Postcard from the Slope

THIS SUMMER: LIT MAG BOOT CAMP FOR TEENS

Looking for something interesting for your teenager to do this summer in Brooklyn, check this out:

LIT MAG BOOT CAMP

For High School Students
5 Wednesday sessions: July 11, 18, 25, August 1, 8 (2007)
10am-1pm
Taught by 826NYC
Write, edit, and publish an original magazine! Ready to take complete control of how and
when your writing is published? This summer, 826NYC will work with a select group of
writers on a collection of articles, short stories, and essays destined for publication.
Apply today for your chance to:

– Join a community of talented writers.

– Meet professional journalists, writers, and editors who will speak with you about the writing process

-Workshop your writing with an instructor and your peers. Have private access to the
writing center at 826NYC.¨

– Learn all of the tools you need to design and produce a professional publication.

– Create an original publication with your peers, which 826NYC, will publish at the end of the summer.

Applications for this program are due no later than April 30, 2007.
 
Visit: http://www.826nyc.org/programming/workshops/ for application materials and more information.
Other Bloggers

SEEING GREEN FORGOT TO UPDATE HIS COMPUTER TO DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME

I had tried.

Believe me, I had tried. I had written Post-It notes to myself. I had
mentioned it several times to my wife and begged her to remind me
(isn’t that what wives are for?) I told my 9-year old who has the
memory of a steel trap and can remember the name of the ship that
7-of-9 (my favorite character) from Star Trek Voyager was abandoned in,
a show that he saw, oh perhaps 2-1/2 years ago. I even threatened him
with severe consequences (ok, cancellation of one Star Trek episode) if
he didn’t remind me. I sent an email to myself (which, under the
circumstances, could’ve been futile.)

To no avail.

I woke up in a cold sweat this morning.  I had forgotten! I
dreaded the trek up the fifteen steps to my office. What would I find
there? Could I even open the door? The room was dark, I having
remembered to close the darkening drapes the night before. Ominous and
still. I opened the door slowly and glanced fearfully inside, prepared
for the worst. What would I be faced with on my desk? A smoking hulk? A
dead lump of plastic and silicon? A sullen monster prepared to bite the
hand that had lovingly keystroked it all these years? All my files
destroyed, my memories erased, my pictures fragmented?

READ WHAT HAPPENED AT SEEING GREEN!

Postcard from the Slope

FREE OPTION AND ANCILLARY-RIGHTS GIVE-AWAY FOR JONATHAN LETHEM’S NEW BOOK

Loveme307
That Jonathan Lethem, he’s such an interesting guy. He’s giving away the movie rights to his book:

On May 15th I’ll give away a free option on the film rights to my novel You Don’t Love Me Yet to a selected filmmaker. In return for the free option, I’ll ask two things:
            

 
I’d
like the filmmaker to pay (something) for the purchase of the rights if
they actually make a film: two percent of the budget, paid when the
completed film gets a distribution deal. (I’ll wait until distribution
to get paid so a filmmaker without many funds can work without having
to spend their own money paying me).

If you’re a filmmaker who feels that You Don’t Love Me Yet might
make a good film and also likes the unusual terms of this proposal, I’d
like to hear from you, at the address below. Tell me what kind of work
you’ve done before, and how you’d expect to handle this project both
creatively and financially.

Read why at Jonathan Lethem dot com.

            

Civics and Urban Life

ONE WAY NO WAY PETITION AND MEETING

Park Slope Neighbors, has launched a petition drive to oppose the plan to make Seventh Avenue
and Sixth Avenue one-way streets.

"One-way avenues are
unfriendly to neighborhood life" and that "changes like these should
only be considered as part of a comprehensive, multi-modal, area-wide
transportation plan." The full petition can be viewed online and signed here. Volunteers have also been out in Park Slope gathering signatures."

BIG MEETING AT METHODIST HOSPITAL AUDITORIUM ON MARCH 15 at 7:30 p.m.:

Park Slope Civic Council meeting on proposed NYC Dept. of Transportation changes to Park Slope traffic patterns on 6th and 7th Avenues. Check out the Council’s website www.parkslopeciviccouncil.org for details and links.  All are welcome. New York Methodist Hospital Auditorium, 506 Sixth Street between 7th Avenue and 8th Avenues.


 

Postcard from the Slope

GOWANUS LOUNGE SAD THAT NURSERY IS MOVING TO RED HOOK

Gowanus Lounge and Brooklyn Record report that the Gowanus Nursery, a wonderful spot for plants and flowers for backyard and container gardening, is moving to Red Hook. GL is glad for them but sad that they’ve left his beloved nabe behind.

We just especially loved their former location. Something about a
nursery in Gowanus spoke to the human drive to overcome any
circumstance that comes your way.) Regardless, the nursery, which lost
its home because of future real estate development in the hood, will
reemerge on March 31 at 45 Summit Street,
which is between Columbia and Van Brunt Streets near the entrance to
the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. It’s on the street whose direction was
changed when some of the traffic patterns were changed because of the
endless construction on Columbia Street.

Civics and Urban Life

NEW BLOG ON THE BLOCK: CONEY ISLAND REPORTER

Joining Gowanus Lounge and Kinetic Carnival in their coverage of Coney Island, there’s a new blog on block called, Coney Island Reporter, "One lonely grad
student has set out to learn everything there is to know about this
bizzare stretch of beach."

About the blogger: Brian
Childs is a fiction writer nd freelance reporter. Currently, he is pursuing a
masters degree in magazine journalism at New York University. He is
author of The Evening Rolled on like a Tank Being Driven by a Zombie:
Short Stories by Brian Childs and The Coney Island Reporter, a blog and
research resource on Coney Island.

Civics and Urban Life

BROKLYN MATTERS AT ETHICAL CULTURE 8 p.m.

  Brooklyn Society For Ethical Culture
 

    53 Prospect Park West
    Brooklyn, New York
 

   
 
   

BROOKLYN MATTERS: Film Screening on March 14th at 8 p.m.

No single event will have a more drastic and more long-lasting impact
on Brooklyn than the proposed development of Atlantic Yards by Forest
City Ratner. This uncommon proposal, however, is mostly misunderstood.
Brooklyn Matters by Isabel Hill is an insightful documentary which reveals the fuller
truth about the Atlantic Yards proposal and highlights how a few
powerful men are circumventing community participation and skirting
legal protections to try to get the deal done.

Postcard from the Slope

HANDYMAN’S TRIAL GOES TO JURY

1 Comment

As I write this, a jury deliberates in the trial of a local, well-liked handyman who was accused by a 13-year-old Park Slope girl of sexual molestation.

The man vehemently denies all the charges.

Readers of OTBKB will remember what happened a year ago when the girl’s mother posted a note about this situation on the mirror in the vestibule of my apartment building (and on many of the street’s lamp posts).

I posted about the note (excluding names) and my report drew a Daily News reporter to Third Street. Then the television news vultures came. For me, it was a real wake-up call. THE EDITORS OF ALL THE NY DAILIES READ OTBKB!! BE CAREFUL.

I am eager to learn the fate of this man. I see nothing about it in the news. Here’s a post I wrote about a year ago:

It was just a note on the mirror of my building’s vestibule. Now it seems like a whole lot more.

People’s lives.

The man. The girl. The mother. They’re all locked in
a  twisted tango. Who is telling the truth? What is the real story here?

Reputation. Judgement. Craziness. I am hearing many things. Many.
That the man is reputable. That the accusations are groundless. That he
doesn’t deserve to have his life ruined this way.

It was just a note on the mirror. But so much more. Ambiguity. A
mother’s attempt to warn and protect or a mother’s attempt to indict
and ruin a man publically? What could be her motive? What could be his? And who is telling the truth?

And then there’s my small role in all of this. Did I fan the flames
by putting it on OTBKB. I just saw the
note and wanted to share what I was feeling about that note: the fear,
the uncertaintly, the sense that these things are complicated.
Wondering if it  true, or is it slander.

I may know Third Street but I didn’t know this man at all. Now I am
hearing about him from neighbors and friends who care about him, trust
him, and strongly believe that these accusations are simply not true.

There were moments this weekend when I wondered whether I was the
reason that note was left there. That the mother knew, somehow, that I
would blog about it, that I would spread the word and be complicit in
what might be a lie.

I don’t know the truth—only three people know, including the girl’s mother. How could I possibly know?

A jury will sit through a trial – and hear the evidence –
and decide whether there is enough proof. I sat on a jury in a sexual molestation trial in June/July of 2005 and I know what that’s like. You go in with a
whole bunch of preconceptions and the trial can really turn you around.
It’s all very complicated. And finally when the jury is sequestered and
it’s time to reach a verdict, there must be proof beyond a reasonable
doubt.

For someone who purports to know Third Street, I guess I don’t know
Third Street as well as I thought. We know what we know and who we know
— beyond that we don’t know a thing. If I fanned the flames in this
incident – I take full responsibility.

There must be an object lesson in all this about journalistic
ethics and blogging. About Brooklyn blocks and what you do and don’t
know. About sexual harassment and the muddy  realm of statutory rape,
endangering the welfare of a child. About lies, about truth. There must
be an object lesson in this.

So I wait to hear what the jury decides. I’ve been following Nancie Katz’s reporting on the trial in the Daily News (last year’s reporter was named Celeste Katz, what’s the story here?).

I know too much about these kinds of cases to even know what to think. It’s all very complex. And so much defends on the quality of the legal representation. Does the handyman have a good enough lawyer? Does the girl have a tough public prosecutor? I heard that he’s facing felony charges and I wondered why. A good lawyer probably could have brought the charges down to a misdemeanor.

I await a verdict, which will determine the next few years in the life of this man.

Still, I know we will not learn the truth from this trial. What comes out of the trial will have more to do with the lawyers and the jury than anything else.

The fact that his lawyer put him on the stand says to me that his lawyer has great faith in the veracity of his story and his ability to come across well (though the man must speak through a translator). There is no necessity to put the defendant on the stand.

More than that, I cannot say.

Postcard from the Slope

6-DAY READING OF NAMES OF IRAQ DEAD PLANNED

1 Comment

This from NY1:

Anti-war activists began a six day reading of the names of those who have died in the war in Iraq Sunday.

The Granny Peace Brigade and other groups have pledged to be
outside the Army recruiting center in Times Square from dawn until dusk
every day through March 16th.

They say they will recite the names of journalists, service members
and Iraqi civilians who have died since the war began in 2003.

"I think its important for people to remember that there are
thousands and thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people that
have died, not only Iraqis, our soldiers. Now it’s Afghanistan,” said
Elaine Brower, mother of an Iraq war veteran. “I want people out in
Times Square and everywhere in the world to realize there are people
dying as we stand here."

Iraqi war veterans, Broadway actors, authors and others are expected to attend the reading throughout the week.

Postcard from the Slope

140 YEARS FOR PARK SLOPE CHURCH

            
            
            
         
This from New York 1: about the red brick church on Sixth Avenue near Lincoln Place.

A Brooklyn church celebrated 140 years in its neighborhood with a rededication ceremony Saturday.

The Sixth Avenue Baptist Church in Park Slope was founded in 1867. Dozens attended services to mark the milestone.

"This church has persevered, continues to provide and its mission
of service to families of the community, it’s outreach to young people
in particular,” said Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz. "And
it’s imparting to each and every generation the internal teachings of
church, and that’s a good thing for all of us from every faith."

Church leaders say recent renovations have improved much of the historic building.

Postcard from the Slope

PS 321 WINTER CARNIVAL ON SATURDAY

From 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. at PS 321 on Seventh Avenue near Second Street, this may be the best winter carnival yet because the weather promises to be warm and they’re having horse and pony rides in the backyard!!!

Not only that: The rummage sale can’t be beat. What a bunch of gently used children’s clothing.

Great books for adults and kids.

A really fun craft area where your children can while away hours exercising their creativity.

The food will be awesome. See you at lunch at the Carnival.

Civics and Urban Life

FIRE SAFETY TIPS FROM FDNY

This from the FDNY website.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta joined other fire officials at Engine 68 in the Bronx on March 9 to announce the Department will be distributing more than 100,000 free batteries for smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors throughout the City.

It is an effort to urge New Yorkers to change the batteries in their smoke alarms when they change their clocks this Sunday, March 11.

“In the wake of Wednesday night’s tragic fatal fire, the message couldn’t be clearer – change and test the batteries in your smoke and carbon monoxide detectors,” said Mayor Bloomberg.

Smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors are required by New York law in all residences. They should be placed outside each bedroom or sleeping area and on every floor of the home – and they should be tested once a week.

Statistics from the National Fire Protection Association show that 70 percent of all fatal fires occur in homes without working smoke alarms.

“Our aim is to reduce fire fatalities in the city by ensuring that as many people as possible hear our message that smoke detectors save lives,” said Commissioner Scoppetta. “Most fires are preventable, and so are fatalities from fire when you have smoke detectors.”

Nine-volt batteries will be given out by members of the Department’s Fire Safety Education Unit and the FDNY Foundation, a non-profit group that supports many of the Department’s initiatives and fire safety education-related programs.

The Mayor and Fire Commissioner also urged that New Yorkers to follow these other simple fire safety tips in the home:

Develop an escape plan and review the plan with all members of the family frequently. Be aware that children and elderly people may need special assistance should a fire occur. Establish a meeting place outside the house for all members of the family to ensure that everyone gets out safely. When a fire occurs, get out of the house and use a neighbor’s telephone to notify the fire department.

Space heaters need space. Portable space heaters need a three-foot (one meter) clearance from anything that can burn and should always be turned off when leaving the room or going to sleep.

Never overload electrical outlets. Never run electrical extension cords under rugs. Replace old or damaged cords.

For information about how to keep your home fire safe, visit our fire safety information page.

Civics and Urban Life

NINE DEAD AND A CITY MOURNS: WAYS TO DONATE

Donations for the families can be sent to:

Magassa-Soumare Family Foundation 
C/O Islamic Cultural Center
271 East 166th Street
Bronx, NY 10456

Mosques throughout the metropolitan area are also collecting money for funeral 
services for the victims of the fire.

The African Services Committee is also accepting donations to
support both families displaced by the fire. For more information, call
212-222-3882 or go to www.africanservices.org.

Taxi drivers are collecting money for Soumare. To help, send a
check made out to Mamadou Soumare, care of the New York State
Federation of Taxi Drivers at:
5811 Fourth Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11220
(718) 492-7680The 


 
Postcard from the Slope

EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY: HEPCAT’S WEEK IN CALIFORNIA

This week, No Words_Daily Pix has been telling a little story. Hepcat went to California to visit his mom on the farm. I can re-trace his steps. What a detective I am.

Saturday: Cool picture of the inside of a taxi cab. Tres interesting. Tres abstract.

Dsc06055_1
Sunday: Pix of the floor of the Jet Blue terminal at Kennedy Airport. Very Arty.

Dsc06097_1
Monday: Pix of Jet Blue television screen on the seat in front of where Hepcat was sitting.

Dsc06109_1
Tuesday: Pix of walnut trees at what is now the edge of his family’s property.

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Wednesday: Pix of woman reading at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Bookstore. And I thought he was looking at the art.  Martini Republic, a blog in Los Angeles picked up that pix for Thursday.

Thursday: Pix of exhibition installation at SFMOMA.

Friday: Pix of walnut tree and two huge containers, where NW_DP keeps the Porsche aka "The Little Orange Car" he inherited from his beloved uncle, his grandmother’s paintings, his old photographs, dishes, old farm tools, computers of the ancients, Porsche memorabelia, and all of his other keepsakes. See today’s No Words_Daily Pix.

Postcard from the Slope

BATHROOM MONTORING BY KIDS AT PS 321?

4 Comments

So the kids are helping to monitor and keep the bathrooms clean. I’m not sure if this is school-wide or just a few classes. And what grade? Just so you know, they renovated the bathrooms last year and they’re gorgeous, complete with kid-made artfully hand-painted and colorful tiles on the wall. I for one am going to ask Marge Raphaelson, the Parent-Coordinator, tomorrow about this. She’ll know what’s going on. Will report back.

I didn’t know a darn thing about it but I read it on Park Slope Parents. An upset parent posted on PSP and set off a firestorm (not unusual over there).  Some thought it sounded unhealthy, others weren’t bothered by it. The upset parent was surprised that no note went home about this. Here’s her latest post. 

 To John & anyone else who thinks I went over the teachers head by going to the
principal.

 
It was THE PRINCIPAL who enacted this plan without first contacting
the parents, not the teacher which is why I went to her in the first
place.  I mean come on we get permission slips sent home for other
activities.  Does anyone else think that maybe the parents should have been
notified first and given the option to not have her child participate in
activities that could affect the child's health.  After all I have to
fill out a health card every year which clearly states all pertinent
medical info.
 
  I have no problem with my child being a participant in upholding
community standards but I draw the line at bathroom duty.
 
  I also would like to think that in an open forum such as this that is
intended to be an information sharing source that I could come out and
ask a question without being battered by anyone that does not agree
with me.  The subject line clearly stated that it was a question for
parents of 321 students - NOT lets get the principal of 321 and hang her by her toes at dawn because she did something I didn't like.Let's all take it down a notch and take it for what it was - a question that I considered important and info that many others did not know...

Another PS 321 parent had this to say:

I believe the philosophy behind the monitoring system is that it will
encourage the kids to not make a mess because of peer pressure.  This
new system takes a little time to work, but the bathrooms do seem
cleaner--and not just 'cause kids are being assigned to clean them.  I
do recall that there was a written school-wide memo some time early in
the year.

 
Civics and Urban Life

DEALING WITH PRE-SCHOOL REJECTION LETTERS

1 Comment

A local parent posted on Park Slope Parents recently about her despair and anger after her child was rejected from two pre-schools.

I see that the PSP community reached out to help. Here is her latest post thanking those who came forward. 

Thanks to everyone for your super supportive emails. I was really
overwhelmed by all the encouragement and empathy. I think I received
24 emails in total.

Here are some helpful suggestions that may be useful to others:

1) Call the admissions director near the end of summer since there are
job relocations or other factors that affect the admissions list

2) Call daycares and not preschools for openings 

3) Wait another year since our generation didn't go to preschool till
4. In the meantime, enroll him in classes like art, music and gym so
he can get the socialization and class structure. There were several
parents who chose this route and in some cases it was an active
decision on their part to hold off another year.

4) I even had a parent who emailed to DIY--teach your child at home.


postcard from the coast

17 CAMERA ANGLES ON HAMLET

Teen Spirit attended last night’s production of the Wooster Group’s Hamlet at St. Ann’s Warehouse and mostly enjoyed it. He loved the very unusual staging and acting by this very talented, very experimental theater troupe, pioneers in the field of experimental theater.

I found this on Fisherspooner’s blog. They did the music for the production.

The
Wooster Group’s Hamlet is an archaeological excursion into America’s
cultural past, looking for archetypes that shadow forth our identity. The Wooster group has been drawn to Richard Burton’s Hamlet, a 1964 Broadway
production which was recorded in live performance from 17 camera angles
and edited into a film that was shown for only two days in 2000 movie
houses across the US. The idea of bringing a live theater experience to
thousands of simultaneous viewers in different cities was trumpeted as
new form called "Theatrofilm", made possible through "the miracle of
Electronicvision". The Wooster Group’s Hamlet attempts to reverse the
process, reconstructing a hypothetical theater piece from the
fragmentary evidence of the edited film, like an archeologist inferring
an improbable temple from a collection of ruins. Channeling the ghost
of the legendary 1964 performance, the Group descends into a kind of
madness, intentionally replacing its own spirit with the spirit of
another.

Show dates are:
Feb. 27-28
March 1-4, 6-11, 13-18, 20-25
All shows are at 8PM, except for Sunday’s which are at 4PM.

Postcard from the Slope

MAN GONE DOWN BY MICHAEL THOMAS

I am so loving this book, a first novel by a black writer who lives in Brooklyn and teaches at Hunter about four days in the life of a black Boston-born thirty-something living in Brooklyn and struggling to write while
supporting his white wife and their three children.

The protagonist is broke and he must
come up with more than $12,000 in these four days — money to rent an apartment, pay tuition at his kid’s private school and reclaim his family from his mother-in-law’s summer house.

The book’s masterful first-person voice is intense, poetic, angry, vulnerable, real, and full of thoughtful rage about race and class in New York City. Check out this passage and go buy the book — my copy is already promised to a friend.

“I thought, when he was born, that his eyes would be closed. I didn’t
know if he’d be sleeping or screaming, but that his eyes would be
closed. They weren’t. They were big, almond shaped and copper — almost
like mine. He stared at me. I gave him a knuckle and he gummed it —
still staring. He saw everything about me: the chicken pox scar on my
forehead, the keloid scar beside it, the absent-minded boozy cigarette
burn my father had given me on my stomach. Insults and epithets that
had been thrown like bricks out of car windows or spat like poison
darts from junior high locker rows. Words and threats, which at the
time they’d been uttered, hadn’t seemed to cause me any injury because
they’d not been strong enough or because they’d simply missed. But
holding him, the long skinny boy with the shock of dark hair and the
dusky newborn skin, I realized that I had been hit by all of them and
that they still hurt. My boy was silent, but I shushed him anyway —
long and soft — and I promised him that I would never let them do to
him what had been done to me. He would be safe with me.”

Civics and Urban Life

7 in 2007: PARK SLOPE CIVIC COUNCIL INITIATIVES

I attended the Park Slope Civic Council’s brunch/meeting last Saturday. The PSCC is a publically supported organization with a membership of more than 700 families. The approximately 30 trustees are drawn from this membership. Organized as the South Brooklyn Board of Trade in 1896, the Council is one of the oldest civic associations in Brooklyn.

It was the first Civic Council meeting I’ve ever been to but I saw a lot of familiar faces, including Fonda Sara, Bernie Graham, Lumi Rolley, Eric McClure, Susan Fox, Dave Kenney aka Dope on the Slope, and many other people whose faces I know but not their names. I also met a few people for the first time like  Lydia Denworth, who leads the PSCC and was on the Park Slope 100, whose name I knew but didn’t know her face.

The special brunch was really a brainstorming session, a way to drum up ideas and initiatives for 2007. For me, the experience was an exciting and unusual exercise in local democracy. 

The group met in a social room on the roof of the 9th Street YMCA. I got there a little late but people were already seated at eight round tables where small group discussions were taking place.

I was intrigued by the process — the way the meeting worked. At each of the tables, people were asked to come up with 1 or 2 ways to improve the quality of life in Park Slope. Each person presented their idea(s) to the table.  Afterwards, the table voted and came up with the two most popular ideas to present to the room.

Then a spokesperson from each table presented the table’s ideas. Afterwards, the meeting moved outside on the roof, because it was a gorgeous day (ah, remember last Saturday?). The eight top ideas were written out on big pieces of paper and participants were asked to vote using dot stickers.

Thanks to Nica Lalli of the Brooklyn Paper, who was at the meeting, here are the seven initiatives for 2007 that came out of Saturday’s brainstorming session/ brunch. Atlantic  Yards, Whole Foods are on-going initiatives for the PSCC so they are not included here.

• Stop the transformation of Sixth and Seventh avenues
to one-way traffic, as proposed by the Department of Transportation.

• Identify locations for more bike racks.

• Host the first Annual “Stoop Night” on June 21 (to celebrate the summer solstice).

• Form a study group to investigate tax breaks and grants to encourage more “green” action in Park Slope.

• Clean up commercial areas.

• Sponsor a “Buy Local” campaign.

•
Install new newspaper kiosks to eliminate clutter on area street
corners.

The idea that excited me was the Summer Solstice Stoop Night on June 21. Stoop sales, music, food, celebration all over the Slope. That was a hands-down favorite.

If any of the
initiatives interest you, volunteer by calling the Park Slope Civic
Council at (718) 832-8227 or by emailing mail@parkslopeciviccouncil.org.

Postcard from the Slope

SLOPE ACTOR CHARLOTEE MAIER IN INHERIT THE WIND

19924673s
Beloved Park Slope actor, Charlotte Maier, will be appearing in a revival of  Inherit the Wind on Broadway with Christopher Plummer and Brian Dennehy.

Previews begin on March 19th of this famous play about the 1925 Scopes Monkey trial, in which a Tennessee science teacher, John
Scopes, was tried and convicted for teaching Darwin’s theory of
evolution, violating a Tennessee law that forbade teaching any theory
that conflicted with the Biblical conception of Divine Creation.

This revival of Inherit the Wind
comes after the original 1955 mounting of the play, a 1960 big-screen
adaptation starring Spencer Tracy and Frederic March, and a 1996
revival.

Maier, shown left with her son, Teddy, is known to many in Park Slope for her small, but hilarious role in "The Pink Panther." She plays the voice coach hired by Inspector Clouseau (played by Steve Martin). "Hamburger, hamburger," she enunciates trying to help Clouseau lose his French speech impediment.

It was the best and funniest scene in the movie. According to Maier, they got the scene in one take. Steve Martin convulsed in laughter as he and the crew watched it on playback. "I think we got it," he said (or something like that).

It is a really funny scene.

Maier’s movie credits also include, Two Weeks Notice with Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant and Music and Lyrics with Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant.

In  Inherit the Wind Maier appears with the star of stage and screen, Christopher Plummer, known to all as Captain van Trapp in the movie version of  The Sound of Music.

No, he will not sing "Edelweiss" at any performance.

If you’re interested in tickets for the show, which is at the Lyceum (149 West 45th) go to the Inherit the Wind website. 

Civics and Urban Life

PARK SLOPE FIGHTS: ONE WAY NO WAY

1 Comment

We’ve even got a slogan. The big meeting is coming up on Thursday March 15th at METHODIST HOSPITAL. at 6:30 p.m.

Important Public Meeting organised by Brooklyn Community Board 6 at New York Methodist Hospital Auditorium, 506 6th Street, (7th & 8th Avenues).

Presentation and discussion of a proposal by the Department of Transportation to convert 7th Avenue (between Flatbush Avenue and Prospect Avenue) from a two-way street to a one-way southbound street and 6th Avenue (between Atlantic Avenue and 23rd Street) from a two-way street to a one-way northbound street.

Presentation and discussion of a proposal by the Department of Transportation to eliminate one northbound and one southbound travel lane from 4th Avenue (between Dean Street and Prospect Avenue) and replace them with improved left-turn turning lanes.
FMI:Streetsblog.org or BrooklynCB6.org or call CB6 at (718) 643-3027.

Civics and Urban Life

WHOSE SEVENTH AVENUE IS IT?

4 Comments

In this eco-friendly community of Park Slope, tell me we’re not going to make a radical change to our cherished Main Street to appease those who insist on driving.

What about those who ride buses north and south?

What about the pedestrians who enjoy the leisurely pace of walking down and across the Avenue?

What about the merchants who benefit from the "congestion," the sense of vitality on the Avenue.

I would sooner make Park Slope a car-free zone than cave into the needs of drivers and/or the Atlantic Yards traffic that is expected.

Understood, cars and trucks are needed to supply the stores and restaurants and to ferry children and other living things into the neighborhood.

But why change the flavor of what is basically a pedestrian strip. Why turn it into a speed zone like 8th Avenue or Prospect Park West. Those Avenues are so decidedly unfriendly to bikers and pedestrians. And scary. 

Long live the Avenues that cater to the walkers. Walking is good exercise, environment-friendly, a good way to connect with one’s community, a boon to merchants, who rely on the foot traffic, and a perfect pace for all of us.

Changes like this make you wonder, whose Seventh Avenue is it? And whose problem are we trying to fix?

Serving Park Slope and Beyond