This week I did NOT allow Brian Berger to guest blog but I DID allow him to guest photag!
Photos taken winter of 1997 around the Gowanus.
9th Street Nude.
This weeks stop on the "New York Calling" book reading tour is at Bluestockings Bookstore on the Lower East Side. If you've never been there, it's a bookstore specializing in underground and left leaning literature, as well as independent zines and whatnot. I keep pimping this book "New York Calling" because not only does editor Brian Berger live in the neighborhood and have his own iconic blog, Walks In Brooklyn but because the book is a must read. The book contains true stories about life in our fair city from every borough and subjects range from general life in NYC to gentrification to drugs to music and more from the 1960's to the Atlantic Yards. Checkitout! even Norman Oder liked it!.
French Blue Union
Friday nights representatives from the book are Margaret Morton, photographer who documents the homeless. Tom Robbins and Robert Sietsema from the Village Voice. Bian Berger will aslso be in attendance.
Bluestockings, 172 Allen St between Stanton & Rivington, Isle of Manhattan. Starts at 7pm.
Has mutant plant life sprouted in Brooklyn Bridge Park?!
No! It’s a new installation by artist; Osman Akan called “The Third Bridge”.
F.I.B and friend R checked it out at around twilight last night and enjoyed watching the quickly changing sky contrast with this fiber optic field of grass. Our only complaint is that we wanted MORE. We wanted a whole trail of these between the two bridges, but I bet that would have been expensive! More funding please!
Here is a segment of the artist’s statement on this project:
“I use fiber optics for many reasons, but most importantly because of their ability to form networks,” Akan has said, by which he means all such networks, from “the flux of information from late night television to surveillance cameras, from chat lines to stock markets, as well as cultural networks such as artist networks.” However invisible, Akan’s “The Third Bridge” suggests, fiber optics constitute the pathways that traffic in our most important symbolic and material values — information, linkage, trade, among others — even to the degree that they help reshape what passes for human nature today and in the future.
The installation is located in Brooklyn Bridge Park near the base of the Manhattan Bridge. Best time to view begins at twilight.
If you read F.I.B on a somewhat regular basis you are aware that I am in the midst of the never-ending task of attempting to empty out my dearly missed pack rat of a Grandmother’s small two bedroom apartment out in Queens. So, as a result I have been taking some mighty long subway journeys. One hour and 45 minutes each way. In case you are wondering, no, I didn’t find any other family members hair this time. Today it was sewing supplies, religious articles, miscellaneous doo dads, bagging what gets donated, thrown out, taken home or set aside for people. It’s A LOT of work and currently,after working on it for over a month, the apartment SORT of looks like what a normal person would have in their home if they lived there for maybe ten years. We found a music box and it’s song has become the theme song of our project. A song so stirring that it gives us the the momentum to continue. And what is the song? Of course it's the “The Impossible Dream” from the musical “The Man of La Mancha”.
So, on my trip home I want nothing more than to have an eventless journey. I planned on using the time to sleep so I would have the energy to go out tonight.
But.
At 23rd Street a couple enters the train with THE BIGGEST STROLLER I HAVE EVER SEEN. I am NOT kidding, it was almost wider than the subway doors! I watched them attempt to find a place to park that mother while bumping into people without apologizing. I am praying, I mean PRAYING that they don’t come near me. Well, you know, of course they did. Why didn’t I move you say? I was bone tired, there were no other seats in the car and also because I became TRAPPED by a doublewide SUV baby stroller and two annoying parents. The father is sitting next to me, with his legs wide open (of course) playing with the baby. Question, why couldn’t they each just take a small stroller if they were taking the train or throw the kids in one of those sling things OR even better take a FRIGGIN' CAB?!
Self involved, self-important and couldn’t even acknowledge a forlorn looking kid of about 7 years of age in raggedy clothes who approached them to buy candy for a dollar. The stroller or rather CHARIOT that they were chauffering their kids in cost $729.00!
You know I have nothing against kids. I actually work with kids and also the elderly and most of the time we get along famously. It’s the parents I have a problem with. Just as a violent and stupid parent models behavior that makes their kids most likely the same, so do these self involved, affluent parents.
It would be great if they could be sent away like in that movie "Wild in the Streets", although sad to say I am now of the age to be sent away too! But they have to be in the SUV stoller parent section of the camp far away from me!
It’s little moments like these that really try my faith in humanity. I never thought I'd be a stroller basher. Why? Because it's just too easy as they totally set themselves up for it. I found that listening to Max Frost helped calm me down and reinstall a feeling of hope for the future. Enjoy and may you all have no run ins with the stroller squad tomorrow.
Found in Brooklyn? From sea to wine dark sea, whether it's Colonial Road or Cypress Hills, Avenue C or Canarsie. Here it's a little more common, starting at the Union St drawbridge over the Gowanus Canal, in the years before propagandists & fools began making claims its ecology can't come close to supporting. Still, there was sand on these shores, with the mighty Crusader Candle around the corner on Nevins, where High John the Conqueror & many other guardians of Gowanus remain.From South Brooklyn to southern Brooklyn, Coney Island Creek, where everybody's heard about the bird. (Bird bird bird, the bird is the word.) This isn't my favorite spot for BK crustaceans-- Rencher's Crab Inn on Flatbush near Avenue O is-- but for a romantic waterfront dining experience, it's the best in the borough.Heading west across the burning sands lovers say goodbye Bensonhurst, farewell Fort Hamilton, adios Bay Ridge; wuzzup... Seagate! How we got in & how we got out isn't something to talk about now but soon after jumping the fence back onto the shores of Coney Island proper... Shy, he thought she'd never ask: bivalve curious??
At 7 pm this Saturday at Vox Pop, Brian Berger of whowalkinbrooklyn will appear with Marshall Berman, the great Tom Robbins and moderator Neil DeMause to discuss the recently published book: New York Calling: From Blackout to Bloomberg.
B.Y.O.A: Bring your own aphrodisiacs?
Vox Pop is located at 1022 Cortelyou Road at Coney Island Avenue, Flatbush! (Ditmas Park) (Kensington)
This event is also a book release party. Here’s what WFMU has to say about this:
….this event will be doubling as a book release party for Dave the Spazz's similarly blazin' new FMU-centric book entitled The Best of LCD: the Art and Writing of WFMU. For newcomers to the party, LCD was WFMU's fabled program guide which for years gave the station a much-lauded representation in the print realm and featured content from not just DJs and listeners, but also noted cultural icons like Nick Tosches, Daniel Clowes, Luc Sante, Chris Ware, Daniel Johnston, and more. The Best of LCD... collects the best of these contributions and offers a fluid portrait of WFMU's relevance in the age before everything went packing for the promised land of the internet. The book will be available for sale at the show, and Dave the Spazz might even step out of his monkey suit long enough to sign a few copies, so saddle up and get ready!
D.J Dave the Spazz will also be spinning the vinyl in the basement lounge.
No advance tickets are available so I advise you to get there early!
Southpaw is located at 125 5th Avenue between St. John's & Sterling Place. Doors open at 8pm.
Check out the WFMU website to find out more about the bands, the book, their fabulous radio station and for lots of free MP3's!
Everybody's favorite architect, Robert Scarano was written about in this week's issue of New York Magazine, in an article entitled; "He Built This Borough (Badly)".
Most of the information in the article was inspired by all the blogs but especially by Miss Heather of New York Shitty as far as I'm concerned. Miss. Heather has been doing an amazing job being on the case of this city's joke agency called the Department of Buildings.
I am shocked that Scarano ONLY got fined for $1,1180.00 for visually raping the Carroll Gardens horizon with his box sitting on top 333 Carroll Street! That box has been just sitting there for about a year, time to dismantle? Or is this a modernist sculpture for the neighborhood to remember his legacy by?! There is something so WRONG with a city agency that allows someone like him to remain in business. As long as he keeps shelling out the green - death, destruction and lies are apparantly not enough to shut him down.
Just an aside, but the article didn't mention the workers who have died on his building sites OR anything about the public outcry regarding 360 Smith Street(from Gowanus Lounge).
Check out these Carroll Garden blogs; C.O.R.D, a neighborhood blog devoted mostly to his 360 Smith Street project and Pardon Me for Asking for more on what's going on the South Brooklyn end with Robert Scarano.
A friend of mine, who is an East Village resident of 20 plus years invited me the Corn Roasting Harvest Festival at the Avenue B and 6th Street Garden today. You know the place, with that crazy tall wooden sculpture that looks like a psychotic concentration camp security tower except it has stuffed animals and whatnot hanging all over it? I've heard that it is in the beginning segment of one of those NYC cop shows I never watch. Anyway, my friend CalmX has a gardening plot there. The event was old school East Village all the way and I’m not talking No Wave or punk. I’m talking hippies who have lived in the East Village for over 40 years. It was cool. You couldn’t get further away from the luxury condo crowd than you could with this bunch. I ate and ate for the entire day, they just kept throwing the corn and the sweet potatoes on the BBQ. People kept showing up with more food. They had a fundraising lottery with the weirdest prize ever being a gift certificate for $250.00 worth of psychotherapy. Me, I won the box of aromatic herbs from the garden but it also included many hippy like things that came from their hippy hearts with all sincerity, things like a purple kaleidoscope, a totally groovy Avenue B garden T-shirt that looked like it was designed in 1967 and a seedling for me to plant called the “Love in a Vine”. Anyway it was nice to be back in the East Village, a place I rarely go to anymore but have lots of non hippy memories of. My first apartment was a sublet at the age of 19 on St. Mark’s Place and 2nd Avenue and get this I paid $114.00 for my room A MONTH (rent stabilized and sublet to me honestly!) I could have had the whole place for $228.00 a month but when you are working at Orhbach’s on 34th Street for 50 cents above the minimum wage that is waaaaaaaay too expensive….
While my social and artistic life is nothing to complain about, F.I.B has been a bit underemployed lately, hence completely broke. Looking for work is one of my least favorite things to do in life. I was trudging home yesterday after making the rounds of some god awful self- esteem damaging Manhattan temporary agencies when I found THIS WORKING TURNTABLE on Union Street & Hoyt. Thank you God or whoever! It has a good needle in it too! I've been turntable-less for well over a year. You have to understand, F.I.B owns more vinyl than C.D's. My ex-husband left me with an Ipod loaded with like 5,000 songs but it just isn't the same. I don't do Ipod. I like to be AWARE.
So, for the past 24 hours I have been on a vinyl binge. The Buzzcocks, Bob Dylan, The Fleshtones, K-Tel, Ziggy Stardust (F.I.B's fave album of all time), George Jones, Disco Hits, K-Tel, Slade, The Church Keys (Rest in Peace, Bill Peitsch), R.L Burnside.... I feel whole again.
Now I just need to find me one of them DVD players that everybody else has.....
On the corner of Third Street and Third Avenue stands the building that Edwin Litchfield built to house "The Brooklyn Improvement Center" in 1882. Litchfield is the man who is responsible for transforming the then called Gowanus Creek into the Gowanus Canal just in time for the Industrial Age.
If he only knew that the canal would become a multi-hued sewage and disease ridden toxic stew and that his elegant building would be used for nothing more than a place for a demolition company to drape it's vinyl banner.
Found in Brooklyn? Definitely. In this apartment alone are two bookcases, two chairs (one brown leather, the other blue vinyl), a box of scratched up (alas) 1960s Ray Price lps, a single volume of collected Shakespeare & a superbly printed copy of R.H. Blyth's "Zen And Zen Classics Volume 5" (Hokuseido Press, Tokyo). Gone: a ridiculous orange lounge chair the cats finally tore up, a high-quality Olympus point & shoot camera sold on Ebay for $30 ten years later & a really nice dropleaf table I gave to friends on Powers Street in Williamsburg; since then, it's moved to Bushwick, Inwood & Las Cruces, New Mexico.Left on the streets, taken on film 1997-1999: hundreds of photos of South Brooklyn, Gowanus, Red Hook & so-called "Carroll Gardens" too. I used the last name myself a few times, although even then I wondered why I'd never seen it in the great works of South Brooklyn literature by Hubert Selby Jr., Gilbert Sorrentino or Emmett Grogan. These images seem very sad and lovely to me now, like my memory of the Spanish voices we always heard on Smith Street, the sight of mama dog & her three pups loping past the Jewish Press building on 3rd Avenue or sliding into the vinyl booths at Helen's Place on Court Street, excited for the sausage, escarole, garlic bread, linguini & clam sauce to come. They always had oldies, the Mets or the Knicks on the radio there & neither of the old-timers who ran the joint were named Helen.
Here is the detritus of Carroll Street, one winter morning between the Canal & Bond. As far as I know, Robert Doisneau never took pictures of Brooklyn--so who the fuck needs him?
Brian Berger is the co-editor, Brooklyn essayist & roving street photographer of the recently published anthology, New York Calling: From Blackout To Bloomberg .
He'll be discussing his work with co-editor, urbanist Marshall Berman, & crime writer, Tim "Brooklyn Noir" McLoughlin at Book Court this Thursday October 4th at 7 pm. Book Court is located at 163 Court Street.
Thank the Angels of Rock & Roll Norton Records for seeking and finding yet another great artist that still has it going on, Mary Weiss of the Shangri-La's made alot of people happy on Sunday, young and old. There was an older gentleman who looked like he was going to faint when he saw Mary walking on stage. He told me that he bought The Shangri-La's first record in the supermarket when he was a teen and never thought he would see this day. Anyway, someone told me she was working as a secretary somewhere. Don't know if THAT'S true, but I do know that the Shangri-La's deserve some recognition. I hope Aerosmith paid them well...and ALSO listening to Mary sing, you can hear just where the New York Dolls got their major influence from. A fantastic show.
FREE COPY OF "NEW YORK CALLING: "From Blackout to Bloomberg" to the first person who can name the location of this photo!
9th Street Nude.
French Blue Union
Another giant plush toy lying in the gutter.....so sad.
Has mutant plant life sprouted in Brooklyn Bridge Park?!
If you read F.I.B on a somewhat regular basis you are aware that I am in the midst of the never-ending task of attempting to empty out my dearly missed pack rat of a Grandmother’s small two bedroom apartment out in Queens. So, as a result I have been taking some mighty long subway journeys. One hour and 45 minutes each way. In case you are wondering, no, I didn’t find any other family members hair this time. Today it was sewing supplies, religious articles, miscellaneous doo dads, bagging what gets donated, thrown out, taken home or set aside for people. It’s A LOT of work and currently,after working on it for over a month, the apartment SORT of looks like what a normal person would have in their home if they lived there for maybe ten years. We found a music box and it’s song has become the theme song of our project. A song so stirring that it gives us the the momentum to continue. And what is the song? Of course it's the “The Impossible Dream” from the musical “The Man of La Mancha”. 
F.I.B is all about free..so, 
Found in Brooklyn? From sea to wine dark sea, whether it's Colonial Road or Cypress Hills, Avenue C or Canarsie. Here it's a little more common, starting at the Union St drawbridge over the Gowanus Canal, in the years before propagandists & fools began making claims its ecology can't come close to supporting. Still, there was sand on these shores, with the mighty Crusader Candle around the corner on Nevins, where High John the Conqueror & many other guardians of Gowanus remain.
From South Brooklyn to southern Brooklyn, Coney Island Creek, where everybody's heard about the bird. (Bird bird bird, the bird is the word.) This isn't my favorite spot for BK crustaceans-- Rencher's Crab Inn on Flatbush near Avenue O is-- but for a romantic waterfront dining experience, it's the best in the borough.
Heading west across the burning sands lovers say goodbye Bensonhurst, farewell Fort Hamilton, adios Bay Ridge; wuzzup... Seagate! How we got in & how we got out isn't something to talk about now but soon after jumping the fence back onto the shores of Coney Island proper... Shy, he thought she'd never ask: bivalve curious??
Everybody's favorite architect, Robert Scarano was written about in this week's issue of New York Magazine, in an article entitled; "He Built This Borough (Badly)".
While my social and artistic life is nothing to complain about, F.I.B has been a bit underemployed lately, hence completely broke. Looking for work is one of my least favorite things to do in life. I was trudging home yesterday after making the rounds of some god awful self- esteem damaging Manhattan temporary agencies when I found THIS WORKING TURNTABLE on Union Street & Hoyt. Thank you God or whoever! It has a good needle in it too! I've been turntable-less for well over a year. You have to understand, F.I.B owns more vinyl than C.D's. My ex-husband left me with an Ipod loaded with like 5,000 songs but it just isn't the same. I don't do Ipod. I like to be AWARE. 
On the corner of Third Street and Third Avenue stands the building that Edwin Litchfield built to house "The Brooklyn Improvement Center" in 1882. Litchfield is the man who is responsible for transforming the then called Gowanus Creek into the Gowanus Canal just in time for the Industrial Age. 
Found in Brooklyn? Definitely. In this apartment alone are two bookcases, two chairs (one brown leather, the other blue vinyl), a box of scratched up (alas) 1960s Ray Price lps, a single volume of collected Shakespeare & a superbly printed copy of R.H. Blyth's "Zen And Zen Classics Volume 5" (Hokuseido Press, Tokyo). Gone: a ridiculous orange lounge chair the cats finally tore up, a high-quality Olympus point & shoot camera sold on Ebay for $30 ten years later & a really nice dropleaf table I gave to friends on Powers Street in Williamsburg; since then, it's moved to Bushwick, Inwood & Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Left on the streets, taken on film 1997-1999: hundreds of photos of South Brooklyn, Gowanus, Red Hook & so-called "Carroll Gardens" too. I used the last name myself a few times, although even then I wondered why I'd never seen it in the great works of South Brooklyn literature by Hubert Selby Jr., Gilbert Sorrentino or Emmett Grogan. These images seem very sad and lovely to me now, like my memory of the Spanish voices we always heard on Smith Street, the sight of mama dog & her three pups loping past the Jewish Press building on 3rd Avenue or sliding into the vinyl booths at Helen's Place on Court Street, excited for the sausage, escarole, garlic bread, linguini & clam sauce to come. They always had oldies, the Mets or the Knicks on the radio there & neither of the old-timers who ran the joint were named Helen.
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