Council Forum - Everyone In One Place! Saturday
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Don't Mess With Bicycle "Rough" Riders
Shooting on Parkside near Parade Grounds. Seriously wounded but not dead. The headline from DNAInfo caught my eye though.
2 Men in Car Shot by Cyclists Near Prospect Park, NYPD Says
2 Men in Car Shot by Cyclists Near Prospect Park, NYPD Says
Were these "cyclists" part of the alleged broader left-wing conspiracy to shut down our roadways like the recent closing of Prospect Park to ALL motorists? Read about that here.
Next time I see a pack of wanna-be Lance Armstrongs barrelling down the loop road in the Park I'll be sure to remember it's not all bike lanes and traffic calming for these guys. Sometimes these Testosterone-ays are packin', and I'm not talking about GORP in their panniers!
Actually, there's a website called AltRider that sells - bicycle panniers with holsters for your guns. I shit you not. http://www.altrider.com/altrider-hemisphere-waterproof-soft-panniers/pid/1527
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Woman Has Psychotic Break: Daily News Leads With the Fact She Was Topless
The Q was called out for tastelessness in regards to his recent post about gang violence. And while I can take the criticism I just wanted to point out that it was intended as sarcasm. This time I'll just straight up tell you how I feel about the media's reporting of criminal behavior.
So you'll recognize this corner at Beekman, home to the long dormant Subway Hoagie Shoppe.
A woman has an episode of some kind - the result of what we do not know - and the headline from the Daily News reads:
So you'll recognize this corner at Beekman, home to the long dormant Subway Hoagie Shoppe.
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| photo: Steven Rex Brown for Daily News |
A woman has an episode of some kind - the result of what we do not know - and the headline from the Daily News reads:
Topless woman threatens to jump from Brooklyn building’s window before cops carry her off on stretcher
Under what circumstances is it okay to note that a disturbed woman doesn't have her shirt on? First, that's not a crime in NYC. Second, was she supposed to dress in a certain manner while losing her proverbial mind? Have some compassion folks! Thankfully no one was hurt. Damn. I hope her family didn't read that insensitive shit.
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Litter Bro's
The Q grew up in a college town, and while frat boys have a deserved reputation for doing beer bong hits with grain alcohol and party rape (yes, an unfortunate term that succinctly defines the problem), we knew the frats to be fairly tidy, a small concession to my neighborhood given the boisterous all-night insanity. If I knew what chapter this was, if in fact it was a fraternity, I'd be shaming the hell out of them right now. Sigma Nu-isance if you ask me.
Animal House indeed.
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Culture Shock In New England
Lest I lose you, dear reader, for going away and astray, here's the latest on the psycho squirrel of Prospect Park and also in neighborhood news the scaffolding on Lincoln Road has finally come down from the Tom Anderson building - after nearly 4 long years. A certain prophetic gentleman whom I've tagged Nostrandamus has noted the bizarrely institutional look to the lobby of the Flatbush entrance, leading us to wonder if half the building might end up being used to house homeless folks? Were it to be so, the term "poor door" would be very much apt. Now on to the middle-aged musing...
It happens every year, with alarming regularity now. 12 years n a row to be precise. The Q pulls up stakes and heads for the hills of Western Massachusetts, to the home of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), now the single biggest museum in the country having nearly doubled in size this past year alone. It's a remarkable place, full of twists and turns and surprises at every twist and turn. Most all exhibits (save the Sol LeWitt) switch-out each year, so it's never the same. I'm ostensibly working for these two weeks, though my job seems constantly shifting and now that I'm Social Media voice I find that I'm stuck in a persona of my own making, a voice much more optimistic and utopian than the one I betray here, so I'm never entirely comfortable even in the acres of air conditioning. Such are the angsty travails of the middle-aged, middle-class, liberal arts educated white man left-leaning "cool" dad. I'd like to think I'm archetypical rather than stereotypical, and that my sense of humor distances myself from the crowd, but even my sense of humor was honed in the same DLetterman/SSilverman/LCK/LDavid/Coco stew as the rest of them, so truly there's nothing original about me at this point, not even the dogged Doubting Thomas Devil's Advocate (DTDA) air of superiority that permeates every breathing thought. I could just off myself now and save the world another mansplainer, but I want to stick around and see how this Trump thing plays out and I really do love hanging out with the family and traveling and watching the world through kids' eyes and helping the occasional fellow drunk get back on his feet. That's not to say I'm depressed. Quite the opposite. Know thyself, and you might just save yourself, since acceptance is the key, and ice cream alone is worth the price of admission to this sorry catastrophe we call modernity.
As I was saying it happens to me every damn year, all through my 40's. As soon as I leave the Bronx, and this time it was just me with the girls heading through lyme-riddled Connecticut, stopping off at friends for a dip in a refreshing private pool the comfort of which most New Yorkers will never enjoy, then on to the Berkshire hills and a bit of soft-serve from one of those ma & pa ice cream and fried clams places that stink up every northeastern town worth its Main Street and Village Green. Why clams and lobster roll anyway? We're four hours from the ocean and sorry folks it's comin' outa the freezer in a bag. Soft serve, that genuinely innovative product that launched a thousand Mr. Softy's, is a true economic leveler, as only the haughtiest of the haughty of gourmands (or lactose intolerant) could refuse its tongue-chilling goodness next to godliness. Like at interstate rest areas, the rich and poor find themselves cone-to-cone with one another, odd benchfellows to be sure, and of every political and philosophic bent to boot. Preppies and yokels, Trumpers and Bern-feelers, architects and grease monkeys, meth-heads and potheads, the Farmer and Cowman CAN be friends, and black and white rest in equal proportion and integrated on a wafer cone in a twisty confection. Not racial black and white of course - there are precious few folks of African descent here. There is absolutely no reason why one SHOULD mix vanilla and chocolate on a cone anyway - it's like mixing coke with mr. pibb - because you really can't distinguish the flavors when they're mixed up that way, but it looks cool and you suspend disbelief even as your licking something neither chocolate nor vanilla but rather Chilla, as my girls and I call it.
Out here in rural America, even BLUE state rural America, you're once again reminded that the country is WAY white and WAY un-NYC, or as Todd from Bovina likes to say "I'd rather take a beating than spend an hour in New York," and btw he lives just three hours away. When you talk to people out here, up here, down there, you start to remember that most of America doesn't relate to the multi-culti progressive zeitgeist nor necessarily have much interest at all in the ways of the nation beyond immediate needs and concerns. Oh, people get worked up like they always have, but until the policies of State hit home, it's just so much hot air. It has always been thus - politics is always local, except on the Huffington Post (or as I like to call it "The Hourly Outrage," since that's about how often they update their absurdly huge headline). Since the founding of the Republic there's always been a sizable contingent that despises centralized national authority and can't fathom why they must pay for things they don't need out of their hard-earned (and sometimes not-so-hard-earned) dollars. Trust me you needn't argue against that line of thinking; I'm with you. It's just not hard to imagine the other side, that's all, when you're away from the dense urban group-think.
Now, as a card-carrying liberal-arts-cool-dad I wish that rural America DID care more about leveling the playing field not just at home but worldwide, since for some reason it was ingrained in me that to be a good citizen of the earth one must worry about famine across the sea and justice for folks who don't look or sound like me. But every once in awhile I'm reminded that the primary concern of every species is procreation and rearing of young, and once fed and clothed and sheltered you could probably be forgiven for thinking the rest is none of your goddamn business. This is a morally bereft legitimate way of looking at the world, and it's one of the reasons I'm surprised that DIY Libertarianism hasn't become a more major political force on its own, rather than being usurped by the GOP as part of its Confederacy of Dunces. To the "farmer stock" of my grandparents' era it wasn't even really an option to imagine otherwise; like the Ingalls fambly you set out on your own and worked hard and did with what you had. In a dire emergency you availed yourself of good ol' Christian charity. I recall my grandfather, a Republican from IL (which, I might add proudly was true of our greatest President) saying that the worst business that government can be in is the charity business, because it creates an unholy alliance between a political party and an underclass, one that can be manipulated at will by the wielding of carrots and sticks. I cede that very point to the man, though his world was pretty small and couldn't fathom the true depravity of a post-slavery post-industrial hyper-capitalist hyper-specialized mostly-urbanized mostly-demoralized society of wildly unequals.
From the Department of Duh it's worth remembering that the Wars and Great Depression changed America, and there was finally a political will to take action, BIG action, on a national scale, and to pay for it with taxes. Suddenly a wildly rich country, the U.S.A. could really pay for stuff like massive infrastructure projects and more generous welfare and even single payer healthcare for the poor and old, and progressives could now imagine a country with a solid judicial that could try to spread things more evenly and take care of its most vulnerable, and best of all (here's where my liberal heart turns cynical) create a reliable base of support for its ideology. I would argue that it was Democrats, not Republicans, who worked hardest to manipulate the electorate to their advantage. They had the brains and the media on their side, and from JFK to the assassination of Bobby and Martin it looked like nothing could stop them. The youth were digging it, some major churches were on board, the Vietnam War didn't help the conservative anti-commie cause, and Medicare and Medicaid helped ensure a base of support for progressive politics into the foreseeable future. And then...bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. An over-reach by the Left? Too much talk of revolution? Or just plain ol' fear striking the heart of the breadbasket? The country's lurch to the right started with Nixon and but for a brief hiccup caused by his paranoia, the rightward march held steady through the late '80s. The wars of these years set the stage for a new all-out negative political terrain that frankly wasn't that different from the old except in its 24-7 intensity. The energy and urgency on the Left had dissipated and the right was now promising something equal in sway to entitlements - tax cuts, unpaid for of course and with dramatic consequences to the national budget and the poor and to the rates of incarceration particularly against young men who were NEVER gonna vote for Republicans anyway.
And really when it gets down to it...aren't tax cuts and health care both entitlements, to appease the two bases? Were it not for those pesky problems of racial, ethnic and religious discrimination, well, it wouldn't be hard to fathom the need to argue those philosophic questions with civility and humility. We're being thrown bones really, to keep us in line, and it works astoundingly well for the wealthy who can hardly contain their glee when the revolution is put off for another generation.
The Trump phenomenon feels personal because that's how it's sold. You, dear liberal, are the enemy, and the current administration won't let you forget it. Your politics are elite and patronizing. You claim moral high-ground even as you take care of your own just as fiercely as any right-winger. You just do it while voicing the dying language of the Left, though there's not much revolution left in you. When you see people truly taking to the streets - whether Occupiers or Black Lives Matter or even the fiercest Bernie Bros, you feel a bit of glee but you don't join in. You're staring at your phone hoping things will go your way in the next news cycle, acknowledging but not participating, secretly hoping that things don't get TOO out of hand, because, after all, at your core, you are a Homo Sapien, a creature like any creature, primarily concerned with pro-creation, the procurement of food and shelter, and the safety and nurturing of your young. They might label you Entitled, and you might feel a pang of regret, but somewhere in your very skeleton your DNA is cheering.
You are a hairless ape with aspirations of grandeur. You are a hairy lizard making decisions based on fear. You are a hilarious mistake of evolution that might just extinguish your lineage in pursuit of what exactly? Art? Comfort? Power?
You are pathetic. And I love you, just as I'm pathetic and love myself to the degree I don't off myself, take pleasure in my young, and seek to illuminate not just my own struggle but the neighborhood, city, country and planet. There. That's all it is, dimly illuminated, with no coherent meaning or spiritual enlightenment to be gained, though you and I will vainly try like Sisyphus to achieve something, and even the greatest of you will descend like Icarus after touching the sun just enough to write a poem or song about it. And you might get a statue and a paragraph on the world wide digital magazine under History of the Human Race, but that sun will ultimately burn out your eyes and scorch your home and those wings were cheap plastic anyway.
To paraphrase this Post, as the Great Lorax once sayeth, UNLESS...
It happens every year, with alarming regularity now. 12 years n a row to be precise. The Q pulls up stakes and heads for the hills of Western Massachusetts, to the home of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), now the single biggest museum in the country having nearly doubled in size this past year alone. It's a remarkable place, full of twists and turns and surprises at every twist and turn. Most all exhibits (save the Sol LeWitt) switch-out each year, so it's never the same. I'm ostensibly working for these two weeks, though my job seems constantly shifting and now that I'm Social Media voice I find that I'm stuck in a persona of my own making, a voice much more optimistic and utopian than the one I betray here, so I'm never entirely comfortable even in the acres of air conditioning. Such are the angsty travails of the middle-aged, middle-class, liberal arts educated white man left-leaning "cool" dad. I'd like to think I'm archetypical rather than stereotypical, and that my sense of humor distances myself from the crowd, but even my sense of humor was honed in the same DLetterman/SSilverman/LCK/LDavid/Coco stew as the rest of them, so truly there's nothing original about me at this point, not even the dogged Doubting Thomas Devil's Advocate (DTDA) air of superiority that permeates every breathing thought. I could just off myself now and save the world another mansplainer, but I want to stick around and see how this Trump thing plays out and I really do love hanging out with the family and traveling and watching the world through kids' eyes and helping the occasional fellow drunk get back on his feet. That's not to say I'm depressed. Quite the opposite. Know thyself, and you might just save yourself, since acceptance is the key, and ice cream alone is worth the price of admission to this sorry catastrophe we call modernity.
As I was saying it happens to me every damn year, all through my 40's. As soon as I leave the Bronx, and this time it was just me with the girls heading through lyme-riddled Connecticut, stopping off at friends for a dip in a refreshing private pool the comfort of which most New Yorkers will never enjoy, then on to the Berkshire hills and a bit of soft-serve from one of those ma & pa ice cream and fried clams places that stink up every northeastern town worth its Main Street and Village Green. Why clams and lobster roll anyway? We're four hours from the ocean and sorry folks it's comin' outa the freezer in a bag. Soft serve, that genuinely innovative product that launched a thousand Mr. Softy's, is a true economic leveler, as only the haughtiest of the haughty of gourmands (or lactose intolerant) could refuse its tongue-chilling goodness next to godliness. Like at interstate rest areas, the rich and poor find themselves cone-to-cone with one another, odd benchfellows to be sure, and of every political and philosophic bent to boot. Preppies and yokels, Trumpers and Bern-feelers, architects and grease monkeys, meth-heads and potheads, the Farmer and Cowman CAN be friends, and black and white rest in equal proportion and integrated on a wafer cone in a twisty confection. Not racial black and white of course - there are precious few folks of African descent here. There is absolutely no reason why one SHOULD mix vanilla and chocolate on a cone anyway - it's like mixing coke with mr. pibb - because you really can't distinguish the flavors when they're mixed up that way, but it looks cool and you suspend disbelief even as your licking something neither chocolate nor vanilla but rather Chilla, as my girls and I call it.
Out here in rural America, even BLUE state rural America, you're once again reminded that the country is WAY white and WAY un-NYC, or as Todd from Bovina likes to say "I'd rather take a beating than spend an hour in New York," and btw he lives just three hours away. When you talk to people out here, up here, down there, you start to remember that most of America doesn't relate to the multi-culti progressive zeitgeist nor necessarily have much interest at all in the ways of the nation beyond immediate needs and concerns. Oh, people get worked up like they always have, but until the policies of State hit home, it's just so much hot air. It has always been thus - politics is always local, except on the Huffington Post (or as I like to call it "The Hourly Outrage," since that's about how often they update their absurdly huge headline). Since the founding of the Republic there's always been a sizable contingent that despises centralized national authority and can't fathom why they must pay for things they don't need out of their hard-earned (and sometimes not-so-hard-earned) dollars. Trust me you needn't argue against that line of thinking; I'm with you. It's just not hard to imagine the other side, that's all, when you're away from the dense urban group-think.
Now, as a card-carrying liberal-arts-cool-dad I wish that rural America DID care more about leveling the playing field not just at home but worldwide, since for some reason it was ingrained in me that to be a good citizen of the earth one must worry about famine across the sea and justice for folks who don't look or sound like me. But every once in awhile I'm reminded that the primary concern of every species is procreation and rearing of young, and once fed and clothed and sheltered you could probably be forgiven for thinking the rest is none of your goddamn business. This is a morally bereft legitimate way of looking at the world, and it's one of the reasons I'm surprised that DIY Libertarianism hasn't become a more major political force on its own, rather than being usurped by the GOP as part of its Confederacy of Dunces. To the "farmer stock" of my grandparents' era it wasn't even really an option to imagine otherwise; like the Ingalls fambly you set out on your own and worked hard and did with what you had. In a dire emergency you availed yourself of good ol' Christian charity. I recall my grandfather, a Republican from IL (which, I might add proudly was true of our greatest President) saying that the worst business that government can be in is the charity business, because it creates an unholy alliance between a political party and an underclass, one that can be manipulated at will by the wielding of carrots and sticks. I cede that very point to the man, though his world was pretty small and couldn't fathom the true depravity of a post-slavery post-industrial hyper-capitalist hyper-specialized mostly-urbanized mostly-demoralized society of wildly unequals.
From the Department of Duh it's worth remembering that the Wars and Great Depression changed America, and there was finally a political will to take action, BIG action, on a national scale, and to pay for it with taxes. Suddenly a wildly rich country, the U.S.A. could really pay for stuff like massive infrastructure projects and more generous welfare and even single payer healthcare for the poor and old, and progressives could now imagine a country with a solid judicial that could try to spread things more evenly and take care of its most vulnerable, and best of all (here's where my liberal heart turns cynical) create a reliable base of support for its ideology. I would argue that it was Democrats, not Republicans, who worked hardest to manipulate the electorate to their advantage. They had the brains and the media on their side, and from JFK to the assassination of Bobby and Martin it looked like nothing could stop them. The youth were digging it, some major churches were on board, the Vietnam War didn't help the conservative anti-commie cause, and Medicare and Medicaid helped ensure a base of support for progressive politics into the foreseeable future. And then...bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. An over-reach by the Left? Too much talk of revolution? Or just plain ol' fear striking the heart of the breadbasket? The country's lurch to the right started with Nixon and but for a brief hiccup caused by his paranoia, the rightward march held steady through the late '80s. The wars of these years set the stage for a new all-out negative political terrain that frankly wasn't that different from the old except in its 24-7 intensity. The energy and urgency on the Left had dissipated and the right was now promising something equal in sway to entitlements - tax cuts, unpaid for of course and with dramatic consequences to the national budget and the poor and to the rates of incarceration particularly against young men who were NEVER gonna vote for Republicans anyway.
And really when it gets down to it...aren't tax cuts and health care both entitlements, to appease the two bases? Were it not for those pesky problems of racial, ethnic and religious discrimination, well, it wouldn't be hard to fathom the need to argue those philosophic questions with civility and humility. We're being thrown bones really, to keep us in line, and it works astoundingly well for the wealthy who can hardly contain their glee when the revolution is put off for another generation.
The Trump phenomenon feels personal because that's how it's sold. You, dear liberal, are the enemy, and the current administration won't let you forget it. Your politics are elite and patronizing. You claim moral high-ground even as you take care of your own just as fiercely as any right-winger. You just do it while voicing the dying language of the Left, though there's not much revolution left in you. When you see people truly taking to the streets - whether Occupiers or Black Lives Matter or even the fiercest Bernie Bros, you feel a bit of glee but you don't join in. You're staring at your phone hoping things will go your way in the next news cycle, acknowledging but not participating, secretly hoping that things don't get TOO out of hand, because, after all, at your core, you are a Homo Sapien, a creature like any creature, primarily concerned with pro-creation, the procurement of food and shelter, and the safety and nurturing of your young. They might label you Entitled, and you might feel a pang of regret, but somewhere in your very skeleton your DNA is cheering.
You are a hairless ape with aspirations of grandeur. You are a hairy lizard making decisions based on fear. You are a hilarious mistake of evolution that might just extinguish your lineage in pursuit of what exactly? Art? Comfort? Power?
You are pathetic. And I love you, just as I'm pathetic and love myself to the degree I don't off myself, take pleasure in my young, and seek to illuminate not just my own struggle but the neighborhood, city, country and planet. There. That's all it is, dimly illuminated, with no coherent meaning or spiritual enlightenment to be gained, though you and I will vainly try like Sisyphus to achieve something, and even the greatest of you will descend like Icarus after touching the sun just enough to write a poem or song about it. And you might get a statue and a paragraph on the world wide digital magazine under History of the Human Race, but that sun will ultimately burn out your eyes and scorch your home and those wings were cheap plastic anyway.
To paraphrase this Post, as the Great Lorax once sayeth, UNLESS...
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A Little Bit About A Lot Of Things
The scaffolding came down on Lincoln Road and you'd think God had parted the Red Sea, what with the Hall Lay Lou Yah that erupted on the social media. It's meaningful to have a sidewalk back in the hands of the people, and folks are going to need some time to heal before embracing this new slice of gentrifier gold. (right next to park, right on top of the train station, next to the day care, and soon another gourmet grocery on its first floor, swank wine store around the corner, coffee and juice shops and cocktail lounges and micro-brews...hard to imagine just a decade back the nabe was thrilled just to have a single homey coffee and pastries place known as K-Dog.Speaking of bagels (Nagle's is also right across the street), did you see that Bergen Bagels is coming to the NE corner of Maple and Flatbush? Google is no longer satisfied to provide current and historical information. It is now a fortune teller, and has Bergen Bagels on Google Maps even before it opens. Don't believe me, map it out yourself. Bergen has the real deal NY bagels and fixins you've come to expect.
An Italian place of some renown on Nostrand? It don't take Nostrandamus to predict anymore, just your handy cellular device. God knows blogs are hardly the place for breaking news. The soon-to-open Tiki Bar and rotisserie Risbo on the lower 'Bush, something or other by the Parkside Pizza folks on the NW corner of Westbury and Flattie Bush, record store, wine stores you name it. Can't keep up really, and who needs to when they come so fast and furious, with fairly predictable pickins'? And yet at least a dozen prime locations sit vacant along the 'Bush, just waiting for the "right" business at the right price.
Speaking of Nostrandamus, a certain prognosticator took a look at the entrance to the new building on Lincoln's OTHER entrance on Flatbush and noted the institutional look to the lobby. Could this be a separately configured building to house, say, homeless folks or social needs population? The City can set up these sorts of shelters wherever it wants with just a minimum of warning, like on Crown and Rogers. We shall see, friends, we shall see. And please, if it does come to pass, don't pre-judge. Folks of all stripes need a place to hang their hats and charge their cellulars.
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The Fiction Issue
Has it really been weeks since the Q's last missive? Typically I leave a "Gone Fishin'" post and thought to do so again but figured nah surely there'll be plenty to write about while working at MASS MoCA for a residency and then vacationing with the fam at the Corner House in southern Vermont and now visiting generous friends at Martha's Vineyard. For sake of a great lady's privacy I won't mention the fact that Mrs Q took a random Sunday yoga class here on "the Vineyard" that was attended by a certain woman of tremendous renown who came with three of her girlfriends and was afterwards brisked away by three overly dressed white men driving a spit-shine clean SUV that had been parked diagonally over three parking places and left idling throughout the hour-and-a-half class. The Q saw this particular famous spouse leaving the Yoga Barn and basically broke down in tears, but luckily only the overly dressed guys saw me, and rightly so as it's their job to take note of everything out of the ordinary, like a schlubby middle-aged guy weeping in a rented Chevy Malibu with Kentucky plates. Why Kentucky? Luck of the draw, but damned if everyone with even an aunt from Louisville thinks they've been given license to strike up a conversation. Ha! License. Plates.
So instead of blogging I've been reading, you know, books. And let me tell you if you hadn't heard - books are awesome, and way more rewarding to read than blogs. With that in mind, I decided to usher out the season with the first ever Q at Parkside "Fiction Issue." Out of the many, many entries I chose a terrific story by an up-and-comer named t.t. cummings. Okay, I'll admit it, that's a nom de plume. This is his first effort at fiction in about 30 years, so I guess you could call it a debut. It's called...
ENGRAVED
So instead of blogging I've been reading, you know, books. And let me tell you if you hadn't heard - books are awesome, and way more rewarding to read than blogs. With that in mind, I decided to usher out the season with the first ever Q at Parkside "Fiction Issue." Out of the many, many entries I chose a terrific story by an up-and-comer named t.t. cummings. Okay, I'll admit it, that's a nom de plume. This is his first effort at fiction in about 30 years, so I guess you could call it a debut. It's called...
ENGRAVED
Nearly all of the headstones in the Danforth town cemetery have born-on and died-on dates, with one notable exception being the slab of gray granite bearing the name Esther “Etty” Stiles. Etty's text ends at the hyphen, a hyphen awaiting letters and numbers to make its sentence complete. And that's not even the headstone's most remarkable feature.
The tax logs at Danforth Town Hall list 438 current residents, give or take in the summer and winter, the winter being the take and the summer the give, this being New England, but the town cemetery counts 884 dead folks resting interred on the picturesque mossy green hill just past the Danforth United Methodist Church – the only surviving Christian congregation within seven miles. As a result its become fairly more ecumenical in observance and outlook than its name might imply. Three years ago a Jewish family from Boston attended without incident.
The cold hard facts on view at the Town Hall reveal that the dead of Danforth outnumber the living two to one, though just 50 years ago the ratio was reversed, and 100 years prior a whole industry of shoe peg manufacturing and logging had led to 12 separate schools, three hotels, two taverns and even stiff competition in the hardware and farm equipment businesses. Currently there is no storefront business in Danforth, ever since the Ormsbee feed store closed. That was winter of 1983, and the store building has since been removed by the current owners, summerers from somewhere in Canada, who favor privacy to commerce.
For more than fifty years a person has had to set foot outside of Danforth town lines to purchase even a loaf of bread or the county newspaper, the Stanton Wind. The paper's circulation is just under 6,000 and dwindling, though the uptick in online readership holds some promise for the future of the Wind's operation and the mortgage payments of publishers Jane and Jim Starkweather, self-acknowledged hoarders whose absurdly long ranch home lies at the 90 degree bend in the Rootkill River favored by young swimmers and partyers drawn to its seclusion and unusual depths and a 20 foot long rope swing that had claimed the life of (just) two teenagers in its roughly twenty years of thrill-serving.
Danforth is a small town in a sparse county in a mostly rural state in the northeastern region of the America. It has no special properties or industry, no claim to fame, no tourist attractions or specialty cuisine. It is as one summering regular calls it a Historic District without the sign or designation, and even the residents knew they were holding on by sheer will to an agrarian and stubbornly seasonal way of life. You were either poor and scraping by, or you had plenty of money but preferred to live like you didn't. No one drove a fancy car. It would look ridiculous, even comical, and anyway most fancy cars weren't very practical in frequently perilous winter weather.
As with other towns in rural New England, many of the surnames on the headstones match those of the living – Skinner, Harrison, Utley, Thompson and Thomson, so one could be forgiven for not remembering which relatives of which family were dead or alive at any given time. Walking about the cemetery offered a glimpse into the past embellished by the present's rumors, weddings, mischief and tragedies. One could almost imagine the ghosts of ancestors weighing in on the day's events and the exploits of descendants.
Etty herself often took note of the ages of various Danforthers at death, figuring how long the living Utleys and Skinners and Thompsons and Thomsons might reasonably expect to live. She had even written down her guestimates and kept the paper pressed in a book of proverbs, but had recently decided to destroy it lest it be found on estate sale and the town's estimation of her character suffer for it. She could keep the information in her head anyway, and referenced it frequently.
Midway through one particularly cold winter it became clear to Etty that she might very well become number 885 on the mossy hill due to a bout of influenza, then walking pneumonia and a persistent cough. Everyone knew that Stiles' lived long, so despite the arthritis, bad back, overweight, acid reflux and the more acute ailments only Etty seemed concerned with her possible demise. Despite the physical hardships, she still made it to church on Sunday, the Ox Roast each August, and continued to make twice daily trips to the Wayside General Store in Grisby – coffee and newspaper in the morning, various and sundry late in the afternoon. One always needed something, she observed, and 4:30-5:30 pm seemed a good hour to get it, after nap and before supper, and the Wayside was just a five minute drive. The weathered flyer in the window of the Wayside accurately reads “if we don't have it, you probably don't need it” so there was rarely a need to drive the extra 6 miles to the Stop 'n' Shop in Bristol. Plus, Amazon Prime delivers all the stuff she doesn't really need anyway.
Ben Ruscher drives the signature brown UPS van up Three Corner Road somewhere from 3:15 – 4 every weekday, and Etty listens to hear if he takes the sharp right at Utley Drive, and if he does she rises or pivots, grabs a glass of water, puts on her yellow Crocs and steps onto the back porch to receive him, and she hands Ben the glass of water as he hands her the package and once in a blue moon he drinks the whole glass, but usually it's just a sip and frankly out of respect not thirst, as Ben is more a seltzer guy and always has a cold one in the truck. He's usually got a half-pint of bourbon in the glove box too, but as a general rule that stays in the box til after the last delivery of the day.
Etty's two grown children live within an hour but in opposite directions. Charley (Etty hates the name and wish he'd stuck with Charles) fixes cars and Judy (a better fit than her birthname Judith) manages a breakfast place. Both are divorced and both are friendly with their exes, a fact that Etty is proud to have modeled for them, as their father Ray wasn't really so much a bad man as a dreamer, and a piss poor gambler, and when he died it was his ex-wife Etty who gave the eulogy that brought tears to the entire crowd of 50, a pretty sizable crowd for a man who'd never met a bet he wouldn't make or a debt he could fully repay. Ray always told a mighty fine joke though, and that has always counted for a lot at the Wayside, and often would earn him a free refill on a cup of coffee. Or a rolled eye and hand gesture from owner Nancy Wilcox. Or both. Usually both.
The tombstone was Etty's idea alone. Always frugal to a fault and quick to pounce on a bargain, Etty had noted the business struggles of Arthur Kaster, seller of monuments in Roscoeville just over the state line, and without mentioning to Arthur the remarkably accurate rumors she'd heard at the Wayside about his financial position, she offered Arthur half the cost of a mid-priced stone that had been slow to move anyhow, and if she were willing to pay cash, might he just happen not to mention it to “the Governor?” That was her way of respectfully protesting sales taxes, which Etty found egregiously excessive, and that firmly held opinion was pretty much the primary reason she'd been an unaffiliated voter in the past several elections, siding more often than not with the Republicans, though she really didn't care much for any of the Republicans serving her currently, on down from president to state representative to county comptroller who she knew to be a weasel of man both a drunk and dating a much too young waitress in Canton. Etty asked Arthur if he'd accept her offer and complete the task by Easter. And she told him that in the next few days she would decide what he should engrave on her headstone, preferably something to match her personality and dry wit.
Arthur agreed to the price and took half of the agreed to cash on the spot, though he ultimately missed the Easter deadline by more than a month. Still, before Memorial Day the finished headstone was loaded on the back of Cal Kindred's pickup truck and hauled to the top of cemetery hill and placed next to Etty's mother and father's joint tombstone, but far enough from any of the Utley family to help ensure the continuation of a decades-long feud over a farm accident well into the afterlife.
The exact cause of the accident with the hay baler was in dispute, but there was no denying that Junior Utley bore the brunt of the deal, having broken his back and lost everything from the elbow down on his left arm. And while no one was laughing that day or for weeks after, Junior was soon quipping that the Good Lord must have been smiling on him that day not to take the hand he wiped his ass with. After hearing that joke a dozen times, most locals just ignored it, but visitors always got a chuckle and probably took the line home to add some local flavor to their vacation stories.
The stone itself was low to the ground – stocky you might say – as was the case with most of the stones from the last 40 years or so. Early in Danforth's history – late 18th and early 19th century – the graves were thin and tablet-like, sort of how you'd imagine Moses with his commandments, though if those tablets were truly made of limestone there's little chance Moses would have been able to lift even a single tablet, even if he'd been buff, and Etty thought to herself that there's no mention in the bible of Moses being ripped or even particularly strong. The tablet-like gravestones must have seemed immutable in their day, but after the first hundred years, most had fallen or broken in half due to one storm-of-the-century or another or to the general clumpiness of the soil, or maybe bugs and worms, but anyway it was clear that a modern tombstone should be prepped for the elements, with its center of gravity as low as possible.
Neither Etty nor Arthur tipped anyone off, but within a couple days the whole town had seen the picture, emails flying back and forth just hours after Sue Rickles took it. Etty had chosen to forgo words on her headstone altogether, and instead opted for an engraved picture of her greatest and most prized possession – a gray GMC Sierra 4x4 with extended cab, a truck she bought the month of her retirement from Grant Guthrie of Guthrie & Sons. Grant's youngest son Bentley (after the car, though he goes by Benji) served ably if drunkenly as best man at Etty's son's wedding, and the elder Guthrie promised to add a few extras to sweeten the deal, at no cost of course, as the Stiles' were like family and “you don't charge family for leather upholstery, you just tuck it into the sales price.”
She'd had her eyes on this truck for years, though another similar American model would've done in a pinch, and in a rare burst of spontaneity she splurged the next Monday after her last day at the Tindex Apparel factory came and went. She'd spent the weekend forecasting the rest of her life and it was clear she had little use for her pension and social security money besides necessities and occasional splurges on her grandkids. She was too old (in her estimation) for traveling the world and frankly a little nervous about planes and foreign languages anyway. The party for her retirement had been a subdued affair on the account of the accident in the finishing department just three days prior, when Anne Graybald had essentially sewn her hand to a blouse after suffering a stroke. Her hand would be fine, but she was unlikely to regain her full range of speech, and there was a chance that she might have lost more than that. Anne was well-liked, never had a harsh word for anyone, and the consensus was that there was a certain injustice that such a terrible thing hadn't happened to someone less agreeable, like maybe Libby Stanton or the new girl.
Etty absolutely loved that truck the minute she drove it off the lot. A great feeling of power and prestige came over her, riding high with her gaze a few inches above the farming men in their much smaller pickup trucks and a couple feet above the Bernie Backers and ex-City ladies in their Subarus, and she took particular pleasure in looking down on the “Mayor” of Danforth, Judge Rickles (he wasn't a judge; that was his name). And it wasn't long before Etty started calling her truck all manner of nicknames, assigning the truck the sort of anthropomorphic qualities usually reserved for dogs and cats. Most often she simply called her Old Lady, or The Old Gray Lady, a reference she recognized but couldn't place until she met the unexpectedly nice family from Brooklyn who'd Airbnb'd the Junior Utley place after he died and they noted that the Old Gray Lady was another name for the New York Times. This ticked her off for at least a week or two, since she was no fan of the NY Times, though she had been known to borrow the Sunday crossword from the recycling box at the Wayside and occasionally cheat by looking something up in her 1979 or 1984 World Book Encyclopedias. In the end, she decided, the reference to the Times was ironic, and she didn't care if anyone took it the wrong or the right way.
Increasingly this was how Etty viewed the world – amused indifference - and it may explain why she felt more content and comfortable in her own skin that she had since her youth growing up less than half a mile away. In a manner she'd replaced her old skin with that of her truck, and the Old Lady was a roomy and warm skin, even if the bed of the truck hadn't seen so much as a fishing rod or bale of hay since she bought it. It was always good to go if needed though, and that's what really mattered. There are times when only a truck will do.
It was on one of her morning trips to the Wayside that Etty first thought of getting Arthur Kaster to engrave a picture of her truck on her tombstone. That was also the first time she'd thought the word “tombstone” in reference to herself. The thought of the truck on her tombstone tickled her silly, though she slept on it for three straight nights just to make sure it wasn't a passing fancy. During those 72 hours she also toyed with the idea of engraving a favorite saying on the stone instead. One in particular made the top of the list - “nothing is written in stone” - and she got many a silent chuckle out of that one. She figured she'd seen it somewhere before, on a stone undoubtedly, but there was nothing on the cemetery hill that even hinted at humor, let alone something as funny as that saying or the image of a prized automobile.
So just after lunch on the fourth day Etty had called Arthur, on a landline as there still wasn't much cell service in the hills and valleys of southern Vermont and Middle Eastern Upstate NY, and Arthur said he loved the idea and told her to drive down the next day so he could sketch it for her. It was rare he got to use his true artistic talent, and anyway he needed the sale in order to meet alimony to wife Number 2, who was now dating the Sheriff, meaning the law was less inclined to let it slide each time the bill came and went due. It irked Arthur to no end that Sheriff Bates might occasionally end up the recipient of some of his alimony money that had gone to buy items in Number 2's refrigerator, like maybe a six-pack of Michelob or a half-dozen eggs and hunk of cheddar. Number 2 was one of the great omelet makers in the county, as most folks knew, or at the very least her ex-husbands and boyfriends who rightly considered an omelet to be the best possible cap to a night of drinking, love-making and sleeping all tangled up with a sweet-smelling – or in summer sweat-smelling – woman. After six years of marriage Arthur had grown tired of the first three of those activities, but the omelet still appealed, and that's what he decided he missed the most about Number 2 – the omelets and the $150 he was out each first of the month or thereabouts.
Once the headstone had been placed, and Arthur and the town's cemetery fund and the casket company had been paid, and everyone at the Wayside had had a great laugh over the engraved truck, Etty felt a wave of contentment envelop her, and it stayed right through summer and the following winter. In fact, she hadn't felt so good in years, maybe ever, and the fact that she would cause no financial burden to her heirs made her beam with pride as she sang hymns of praise at the Methodist Church each Sunday.
Life was good, and death wasn't looking so bad either. It was that balance – an appreciation for life in the present and the lack of fear for the future - that was the secret to life she thought, and she'd stumbled upon it.
It was almost three years before Etty noticed just how hard it had become to climb into the cab of the Old Lady. Three unhelpful trips to Doctor Walden convinced her to try acupuncture, which seemed to work a couple times and provided all manner of great stories for her Wayside afternoons. But things were getting worse, not just in her legs, hips and back but also in her hands. By the time she could barely hold the plastic digital pen to sign for her packages from Ben Ruscher, her spirits had sunk and she had come to dread pulling herself up into the cab of the truck each morning. The following spring she had a knee replaced. That summer it was the hips. And then that winter her back hurt so much that even sleeping was impossible. A special orthopedic chair from Amazon Prime brought her some relief, but now she had to take most of her sleep in the sitting position, with a heavy dose of Tylenol and maybe even one of the pain killers she'd swore she'd never take after hearing one too many stories at the Wayside about cousins, aunts, uncles and high school buddies who'd become addicted to the heavy stuff.
And then one freezing cold day, Etty fell backwards into the snow as she tried to pull herself into the cab of the Old Gray Lady. It took her half an hour to right herself, and the fact is had she been unable to do so, first on her knees and then ever so slowly back to the house, she would have frozen to death, unless by chance Ben Ruscher had brought a package that very afternoon. Such was the very real consideration of every older person living alone in the country anywhere on earth. Dying on the floor of one's own house was not unknown to the people of Danforth, and several of the 884 on the hill had passed in that manner.
Etty's children finally convinced her to give up the truck, though she half expected it was because Charley wanted it for himself, and in fact he did end up taking it off her hands never offering to help buy her another more sensible car. Etty never mentioned it, but she made a mental note to go light on Charley's Christmas gift that year. The envelope was thin, he noted at the time, and not because the bills inside were of higher denominations.
From the near freezing scare forward, Etty drove a used AWD Subaru, bought from one of those summer-only Bernie backers who'd politely agreed to remove all the political stickers for her before transferring ownership; she liked Bernie fine but would rather walk into the Wayside in her underwear than sport political slogans on her primary form of transport. It was three whole years before the thought occurred to her to call Arthur Kaster one last time and ask him how much it would cost to add a line of text near the bottom of her monument. He offered to do it “at cost,” which seemed a bit silly since all you were paying for was the labor anyway. Cash of course; no need to tell the Governor.
The phrase “Nothing Is Written In Stone” was added to Esther Stiles' headstone, in a font that looked like Olde English. Etty never did drive up the hill to see it and give Arthur compliments on his work, but her spirits rebounded quickly, and endured.
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Our City Council Election Draws Nigh
Did you see it? Twice in two days pay-to-play (some-do-say) vanity rag Kings County Politics runs pieces on the two front-running challengers in our 40th District City Council race. And what do they focus on? Matching funds. Pia Raymond got them in the last round; Brian Cunningham didn't. Look for Brian to get his 6-1 matching funds at the next round, having some of his gifts kicked back not for anything truly improper - since the City takes its matching payments seriously even a small error in donor addresses or credit card authorizations can make it hard to pass on first submission. It's highly unlikely that Cunningham will miss the next batch and qualify for more than $100,000 in public funds. Will it be too late to help? Probably not, but Raymond's filing is no death blow.
What is KCP? Ask your favourite political insider or elected official - you take out ads on the site, you get puff-ball treatment and vanity interviews. The Q's heard it time and again, though even if it weren't true, the "Brooklyn Lawmakers On the Move" feature is embarrassing, as if your politicians were super-heroes for doing their job. Still, there are very few competitors. But that actually makes KCP outsize in its influence. Which is, to quote our commander in chief, sad.
First the KCP puff-blog writes this basically calling Pia the front-runner on $$ alone; then publishes this knocking Brian's first-round miss on the matching funds, which frankly come in much too late to help ANYbody in the do-or-die primary fight. Generally speaking KCP has published p.r. friendly pieces about each of the candidates, and I encourage you to check out their interviews with Raymond, Cunningham, Berkley and Eugene. But given the scant coverage of these sorts of crucial local elections, a single story can convince voters that only one candidate has a chance to beat the incumbent Eugene. Nothing could be further from the facts. BC is running a great door-to-door campaign, and doesn't need the matching funds to continue fighting hard for the all-important votes, though he'll get them soon enough. And now, some pictures:
BUT (and this but is bigger than MY butt) the most interesting aspect of the race has been glossed over. What's that you ask?
Brian will be on the ballot in November. On the Reform line. Meaning even if the decade-long-serving dud Mathieu Eugene wins the primary seeking to extend his do-nothing brand of leadership (he's a "doctor" - perhaps his thing is to "do no harm?") we have a chance to vote him out in a one-on-one against him with a solid candidate with a record of policy experience and grass roots connections and political savvy.
Is Brian Cunningham a better candidate than the affable, smart but maybe too reserved Pia Raymond? I feel I have a good sense of who they are and what they stand for. And honestly I would be happy to vote for either over our current absentee-councilperson. In the end, the Q must go with his considerable gut - Brian strikes me as in it to win it, ready for the Big Leagues, honest and capable. I think he'll grow with the job, he's been a political operator for years, and I think it's meaningful that he had the good sense to find a spot on a third party line as a hedge against the big field of candidates vying for the primary nod.
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Jen Berkley is also on the ballot, and while I think she does great work on housing within the community, I can't in good conscience, with where we are as a city and country, vote for the relative newcomer to the nabe who has few deep ties to the African-American and Caribbean-American community that Lefferts has long been. Okay, okay, why bullshit. You count on the Q for nothing if not bluntness. She's a white lady (sic). The time is not right for white ladies (even less so for white dudes) especially short-timers to run for positions representing a largely black quickly gentrifying district. She has a lot to offer and we look forward to her work on behalf of renters everywhere. (FYI she pretty much just unloaded on my Facebook. Another reason to question her candidacy - not because it was me, but because unloading on people is reminiscent of a certain White Dude running the country.
As we head into the final laps of the Primary Race, I hope y'all will read up on the candidates, sent their campaigns an email, check out their websites, find out where they'll be so you can talk in the flesh. It's time to bone up!
What is KCP? Ask your favourite political insider or elected official - you take out ads on the site, you get puff-ball treatment and vanity interviews. The Q's heard it time and again, though even if it weren't true, the "Brooklyn Lawmakers On the Move" feature is embarrassing, as if your politicians were super-heroes for doing their job. Still, there are very few competitors. But that actually makes KCP outsize in its influence. Which is, to quote our commander in chief, sad.
First the KCP puff-blog writes this basically calling Pia the front-runner on $$ alone; then publishes this knocking Brian's first-round miss on the matching funds, which frankly come in much too late to help ANYbody in the do-or-die primary fight. Generally speaking KCP has published p.r. friendly pieces about each of the candidates, and I encourage you to check out their interviews with Raymond, Cunningham, Berkley and Eugene. But given the scant coverage of these sorts of crucial local elections, a single story can convince voters that only one candidate has a chance to beat the incumbent Eugene. Nothing could be further from the facts. BC is running a great door-to-door campaign, and doesn't need the matching funds to continue fighting hard for the all-important votes, though he'll get them soon enough. And now, some pictures:
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| Brian Cunningham - the Q salutes you |
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| Mathieu "51st State" Eugene (wtf up w/that picture?) |
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| Cool lady Pia Raymond. Might not make it in September though. |
Brian will be on the ballot in November. On the Reform line. Meaning even if the decade-long-serving dud Mathieu Eugene wins the primary seeking to extend his do-nothing brand of leadership (he's a "doctor" - perhaps his thing is to "do no harm?") we have a chance to vote him out in a one-on-one against him with a solid candidate with a record of policy experience and grass roots connections and political savvy.
Is Brian Cunningham a better candidate than the affable, smart but maybe too reserved Pia Raymond? I feel I have a good sense of who they are and what they stand for. And honestly I would be happy to vote for either over our current absentee-councilperson. In the end, the Q must go with his considerable gut - Brian strikes me as in it to win it, ready for the Big Leagues, honest and capable. I think he'll grow with the job, he's been a political operator for years, and I think it's meaningful that he had the good sense to find a spot on a third party line as a hedge against the big field of candidates vying for the primary nod.
As we head into the final laps of the Primary Race, I hope y'all will read up on the candidates, sent their campaigns an email, check out their websites, find out where they'll be so you can talk in the flesh. It's time to bone up!
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Repeat: Don't Drive Sunday and Monday
If you have a parking spot - stay put. If you were thinking of tooling around central Brooklyn, forget it. Many have driven on Labor Day Weekend, never to be seen again. They're somewhere in Paramus, the black hole of the metropolitan region, desperately seeking their way back home.
If you need specifics, here they are:
If you need specifics, here they are:
J'Ouvert and West Indian Day Parade Street Closures on September 3 & 4
On Monday, September 4, 2017 from 6 am to 7 pm, J'Ouvert and the West Indian Day Parade will occur along Flatbush Avenue and Eastern Parkway. The celebration and parade will draw more than 150,000 participants and there will be amplified sound along the parade route. Please view a detailed list of closures below or download our community notice. We encourage you to share this notice with your constituents and partners.
Sunday, September 3, 2017 to Monday, September 4, 2017
Sunday, September 3, 2017 to Monday, September 4, 2017
- Grand Army Plaza, Sunday, September 3, 11pm to Monday, September 4, 10am
- Flatbush Avenue
- Between Grand Army Plaza and Empire Boulevard, Sunday, September 3, 11pm to Monday, September 4, 7pm
- Empire Boulevard
- Between Flatbush Avenue and Nostrand Avenue, Sunday, September 3, 11pm to Monday, September 4 10am
- Nostrand Avenue
- Between Empire Boulevard and Rutland Road, Sunday, September 3, 11pm to Monday, September 4,10am
- Eastern Parkway
- Between Buffalo Avenue and Grand Army Plaza, Monday, September 4, 7am to 7pm
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Getting Busy - 13 Shopping Days Left For City Council
If you're with Cunningham and wondering how to help him win, it's really pretty simple. Convince 5 or better yet 10 people you know to vote for him. That's it. If you're feeling frisky volunteer for the campaign. In particular, they'd like to see a lot of people out on election day, passing out flyers near but not too near the polls, making it clear that he really does stand a chance. Eugene will have a couple big union machines out doing the same, basically people told to do it. But with 13 endorsements and counting, Brian's showing real strength.
The Q has sounded off on the most extraordinary ineptness of your City Councilperson for nearly 8 years now. I simply don't know how to make it any plainer! If you want a neighborhood leader, and responsive city representative, a voice from the community who's respectful and thoughtful, then you're what I would call a responsible, civically engaged person.
Let's be the adults this time and put an adult into the council chambers.
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CaribBeing Founder in the News
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| Nicole Craine for NY Times |
If you've ever wondered about the shipping container at the Caton Market (at Flatbush) don't miss this article on Shelley Vidia Worrell its founder and creator.
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Flatbush Zombie House Opening
The secret is out. And of course, J'ouvert is the perfect time to open. The neon sign is ready to light up, and a full-on Tiki Bar is opening on Flatbush btw Parkside and Woodruff, two down from Peppa's famous jerk chicken.
They're having a "secret" party this weekend pre-grand-opening, but if you're chill and sincere I'm sure they'll let you in. On the Facebook invite they mention they'll have wine and "dutty wine," which is something you really need to know about if you live in the nabe. What is Dutty Wine you may ask?
Ever seen those super-provocative dancing videos that Jamaican and Trinidadian (and others!) places sometimes show, or even on the Dollar Vans? That's usually "dutty" as in "dirty" and wine meaning gyrations. Before adapting the dance style into your own routine (Bob Marvin I'm looking at YOU!) be sure to consult a doctor and stretch before Dutty Wining. It's been known to cause serious neck injury.
I fell in love with a Dancehall song called Wining Queen when I was buying a cell phone last year, and the tune was playing. It's absolutely irresistible, if maybe a bit inappropriate to your prudish side. "Stick it, stick it, stick it" is not exactly subtle, unless you're talking post-it notes.
I highly recommend this music video - and "stick" with it, as it takes awhile to kick in.
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Talk About Overtime and Overkill
This is sort of heart breaking. An event of love and community spirit, and freedom from oppression, gets reduced to a bunch of blue uniforms, blinding lights and helicopters. We get it. You've got the firepower and the badges. But will all this stop some idiot from seeing red and trying to kill somebody? "You know I was going to grab that gun/knife and shoot/stab that motherfucker, but then I saw those bright lights and decided to give peace a chance." I don't know what to root for anymore. Safety, yeah, but this is ridiculous. Thx Kieran for the photos.
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Lefferts Echo Ready For Perusal
It's here! The Echo, America's greatest two or four page hyperlocal actually printed newspaper is out, just in time for the crucial election for City Council. That the incumbent has even a chance shows the power of incumbency...the guy hasn't a clue after 10 years, and a win by him is yet another eff you to the entire community. Get out the vote! ![]()
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Flatbush Market - You'll Always Be Suzie Farm To Me
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Looking Good, Risbo
Is the Q wrong, or has Risbo been taking, like, forever to open? And in a quintillion years I never would have guessed that this stretch of Flatbush on the east side Parkside to Winthrop would sport not one but two bistro type spots. But by the look and sound of things, Risbo will have that casual sophistication typically reserved for 2000s Bushwick. Or 2010s Bed-Stuy. I hear Chef Boris will have plenty of French roto-chicken on the menu, but I'd wait til the grand opening, sometime before Halloween, to get a gander at the poultry menu. Get it? Gander. Poultry. Ah forget it. Happy to see he's opening soon so we can just get on with the raves or pans.
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More Big Buildings For the Neighborhood
So, how much do you think it costs to build that thing at 2415 Church Ave btw Bedford and Rogers that the developer wants you to believe is in Lefferts? If you guessed $20 million, well, you must be in the trade, because I probably would have guessed way lower, like $5-10 million, because I don't know jack about the trade. You could say I'm not a jack of all trades, or rather I'm not a jack of the construction trade. I am however a jack of some other trades, like the blogging trade for instance. I've been plying this blogging trade for some town, while not plying the plywood trade, meaning I'm a jack of a couple trades that have nothing to do with building buildings or putting down flooring. I suppose you could say I'm a jack-of-few-trades, but I don't want to sell myself short - these days, very few of us can rise to the level of Charles Ingalls of Little House, who really was a jack-of-most-trades, though I'm pretty sure he wasn't a blogger. A logger, sure. Are there logger bloggers? Let me go check...here's a compendium of logging articles in Canada but that's more of an aggregator, as opposed to an aggravator, which this post most certainly is. We aggravators share many of the same traits as bloggers, though the subtle differences are known only to those who are jacks of those trades. And that's the fact Jack.
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You Want Landmarking? Get Busy. This Thursday!
Don't miss this one, if you're interested in slowing down the speed of development outside the Historic District. Cute church too. Oh, and ever read articles by historian "Montrose Morris?" That's her nom de web. She's Suzanne Spellen, who's speaking, and don't no one know more about Brooklyn's architectural history.
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It's Simple. Vote for Brian Cunningham.
Good man, good beard, good heart, terrific listener, lifelong resident, worked in the council, knows the issues, gets how government and politics work. Is he perfect? Is anyone? I say give him a shot - he's the Q's favorite candidate for Council and I don't think he'll let us down. As for the incumbent, if the vote splits and we get him back for another 4, kiss leadership and representation goodbye til Bill de Blasé is off to serve as Sanders' Housing Secretary. (If his health holds out...Bill's, not Bernie's, who'll be here til they remove his brain and put it in a young, hunky cadaver, sometime in the mid 1920s. There'll be a constitutional crises over whether Bernie is technically in his 80's or 20's, since you need to be old enough to be President, but Justice Barack Obama will cast the deciding vote in favor of splitting the age difference. Justice Hannity will write the dissenting opinion.)
Sure Brian will be on the Reform line in November, so he'll get a second chance. But it's hard to knock off a Democrat in this town. Unless, like Jesse Hamilton, you run as one then change parties. But that's another story...
Need more reason to vote for him? Check this out:
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Need more? Check this one out with his fierce wife Stephanie wearing a fetching optical illusion.
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Just vote for crying out loud. Oh, and I like Eric G. for D.A. - met him, seems sincere, and he was really into Ken Thompson's reforms - plus Ken didn't fire him when he took over from Hynes - a good sign I think.
In the other races just choose the women and people of color. You'll feel better about yourself, as if you're somehow striking back at the Bread Basket and Deep South and Big Sky Country and Rust Belt and everywhere else that prep-school redneck (orange-neck?) won the popular vote. Oh yeah, and the Republics of Texas and Northern Arizona. Geez that's a lot of places - and some of them are even in the U.S.A. God surely hasn't been blessing us much lately has she?
Sure Brian will be on the Reform line in November, so he'll get a second chance. But it's hard to knock off a Democrat in this town. Unless, like Jesse Hamilton, you run as one then change parties. But that's another story...
Need more reason to vote for him? Check this out:
Need more? Check this one out with his fierce wife Stephanie wearing a fetching optical illusion.
Just vote for crying out loud. Oh, and I like Eric G. for D.A. - met him, seems sincere, and he was really into Ken Thompson's reforms - plus Ken didn't fire him when he took over from Hynes - a good sign I think.
In the other races just choose the women and people of color. You'll feel better about yourself, as if you're somehow striking back at the Bread Basket and Deep South and Big Sky Country and Rust Belt and everywhere else that prep-school redneck (orange-neck?) won the popular vote. Oh yeah, and the Republics of Texas and Northern Arizona. Geez that's a lot of places - and some of them are even in the U.S.A. God surely hasn't been blessing us much lately has she?
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Douchebag Wins Democratic Nod - Again
How does he do it? Are we living in some sort of upside-down inverse of reality where incompetence and ignorance puts Democracy to shame? Guess so. If the Orangeneck can do it...
Look, with three challengers to the 40th Council seat in the field it was going to be damn near impossible to beat him. But he basically lost the total votes 6 votes to 4. Think about that. No other incumbent comes even close to those kind of shitty numbers. Cumbo beat back a strong challenger with ease, for instance, and she has plenty of detractors (I do not count myself among them, btw, and I get pretty tired of the nonsensical insults hurled at her, but hey, dem's the games. I happen to think she may be too smart for politics, frankly. After this term, maybe she'll get the deserved turn at helming Spelman College she's always wanted.)
Brian Cunningham's on the ballot in November, on the Reform Line, his ace in the hole sensing this turn of events. Forget about Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan. Ralph Nader also ran as a Reform candidate. BC had the good sense not to run as a Republican. Um, it's not really their time right now.
Go get 'em slugger. But remember, there's something truly remarkably Forest Gump about this guy.
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