Let me know if you’re interested. One post a day. A post here, a post there. 100 words will do the trick.
Hepcat will be holding down the fort while I am away. If you’re interested email me; louise_crawford@yahoo.com
I will be out of town — somewhere with unreliable Internet connections. A blessing. I am taking a break from OTBKB and focusing on some other writing.
Louise
Park Slope novelist Rob Reuland used to be a prosecutor in the DA’s office in Brooklyn. That is, before his crime novel, Hollowpoint, was published in 2001.
In February 2001, Reuland was interviewed by New York Magazine about his first novel and was quoted as saying, "Brooklyn is the best place to be a
homicide prosecutor. We’ve got more dead bodies per square inch than
anyplace else."
I remember the incident well because I used to rent studio space in Reuland’s brownstone, which I shared with another fiction writer and a quilter. My office was an adorable and rustic mud room that led to the garden. Unheated, it was a little cold in the winter. But hey, it was my rustic writing room in the woods of Park Slope. The others were in a larger room. Rob and his wife had a big, fancy office in a big room closer to the street.
After about a year, they decided to reclaim the back of their ground floor and we all moved out. But I knew Rueland had a crime novel in the works and I kept my eye out for it. Then I saw the interview in New York Magazine. I thought it was a good quote. There was definitely some poetic license there — I wasn’t sure if it was statistically correct. But I was surprised a few weeks later when the whole thing blew up.
Then again. Maybe I wasn’t so surprised.
The quote got him into trouble with his boss, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes. According to an article in last week’s Village Voice, then State Senator Marty Markowitz wasn’t too pleased either.
Inveterate Brooklyn booster Marty Markowitz (then a state senator
and now borough president) demanded Reuland’s head. With Hynes out of
town, Reuland’s boss, Amy Feinstein (now Hynes’s top assistant)
summoned him, and Reuland told her he didn’t mean to piss anybody off.
He offered to write a letter to New York. Feinstein and another
boss in Hynes’s office edited Reuland’s meek missive, in which he
admitted "my hyperbolic remark" and said, "This was not intended to be,
nor is it, literally true. In fact Brooklyn’s murder rate has declined
more than 66 percent during the past decade." But Hynes wasn’t
mollified, taking Reuland’s comment as a personal attack on the crime
reduction that Hynes believed his office was instrumental in achieving.
Well, here it is six years later and Charles Hynes is promoting his new book, "Triple Homicide." In early June, he had a reading at the Park Slope Barnes and Noble. Here’s the Village Voice again:
[Hynes} started expounding about this and that," says Reuland, "and
I just couldn’t stomach it." No surprise there. Six years ago, Hynes
tossed Reuland out of his job as a prosecutor in the high-profile
Homicide Bureau for doing exactly what the district attorney is now
doing: hawking a book.
Reuland walked out. I wish I coulda been a fly on the wall. But the Village Voice was there and tells the tale.
The New York TImes has the story of the avant garde violinist who lost his violin at the Clark Street station of the 2/3 train after playing a show with his quartet the Fluxus Quartet at Bargemusic, the floating performance space in Brooklyn Heights.
This is a Brooklyn story par excellance. The Times’ reports that the violin was found at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station.
Sometime after 10 p.m., Mr. Chiu said, he got a call from a transit
official at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station. “He asked if I
was missing something,” he said. “I described the contents of the
violin case. He said there were a bunch of bow ties in it and I knew it
was mine.”The official, Mr. Chiu said, told him that the violin
had been sitting on a desk at the station for a while — perhaps days.
“He found something with my name and address on it inside the violin
case and figured it must mean something to somebody, so he called me.”The
Coney Island station, however, does not house the Metropolitan
Transportation Authority’s official lost-and-found. “I think it’s for
things that were found on trains on all the lines that end there,” Mr.
Chiu said. The Clark Street station, where Mr. Chiu and the Scarampella
had last been together, is on the 2 and the 3 — which do not go to
Coney Island.
You can see it from my dad’s window in Brooklyn Heights. He said it wasn’t that crowded yesterday but who knows when he was there.
Mayor Bloomberg and his staff are moving to the city’s new Emergency Management Office in Brooklyn for two weeks while offices in City Hall are refurbished.
The joke at Groovy Grandpa and MiMa Cat’s annual fireworks party in their 27th floor Brooklyn Heights apartment is that they arrange the fireworks just for us to enjoy.
It’s our very own private fireworks show.
They have the most incredible from their living room and bedroom. Windows face the river and the Manhattan skyline in one direction and Coney Island in the other.
In the half hour or so before the Macy’s fireworks began we ask, "When are you going to pull the switch, dad? When do the fireworks begin?"
The Macy’s barge is parked in the harbor right in front of his windows. The fireworks literally fill those windows with color and light. Last night was better than ever.
Two-and-half-year-old Ducky sat on a stool near the window.
"Fireworks. Fireworks. They’re PRETTY!" she exclaimed over and over.
OSFO kept telling Ducky to try and catch one. "Reach out, reach out," she’d say. Ducky and OSFO pretended to eat them.
YUM.
Teen Spirit told Ducky that Grandpa had told them to spell her name. "See," he told her. "Those are the letters of your name."
Ducky was enchanted.
Hepcat took pictures. All of us drank cold white wine. We complimented my father constatnly. The fireworks are GREAT. There were some new effects we noticed: a tall white waterfall.
"That’s NEW. Love the new ones, Dad," my sister exclaimed.
After the show, my father accepted the compliments like it really was his show. That’s part of the joke.
"Just a little fireworks for the party," he said. "Hope you liked it."
A friend, a former Park Sloper who now lives in Staten Island in a beautiful old barn, had a fourth of July BBQ. Lucky us.
Even in the light rain, it was fun to leave the borough and celebrate the fourth with a bunch of Brooklynites in a countrified setting.
The section of Staten Island near Snug Harbor is beautiful and historic. My friend’s house, a barn, belonged to the large 1859 house next door. It was converted into a home by a sculptor, who had a great architectural sense. Double height living room, exposed beams, lots of windows. A street near my friend’s house has numerous Stanford White houses.
The guest list was made up mostly of Park Slopers and some from Kensington, Old Mill Basin, and other spots in Brooklyn. There were of course plenty of friends from Staten Island.
No skinny backyard for this former Park Sloper. My friend has an acre or more with a stream, a pergola, a hot tub and more.
The food, chicken, dogs, hamburgers, pasta, salad and more was delish. The host and hostess asked everyone to bring "bevvies." And there were a lot of those. Bottles and bottles of wine and beer.
Typical Park Sloper’s, we were nervous about leaving the borough. Would there be traffic? Would we find the way? Would we get back to Brooklyn in time for the fireworks?
Teen Spirit and OSFO opted to stay on Third Street for our building’s BBQ. Two other friends piled into the car for the ROAD TRIP adventure to Staten Island. Before entering the party exit plans were discussed.
"We have to leave no later than 6:30," I said.
"Give me a half-hour warning," my friend said.
It was just like the old days when I would would venture to a party in Brooklyn terrified that I wouldn’t know how to get home to Manhattan. Were there cabs in Brooklyn? Is anyone driving? Parties would empty out at 11 pm as Manhattanites raced out if someone had a car or had called a car service.
It was like the last transport out of Saigon.
We left Staten Island around 7 p.m. Scott Elliot, director of the Brooklyn Writer’s Space and his son came with us back to Brooklyn.
"I want you to know that I get car sick," his son said.
We braced for the worse but he fell asleep crossing the Verrazano Bridge.
Scott told us about the Writer’s Space baseball team. They’ll be playing Paragraph, a Manhattan writer’s space sometime in July. He also mentioned Room 58, his new workspace designed for journalists and other
research-based writers on 7th Street between 3rd and 4th Avenues in Park Slope/Gowanus. Soundsl ike a great space for those in need of work space (ahem: Hepcat: Can you hear me?).
Picture by Anonymous.
The Nathan’s contest glamorizes gluttony, says one of the signs that GL captured on his camera, as well as a person dressed as a pea with a sign that says, Give Peas a Chance.
Even if it is gross. And it is. A hot dog eating contest. Gross. But’s SO Brookyn. So here goes:
The Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July International Hot-Dog Eating Contest has a new champ: Joey Chestnut. The six-time champ, Takeru Kobayashi, has been beaten.
It was a world record for Chestnut, who ate 66 hot dogs in the 12-minute contest. Kobayashi finished second in a field of
17 eaters. He ate 63 hot dogs.
According to the City Room, there was some debate, however, as to whether, at the end of the 12 minutes, the frankfurters that were partly in and partly out of his
mouth would count or not.
How’s
this for irony? The day my book comes out—a book celebrating the
streets of New York—I am run down in the streets of New York. Crossing
the street around noon last Thursday, I was struck and knocked over by
a minivan. The worst appears to have been averted: The X-rays in the
emergency room didn’t show any breaks. But I won’t take up space
discussing my injuries and aches, since I’m here to write about the
aforementioned book: Walking Brooklyn.Because of the accident, it was Saturday before I went out and finally
got to see it in a bookstore. Unfortunately, it wasn’t in Brooklyn, as
the first bookstore I passed that day was the Borders at Penn
Station—where I was thrilled to see not only that Walking Brooklyn
is centrally displayed on a wall of NYC travel books and that it’s a
display you can see through the window when you’re outside the store.
This is my first book, so that was indeed a thrill! So there’s Walking Brooklyn
on the shelves—twenty months after I received an email from an editor
at Berkeley, Calif.-based Wilderness Press, who’d gotten my name from a
mutual friend after he heard Wilderness was looking for an author for
the next destination in their urban walking tour series, Brooklyn.The
email said they were looking for a writer who is “an active walker and
urban explorer, who’s curious and appreciative of the urban
environment…” Sounds like a personal ad I might have written! After
submitting proposals for the book, I was hired and my journey to get to
know Brooklyn better than ever commenced. By then, it was early 2006.
That winter I did book research, and in April began the legwork.Now,
just over a year later, the result is in the stores. Thirty walking
tours, each created by me. In all, over forty neighborhoods are
represented. It’s the only guidebook I know of that covers such places
as Bushwick and Cypress Hills and Mill Island—places that guidebooks
would call “off the beaten path”—in such depth. All the old favorites
are there too, like Brooklyn Heights, Prospect Park, Fort Greene and,
of course, the Slope. There are walks across bridges, along the bay and
ocean, into cemeteries, and through streets lined with posh residences
of the late 1800s and the early 2000s. It’s a book I hope Brooklynites
and other New Yorkers will enjoy as much as tourists.To be continued….
Good blog. Good info. Especially this story about graffiti artist, Ellis G, an OTBKB fave.
Here’s OTBKB’s story about Ellis G. from 2005 (with pictures, too).
McBrooklyn knows where to watch the fireworks in Brooklyn…
Gowanus Lounge has the pix of the Floating Lady Pool
Here’s Peter on the Declaration of Independence:
Wouldn’t it indeed be something if we actually "held these truths to be
self-evident?" – "That all men (people) are created equal, that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that
among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to
secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving
their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any
Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right
of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new
Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its
powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their
Safety and Happiness."What a radically wonderful and different country we would be living in
than this one. How did this happen? How did we stray so far from the
ideals set forth in this document? Were these always too high as
standards for us to live up to? Are we still just too insecure, greedy,
needy, narcissistic and ego-driven to honor by action the words of our
Founders? What is the lesson in the ironic fact that the people who
boistrously tout themelves to be true Americans the most are almost
always the ones who live furthest away from these ideals?Finally, wouldn’t it be something if on this July 4th, we could just
take a brief break from the fireworks and hot dogs to reflect on the
state of our country, and perhaps marvel at the brilliance of these
words given to us as such a gift 231 years ago.
Reprinted from OTBKB July 6, 2007:
They were just suitcases. But so much more. They caused the police
to close up streets in Park Slope for six hours on Monday while they
investigated the possibility that there were explosives inside.
Those suitcases belonged to a homeless man who goes by the name Mr.
G.. He is a familiar site with his white hair and his shopping cart
filled with Key Food bags, bottles and cans. Local legend has it that
he became homeless many years ago. Prior to that he lived in a rental
apartment on Union Street. Then he lost his job and his life took a
downward turn: he became homeless.
An older woman on that block let him keep his belongings in the
basement of her brownstone. She was an old friend, someone who knew him
in better days. For years his belongings resided in her basement. More
recently, he brought empty suitcases downstairs.
Chloe, the daughter-in-law of that woman, wanted to clean the
basement. She noticed that the suitcases were getting mildewed. She
left a note on Monday July 3rd for Mr. G. It was something along the
lines of: Please take your suitcases out of here by Friday.
Well, he did. He came by on Monday, sometime before 3 p.m., when no
one was looking and put some of the suitcases on the street in front of
the house where Chloe and her mother-in-law live. He may not have
wanted to leave all of them in front of their house, so he carried them
in his shopping cart and threw them out in garbage pails along Seventh
Avenue.
On Monday afternoon, Chloe did some errands on Seventh Avenue. When
she came back, she told her neighbor, Leah, that the police were
closing off traffic on Seventh Avenue. There was a bomb scare.
Leah and Chloe watched their sons, who are playmates, play together.
They watched as Union Street was closed off, as was 8th Avenue. There
were many police officers on the streets.
Chloe took a walk and caught sight of one of the suitcases and a
lamp. Those look like the suitcases Mr. G. removed from my basement,
she thought to herself, she told Leah.
So Chloe told the police officer who seemed to be in charge. A
little while later, more police and the FBI called on Chloe at her home
to verify her story.
This happened sometime after 7:00 p.m. on Monday. After that, the police closed the investigation down.
Leah did see Mr. G. on Monday he was pushing a shopping cart and
there was still a suitcase in it. She’s not sure if he knows, even now,
what he set in motion.
IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people
to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another
and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal
station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a
decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should
declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted
among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
— That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these
ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to
institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and
organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely
to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate
that Governments long established should not be changed for light and
transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that
mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to
right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably
the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute
Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such
Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such
has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the
necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of
Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a
history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct
object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To
prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and
pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his
Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly
neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large
districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of
Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and
formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual,
uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records,
for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his
measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause
others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of
Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise;
the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of
invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for
that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners;
refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and
raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign
to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent
to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders
which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring
Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging
its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument
for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries
to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun
with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the
most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized
nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high
Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of
their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has
endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless
Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished
destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress
in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered
only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by
every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free
people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We
have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to
extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of
the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have
appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured
them by the ties of our common kindred. to disavow these usurpations,
which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence.
They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.
We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our
Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in
War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America,
in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the
world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by
Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and
declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free
and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to
the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and
the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and
that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War,
conclude Peace contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all
other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And
for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the
protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our
Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
— John Hancock
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin,
John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson,
George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
It’s the 4th of July: Independence Day and Louis Armstrong’s birthday.
Don’t miss the 24-hour Louis Armstrong marathon on WKCR, Columbia University’s legendary radio station, all day on 89.9 FM.
Reprinted from OTBKB July 4, 2006.
July 22nd is the second Brooklyn Blogade Roadshow. Come on board. The bloggers are going to Greenpoint. And Miss Heather of New York Shitty will be the hostess. I got this email from her. It sounds like fun. The last one at Vox Pop in Flatbush was tres fun. A great way to meet bloggers AND a great way to get to know a new Brooklyn nabe. You MUST RSVP to attend. You won’t want to miss this one. Here’s the missive from Miss Heather:
As some of you may be aware, I am coordinating this month’s blogger
meet-up which is to be held right here in the mighty Greenpoint. Here
are the deets.When: July 22 (a Sunday) 2:00 to 5:00 p.m.
Where: Casa Mon Amour, 162 Franklin Street
What: There will be a $10.00 fee to attend. This
will cover the cost of Beatrice (Casa Mon Amour’s owner) opening the
restaurant on a Sunday, it will also purchase you as assortment of
tasty Dominican kibble to nibble on such as…
- Chimol (it’s pretty much the same thing as Pico de Gallo)
- Shrimp Ceviche
- Rice and beans
- Plantains
- Baked Chicken
- Mixed Green Salad with homemade vinaigrette
Who: Anyone who is interested in attending. You
need not be a Brooklyn blogger or blog about Brooklyn to attend. If
you, for example, blog about Long Island City, photoblog your kidney
stones— or both— you are more than welcome to attend. Kink and quirk
are perfectly acceptable; I want diversity. (Like I have any right to
pass judgment on someone’s eccentricities anyway…)Kevin “The Man” Walsh
is scheduled to give a presentation about North Brooklyn to get
everyone in the Greenpoint spirit. I have a couple of surprises up my
sleeve as well. It should be a lot of fun.Those of you who are interested in attending can R.S.V.P. via email at:
blogade.rsvp@gmail.com
Be sure to indicate in your email if you are interested in eating
shrimp, chicken or straight vegetarian fare so I can ensure there’s
enough of the right food for everybody.Thanks!
Miss Heather
The big weigh in: New York 1 reports that 17 contenders in the Nathan’s Hot Dog
Contest got weighed in today in Manhattan (Why Manhattan?).
Last year’s winner, Takeru Kobayashi of Japan, weighed in. He is ecovering from a jaw injury. He’s not sure if he’s going to compete and will decide tomorrow.
California’s Joey Chestnut, is the favorite. She weights 215 pounds and ercently set the world
record earlier this year by eating more then 59 hot dogs in 12 minutes.
A great operal singer and a great arts administrator, this Brooklyn girl died today. She was borni n 1929 in Crown Heights, went to PS 91 and later went to Erasmus Hall High School.
After she retired from singing, she ran the New York City Opera for a decade. Later, she
assumed the volunteer post of chairman of Lincoln Center in New York
City from 1994 to 2002. Later she accepted the volunteer
post of chairman of the Metropolitan Opera.
I found this pix on Rosie O’Donnell’s Flickr page.
Philissa of the Brooklyn Food Group wrote to tell me that they’ve got an event coming up. Unfortunately I will be away for the Brooklyn Food Group’s two upcoming dinners on July 13 and 14th.
She tells me that they got such a great response from OTBKB readers for their last dinner that they wanted OTBKB readers to be in the know about this new one.
Don’t miss an amazing summer menu. I assume there’s information on their blog: see below.
Dates: July 13, 8 p.m., July 14, 7 p.m., in Cobble Hill.
Tickets are $50 and can be reserved at brooklynfoodgroup.blogspot.com
She left the house so early she didn’t have time to post anything. And she was out late last night. And she had to go to the dentist and…
TMI. You don’t need to know all that. Suffice it to say, sorry for neglecting the blog.
New York 1 reports that an Olympic athlete has confessed to raping five women in city parks, including Prospect Park, over the last four years.
Police arrested 30-year-old Alvin Henry of Springfield Gardens Sunday.
According to the Associated Press, Henry admitted to attacking two women in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park.
The former sprinter for Trinidad and Tobago’s national Olympic team
was brought in after police matched him to a composite sketch."It did have something to do with contact that this individual had
with a victim," said Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. "After he
victimized this young woman he did contact her, there was an exchange
of phone numbers."Henry faces several charges, including rape and sexual abuse.
The latest happened on June 15th in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, when
he allegedly raped a woman at gunpoint. Police say he managed to
separate the victim from a male friend.
Anne Pope, of Sustainable Flatbush, sent me word of this piece on Streetsblog .Thanks Ann
This from New York 1:
Police have arrested a Queens man they say is a serial rapist who has struck five times in the last four years.
Alvin Henry, 30, of Springfield Gardens faces several charges, including rape and sexual abuse.
He was arrested Sunday after police linked a recent rape to four others.
Police say they were able to link Henry to five attacks on women –
the latest happened on June 15th in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, when he
allegedly raped a woman at gunpoint. Police say he managed to separate
the victim from a male friend and attacked her.
Henry is accused of raping a teenager in the park back in April.
Investigators say he also committed three rapes in two Queens parks.
Two happened in Roy Wilkins Park – one last month and one in August of
2003.
Another rape happened in Baisley Park in June of 2003.
Well, not really. It’s just that he’s been studying it, using it, admiring it, net surfing with it, twirling it, showing it off, even answering the phone with it since he got it after midnight on Saturday morning: he just went to the Apple Store and bought it. No fuss. No muss.
Suffice it to say, he loves the thing and is most impressed with its touch screen capabilities and the way you can zoom in and out of whatever is on the screen.