So the New York Times just discovered neighborhood blogging. Obviously they got wind of Outside.in’s survey that Brooklyn is the Bloggiest. Now the Times’ pipes in with a sligthly snarky come on:  "First come the renovated condominiums, the latte bars and the expensive baby strollers. Next, apparently, come the bloggers." 

One
Web site’s survey of the prevalence of blogs in urban neighborhoods
found a link between gentrification and the number of people who feel
compelled to think out loud about the changes in their backyards. The
site, Outside.in, crowned Clinton Hill in Brooklyn as the most
blogged-about neighborhood in America.

Also on the top 10 list
were Harlem; Shaw in Washington; downtown Los Angeles; Newton, Mass.;
and Rogers Park/North Howard in Chicago.

Before the survey, the
staff of Outside.in was “not conscious that local blogging would be so
closely allied with gentrification,” said Steven Berlin Johnson, a
founder of the site. Change, he said, “makes people particularly
interested in every little development in their neighborhoods.”

Outside.in
was introduced in February as a collector of local news and blog posts,
covering about 3,000 neighborhoods in more than 60 cities. It described
Clinton Hill as a place with “rapidly gentrifying tree-lined blocks of
19th-century townhouses” and said that the neighborhood’s leading blog
was Brownstoner.com.

In
determining the top 10 list, “We approached it statistically from a
couple of angles, and then took a little bit of editorial license,”
said Mr. Johnson. The latter, he said, included a decree that the list
could contain only one neighborhood in Brooklyn, a borough that seems
to have a rather high blogger density. The whole staff of Outside.in
lives and works in Brooklyn, said Mr. Johnson, a resident of Park Slope.

In
Clinton Hill, Jonathan Butler, the publisher of Brownstoner, did not
take his blogging title too seriously. “This either means we’ve got a
lot of creative, community-minded people in the neighborhood or a lot
of recluses with too much time on their hands,” he wrote in an e-mail
message. MARIA ASPAN

That’s right. I want to know who’s coming. Bloggers and Non-bloggers alike.

Let me know if you’re coming so you’ll be included on the participating bloggers list. Also, you’ll have a cool nametag ready for you.  Include your URL and the name of your blog in the email.

Please email:  louise_crawford@yahoo.com

Thanks.

This from 1010Wins:

NEW YORK — If you’re
outraged by the menus and supermarket, drugstore and other circulars
left on your doorstep, then you should love a new proposal from New
York City Councilman Simcha Felder.

The Democratic councilman, whose district includes parts of
Brooklyn, intends to introduce legislation that would make it illegal
to distribute menus, circulars and fliers to homes and apartment
buildings that display a sign indicating promotional materials are
unwanted.

Felder’s bill calls for a fine of at least $50 for distributors that leave them anyway.

“This drives people out of their minds,” said Felder, referring to
complaints from his constituents, mostly homeowners, in the Midwood,
Borough Park and Bensonhurst neighborhoods. “You have no control over
it. People are livid. If I’m responsible for the cleanliness of my
property I should also have the authority to decide whether I receive
the junk or not. You shouldn’t have to be responsible for cleaning up
someone else’s garbage.”

Felder said the accumulation forces property owners to clean it up
or risk getting a summons from the Department of Sanitation, like the
$100 summons his mother, a Midwood resident, received this year. It
also poses a security risk as mounds of circulars tell would-be
burglars that residents might be out of town, he said.

Anne Karni in the New York Sun reports that the Clark Street elevator failed 400 times in the last two years. Yeesh. That’s an elevator I know and love to hate. I used to live on Montague and I have relatives and friends who live close by. Here’s an excerpt from her story in the Sun.

A shoeshine booth, a barbershop, and a café where chess players gather give the subway stop at Clark Street in Brooklyn Heights the atmosphere of a small town. But the station’s welcoming façade belies some of the biggest service problems in New York City’s system.

Over the past two years, the three elevators at Clark Street have broken down almost 400 times, averaging a pace of almost one breakdown every other day. Riders have been trapped inside the elevators more than 20 times. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s maintenance crews have been sent out multiple times in single days to repair the same elevator, and temperatures inside the elevators have risen to 100 degrees.

The elevators, the main conveyance for customers to reach the trains in one of the deepest stations in the system, have long been sore spots in the community.

"In Brooklyn Heights, one working elevator out of three is about par," the executive director of the Brooklyn Heights Association, Judy Stanton, said. "People are just used to bad service, and I guess people feel that we’re lucky to have even one working at this point." The only alternative to waiting is an 80-foot climb up a steep staircase used only in emergencies — and perhaps by mountaineers and marathoners in training.

Transit worker, Marvin Franklin, 55, of St. Albans, Queens died yesterday after being hit by a G-train. A reader writes that "Marvin
was also a gifted artist. He has work up right now at the Art Students’
League. And he was an amazing, warm, laughing person." This from the New York Times:

One transit worker was killed and another injured yesterday
afternoon when they were hit by a G train at a Brooklyn station, city
officials said. It was the second fatal accident involving track
workers in less than a week.

The northbound G train hit the
workers in the Hoyt Street-Schermerhorn Street station just after 4
p.m. One of them, Marvin Franklin, 55, of St. Albans, Queens, a transit
employee for more than 20 years, was apparently dragged half the length
of the station and was found dead under the train. The second worker,
Jeff Hill, 41, a track worker since 2005, was taken to Bellevue
Hospital Center, where he was in stable condition last night, the
police said.

As a result of the recent back-to-back accidents,
maintenance and construction work on subway tracks was suspended and
workers were being called in for refresher safety training. An
investigation will be held by a transit board of inquiry.

Yesterday’s
accident happened during a weekend-long shutdown of the A and C lines
in part of Brooklyn, to allow for a major renovation of the concrete
track bed. Mr. Franklin and Mr. Hill were not working on that project
but were part of a maintenance crew that was taking advantage of the
shutdown to do routine repairs that involved replacing metal plates
that sit between the rails and the track ties. While no trains were
running on the A and C lines at Hoyt-Schermerhorn, there was normal
service on the G, which runs on parallel tracks at that station.

Mark the date: May 10th, 2007 at 8 p.m. at the Old Stone House on Fifth Avenue and Third Street. Suggested donation: $5 dollars.

The Brooklyn Blogfest is going to be quite the whoopdeedoo.

–Speakers include: Brownstoner, Brooklyn Record, Gowanus Lounge, No Land Grab and more

–Open Mic Shout-Out for new bloggers (email louise_crawford@yahoo.com if you want to do the Open Mic).

–Meet and greet all your favorite bloggers (see blogfest blog for a list of participating bloggers).

–Free Partida Margarita with 100% organic agave nectar and Mexican snacks courtesy of Partida Tequla.

If you really want to convince someone to stop smoking, check out what the The NYC Health Department is doing. You can send your friends an audio/email of Ronaldo, the trachiotomy guy featured in NYC Dept. of Health anti-smoking ads on television.

"Smoking gave me throat cancer at 39. Now I breathe through a hole in my throat and need this machine to speak."

This may be the most effective anti-smoking campaign ever. Help your friends quit smoking. It’ll scare them. But for a good cause.  email Ronaldo to your friends.

Yesterday, Gowanus Lounge was at the  Sakura Matsuri Festival at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. "Not very many blossoms but good people watching," he wrote on his blog.

Check out the goods.

Claremont Riding Academy, the last riding stable in Manhattan, is closing. Located at 175 West 89th Street it was built in 1892 and is included on the National Historic Registry.

The stable is across the street from Smartmom’s public elementary school, PS 166. It is there that she saw a dying horse being carried onto a truck when she was in 2nd grade. The horse had been killed because it had a broken leg (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?) It was a very memorable and sad sight.

The stable is a multistory barn with floors connected by ramps. The horses are housed in individual stalls in the basement and on the second floor.
There is a small indoor riding ring.

Claremont is famous for its lessons. They also rent horses to experienced riders to ride on the bridle paths in Central Park. The owner says that one of the reasons he is closing the stable is beause the bridal path has become a "zoo" with bikers pedestrians, dirt bikers and frisbees always on the path.

Getting to the park requires
riding a horse on Manhattan streets, mixed in with the regular traffic,
and crossing Central Park West. Claremont is closing for business on 4/29/07.

It is the end of an era.

Kathy Malone, director of the Brooklyn Indie Market, which opens in its new location on Smith Street at Union, is a talented clothing designer in her own right.

Her career journey is an interesting one maked by her love of sewing and clothing and a penchant for building community and helping others.

After moving to New York at the age of 18, Kathy studied
millinery at the Fashion Institute of Technology. "That absolutely
delighted my parents," she  writes on her website.

Kathy learned to sew on a
second-hand Elna built in the 1970’s, when they were still manufactured
in Switzerland. "That sewing machine," says Kathy, "still runs like a
dream." 

After graduation, Kathy apprenticed with numerous New York
milliners, including Lola Millinery (hey, that’s the woman who made OTBKB’s beautiful wedding veil).

Because of her skill, she was
enlisted to repair some elaborate head pieces needed for a production
about Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo for the Jose Limon Dance Company,
This led to more work with Jose Limon and other dance and theater
companies.

When her son, Milo, was born in 1998, Kathy decided that the
demands of the theater and dance world were incongruous with the needs
of her new family, so she got a job in the wig making department at the
Metropolitan Opera.

In her "spare time" she began to design children’s
clothing. Her quilted skirts with their trippy, vibrant, floral linings
and inside-out style were a particular success. Kathy even began to
have some admirers among the 7-year-old set in Brooklyn. Apparently,
their mommies liked the skirts too, because she began to get requests
for adult sizes. And so began her line of women’s clothing, fofolle.

Today, Kathy’s adult designs can be found at Brooklyn’s Flirt (Fifth
Avenue and Smith Street shops), and Ai Ai Gasa in Park Slope.

In 2005, Kathy established the Brooklynindiemarket, a group of Brooklyn clothing, knit-wear, jewelry, and home designers, who were in need of a venue in which to sell their wares. The group set up shop in numerous temporary venues around Brooklyn. But Kathy longed for a permanent home for this group. Now they have it on Smith Street and Union.

And that’s just the latest stop on Kathy Malone’s interesting journey. Good Luck, Kathy.

One more weekend until the Brooklyn Indie Market opens on Smith Street at Union in Carroll Gardens/Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. We walked by there the other day and saw the old red and white stalls that were put up for book vendors ages ago. Now, they’re part of the Brooklyn Indie Market, which opens ON SATURDAY MAY 5th. The market will be there May through December rain or shine. Here’s the info from Kathy Malone, director of the market and a designer in her own right.

Dear Designers, Creators and Shoppers,

I am very pleased to announce that Brooklyn Indie Market
  has a permanent, weekly market in the tents on Smith
  Street and Union Street every Saturday and Sunday,
  starting May 5th and May 6th throughout the year.
  Johanna of Daisyhead
and I, will open its "doors" to the public and will heartily advertise
to the press, media, blogs, and have many social media tools such as a
flickr account etc. We will also have flyers and a postcard distributer
and of course our BrooklynIndieMarket website. The location on the
corner of Smith and Union Streets is adjacent to Eckerd, PS 58 and
steps from the Carroll F/G subway stop. We have big plans to beautify
our corner with lots of plants and fabulous shopping!

Vendors: The price per spot is $50 inside the tent and the 3 kiosks on Smith St. will be $60 each. Just email us at info@brooklynindiemarket.com and I will let you know if there is availability and how to reserve a spot.
This is my dream come true and what I have been working towards for several years so I hope to make it a success for all of us!
Feel free to fire those questions, suggestions, recommendations away!

Very happily yours,
Kathy 

Here’s Smartmom from this week’s Brooklyn Paper:

If you think you can shield your kids from the horrific realities of current events, think again.

Parents
try. They limit television watching. They hide the newspaper. They turn
off the news when it comes on. They stop talking about delicate topics
when their children walk into the room.

But kids know. Just like Smartmom always knew something was up when her maternal grandmother switched to Yiddish.

Kids
know when you’re hiding information and they also manage to find things
out for themselves from classmates, teachers, a friend’s parents, or a
headline at the newsstand (try explaining “Headless Body in Topless
Bar”!). Kids are exposed to the news — whether it’s Virginia Tech or
the sad death of Sludgie the whale in the Gowanus Canal — even when
their parents don’t know it.

“I don’t believe in sheltering kids
from the news because that’s what’s out there,” Keith Elliot Greenberg,
a producer of “Geraldo At Large,” told Smartmom in front of PS 321,
where his 10-year-old son is in the fourth grade.

“Back in 1966,
I asked my grandmother to read me all the articles in the Daily News
about mass murderer, Richard Speck. For me, it cultivated a certain
taste for lurid, tabloid news which I later pursued as a career,” says
Greenberg, who was in Blacksburg, Virginia last week interviewing the
South Korean community in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech massacre.

Needless
to say, many parents disagree with the lurid Mr. Greenberg. Smartmom’s
friend, Tall and Lanky, insists on protecting her children. She doesn’t
think they’re old enough to process this horrible crime and she works
hard to preserve their fleeting innocence.

So she was absolutely
sure that her 10-year-old daughter knew nothing — as Sgt. Schultz might
say, “Nut-tink!” — about the Virginia Tech tragedy.

Tall and Lanky was wrong.

Last
week, when Ryan Seacrest, host of “American Idol,” expressed his
sympathy to the families of the Virginia Tech victims at the top of the
show, Tall and Lanky’s 8-year-old son shouted out: “What happened in
Virginia?”

Their supposedly innocent 10-year-old didn’t miss a beat: “Oh, there was a massacre there. A guy murdered a bunch of people.”

Tall and Lanky was flabbergasted. “How did you know that?” she shrieked.

Her daughter shrugged. “My teacher led a discussion in class about it,” her daughter said.

Tall
and Lanky was not a happy camper. She was angry that her daughter’s
teacher didn’t tell the parents that there was going to be a discussion.

Perhaps
the classroom discussion was spontaneous. Maybe it grew out of
questions from one of the kids. It’s probably safe to assume that
school-age children will learn about current events in the classroom or
on the playground.

“I have a hard time with repression, with
things left unspoken,” says Greenberg. “There are, of course, lines
that we don’t cross. But it’s up to each parent to define those lines.”

For
Greenberg and his wife, discussing the Holocaust is one of those lines.
“The enormity of it — the fact that regular people were plucked out of
their lives and taken to gas chambers — it’s very distressing for a
child.”

He also doesn’t tell his son stories about people with Alzheimer’s who put themselves in harm’s way.

“My son’s grandfather has the disease and that would upset him.”

Clearly,
it’s up to every family to decide what children can and cannot handle.
Some kids worry things to death. Others are able to process things more
quickly.

Smartmom has always been open with her children about
what’s going on in the world. It’s not that she wants to scare them.
It’s just that she’s a bit of a news junkie, with the radio tuned to
WNYC for most of the day.

So on Monday night, news of the Virginia Tech massacre wafted through her apartment.

On
Tuesday and Wednesday, stories about the 32 victims and their mentally
ill killer continued to emanate from that kitchen radio.

Teen Spirit, who is 15, was clearly disturbed by the story.

“The only people who survived were those who pretended they were dead,” he told Smartmom.

But the 10-year-old Oh So Feisty One seemed to be tuning it out
while she worked on an art project or watched a “Sailor Moon” video on
the computer.

But on Thursday, Smartmom wasn’t so sure. An NPR
reporter mentioned that some of the shootings occurred in room 207 in
Norris Hall.

“That used to be Mrs. Cohen’s classroom,” OSFO shouted out.

“But they’re talking about one of the classrooms at Virginia Tech,” Smartmom told her.

“Well, I’m glad Mrs. Cohen isn’t in room 207 anymore.”

Perhaps
that’s how children see the world. They connect what’s going on “out
there” by connecting it to what they know here. That’s why news can be
very scary for children. If it can happen there, it can happen here.

So,
if you think your kids are tuning out the news, think again. Don’t for
a minute think that it’s not seeping in. And sometimes, it takes a few
years for the trauma to express itself.

A while back, Smartmom
ran into a Prospect Heights mom whose daughter was experiencing acute
anxiety riding a school bus to middle school.

When the girl spoke
with a therapist, it turned out she had many unresolved fears stemming
from 9–11, a mind-numbingly awful day that the girl remembered only as
that time when her mother had to walk all the way home from work. The
girl worried that if something bad happened again, she wouldn’t be able
to walk home from middle school.

After that, her parents showed
her that she could walk home from her middle school in an emergency.
Her parents even bought her a cellphone, which made her feel a lot more
secure.

But the whole thing might have been avoided — might, of
course, because all kids are different — if the parents had discussed
9–11 a bit more openly.

Smartmom believes that it’s better for
the child — and the parents — for children to hear difficult news from
their parents. That way, parents can determine how much their children
already know, answer questions, and allow the children to express their
feelings.

For the kids, hearing from the parents means they’ll get all the comfort, the love, and the hugs and kisses that they need.

No
less an authority than the late great Fred “Mr.” Rogers agrees:
“Somewhere deep inside each one of us human beings is a longing to know
that everything will be all right. Our children need to hear that we
will do everything we can to keep them safe and to help them grow in
this world,” he once wrote on his Web site.

The attempt to
preserve your child’s innocence can easily backfire. If your kids are
going to find out anyway, they might as well have you there to give
them something positive to take away.