Canal Conservancy. The event is on 2nd Street at the Gowanus Canal. It’s on May 8 at 6:30. That’s the night before the Brooklyn Blogfest at the Brooklyn Lyceum for one and all.

Here’s the blurb from De Blasio’s office:

What and Why: With Brooklyn’s current state of hyper-development it is
important that we recognize and plan for the impact that the growing
population has on our borough’s aging infrastructure.

To begin this conversation I would like to invite you to be involved
in an open discussion with professionals from various New York State
and City agencies. The event will focus on the Gownaus Canal corridor
that is outlined in the framework developed by the Department of City
Planning (http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/gowanus/index.shtml) and
the future development of the Public Place site.

Topics can range from transportation, combined sewer overflow,
traffic, schools and affordable housing and more. The event will also
feature canoe rides by the Gowanus Dredgers. If you would like to
preregister question so the appropriate agency can better address them
at the event please email them to Tagray1@gmail.com or call
718-854-9791.

Where: 2nd Street at the Gowanus Canal (off of Bond Street)

When: May 7th, 6:30pm-8:30pm

Groups Invited:

Department Of Transportation, Metropolitan Transit Authority,
Department of Environmental Protection, NYS Department of
Environmental Conservation, Department of Education, Department of
City Planning, Department of Buildings, NYPD, FDNY and NYC Park and
Recreation.

It was an interesting site:

Teen Spirit had four friends over to watch Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors. They crowded onto the green leather couch; there was a girl visiting from France in the group so they had the French subtitles going.

The film, with Martin Landau, Angelica Huston and SO many other great actors, is an interesting one. It’s got it all:

The big dark issues of mortality, ethics, and meaning Woody Allen style. The humor. The flashback scenes to the Jewish family seder, the relationship stuff. The funny lines:

“People don’t commit suicide in Brooklyn. They’re too unhappy…”

Lots of LOL stuff. But it’s a dark, dark film about justice and accountability in the eyes of the law, in the eyes of God. Here from Roger Ebert:

The implications of “Crimes and Misdemeanors” are bleak and hopeless. The evil are rewarded, the blameless are punished, and the rabbi goes blind. To be sure, justice is done in the low-road plot: Cliff does not succeed in leaving his wife to marry a girl for whom he would be the worst possible partner, and the rich and triumphant Lester gets the girl and will possibly make her happy, or at least rich. But in the main story Dolores lies in her grave, and Judah finds that life goes on — for him, at least. For Martin Landau, the performance is a masterpiece of smooth, practiced diplomacy, as he glides through life and leaves his problems behind. Landau is never more effective than when he is shocked and dismayed at his own behavior. It’s as if he’s regarding himself from outside, with a kind of fascination. He sees what he does, and does nothing to stop it. In his own world, he is the eyes of God.

Teen Spirit and a friend are watching EVERY Woody Allen film. Up next: Orson Welles. I forget who they’ve already done. They loved Hannah and Her Sisters.

It’s their own private extra-curricular course in film history.

Finally. It’s been out on video from The Criterion Collection for a while and it’s been on my Netflix queue since last month. Finally. It arrived yesterday: Three Women, Robert Altman’s masterpiece from 1977 with Sissy Spacek and Shelley Duvall.

I remember seeing it when it came out. I had almost no memory of what it was actually about but I could never get the mood of it out of my mind. And I’ve always wanted to see it again.

Apparently Robert Altman dreamed the film. Everything. The plot. The characters. The locations. The casting.

Last night we watched this strange, interesting, beautiful film, which must be seen. Here’s the synopsis from the Criterion Collection.

In a dusty, under-populated California resort town, Pinky Rose (Sissy Spacek), a naïve and impressionable Southern waif begins her life as a nursing home attendant. There, Pinky finds her role model in fellow nurse “Thoroughly Modern” Millie Lammoreaux (Shelley Duvall), a misguided would-be sophisticate and hopeless devotee of Cosmopolitan and Woman’s Day magazines. When Millie accepts Pinky into her home at the Purple Sage singles complex, Pinky’s hero-worship evolves into something far stranger and more sinister than either could have anticipated. Featuring brilliant performances from Spacek and Duvall, Robert Altman’s dreamlike masterpiece, 3 Women, careens from the humorous to the chilling to the surreal, resulting in one of the most unusual and compelling films of the 1970s

.

Brooklynite Catherine Swan is fighting the good fight with her blog Washington Square Park, the chronicles of a beloved park and a city government overcome by its own power. In her first post from February 2008 she had this to say:

Someone referred to Washington Square Park as “magical.” It took me awhile to see that. Certainly, I’d been to Washington Square Park over the years. I’d sat and listened to music or watched strange happenings within the fountain. I’d marveled at the almost laid back ’60’s bohemian feeling it retained which co-existed amongst college students, chess players, old-timers, newbies, dog walkers, families, tourists. Every type person coexists and intermingles within Washington Square Park.

My renewed interest in the Park — in relation to the massive changes and radical overhaul the City has planned for it — occurred late last year out of concern for the cutting down of the trees and what that would mean for the wildlife in the Park. I then realized what was going to be ‘taken away’ by these mysterious, suddenly “necessary” changes — changes that would affect the whole essence of the Park — the things that make it work… those inexplicable factors which make it such a special place for so many people. To want to change that seemed to me an extension of the long arm of gentrification and homogenization of our city(by our current Mayor, Mayor Bloomberg).

Then, it became even more important to oppose these changes. This is my attempt to document what I’ve learned in a short time and share that information.

Daily since then she has been documenting what’s going on in that park, as well as Union Square Park. One of her key posts is called, Connecting the Dots: A Guide to NYC Parks Department — Washington Square Park and Union Square Redesigns. Another key post: Honey I Shrunk the Park.

This Arbor Day, she reports, there’s a demonstration:

Street Artists, Activists, Community Members, Public Space and Free Speech Advocates (Everyone Invited) Gather to Protect Our Trees and Protest Privatization of Public Space

In Honor of Arbor (Tree) Day Friday April 25th

When: Friday, April 25th, 6-8 p.m.

Where: UNION SQUARE PARK, 14th Street betw. Union Sq East and Union Sq West by Gandhi Statue, Manhattan

Despite Mayor Bloomberg’s hyping of his “MillionTreesNYC” P.R. initiative, thousands of mature trees have been cut down in all five boroughs at our City’s Parks, mostly in the interest of privatization of public space, which has dramatically increased under Mayor Bloomberg.

OTBKB fave author Richard Grayson wrote to say that Gawker attacked his book of sex stories for teens.

The upstart Dumbo Books of Brooklyn thought of a not-so-ingenious way to get real life teens to blurb their upcoming release of Queens writer Richard Grayson’s new book: Craigslist. With only a Blogger website to their name, the small press has turned to blind posting in ‘Writing Jobs’, looking for “18-25yo hipsters to blurb our cool forthcoming book of sex stories for teens…you must be cool-looking, smart looking.” High standards, but when you’re desperately seeking random blurbs for the tragically titled, Who Will Kiss The Pig? Sex Stories For Teens, you want the best. Hopefully they’ll omit the Miss Piggy-inspired cover from the PDF they promise to send along to chosen hipsters. And if you’re under 18, there’s still hope: just ask your parents if it’s OK to talk about how much you love this book/PDF about teen sex. After the jump, the full Craigslist post in all its glory..

Here’s the ad that Gawker is so snarky about:

Cool Brooklyn book publisher looking for cool 18-25yo hipsters to blurb our cool forthcoming book of sex stories for teens. We will send you a PDF of the book and ask for a blurb & headshot for advertising, website, publicity. Tiny honorarium of free books and our guarantee to read and consider your own book manuscript for publication. Our books have been reviewed in Phila. Inquirer, Kirkus, Hipster Book Club, Florida Book Review, etc. You must be cool-looking, smart-looking. Minorities encouraged to apply. Under 18, must have parents’ permission!

Last but not least, here is Grayson’s response to being called a Queens writer: “I am very insulted about being called a Queens writer.”

As readers of OTBKB know, Grayson is the Brooklyn author of: So I Kissed Him on Lorimar Street, I Break for Delmore Schwartz, With Hitler in New York and many more. We at OTBKB love his stories about his Brooklyn boyhood and his trips around Brooklyn by bus.

Eliot sent me the summons he saw on the House of Whimsy, that notorious building on the corner of 1st Street and Seventh Avenue, owned by Dorothy Nash, that used to have a weird bar in the storefront (a weird vintage dress shop and real estate office, too) that is now the vacant, dangerous, eyesore of Seventh Avenue.

Here is a photo of the latest Notice of Violation dated today (Friday) and taped to the front door of the defunct Landmark Tavern. The Violation Conditions Observed reads: WORK WITHOUT A PERMIT. EXPIRED PERMIT. NOTED SIDEWALK SHED IN PLACE IN ACCORDANCE WITH PERMIT #302308599 EXP ON 12/31/07

Today, Brownstoner has the story:

Apparently the DOB affixed a notice to the building about a hearing that was supposed to take place on Monday regarding the structure’s latest violation, which involves having an out-of-date permit for scaffolding. The DOB also recorded a violation on the property last year due to its owner’s “failure to maintain bldg.” City records do not show that the owner, Dorothy Nash, did anything to remedy the infraction, which carried a $2,500 fine (amount paid: $250). The building is legendary in Park Slope because it’s been in decline for almost two decades. The Times published a piece about the property a couple months ago saying that it “radiates a mysterious, haunted quality.” At the time, Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn noted that “187 Seventh Avenue is an ugly mess. Nash has been offered gobs of money to sell the place but has continuously refused. She also owns a building on Second Street between Seventh and Sixth Avenue, an eyesore in similar disrepair.

Public school kids are on vacation. There are parking spaces. The temperatures are warm; Spring is in the air. Pink magnolia blossoms fill neighborhood trees. People are enjoying out door dining, walks in Prospect Park.

It’s a lovely week in the Slope

So how literary is Park Slope’s PS 107? Did they make it on the New York Observer’s Brooklyn Literary 100. And why not? There are some pretty big names in the parent body over there. And they get help from other Brooklyn literary types to put this fantastic series, which raises money for the school’s library. So here goes:

Brooklyn literati at PS 107 are at it again with their 4th Annual Readings on the 4th Floor Author Reading Series.

It’s a cool series in a cool space and a fundraiser for the school’s library. I’ve never been but I am always intrigued.

Brooklyn, April 18, 2008 – How do you go from literary agent to resident
expert on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart? This question and more will
be answered on Tuesday, May 6th at 7:30 pm as author, actor, and comedian
John Hodgman will present an evening of amusements that includes readings
from his forthcoming book, More Information Than You Require. Various
talented acquaintances he has met in a professional capacity will join
him, including Darin Strauss, author of the novels Chang and Eng and the
upcoming More Than It Hurts You, and Patrick Borelli, one of Time Out
NY’s Ten Favorite Comics and a regular contributor to Comedy Central and
Cartoon Network.

John Hodgman, a New York Times Magazine contributor, is the author of The
Areas of My Expertise, a book that Publisher’s Weekly said attested to his
status as: “leading authority in the realm of informative false world
knowledge.” Hodgman has developed a diverse career that includes his
regular appearances on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and his performance
as the “PC” on a series of Macintosh commercials. John was also the host
of the Little Gray Book Lectures—a wildly successful series of readings
and performances that was featured on This American Life. Hodgman, now a
native Brooklynite, is pleased to be a part of a reading series that
benefits public education.

The reading will be held on the 4th Floor of PS107, which is located at
13th Street and 8th Avenue in Park Slope. Subway: F train to 15th Street.

This event is a part of the 2008 fundraising series sponsored by the PTA
of PS 107. Proceeds go towards building the school’s library collection.
Tickets $15 (tax deductible). For advance tickets please visit:
http://www.ps107.org/

Let’s give Dorree Shafrir of the New York Observer, the author of the Brooklyn Literary 100, a taste of her own medicine. Send names that you think should be on the list. Thanks.

Writer Dorree Shafrir at the New York Observer did it; she put together the Brooklyn Literary 100. Like the Park Slope 100, it’s sure to get slammed. Lists are silly and fun.

Neighborhood by neighborhood, she did the who’s who of the Brooklyn literati. Interestingly, it’s not just authors but agents, editors and others.

And I love the Map!

Do I agree with her list? Of course not. Well, she does have some of the essential names for Park Slope. But there are so many others that she left out.

List making; it’s reductive thing. But hey, that’s what it’s about. It was interesting to read the names in all the other Brooklyn nabes, too. The who’s who and where they live. You know me, I love this sort of thing. It’s fun to hate. It’s fun to love.

The idea of a Brooklyn literary “scene” is one that has become so ingrained in the city’s consciousness that, in true Brooklyn style, it has now become fashionable to consider writerly Brooklyn in an ironic manner, to comment on the ridiculousness of the idea that a place can, in fact, be said to help define a literary community. Take, for example, Colson Whitehead’s cheeky New York Times Book Review essay—“I Write in Brooklyn. Get Over It”—from last month, in which he questioned the very idea that the borough could be said to inspire any kind of literary imagination. He wrote: “There was the famous case of the language poet from Red Hook who grew despondent when the Shift key on her MacBook broke. She couldn’t write for weeks. Overcome by melancholy humors, she jumped into the enchanted, glowing waters of the Gowanus Canal, her pockets full of stones. And … she was cured! The metaphors came rushing back. With eccentric spacing between the letters, but still.”

Here’s the Park Slope list:

Park Slope
Paul Auster, author
Jonathan Safran Foer, author
Mary Gannon, editor, Poets & Writers
Ben Greenman, editor, The New Yorker; author
Colin Harrison, editor, Harper’s; author
Kathryn Harrison, author
Steven Berlin Johnson, author; blogger
Edward Kastenmeier, editor, Knopf
Porochista Khakpour, author
Nicole Krauss, author
Megan Lynch, editor, Riverhead
Sarah McGrath, editor, Riverhead
Suketu Mehta, author
Elissa Schappell, contributing editor, Vanity Fair
John Sellers, author
Darin Strauss, author
Alexandra Styron, author
Bill Wasik, editor, Harper’s; author
Larry Weissman, agent, Larry Weissman Literary