Gabriel Cohen sent me this book and it’s really good. I haven’t finished it but I highly recommend his reading tonight. Cohen, author of "Red Hook", reads from his new Brooklyn novel, "Boombox",

tonight, June 13th, at Community Bookstore at 7:30.

Black and white, young and old, men and women, they
live in Brooklyn’s Boerum Hill, sharing a courtyard in
relative harmony. It’s what a former mayor liked to
call “the urban mosaic.”

There’s Carol Fasone, a secretary enjoying her new
marriage to a Bosnian immigrant. There’s Mitchell
Brett, a Wall Streeter transplanted from Manhattan’s
Upper East Side, trying to get his wife pregnant.
There’s Grace Howard, hoping for a promotion in her
corporate job, surprised to find herself beginning a
romance with a member of the Board. And then there’s
teenage Jamel Wilson, who buys a big sound system to
impress his friends from the projects around the
corner, blasts gangster rap into the backyard gardens,
and—over the course of one hot summer—pushes the
block’s friendships and alliances past the breaking
point.

We hope you can come! Gabriel Cohen, author of "Red
Hook", reads from his new Brooklyn novel, "Boombox",
tonight, June 13th, at Community Bookstore at 7:30.

New eats on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope:

–Oko, a new frozen yogurt shop with assorted teas, hot and iced, including a lip-smacking ginger with Asian pear, are $3 to $4 for 16 ounces. The name means “eco” in Hungarian. Oko is at 152 Fifth Avenue (DeGraw Street),
(718) 398-3671.

–A new bakery called Trois Pommes has opened at 260 Fifth Avenue (Carroll Street), (718)
230-3119.

An OTBKB reader needs information on local banking.

I need to open a new bank account and I had this idea that I should open it
at Independence Community Bank because their foundation funds so much
Brooklyn goodness, but they’ve been acquired by Sovereign and I don’t know
a thing about them. Williamsburgh Savings? Now HSBC.

So now I’m wondering, what do other Brooklynites do? Does anyone try to
bank locally? I’d go the credit union route, but they seem not to offer so
many interest bearing accounts. Or do they?

I’d love to hear from OTBKB readers about where they bank and how they like it.

I’m serious.

Cory Doctorow in Boing Boing reports that Forbes Magazine has put together a collection of articles about 21st century city, including Doctorow’s about the future of urban surveillance, called “Snitchtown.” Here’s an excerpt.

The key to living in a city and peacefully co-existing as a social animal in tight quarters is to set a delicate balance of seeing and not seeing. You take care not to step on the heels of the woman in front of you on the way out of the subway, and you might take passing note of her most excellent handbag. But you don’t make eye contact and exchange a nod. Or even if you do, you make sure that it’s as fleeting as it can be.

Checking your mirrors is good practice even in stopped traffic, but staring and pointing at the schmuck next to you who’s got his finger so far up his nostril he’s in danger of lobotomizing himself is bad form–worse form that picking your nose, even.

I once asked a Japanese friend to explain why so many people on the Tokyo subway wore surgical masks. Are they extreme germophobes? Conscientious folks getting over a cold? Oh, yes, he said, yes, of course, but that’s only the rubric. The real reason to wear the mask is to spare others the discomfort of seeing your facial expression, to make your face into a disengaged, unreadable blank–to spare others the discomfort of firing up their mirror neurons in order to model your mood based on your outward expression. To make it possible to see without seeing.

Math scores for students across New York State improved significantly in every grade tested this year, especially in New York City, according to results of the annual statewide math exam released by education officials yesterday. Read the Times here.

One of the members of the Transformers, the group from Gibbsville Reformed Church in Gibbsville, Wisconsin who are fixing the chandelier at the Old First Reformed Church, has a blog. His name is Chris and he’s blogging about the group’s experience in Brooklyn.

This is so, so cool. Chris writes,

Well, we had a wonderful second day in New York. We slept in to about 8AM, then had some breakfast, and did some worship songs and at 11AM, we participated in the church service of Old First Reformed. It’s a very traditional reformed church, every week they do communion, and most of us participated in it. We were also talked about by Pastor Dan, and the surprise and delight of our group, when Transformers were introduced to the rest of church, we were greeted with applause and excitement, what a blessing!

He’s added a vaguely European movie soundtrack feeling to my treks up and down Seventh Avenue. In front of Chase Bank, Old First, here and there, he has, in his own somewaht melancholy and musical way, altered the mood of Seventh Avenue.

Thank you Mr. Accordian Man. Dope on the Slope has a picture

Gowanus Lounge reports that Astroland may stick around for another year. You’ll have to go over there for the story.

Got this info today about a new online book discussion group, Brooklyn Book Talk, sponsored by the Brooklyn Public Library.

Want a new way to discuss books and literature? Can’t make it to your library’s book discussion? Join other readers online! Brooklyn Public Library has started an online book discussion.
We’ve kicked off with “Siddhartha,” Hermann Hesse’s exploration of the tensions between spirituality and worldliness. Future titles include “The Night Watch,” about four young Londoners struggling through World War II, by Sarah Waters and “The Lost Painting,” Jonathan Harr’s real-life detective story from the art world.

Via this online book discussion, BPL will offer entertainment and education by providing a platform for lively, engaging, friendly, and probing discussion and debate, 24 hours a day. All you need to participate is an enthusiasm for books and for talking about them. Discussions will change every month and are led by BPL librarians.

Go to http://brooklynbooktalk.blogspot.com/ for more information and to join in.

Check out Listen Missy.

I’m dreaming of Richard Serra…

It must be PMS season at Listen Missy headquarters, because I’ve noticed myself being a little aggressive…

Nice photo of a hammock in Ft. Greene Park.

I’m the person the reporter quoted asking another parent: “You don’t happen to be a graphic designer, by any chance?” Pandamonium, the school’s poetry magazine, always needs parents who are graphic designers, scanners, typists, or proof readers.

By DAVID K. RANDALL
Published: June 12, 2007

IT was 30 minutes before the open microphone part of the show was to begin, and one poet was already nervous.

“I don’t feel like doing it,” he said, tugging at his shirt while eyeing the microphone.

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” his mother answered.

“O.K., I’ll do it,” he replied.

Last Friday night, about 50 pupils and their parents were tucked into a corner of a Barnes & Noble store in Park Slope, Brooklyn, for Public School 321’s first open mike night. The students were there to read their original poems as part of a three-day fund-raiser in which the bookstore donated some of its sales to the school.

In a neighborhood known for its concentration of writers and editors, poetry nights like this may be the urban equivalent of the neighborhood car wash.

John Ellrodt, an educational consultant whose children attend P.S. 321, served as the night’s M.C. He briefed students on the protocols of poetry nights, and offered them a backward baseball cap or black beret to wear while they read.

“The Beats used to wear these hats,” he said. “As you get a little bit older, I encourage you to look them up.”

Mya Brady, a third grader, walked up to the microphone to read the night’s first poem. She began:

The owl books are boring

Nothing’s fun

Since Henry moved away

Nothing’s fun to play.

Children came up one by one, reading poems about the ocean, giant bugs and an older man named Tony who sits on the stoop smoking every night.

A group of adults gathered around a table stacked with books on money management, and one parent asked another if she might be able to volunteer to work on the school’s literary magazine.

“You don’t happen to be a graphic designer, by any chance?” she was asked.

“No, I’m an editor,” she replied.

“That’s good, too!”

After the children who wanted to come up had read their first poems, Mr. Ellrodt opened the floor to parents and teachers. Parents took turns walking to the microphone and reciting poems they memorized when they were their children’s ages, and walked back expressing amazement at how they were able to recall rhythm and meter from long ago.

“You see, poetry helps set a rhythm for how you live,” Mr. Ellrodt told the children on the floor at his feet. “There’s no doubt that the days you remember your poems beat the ones that you don’t, because the poetry you love sets a nice pace when yours might need changing.”

Anyone know of one that’s free or inexpensive that when checked out by a piano tuner/repair person will elicit cries of: "THIS IS A GREAT PIANO!!!"

Let me know: louise_crawford@yahoo.com

Rooftop Films will be holding its first screening of the summer season at its Brooklyn location this Saturday, June 16th (same night as Louis and Capthia).

Rooftop screenings are always great opportunities for communities to get together and meet each other; last week’s show in Manhattan’s Lower East Side drew about 600 people to a beautiful rooftop location.

We’d really appreciate it if you could possibly post on your blog about this event. I’m pasting the copy for the screening below.

Industriance Shorts: Disaster Management
The Space Age goes terribly wrong. Short, funny, bizarre films.

SAT., JUNE 16, 2007 (dang same night as Old Stone House event)
8:00 – Doors open
8:30 – Live Music by Zeke Healey (click for details)
9:00 – Movies Begin
11-1AM -FREE Wine reception in the courtyard,
C ourtesy of Beaujolais and licensedtochill.org.

On the roof of The Old American Can Factory
232 Third Street @ Third Avenue
Gowanus, Brooklyn (Between Carroll Gardens and Park Slope)
In the event of rain the show is indoors at the same location.
Tickets -$8 at the door or $5 online HERE with code: RFJUNE
Presented in partnership with – IFC.com, New York magazine &
XØ PROJECTS INCORPORATED.
More information about the shorts available at www.rooftopfilms.com

Thanks to  NY Magazine’s Intelligencer  for the funny headline in response to OTBKB’s piece about Park Slope being #1 in Recyling.

CITY ENCOURAGES PARK SLOPE’S SUPERIORITY COMPLEX

Park Slope: Another thing to feel superior about: recycling more than any other neighborhood in the city. [Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn]

Finally, something to be proud of feeling smug about. I’m proud of us but we could do SO MUCH BETTER.

If we’re the best — imagine the worst.

If we’re the best, imagine how much better we could be.

Still, it feels good to be cited for something like this instead of the usual snarky references to us as  hipster, helicopter parents with  bratty kids munching on Pirate Booty walking down family-centric Seventh Avenue with Bugaboos drinking over priced coffee holding Brooklyn Industries bags on our way to the Food Coop reading Jonathan Safran Foer books and….

Props to Park Slope for being numero uno. But let’s try harder.

PO, one of my favorite restaurants restaurants in New York City, the place I recommend to tourists on the subway when they ask for a real quality (but not too pricey) restaurant suggestion, was started by celebrity chef Mario Batali on Cornelia Street (pre-celebrity). They have now opened a Brooklyn outpost on Smith Street.

No longer connected to Mario, the food is still fabu, fabu, fabu. All I can say is this:  ORRECHIETTE WITH SWEET SAUSAGE RAGU AND BROCCOLI RABE.

Hepcat and I were there a few months back after seeing Spring Awakening (good night) and Po is still po-sitively great. So excited.

Oops. I forgot. I’m on a diet. No homemade orrechiette (ear shaped pasta) for me.  Go to Gowanus Lounge for menu.

The crime rate is down. Two dozen extra cops on duty in Prospect Park this summer. And Marauding chickens.

I’m sorry you’ll have to go to Gowanus Lounge for that story.

Upcoming Screenings of Brooklyn Matters:

Wednesday, June 13, 6pm.
Downtown Community Television Center (DCTV).
87 Lafayette Street. Manhattan.
6:00 pm reception (and cash bar). 6:30 pm screening
Sponsored by Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project

Followed by a discussion with filmmaker Isabel Hill and other guests.
RSVP: info@nedap.org or (212) 680-5100.

Friday, June 15, 7pm.
Spoke the Hub Recreation Center
748 Union Street (btwn 5th and 6th avenues, closer to 6th), Bklyn
RSVP: 718-408-3234

Tuesday, June 19, 7pm.
Fifth Avenue Committee
621 DeGraw Street (near 4th Avenue). Park Slope
RSVP: 718-237-2017 ext. 171

Wednesday, June 20, 6:45pm
St. Gregory’s Roman Catholic Church
991 St. Johns Place (Near Brooklyn Avenue). Crown Heights.
Sponsored by the Crown Heights North Association

Thursday, June 21, 7pm
Park Slope Jewish Center
1320 Eighth Avenue (at 14th Street) Bklyn.
Sponsored by the Park Slope Jewish Center , Jews for Racial & Economic Justice and Kolot Chayeinu

Panel discussion to follow with:
— City Council Member Letitia James
— Ron Shiffman, FAICP, Former City Planning Commissioner
— Michelle de la Uz, Executive Director of the Fifth Avenue Committee
— DDDB Spokesman Daniel Goldstein
— Filmmaker Isabel Hill

Found this in my inbox from Emily Ferris.

Most of you already know, but I wanted to make a semi-official (read: mass-email) announcement now that I’m back from my trip: I sold my contemporary casserole cookbook, tentatively titled "Hot Stuff: Not Your Mama’s Casserole" to Perigee, a division of Penguin Books.

It will be published in Fall 2008 (which is technically January 2009; I don’t get it, but that’s the book world, I guess).

To get the buzz going, I’ve started a casserole website, casserolecrazy.com which (now that I’m back from my European Adventure), I will try to update every day. I hope you’ll visit often. I’d love for it to be really interactive, so when I try to make things that do—or more likely, don’t—go well, you’ll know and can make fun of me all you want.
Thank you all for your support and encouragement with this book/project.

Join Council Member David Yassky, Parks Commissioner Benepe, and Brooklyn Borough Commissioner Julius Spiegel for the grand opening of Cadman Plaza. The ceremony will take place tomorrow, Tuesday the 12th, at 11:00. It will be on the Tillary end of Cadman Plaza.

Mindful Eating Lecture:
Learn the basics of mindful eating.  Dr. Susan Albers, psychologist and author, has new tips for under, over and choatic eaters.
by Susan Albers PsyD the author of Eating Mindfully and Mindful Eating 101: A Guide to Healthy Eating in College and Beyond www.eatingmindfully.com 
Friday June 15th 2007  6:30 P.M.
East West Bookstore
78 Fifth Avenue @ 14th Street
New York , New York 10011
Phone: 212-243-5994.
Subways: 2 blocks from Union Square station

Any ideas? Available immediately. louise_crawford@yahoo.com

Seeing Green was sad to read (in OTBKB) that Seventh Avenue Books will be closing.

I tell all my friends to avoid our local Barnes and Noble and shop at 7th Ave Books or the Community Bookstore, the two shops which are right there and locally owned. Most of my friends still go to B & N; in fact, for the Dillster’s birthday he received three book certificates from there. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth or anything, but if enlightened locals don’t shop locally, what chance is there for these small stores?

Bill T. Jones is an amazing, amazing dancer and choreographer. I was lucky to take classes with him when I was in college in Binghamton, New York. He, Arnie Zane and Lois Welk lived and danced in an old YMCA or school building in the wilds of Binghamton called, the American Dance Asylum. They were in Binghamton from 1973 until at least 1980.

I used to bike over there and take classes; I’d go to performances of things like contact improvisation. I saw Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane perform their work there and am forever the happier; Jones performed a solo work called Monkey Run Road there and it was like entering a sacred palace of intimate art — he talked while he danced about his family, his life, the world beyond — the likes of which I had never been exposed to.

Arnie Zane died of AIDs in 1988. The two were partners, as well as intense artistic collaborators so the company is named for the both of them. I’ve managed to make it to a few Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company performances over the years. I saw the piece, Still/Here at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and was blown away.

Jone’s choregraphy in Spring Awakening is wonderful, as is the show.

And it was oh so surreal. But he wanted to tell Design Sponge, Park Slope’s famous design blogger, about a book about an interesting artist named Charlie Harper.

a few weeks ago i was walking the aisles at the stationery show and one of the most surreal events of my life took place. my cell phone rang and todd oldham was on the other end. instantly my head was filled with visions of afternoons spent in front of the tv watching todd and cindy crawford on house of style. todd is such a fixture of my memories when it comes to design that i just about passed out. as it was he was calling to talk about a new project of his, a book on the life and work of charley harper. i’ve heard about a lot of projects over the past 3 years but it’s not often that you hear someone discuss something with the sort of passion that comes only from truly living and breathing a project. todd discussed mr. harper’s work with such reverence and admiration, it was easy to see why he would embark upon a book celebrating his career and dedication to art.

Check out the Stoopendous web site for ideas about what to do on your block for Stoopendous, a celebration of the summer solstice on June 23rd.

On 14th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues, plans are afoot for a Stoopendous ice cream party. Here’s an email that went around to people on the block.

We’ve got 2 families bringing ice cream and we need more. Anyone interested in bringing syrup and sprinkles and other toppings? Does anyone have scoopers that we can borrow?
I can try to get a commitment as to what flavors folks will bring so have a variety and ditto for toppings, so please report back if you want to bring sundae ingredients…

Here are details about a Kid’s Art Show planned for Stoopendous, a celebration of the summer solstice in Park Slope on June 23.

Park Slope Parents is now accepting art from local, young artists for the PSP Sunshine &
Solstice themed Children’s Art Exhibit. All entries receive a ribbon and a spot in our art show
(NOTE: This is not an art competition)
WHAT: Solstice, Sunshine Themed Children’s Art Show
WHO: Park Slope Children, 18 and younger
WHERE: Lion in the Sun: the exhibit will be at the old location on 453 4th Street (between 7th
and 8th Avenues)
WHEN: Friday, June 22nd from 4 to 7 and Saturday, June 23rd from 1pm to 4pm
HOW: ENTRY GUIDELINES
– Sunshine or solstice themed (abstract and realistic art accepted)
– Art is to be presented on 11×14 or smaller paper or canvas
– Artists must title their work
– Artists must be 18 or younger
– Art must be dropped off with a PSP entry form attached
– For privacy, we recommend you do not sign your art on the front. Please put your name on
the entry form and back of the art.
– Artists may use any medium as long as it is on paper or canvas, 11/x14 or smaller.
Acceptable mediums include (but are not limited to): crayons, marker, oil pastel, watercolor,
tempera, acrylic, computer-generated art, collage.