Husband and I stopped into the Brooklyn Lyceum last night to have a snack at Schnack: Express. And boy are we glad we did.

Schnack: Express is a casual hamburger and hot dog eatery in the lobby of the Lyceum.  It is the second outpost of a popular Red Hook snack joint. They serve delicious mini-hamburgers, Angus hot dogs, sandwiches, fries and onion rings. They also have vegan offerings.

My delicious mini-hamburger was made of quality ground meat with great seasonings. Husband ate his angus dog very quickly without offering a bite. That usually means that he’s eating something really good.

The owner of the Lyceum, Eric Richmond, was sitting at the box office table in the lobby. I introduced myself to him by saying, "I believe I owe you an apology for what appeared in my blog." To which he replied: "Oh, YOU’RE the evil blogger." He then laughed and I knew that he was open to having a discussion.

I apologized for writing that the Lyceum is underutilzed. One look at their web site reveals just how much has been going on there. In fact, 100,000 people have attended theater, film and musical events in the last five years.

I asked Richmond why the perception of the Lyceum is so skewed. "Locals in Park Slope don’t pay attention to what’s going on here." I wondered if that has something to do with the Fourth Avenue location. But Richmond thinks it’s something more. In his comment to OTBKB last month he wrote this:

The tough marketing-phobic skin that Park Slopers have precludes many different experiences. A friend of mine nailed it several years ago when we were discussing the difference betwen New york and Chicago. Chicago is a theater town, New York is a fashion town. paraphrased, Chicagoans enjoy the hunt for art, New Yorkers refuse to hunt. That is changing as New York is invaded with the rest of America…

Reviews and listings in the Times, New York Magazine, Time Out New York the Voice and the New Yorker and others have completely passed beyond your view. more likely is that without a million dollar ad capaign to search you out you are completely unable to navigate culture at the sub-broadway, non bar-band levels.

I always find it humorous when I get European tourists who visit because they have seen footage of it on the BBC.

With my series Brooklyn Reading Works, I know first-hand how difficult it is to get Park Slopers to attend cultural events – even if they want to. Jobs, children, dinner, homework, bedtime, lack of childcare makes it hard for people to break out of their daily routines to go out on a weeknight or even on a weekend.

When they do go out they’re usually glad they did feeling renewed and replenished with the experience of art. But getting them to actually do it is hard.

I suspect that as more singles and marrieds-without-children move into the neighborhood the local cultural organziations will enjoy greater attendance. As Brooklyn becomes more of a destination, the pull of Manhattan culture will weaken as Brooklynites recognize the cutting edge activities in their midst.

Living next door to one of the cultural capitals of the world, is hard on any arts group in the boroughs. And yet, Brooklyn offers it’s own brand of quality, cutting edge art – it is as valid and interesting as anything in Manhattan. Just look at Barbes, the Lyceum, Issue Projects Room and The Old Stone House.

About the garbage situation that was alluded to on the blog, Richmond said with some exasperation: "There is only 1 garbage pail on Fourth Avenue between Union and President. I call the Department of Sanitation to complain and they bring 3 more. Then local construction workers dump construction garbage in the pails and make a mess. The Sanitation guys get mad and they take the 3 pails away…"

It’s hard and sometimes thankless work being a community arts organizer. And Richmod deserves the support of his neighbors. I don’t know Richmond at all, but he seems to be going out on a limb to bring vital arts programming to his architectural treasure on Fourth Avenue. With the support of this community, the Lyceum will hopefully continue to thrive. Have a snack at Schnack: Express, check out the Lyceum schedule, and have a look around.

Schnack: Express is open Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to noon and 5 p.m. until mid-night. Saturday and Sunday it is open from 10 a.m until mid-night.

FYI: On Friday night December 2nd, there will be a Hurricane Katrina benefit and concert at the Brooklyn Lyceum,  featuring Cool and Unusual Punishment and other local teen bands including StunGun, Francesca Perlov and Blue House, among others. It should be a great event and a great way for locals to see what’s going on there.

Brooklyn’s own Rosie Perez will be the Grand Marshal for Sunday’s Develop Don’t Destroy Walkathon. Rosie joins State Senator Velmanette Montgoemery, Community Leader Chris Owens, and Brooklyn residents who will walk together to protest Bruce Ratner’s plans for the Atlantic Rail yards.

Go here for more information about the Walkathon.

Moms talking to moms is probably the single most important strategy for dealing with life with a teenager.

Some of us stop each other on Seventh Avenue and ask how things are going. That’s code for: Is everything alright?

We share information…"I saw your kid with…" Or, "Do you know anything about…?"

We want to know that our children are hanging out with nice kids, and doing nice things. We also need to hear about the things that aren’t so nice.

Which kids are doing drugs? Alcohol? Having sex? Misbehaving? Acting out?

In other words, is my kid doing drugs, drinking, having sex, misbehaving, or acting out?

Even more, we want to know if our kids are safe, acting cautiously, being alert to the dangers of the city.

Just yesterday a mom very much in the know told me that some kids have been mugged on Seventh Avenue. Groups of girls have been accosted, their bags emptied out on the sidewalk, their cell phones, i-pods, and money stolen.

That worried me. 

I wanted to know about who’s going to the Prospect Park after dark and what are
they doing there? From what I hear, the Park has become quite a hangout
and that worries many of us. It doesn’t seem safe; it’s not a good
place to be after dark. Even before dark, there are some very isolated
spots.

This same mom said that her son was beaten up in Prospect Park this past Saturday night (November 5). He ended up in the emergency room at Methodist Hospital. His friend was beaten up too. "I don’t have a lot of rules," she said "But my kids are forbidden to go into Prospect Park!"

She told me to spread the word to other moms, to the kids. "Tell everyone what happened to my son," she said. So that’s what I’m doing now.

There are so many reasons to worry. Talking to other moms is one good way to find out what we don’t always want to know. We each know a little bit about what is going on. Together we know a lot. We can help each other, and help our kids avoid some of the pitfalls of being a teen…

We have to look out for each other and each other’s children. The streets have eyes: and it  is us. All of us.

A piece about Brooklyn native Isa Chandra Moskowitz caught my eye on Daily Heights. She is the creator of Post Punk Kitchen a public access television show and new vegan cookbook, "Vegan with a Vengeance." I later found this interview with her on The Gothamist.

Gothamist: Your Brooklyn upbringing and love for the borough is a large part
of the book. Can you elaborate on what

Does The Squid and the Whale reveal the pretentiousness of Park Slope? Writer Jake Moody in his piece A Movie, A Mirror, in Sunday’s City Section thinks so.

EARLY in "The Squid and the Whale," Noah Baumbach’s semiautobiographical film about divorce among the literati, the teenage Walt Berkman is seen sitting alone in a high-school classroom when a potential girlfriend strikes up a conversation: "You live in Park Slope, right?" The answer is complicated – his parents live apart and have joint custody – and anyway, the exchange is over just seconds later, grinding to a halt when Walt dismisses the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel "This Side of Paradise," which he has not read, as "a minor work." Audiences laughed at Walt for, among other things, his pretentiousness and his quickness to echo the pretentiousness of his father, Bernard, a pompous writer and professor who passes similar judgment on Dickens’s "Tale of Two Cities." Chase Madar, a 34-year-old lawyer, translator and critic who has lived in Park Slope for three years and is one of the film’s many fans, laughed along with them. But he also cringed, if only a little. Along with the laughter, he confessed, "I felt totally incriminated." READ MORE IN THE NY TIMES.

On Sunday November 6th at 3 p.m. BROOKLYN READING WORKS at the Old Stone House presents JESSE GREEN and CHRISTINA FRANK reading from a new anthology about adoption called: A LOVE LIKE NO OTHER: STORIES FROM ADOPTIVE PARENTS.

The Old Stone House is located in JJ Byrne Park on Fifth Avenue between 3rd and 4th Streets. Free. Refreshments. Books available. Discussion to follow.

This event is NOT just for adoptive parents or those contemplating adoption but for anyone interested in families and children. Please join us for what promises to be a great event. 

ABOUT THE BOOK:

From various perspectives, 20 adoptive parents offer evocative, sometimes provocative, personal essays that have the liveliness and immediacy of prose fiction. Biological parents are variously imagined, sought and found in the opening section, "Reflections on Birth Parents." In "Encounters with the Unexpected," adoptive parents confront "postadoption depression," family wariness, ethnic identity issues and disabling psychological problems. Each family (single parent, gay parent, divorced parents, intra-family adoption, blended family) is adoptive in its unique way, persuasively confirmed in "Variations on Family." While the early sections focus on the parent-child relationship, the concluding "Personal Transformations" leans toward the child-to-parent effect; as one writer puts it, "I knew a child would rearrange my home life, but upend my career and worldview? Those two items weren’t even on my list." Any parent will find commonality here, but the collection will especially engage adoptive parents in conversation and controversy with people who share their dilemmas and delights. Diverse as this collection is, it’s worth noting that the essayists are professional writers (they include Jacquelyn Mitchard, Emily Prager and Dan Savage), most of the children are preadolescent and 11 of the adoptions are transnational (five of them from China).

On Wednesday, the moderators of Park Slope Parents, a local list-service for parents, sent out this ominous message:

The moderators have been threatened with a lawsuit pertaining to a post on the Park Slope Parents Yahoo Group.  In order to protect ourselves, we are SHUTTING DOWN the Message Archives until further notice.

The PSP Moderators and Advisory Committee have already spent hundreds of hours trying to resolve this situation.  It is important that we resolve this quickly and with integrity — if we do not, the entire PSP list may be in jeopardy and may have to be closed down entirely. We may need to ask for donations from PSP to pay for legal counsel.

For those not familiar with PSP, it is an invaluable resource to the parents of Park Slope, which provides an open exchange of information about parenting in Park Slope Brooklyn.
Issues such as "Where’s the best place to get shoes that fit?," or "Does
anyone have an idea of how to get a baby to take a bottle?" The group
is open to parents in the neighborhood with children of all ages. It is
"gently" moderated.

After word of the lawsuit spread, members of Park Slope Parents rushed to the aid of  the moderators and have offered to donate money, legal services, and anything else in order to save this cherished community resource.

Members of the PSP list service expressed their shock, concern, and dismay about this lawsuit in the way they know best: by posting messages to the group.

Susan Fox, Founder and Co-moderator of PSP, said in an e-mail to OTBKB this morning: "We have received private, positive support and offers of legal assistance which has been wonderful to have."

Here are a few of the messages of support that have already appeared on PSP. Today (November 5)  the list features many, many more, as well as good information about lawsuits of this kind.