Postcard from the Slope

POSTCARD FROM THE SLOPE_Father’s Day

Ds019328_stdThe window of The Clay Pot is tastefully decorated with gift items for Father’s Day. It’s full of the kind of stuff that men are supposed to like or need: money clips, wallets, watches, cuff links. There are also well-designed radios, a chess timer, a poker set, and a  miniature game of roulette.

The dad in our house doesn’t wear cuff links or a money clip. And he certainly doesn’t want a miniature roulette wheel. It’s amazing how these cliches about men persist. Cuff links seem so old fashioned. My grandfather wore cuff links and used a money clips. He was exquistely groomed and smelled of fine colgne.

But not the man I’m married to.

He grew up on a farm and his idea of dressing up is wearing a clean black t-shirt from Target.

My husband is hard to buy gifts for. Most of the things he wants he gets for himself like photography and computer equipment. I’m pretty good at picking out the kind of books he like’s to read: a history of science or technology, or a book about the history of something really mundane like the pencil or salt.  A book of photography by one of his heroes is also a good bet. Unfortunately I can’t afford to buy him a vintage John Deere tractor, which is what he’s really pining for.

Ds019319_stdSometimes I wonder why I even bother. My husband hates  "Hallmark holildays." As previously discussed here, he
seems constitutionally unable to buy me a Mother’s Day gift or send a Mother’s Day card. Every now and then, he succumbs to pressure from me and picks something up. But I know he hates to do it.

Part of me thinks that I should just "poo poo" Father’s Day, too. But because I make such a fuss about Mother’s Day, I figure I should model good "Hallmark holiday" behavior. By giving him a gift, I am, in a strange, emotional circumnavigation, showing him how to do what I would like him to do for me. Yup, it’s that crazy: I want him to recognize me on Mother’s Day so I get him a gift on Father’s Day.

Marriage is one strange institution.

So off I went with my daughter to Razor, the new men’s shop on Fifth Avenue, and pcked out a shirt for my husband. I took a risk trying to pick out an item of clothing. But it’s a gorgeous…

I better not say. He’s going to read this before tomorrow and I want it to be a surprise.

* Items pictured are available at Shangri-La on Seventh Avenue between 13th and 14th Streets.

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Postcard from the Slope

POSTCARD FROM THE SLOPE_Day Off From the Jury

Even though I didn’t have jury duty yesterday (we’re only in court on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday), I couldn’t get it out of my mind.

And I’m not even referring to the trial because I barely thought about that at all.

I just kept thinking about my new family of jurors in the jury room of that massive,  hideous courthouse on Adams Street.

Not that I wanted to be there. Running in Prospect Park at 1:30 p.m. with my personal trainer (and doing push ups, ab exercises and other exertions), I felt blessed to be outside on such a gorgeous day. While running, I did think of the judge, the clerks, the court officers, lawyers, plaintiffs, etc. who were working in the courtroom taking care of all kinds of legal business. 

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Postcard from the Slope

POSTCARD FROM THE SLOPE_Rickie Lee Jones Celebrates Brooklyn

AnthologyTransfixed. At least I was by Rickie Lee Jones’ performance Thursday night at Celebrate Brooklyn. The girl at the grand volcano played solo for 45 minutes or more singing her syncopated, wordy-poetic, beatnik jazz.

Even though it’s been nearly thirty years since she won the grammy for best new artist and had a mega hit with "Chuck E’s in Love," there was nothing in the least bit nostalgic about RLJ’s performance. Her voice is in great form and songs like "Last Chance Texaco," "We Belong Together," "So Long Lonely Avenue," "Living it Up" and others from her first few albums sounded better than ever…continued…

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Civics and Urban Life

POSTCARD FROM THE SLOPE_Tension in the Jury Room

2494920_stdThere was tension in the Jury Room Wednesday morning. Juror #1 arrived over 20 minutes late. The 13 of us had to wait for her before we could go upstairs to the court room.

"Where the hell is Juror #1? " one of the woman asked aloud. Earlier she had told the group a funny story about a person taking their pet fish to the dentist. She’d seen it on Fox 5.

The judge was waiting for us in the courtroom. It felt like such a waste of time. And this wasn’t the first time Juror #1 had been late. She was late back from lunch on Tuesday, as well. Jurors rolled their eyes and sighed impatiently waiting for Juror #1 to arrive…  

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Postcard from the Slope

POSTCARD FROM THE SLOPE_Ulysses Without Fear

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Ds016966_stdTonight, the Community Bookstore will celebrate that fictional day of days portrayed in James Joyce’s 783 page modern masterpiece, ULYSEES.

The novel recounts the hour by hour passage of a time in Dublin, June 16th, 1904. It is the odyssey of Leopold Bloom, an ordinary Dubliner — a modern-day Ulysees.

For ULYSEES fanatics and novices alike, here’s what the folks at the bookstore have planned.

–The literary largesse begins at 6:00 p.m: Gather and comingle.  Uncork the Guinness.

–At 7:00 p.m., David Damrosch, a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and President of the American Comparative Literature Association will give a talk called:  "Ulysses Without Fear," on how to have a really pleasurable first reading of the novel.

At 7:30 or so, the read-aloud begins. Catherine, the owner of the Community Bookstore says: "We’re not entirely sure what we’re reading, yet, so any suggestions are welcome, or just show up on the night with your copy marked."

Catherine promises to read Molly Blooms’s soliloquy:

"…I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."

Yes, it should be fun.

ONLY THE BLOG KNOWS BKLYN RESTAURANTS

ONLY THE BLOG KNOWS BROOKLYN RESTAURANTS

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BONNIE’S GRILL  278 Fifth Avenue. Park Slope. (718) 369-9527 

by Paul Leschen

11105After moving all my cherished belongings into my new place, I needed a reward. My dear, well-intentioned mother raised me in this manner, and as a consequence, I can complete a basic task only if someone throws me a fish afterwards I treat myself to a specially selected meal afterwards. The pre-selected reward for moving back to Park Slope was a trip to Bonnie

Postcard from the Slope

POSTCARD FROM THE SLOPE_Jury Duty

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I received my first jury summons in the mail about a month ago. I’d always wondered when they’d catch up with me. I figured one day I’d be called upon to perform my civc duty in a court of law.

In the summons, Wilbur A Levin, the Kings County Clerk wrote, "I recognize jury service can be burdensome, as it may interrupt your personal business lives. Please be assured that we will work within the limits of the law to accomodate varying needs. Our goal is to make your service as a juror a rewarding and memorable experience."

Part of me was curious, the other part extremely nervous that I’d be picked for a trail, forced to spend days away from work and family.

On Tuesday morning, surely one of the most humid days of the year, I arrived at the Supreme Court Building at 360 Adams Street, feeling sweaty and rumpled, fully expecting to be discharged. Everyone I know gets discharged.

I sat in a large well air-conditioned room and watched a video narrated by Diane Sawyer about the Jury process.

After the video, there was a certain element of comedy as officials, in three languages (English, Chinese and Spanish), explained selection procedures over and over, and called out names on the loudspeaker.  One official sounded like Tony Soprano, another had great difficulty pronouncing many of the names. I hoped I’d recognize my own name. There was a trickle of laughter when someone named Keith Richards was called.

Is the Rolling Stone here for jury duty, I wondered?

Finally I was called to the impaneling area with a large group of prospective jurors. We were seated in a courtroom where a judge explained the nature of the trial and the fact that it would probably take up to three weeks to complete. He then asked if anyone would have difficulty making that kind of commitment. A large line formed.

I told the judge that I was self-employed:

"If I don’t work, I didn’t get paid. I am supporting a family of four. It will be very hard for me to take time away…" I said.

"All very Dickensy, I know," he said. "But if I dismiss you, you might be put on another jury and in this court, we only meet three days a week. Do you think you can commit to that?" His eyes got very big.

"I guess I can," I said.

17 of us were then seated in the jury box and interviewed by the judge and the lawyers. The judge was interested to know which Brooklyn neighborhood we lived in. Some people simply offered a street address but the judge pressed further, "What neighborhood?" Some people didn’t actually know the name of their neighborhood and the Judge would help them figure it out.

It was interesting to hear where people were born, what they did for a living, their level of education, whether they had ever been witness to or victim of a crime. A mix of white, black, Caribbean, Chinese and Hispanic, most were middle-aged, some were retired, a few were in their twenties. The group was made up of hospital workers, a math teacher, a Girl Scout administrator, a lawyer, two college students, sales representatives, and secretaries. A few were unemployed.  We really were a true representation of Brooklyn’s so-called diversity.

To my surprise, I was selected for the jury and told to report to room 527 to meet with the other members of my jury. In the small, badly air conditioned jury room, the other jurors, who had been waiting since 11 a.m. the previous day for the jury selection to be complete, looked hot and bothered. The table was littered with spread out pages of a New The York Times, a Daily News’, The Post, a Christian novel, a Vanity Fair Magaine, and copy of Phillip Roth’s "American Pastorale."

The trial was set to begin after lunch. I took off for an old favorite falaffel place on Montague Street, ready to begin by first experience in a court of law.

Postcard from the Slope

POSTCARD FROM THE SLOPE_Mothers vs. Mothers

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BabyThe story of the woman on the airplane resonates with me because I have flown cross-country many, many times with my children when they were mere babes in arms.

It’s hard enough flying with children let alone having to worry that someone might be offended if you breastfeed.

Yet,  I do  feel that Barbara Walters has every right to complain about her discomfort. Watching other people breastfeed is not for everyone. Some find it beautiful. Others find it distasteful or titillating. Some just think it’s a private act that should go on behind closed doors.

Barbara Walters has every right not to want to sit near a baby on an airplane (breastfeeding or no). There is nothing more stressful than listening to a baby cry on a flight. I’m a nervous flyer to begin with and a crying baby can put me over the edge.

Still, I believe that breastfeeding mothers should be able to breastfeed their babies in public: on airplanes, in train stations, on the subways. Wherever. It is up to the mother where she wants and needs to do it.

By expressing her discomfort with breastfeeding on "The View," Barbara Walters has ignited a full-fledged debate about a woman’s right to breastfeed.

Yet, something else has come up in the process. While breastfeeding may be a right, it should not be a standard by which mothers are judged.  In some of the comments I received, I detected the implication that breastfeeding is superior to other approaches.

While there are many health and emotional reasons why "breast is best," it is very important that it does not become an issue that  pits one style of mothering against another, or one mother against another.

Women can be very  judgemental when it comes to mothering styles. And they are very hard on each other probably because they are so hard on themselves. The quest to be the perfect mom (and overcome the difficulties of being a mother in American society) sometimes results in mothers taking on a "Holier than Thou" view of things.

Women judge one another about breastfeeding, the food they feed their kids, cloth diapers vs. paper, how they put their kids to bed, when they put their kids to bed, where their children sleep (in the parent’s bed or not) and so on.

It’s almost like we’re judging each other when we should be coming together to raise awareness of how difficult it is to juggle motherhood with everything else that’s expected of us with so little support from the government and the culture.

One commenter wrote:
Barbara Wa Wa has never even breastfed!!! Her daughter is adopted. I
think she should keep her mouth shut about things she obviously knows
nothing about!!!

That one gave me pause. I am very sensitive to the ways that some kinds oif motherhood are held above others. And I find this apalling. I don’t think you are any less of a mother because you don’t breastfeed, or if  your child is adopted, or if you have to work full time, etc.

ABSOLUTELY NOT. 

A woman named Suzanne wrote this in response to the previous commenter.

""Her daughter is adopted"

Postcard from the Slope

POSTCARD FROM THE SLOPE_LIFE COACH

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MesmlIt’s been quite a week. The whole thing took me by surprise. When I wrote "Breastfeeding Brouhaha" I figured it would be a quick little story. Little did I know that thousands of readers from around the country would log on.

Here I wish to thank the person who really made this happen. Deborah Ager, my Life Coach, sent me an e-mail last Thursday that turned my world around. In it she said:

After reading your post about breastfeeding and Barbara Walters, I saw this post on my local DC moms

Civics and Urban Life

POSTCARD FROM THE SLOPE_Hazy Weekend

Ds018789_std

There was lots going on this weekend in the Slope; Seventh Avenue was the usual weekend carnival and the side-streets had their share of stoop sales and block parties. The Brooklyn Pride Festival was on Prospect Park West near the Pavillion and on Saturday night at 9 p.m. the annual Gay, Lesbian and Transgender parade took over Seventh Avenue.

Traffic was atrocious. I was only in a car once – my brother-in-law drove me from Seventh to Eighth  Avenue on Union Street and what a mess that was.

Seventh Avenue was bumper to bumper as was Third Street. My neighbors kept asking, "What’s going on? Why all this traffic on Third Street?"
But I sort of sleep walked through most of it as I was in a slow-motion frame of mind due to the humidity and the exhaustion from a busy week. I was aware of all the activity but sort of oblivious. Excuse me, could you move your stroller please. Excuse me. Just passing through. There was so much to do – but I chose to avoid it for the most part; just did my errands and got home.

Chilling out and staying cool was my M.O. Lots of iced coffees and an expensive Mocha Chip cone from Haggen Daz. My daughter and I caught some air conditioned air at Lisa’s Nail Salon upstairs on Union Street and Seventh. The place was packed with a multi-generational mix of women in need of manicures, pedicures and waxing. Chartruse was the color my daughter chose for her nails and the manicurist painted tiny flowers on two of her nails as a treat.

The rain cooled things off a bit Saturday afternoon and I was able to nap on the sofa for an hour or so. When I woke up it was torrid again and my daughter and I walked over to the Pavillion to catch the 8:30 show of "Madagasgar." Outside the theater, the Brooklyn Pride Parade was forming – a colorful display of flags, floats, costumes, and signs. I was sorry we had to miss it – but being inside at the movies seemed a better way to go.

I enjoyed the film immensely but it might have been the air conditioned air that had me fooled. My daughter seemed to like it to, too. We walked home down Seventh Avenue after the parade was over and everthing was cleared away. We did see a woman wearing a snake around her neck and a Gay Pride t-shirt in the donut shop on Seventh Avenue near Ninth.

That was cool.

Postcard from the Slope

POSTCARD FROM THE SLOPE_Meredith Viera

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Isn’t it interesting that Meredith Viera, co-host of The View (with Barbara Walters, Starr Jones and others) was hired and then fired from "60-Minutes" years ago because of work/family issues?

In a book called: Divided Lives: The Public and Private Struggles of Three Accomplished Women published by Simon & Schuster (New York) in 1995, the author, Elsa Walsh writes about Meredith Viera’s struggle to hang on to her high profile, highly paid job as a 60-minute correspondent while struggling through a high risk pregnancy.

"The measures established to prevent previous miscarriages and accommodate her medical needs eventually lead to friction and discord among co-workers and staff. As the following anecdote demonstrates, Meredith refuses to separate her roles as journalist and mother. When the baby is born and salary negotiations begin, Meredith brings her infant son to the Tavern on the Green lunch meeting so that she can nurse the baby on demand. The executives are flabbergasted by her behavior and by her announcement that she intends to become pregnant again," writes  Literature, Medicine and Arts Database.

I’m sure Meredith Viera can relate to R.’s need to breastfeed her 2-month old baby on the New York/DC shuttle (after an 18-hour flight from South Africa). Meredith V. can probably also relate to R, a hardworking woman with a high profile job at the World Bank, who is intent on balancing a career with motherhood.

It sounds like the World Bank is far more tolerant of a working mother’s need to pump breast milk at the office. As R. said in the OTBKB interview, her husband brings the baby  to the office for a feeding.

It’s quite heroic the lengths women go to provide their children with the nutrition and emotional sustenance that breastfeeding provides.

I’m sure Meredith Viera can relate to that.

Postcard from the Slope

POSTCARD FROM THE SLOPE_BIRTHDAY BOY

Ds019937_stdToday is my son’s 14th birthday. I will, of course, never forget his
birth by C-Section at Lenox Hill Hospital all those years. ago. When he
came out the nurse shouted: "He’s cute," and I figured that meant he
had all his fingers and toes.

My husband held him for the forty-five minutes or so while the
doctor sewed me up.They stared into each other’s eyes; it was the most
blissful thing in the world. That night, I remember singing to him: "Yes sir that’s my baby, No sir, I don’t mean maybe,  Yes sir, that’s my baby now."

It had been a difficult pregnancy. I spent five months in bed,
including one month in the pre-natal unit at Lenox Hill, with a case of
pre-term labor, a condition best treated with bed rest and a medication
called Tributilin.

I was under doctor’s orders to stay calm in an effort to  prevent
contractions from causing an early delivery. "Don’t laugh, don’t cry,"
my doctor said. And it worked: my son was born on his due date.

Needless to say, the staying calm part was pretty hard but I did
have an interesting time in bed. We moved into my mother’s Riverside
Drive apartment because our duplex in the East Village had a spiral
staircase and one bathroom on a separate floor from the bedroom. I was
taken care of by a steady stream of family and friends who brought
food, books, magazines, and news of the outside world.

I vowed not to waste my time in bed watching television although I
did become slightly addicted to the Sally Jessie Raphael Show and
eating Mallomars. My reading list was a veritable syllabus of books I
had always meant to read but had never gotten around to including
selections from: Balzac, Jane Austen, Henry James, The Brontes,
Virginia Woolf,  Flaubert, Joyce, E.M. Forster, Milan Kundera and a
wonderful biography of Simone Du Beauvoir. It was a pretty wonderful
way to spend five months and I proudly stacked the books on a shelf in
the room I’d grown up in. Painted blue, it had a gorgeous view of the
Hudson.

Maybe all that reading is the reason my son loves to read so much.
For his birthday, we bought him a bass amp, which we already gave him
for his gig last week with Cool and Unusual Punishment. But yesterday I
also went to Community Books and Barnes and Noble to pick out some
presents: "The New Smithsonian Book of Comic Book Stories From Crumb to
Clowes," "Beyond Good and Evil" by Frederick Nietzsche, "All the
Presidents Men" by Woodward and Bernstein, and "Kiss Like a Stranger,"
an autobiography by Gene Wilder.

We were the first of our friends to have a baby and we didn’t know
what to do. But we figured it out as we went along and we wrote a song
about it which we sang constantly:

"It’s hard work being a baby just ask H____ he knows, It takes a
lot of concentration to grow, and it shows. First they feed you, then
they burp you, then they put you to bed in your room. Then they wake
you and want you looking good so all the relatives will swoon…."

The now disparaged "What to Expect When You’re Expecting" was our
bible and the book I was holding in one hand, while I figured out how
to diaper him with the other. The breastfeeding was a trial and it took
days and days for him to latch on. I still have the breastfeeding
journal I kept at the time to keep track of which breast I used at each
feeding. It’s a weird list that goes on for pages and pages: Left.
Right. Right. Left. Left. Left.

It’s hard to believe that was 14 years ago. He spent yesterday in
Coney Island with friends. And tomorrow he’s taking his friends to the
Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art in Soho. He’s very much his own person
now: utterly handsome, interesting, full of humor and smarts.

Yes sir, that’s my baby.


Check out the OTBKB STORE for "Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn" and "It’s Only Natural"  T-shirts.  More designs to come…

Postcard from the Slope

POSTCARD FROM THE SLOPE_Barbara Walters on Jimmy Kimmel Show

I missed seeing Barbara Walters on the Jimmy Kimmel show but here’s a report from Ashley Clark, one of the founders of  NurseOut: 

As seen on Tuesday (07 June 2005) night’s episode of "Jimmy Kimmel Live" (also an ABC show), Barbara Walters clearly says "It made us uncomfortable" referring to a woman breastfeeding her infant on an airplane. This flies directly in the face of her statement and a phone call she made live to "The View" yesterday, where she claimed it was only the man sitting in the seat next to her who was uncomfortable, as she claims, many men are.

Barbara Walters and the other ladies on "The View" are in the middle of a larger debate now regarding attitudes towards breastfeeding and nursing in public because of recent statements they have made that have angered and hurt a lot of nursing mothers in the larger public.

In fact, so many mothers are upset by the general anti

Postcard from the Slope

POSTCARD FROM THE SLOPE_Naparstek Was There

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Brooklyn Neighborhood Cyclist Killed

Thanks to Aaron Naparstek, we have this personal report of what happened yesterday on Fifth Avenue. He wrote it soon after the incident. Since then, more information about the incident, the name of the victim, etc. has become available.

I
just got back from a horrific scene down on 5th Avenue and Warren
Street. A woman cyclist was killed at the intersection about an hour
ago. She was riding northbound on 5th towards Flatbush. Apparently, she
got pinned between a PC Richardson appliance truck parked curbside and
an Edy’s ice cream truck coming up on her left. A witness told me that
the ice cream truck on her left didn’t make enough room for her as she
passed by the parked truck. The cops are saying that the driver of the
PC Richardson truck opened his door, causing her to veer to the left.
She got jostled off her bike, fell under the moving truck — a very big
10-wheeler — and her head was crushed under the right rear wheels. She
died instantly.

The cops have not released her name. She was
wearing bike shoes and was riding what looked to be a rather high-end
looking bike. Another witness, a passenger in a U-Haul truck riding
directly behind the ice cream truck who was very shaken up, said that
she was not doored by the driver of the PC Richardson truck. The
witness also said that the light on 5th Ave was green when the incident
took place and all the vehicles were moving. The cops, however, are
saying that the cyclist "cut between" the two trucks. Typically, when
these things happen, the cops and the media, consciously or not, slant
towards blaming the cyclist.

Several years ago, the advocacy
group Right Of Way documented that aggressive passing is the driving
maneuver most responsible for killing cyclists in NYC. (Click here to see the report. Warning: It’s a PDF document.)

The
driver of the Edy’s ice cream truck, a young Hispanic guy, drove off
after running over the woman. He was chased and stopped about two
blocks down the road by onlookers. He told the guys who chased him down
that he had no idea he hit anyone.

I am somewhat ambivalent
about posting these photographs on the site. But I think it is
important to see this. At least three cyclists have been killed in New
York City since the end of April. Two weekends ago I myself was cut off
and knocked down by a cab about two blocks from the site of today’s
crash. My bike is still all bent up.

Dying like this seems to me
to be just an incredible, massive injustice, particularly because it
would take so little effort and money to create safer cycling routes in
New York City. And the benefits of making New York City more safely
bikeable extend so far beyond just cyclists themselves. So, I’m posting
these photos not to be ghoulish, but to let people see the injustice
that I witnessed this morning. It is one thing to read about it. But
viewing the scene I couldn’t help but think: This could easily be me,
my wife, or my friend. In fact, for all I know it is one of my friends.

Ride as safely as you can, folks.


Looking northbound on 5th Avenue towards Flatbush


NYPD detectives examining the truck that ran over the cyclist.


Police photograph the crime scene.

 

Postcard from the Slope

POSTCARD FROM THE SLOPE_The Rosa Parks of Breastfeeding

Blogland is waiting to hear from R, "the woman on the airplane," who
breastfed her 2-month old baby on the shuttle from Kennedy to
Washington, DC., two seats away from Barbara Walters.

R., who has a very high profile government/finance job in
Johannesberg, South Africa, was unable to respond to my questions
because she has a deadline to meet for the new president of the World
Bank.

This is a woman of consequence.

Understandably, things are a bit hectic for R., She just got back
from a grueling trip to Washington to visit family. 36 hours plus hours
on airplanes with a 2-month old. And now work deadlines AND a baby at
home (and still breastfeeding).

This is what it means to be a working mother in the 21st century. I must say, I am a little bit awed by this woman.

R. promises to get back to me when she has a moment. Does a woman in R.’s situation ever have a moment.

R., has the respect of thousands of woman around the country who
have been logging onto OTBKB. These women belong to chat rooms like
Sybermoms.com, the-bungalow.net, mothering.com, nursingmom.com,
got-breastmilk.org, and others, where they are "chatting" about Barbara
Walters and the woman on the airplane.

R., your public is waiting. We want to hear more from you.

Postcard from the Slope

POSTCARD FROM THE SLOPE_Biker Dies on Fifth Avenue

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Ds016988_stdSad news tonight at the Old Stone House wine tastng: A biker died in a traffic accident on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope.

Aaron Naparstak, the man who helped convince the local Commerce Bank to rethink the drive-in concept, informed me and a friend about the incident.

The accident occurred on Fifth Avenue at Warren Steet. This is how I understood what he said: the woman was cycling north down Fifth toward Flatbush when the door of a truck opened suddenly and hit her. She went flying off her bike and sent to the other side of the street, where she was hit by another truck She died on impact.

The New York Daily News describes it this way: As Elizabeth Padilla, a 28-year-old lawyer, attempted to pass a 10-wheel Edy’s Ice Cream truck, the driver of another truck parked on Fifth Ave. in Park Slope opened his door, witnesses said. Padilla swerved to avoid the door but hit the side of the moving ice cream truck, causing her to topple under the vehicle’s large rear wheels, police said. She was killed instantly, just six blocks from her apartment.

The friend I was standing with at the wine tasting had already heard the news. She lives on Berkeley Place in the building next door to the young woman’s apartment. Earlier today, a policeman came to her home and told her that one of her neighbors was in a biking accident. He wanted to know if she knew the young woman’s relatves. She did not.

In fact, my friend didn’t know the woman at all. The young woman moved in maybe three months ago. "There’s a lot of turnover in the building next door," she said. They never spoke. "I don’t even remember what she looks like," she added. But she feels very said,
nonetheless.

My friend asked the policeman how the young woman was doing. "Not very well," the police offier said.  Somehow she knew that meant she was dead. "It is every mother’s nightmare to lose your child. I felt sick to my stomach for the mother of that young woman."

A young life was lost today on Fifh Avenue. Her name was ELizabeth Padilla.

* A reader on Daily Heights notes that it is more than likely that Padilla was riding on (or trying to) ride on a well-marked bike lane. Much of FIfth Avenue from Flatbush to 20th Street is well-marked as such. 
 

Postcard from the Slope

POSTCARD FROM THE SLOPE_More Nursing

BfgraphicAshley Clark, one of the organizers of the Nurse-in, the protest against Barbara Walter’s comment about breastfeeding on THE VIEW, stopped by my in-box today and had this to say: 

"I’m one of the organizers or the nurse-in and we’d love to get in contact with R.  Would it be possible for you to send her my email address? Our website is up and although rough, it’s running (we’ve all had such craziness really with all this that there hasn’t been a whole lot of time)."

I forwarded her message to R. and then e-mailed her back asking her if I could interview her:

Thanks so much!  And yes, absolutely.  I’d love to talk…what would you like to know?

Readers, you’ll be the first to see….


Serving Park Slope and Beyond