Thursday, September 27, 2018

First


























I didn't have time yesterday to visit the Nicola Hicks exhibition in Chelsea. I only got to look through the gallery door, but I swore to myself I'd be back again today. And so it was.  The gallery is dimly lit, the figures sharp in monochrome. And the presence of their shadows - like pools of dark energy - is as potent as their physical forms.  Familiars.  Shape-shifters, the figures stand in a world before animal & human were split apart.  How facile such distinction.  They belong to the first stories.  Not the safe ones, but the ones that only a child is fresh enough to know as true.

Here are the beasts. Here they come padding back again.



Wednesday, September 26, 2018

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Nicola Hicks (Flowers Gallery, 529 W. 20th)

This book will take you back to a vanished Brooklyn (Post)
Flipping through his new book “Brooklyn Before: Photographs 1971-1983” (Three Hills), out now, you’ll find working-class families — many of them Italian-American, Irish-American and Puerto Rican — gathering after church, kids playing on sidewalks, children celebrating their First Communion, tie-clad candy-shop owners, old people hanging out on stoops. The book includes 128 photos, alongside essays by writer Tom Robbins and art critic Julia Van Haaften. Together, they paint a moving portrait of a vanished world.

One year after Maria, the Puerto Rican diaspora charts a new path forward (Grist)
Again and again, speakers at the event called for for the island’s people to be able to chart their own future — and escape the federal government’s grip.
Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of the Latino community-based organization in Brooklyn, UPROSE, paid respect to a resistance she says is building within the island. She called its members “the people who are making sure that Puerto Rico is there 50 years from now, 100 years from now, and that we are an independent, sovereign nation.”

The Prostitution Empire and the Former N.Y.P.D. Detective, Always One Step Ahead of the Law (NY Times)
The women’s pictures appeared on Backpage.com and other sites notorious in the sex trafficking world. Selfies, grinning and topless. “I’m a fun, flirty, sexy & bubbly girl who just wants to hang out and have some fun,” one ad read.
She listed her location: an apartment on Fourth Avenue near 11th Street in Brooklyn, on the border between Gowanus and Park Slope (below, left of the Rain Forest Relaxation spa).


















On the Front Lines of Feminism: Classic Articles, Essays, and Poetic Extravaganzas From the Voice Archives (Village Voice Archives)
From “Battling” Bella Abzug writing a guest column about the Equal Rights Amendment to Ellen Willis’s always-cogent essays on all things female and beyond, as well as Vivian Gornick’s deep dives into feminine consciousness and Jill Johnston’s legendary stream-of-the-id poem-speech, the Voice has always provided a forum for feminist theory, joy, outrage, and debate. 
The newsprint may be yellowed, but the ideas and arguments remain timely in this gallery from the Voice archives.

Don’t Take My Kodachrome Away — A Review of Fred Herzog: Modern Color (National Gallery of Canada)
In the new book, Fred Herzog: Modern Color, the photographer’s masterful use of colour is on full display. A quintessential mid-20th-century street photographer, Herzog captures daylit streets crammed with shop signs and people. At night, the neon lights of a gloriously gaudy Vancouver float in the darkness like fireflies in pitch. Open lots with wrecked and decaying automobiles sit cheek by jowl with down-at-heel businesses on forgotten street corners. Industrial sites acquire strange beauty in their very ugliness — informed by the knowledge that they, too, are relics of an age before towering skyscrapers and condo canyons.  More Herzog here.

Rainy city stories (rag-picking history)
In dismal late-autumn light, those five wet days seemed locked in a strange timezone – my experience of the city was all interiors, punctuated by dashes between buildings or steamed-up buses, umbrella always at hand. Outside, the rain stained the city’s brick and concrete buildings with ribbons of water; it gathered in every available hollow, and dribbled incessantly from lintels and eaves. For that seemingly interminable period, it was as if the solid architecture of the city had been blurred into the smudges of paint seen in the work of Adolph Valette, teacher of L S Lowry – the city liquified into atmosphere; water everywhere. 

Monday, September 24, 2018

Brooklyn Before

"But back in 1972, when I rented an apartment on 15th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues, a few blocks from my family's first home, which was demolished in 1954 for the construction of the Prospect Expressway, my neighbors and I had no idea of the changes to come.  I went about my work as a photographer and, at home, converted the bedroom to a darkroom and the living room to a small studio for portraits and still lifes.  Although I worked as an assistant in a Manhattan photo studio, I became a street photographer long before I knew what that phrase meant.  I took frequent walks with my camera from Prospect Park to Green-Wood Cemetery to Sunset Park and photographed religious processions, political parades, and street fairs in South Brooklyn."
                                                                                                                             Larry Racioppo



























Brooklyn Before: Photographs, 1971 - 1983, by Larry Racioppo, was published earlier this month.  If you live around here, whatever you want to call the neighborhood you live in, you'll want to buy it.  Maybe it will summon the familiar, the streets and faces you recall from decades back.  Maybe you'll hardly recognize the place - the people, the stores, the traffic of the streets. Either way, the book matters. You have to look. Here in the replacement city it's easy to forget who and what went before, and not every neighborhood's blessed by a testament.  In Brooklyn Before, we have one. 

You can find the book nearby, in local bookstores (the preferable way to go), and you can, of course, order it online.  In tandem with the book's publication, an exhibition of Racioppo's work will open at the Tabla Rasa Gallery on September 29th.  The show will run through October 27th. There'll be a reception & book-signing at the gallery this Saturday, from 3 - 5 p.m.

Tabla Rasa Gallery
224 48 Street
(between 2nd & 3rd Avenues)
Brooklyn, NY 11220
718. 833-9100

Sage House News, the Cornell University Press blog, currently features an essay by Racioppo on how he got started as a photographer.

To see more of his work, the Brooklyn Collection at the BPL's Central Branch, is currently showing Larry Racioppo: A Retrospective through December 29, 2018.  The Brooklyn Collection holds hundreds of Racioppo's photographs in its archives. The show features photographs from several of his Brooklyn-based projects; these include Brooklyn Churches, Theatres, Coney Island and Prospect Park. The exhibition also displays photographic equipment, books, ephemera and archival material from his career.




















Boy in the Street with Chalk Drawing, 15th Street, 1976
Credit: Larry Racioppo

Thursday, September 20, 2018

New Building for 21st


















2012

An application has been filed for a four-story, four-unit building at 332-334 21st Street.  332-334 were sold for $3M.

The double lot has been vacant for several years.  Prior to that, there was a small house to the rear of the lot at 334, and a garage/shed at the rear of 332. The rest of the space was taken up with junked cars, a boat and an ephemeral mix of trash. The house, which became damaged by fire, was occupied until 2013 when according to local accounts, an elderly woman living in the basement was evicted.



















2014

A house at 334 is indicated on a map of 1880, when the block was still mostly empty lots. The Eagle gives us only wisps of information on early occupants at 332 & 334. The names of William Artz & G.C. Pabst appear at 332, and at 334 John Clark (marriage) and Thomas Mulligan (death). In 1933 the Eagle runs an ad for a 3-piece velour parlor suite, $10, (A-1 condition).  334 21st Street- call HUguenot-4-3230.  At the same address, in 1947, sixteen-year old Thomas Kennedy was listed in "fair condition" at Methodist, after being "Shot in Back by Pal  While Assembling Rifle."



















Tax photo, 1980s

A couple of years ago, a woman on the block told me she was hoping the lot would be built on soon.  It was rife with raccoons.  She also spoke about the block and that ever-fluid & contentious topic  - neighborhood names & boundaries.

It was quieter, safer now, but local dramas were always better than TV.  By far.  With no prompt from me, the topic of neighborhood names came up.  These days, the lady said, it was South Slope to 23rd, & Greenwood Heights to the mid 30s, but when she was growing up it was Park Slope straight to Sunset Park.  


Links

























More info from UPROSE here.

"Hurricane Maria landed on a legacy of austerity, neglect and colonialism in Puerto Rico and opened the floodgate to those who prosper on the pain and loss of people of color - those responsible for climate change. Climate Justice is the resistance to a history of extraction of land and labor in the Global South. We know this is a fight for our survival and we are ready."
                                                                                             Elizabeth Yeampierre

New York City Neighborhood Data Profiles (Furman Center)
Neighborhood data is critical for understanding local housing and demographic trends, identifying community needs, and informing policy conversations. The NYU Furman Center's New York City Neighborhood Data Profiles are a one-stop platform for viewing and downloading neighborhood indicators, providing an in-depth look at demographic, housing market, land use, and neighborhood services indicators for the city’s 59 community districts.

Commercial rent control bill to get October hearing (Crain's)
A hearing on a hotly-debated piece of legislation could determine who is really in control of city policy—Mayor Bill de Blasio or Council Speaker Corey Johnson.
The City Council confirmed to Crain's that its Committee on Small Business will hold a hearing on the Small Business Jobs Survival Act near the close of October. Often described as "commercial rent control," the bill would entitle any commercial tenant who has complied with the terms of their lease to a 10-year renewal and the right to force the negotiations into binding arbitration if the new terms are contested.

Coming to Grips With the Two-Decade Deluge of LLC Money into New York’s Democracy (City Limits)
The 22-year-old “LLC loophole” has been a bête noire for government-reform advocates for years because it gives these companies the same rights as people. In fact, it allows firms to wield far more power than individual donors by using affiliated LLCs to write multiple checks to candidates. What’s more, while the beneficial owners of the LLCs make themselves known to the candidates themselves, the structures are so opaque that they are often impossible to penetrate for the voting public. New York’s LLC loophole—similar ones exist in five other states—defeats a basic function of the modern campaign-finance system, which is to make the source of candidates’ money transparent.

Who’s Left Covering Brooklyn With the Big Newspapers in Retreat? (Atlantic)
When the New York Daily News laid off half of its newsroom in late July, the retreat from the outer boroughs by the city’s great daily newspapers was more or less complete. And it didn’t stop there. At the end of August, the legendary alternative weekly The Village Voice shuttered publication online—it had closed its print operation last year. Digital news organizations have proved equally vulnerable, because sustainable ad revenues online have been almost as elusive as rapidly disappearing print advertising.

CNG Acquisition Means Less Local News For Bay Ridge and Sunset Park (Bklyner)
BAY RIDGE – On September 7, 2018, Schneps Communications bought Community News Group and associated properties, making them the largest owner of community weeklies in the city.  This comes on the heels of Schneps having sold Brooklyn Reporter to the Brooklyn Eagle in May of 2018. They had shed Brokelyn even faster from the acquisition of Blank Slate (publisher of Brownstoner) in February of 2017.
A non-compete from the Brooklyn Reporter sale bars the new entity from covering the same ground as their old paper, Josh Schneps confirmed.
All this just means that Bay Ridge and Sunset Park will have fewer reporters covering the area, at least for a good while.

How Smart Should a City Be? Toronto Is Finding Out (CityLab)
A data-driven “neighborhood of the future” masterminded by a Google corporate sibling, the Quayside project could be a milestone in digital-age city-building. But after a year of scandal in Silicon Valley, questions about privacy and security remain.

Business of the Month — Casa Magazines, 22 Eighth Avenue (Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation)
It is small and cramped with over 3,000 magazines stacked all the way to the ceiling. The best sellers are lain flat on the lower ledges, while a broad array of quotidian and esoteric titles from all over the world are displayed on racks and shelves packed to the ceiling. But Mohammed and his staff know where every single title is. And if they do not carry it, which would be a surprise, Mohammed is glad to order it for you or even ship it.  The daily tabloids and international papers are also on hand, along with gum, and batteries, and other daily basics.

America Is Alive and Well at Paradise Alley (Punch)
Since 1993, the neighborhood has shifted starkly. Scattered around Northern Boulevard are some of the borough’s best Korean barbecue restaurants. Just south of the Alley is a Hindu Temple and west are Mongolian, Shanghainese, Cantonese and Hunan restaurants. Fitzmaurice recalls that with the arrival of the Asian population, the neighborhood became safer, cleaner. “You never know who’s going to show up. Some nights it’s all Hispanic men. Last Thursday, it was all Korean.”
In a city that’s become increasingly expensive and homogenized, aesthetically and culturally speaking, Paradise Alley feels like an oasis of New York camaraderie—a place reflective and welcoming of its neighborhood’s vibrant, shifting population.

The schedule for next month's Open House New York has just been revealed.  This is a not-to-miss event.  Plan your weekend now.

Wednesday, September 19, 2018

Topping Out

The place is flush with red white blue & gray. Gray's the default for upscale flip-job brick three-families, & closer to the sky the flags are flying from construction sites. Sometimes the two merge.

Sunday, September 16, 2018

The Dance


















I spent the day at the shore.  I went to a Russian supermarket and bought candy & disturbing mini sausages called TV Sticks.  On the avenue sidewalk, right in front of Starbucks, a man was passed out. Someone called an ambulance & a woman knelt to comfort him.  A crowd gathered. The EMS guys knew him as a regular.  Their faces were weary but they weren't unkind.  As they led him to the ambulance, someone shouted, "His hat! his hat!" & they picked it from the ground, dusted it off a bit, & jammed it on his head.  It was drink, the crowd nodded, looking important.  A man who couldn't speak tried to explain more about the situation.  His gestures were grand, and very exciting, but almost impossible to understand.  The sidewalk outside Starbucks stank, the crowd observed, & several of us wrinkled our noses. The drama over & the stench unbearable, the crowd dispersed. How stupidly we gather sometimes. Just down the street a couple were sitting at the curb between two parked cars.  The woman got up, unsteadily, and crouching over in the street, tried to get her partner's boots back onto his sockless feet. He was laughing and this wasn't helping much. The woman was pissed. There were panhandlers on the sidewalk all the way along Brighton Beach Avenue.  Some of them looked in desperate shape. 



















Up on the boardwalk the sun was dipping & everything was sentimental.  It got you too easily, you knew, it suckered you in, but who could resist it?  At least the boardwalk didn't deal in age discrimination.  It gilded us all.  An elderly woman in a dripping swimsuit was toweling herself; her dimpled thighs pink with cold.  There were ocean gazers and boardwalk shufflers and a cute little kid in a plastic pushcar holding an ice cream, just starting out.  A couple selling Christian books and frilly dolls and flip flops were dancing together in front of their stand. Middle-aged teenagers. They made me think of the Leonard Cohen song, & of Miss Coney Island, dancing on demand & always reminding us. Don't Postpone Joy.





Friday, September 14, 2018

BQE Discount

Whenever we're at Humboldt & Meeker, crossing to McGuinness, there's a moment of suspense.  Will the little shingled house with the BQE Liquor sign (the liquor store itself is round the corner) still be standing?  I haven't seen it for several months, but fingers crossed it's made it into fall.   I wanted to get an elevated shot (the only good thing about the BQE are views) but the best I could get was a Google vintage 2014 & the angle I was hoping for was hidden by this damn truck. It's not such a bad truck really, especially when set in front of New York's Finest needs all of New York's finest (we're still hoping for them), & the French Products add a certain frisson to the scene. 



















Here's the blurry best I could manage.





















And from the ground, several years earlier. 




















Cheers to the old place. 

Monday, September 10, 2018

City for Sale





















It's a bitter night, with snow on the way.  It's quiet in the grocery store, just one customer at a table. Up front, two little girls are standing at a shelf, facing a candle wrapped in cellophane. They're playing birthdays.  It's a sweet little game, and they sing so softly, then all of a sudden their interest vanishes. The game is a dull old thing.  It's time to run, & they hit the aisles, screaming with pleasure.  It's fun to watch them letting off steam, but oh, now they've gone too far.  It's time to leave, and they're sent to the back, each with a concha and a cup of milky coffee in hand.



719 & 720-722 Fifth are currently listed for sale for $10.95M. 720-722 were previously occupied by the Guerrero Food Center. The space was divided into two in 2013, and since then it's been occupied by Danny's Tailoring (which moved from 681, two blocks north)) and the Puebla de Los Angeles grocery store.  I've had countless clothes altered or repaired at Danny's, and often stop by to place an order at the grocery store. The food's good. These two define the essence of a family business.  I always like seeing the kids around the place, and have sometimes lingered there, drawing pictures with a restless store-bound toddler, or, (on request & with permission), taken pictures of the schoolgirls playing outside.  This part of Fifth is still peaceful, hospitable to children chalking on the sidewalk, or lost in a game with a doll or a superhero.  Jane Jacobs would recognize it with a smile. It's quiet enough for little kids to play out front alone, with a store door open & someone nearby keeping a watchful eye.  The sidewalk isn't a means of getting from A to B; the sidewalk's home.

This is the city we love.

Friday, September 7, 2018

Breaking Through



















I love these cigarette-card ciclistas, staring down time with sturdy bare limbs and a jaunty contempt for the camera.  How easily duped we are by the stiff poses of history, by a slow shutter leaving the subject far behind, inscrutable and out of reach.  "Old-fashioned". These girls have made it to the twenty-first century intact, as fresh and insolent now as then.  Look how alive they are in mind and body, altogether of the moment, brimming with health.  Nothing will hold them back.


























Arents Cigarette Cards (NYPL Digital Collections)

Tuesday, September 4, 2018

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Prospect Expressway Study Envisions New Redevelopment Possibilities (Bklyner)
And here's one of them ...
The Prospect Expressway was constructed according to best practices in the mid-20th century, which included wide shoulders on either side of the roadway that slope upwards towards street level. These areas, although owned and maintained by NYSDOT, are not landscaped and provide limited utility to the community today. A feasibility study would need to be completed in conjunction with NYSDOT to determine if these underutilized spaces could be leveraged for real estate development whereby buildings are constructed on a pedestal or other elevated structure to be level with the street. New buildings constructed in this manner, particularly along 18th and 19th Streets, could provide community amenities, commercial development opportunities, or even new housing units.

Sunset Park Nixed From de Blasio’s Brooklyn-Queens Streetcar Fantasy (StreetsBlog)
The streetcar that nobody asked for is the brainchild of real estate developer Jed Walentas of Two Trees Management, whose real estate investments along the route would benefit from its construction.
The route would serve fewer than 40,000 people — in line with the city’s busiest bus routes, many of which are begging for upgrades that would cost far less money than the BQX.
It is unclear why Sunset Park was dropped from the route. Neighborhood group UPROSE strongly opposed the project, and Council Member Carlos Menchaca had wavered in his support. Then again, Michelle de la Uz of the Fifth Avenue Committee is a supporter.
The city plans to reveal the proposed route tomorrow, the source said. The mayor has changed the path significantly from previous renderings — but then again he has also abandoned the promise that the bus-on-rails would pay for itself through rising property values along the route.

Go UPROSE!

Brooklyn-Queens streetcar changes course, will cost more (Curbed)
The cost of the project has now gone up from $2.5 billion to $2.73 billion, and the construction timeline has also been pushed back to start in 2024 and end sometime in 2029, long after Mayor de Blasio has left office. The city will also need about $1 billion in federal funds to ensure that the project moves forward.

Developers seek greater density along Gowanus Canal (Crain's)
The preliminary plan reserved the greatest density for Fourth Avenue, a wide thoroughfare that has already seen a boom of apartment construction in recent years, allowing buildings 12 to 17 stories in height and stating that the city would support buildings of 22 or more stories "where appropriate."
... Some planning experts ... believe the city is aiming to allow developers to build four times a site's floor area on the western side of the canal and five times on sites along the east side. The group of developers is hoping to persuade the city to raise that to six times a site's floor area.
Another complicating factor is a likely requirement for some new developments to include light manufacturing space for artists, artisans and makers ...That space is considered less lucrative than residential use and a further burden on developers' bottom lines.

Embattled Garbage Hauler Co-Owns Dump With Person Expelled From Trash Industry, Records Show (ProPublica)
Bronx politicians Jeff Klein, Mark Gjonaj, Nathalia Fernandez and Michael Benedetto submitted a letter of support for the temporary restraining order and a reinstatement of Sanitation Salvage’s license.
“Sanitation Salvage has been an exemplary example of a good corporate citizen,” they wrote.
According to a ProPublica review of state campaign finance records, since 2007, the Squitieri family, along with their companies and a web of realty corporations and LLCs, has given over $120,000 to Klein. Gjonaj has received more than $40,000 from the Squitieris as well.

Here’s how much NY AG candidates are hauling in from real estate donors - Sean Patrick Maloney has raised the most; Tish James’ contributors include broker for “Worst Landlord” Ved Parkash (The Real Deal)
Public Advocate Letitia James and Democratic Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney have combined raised more than $700,000 from New York City real estate interests in their bids to become the next AG. 

The Village Voice, a New York Icon, Closes (NY Times)
Tom Robbins, a former longtime investigative journalist at The Voice, said, “It’s astonishing that this is happening in New York, the biggest media town in America.”
Now on the faculty at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York, Mr. Robbins added, “I think it really helped so many people sort of figure out everything they wanted to know, from where to find an apartment to what show to see to what scandal they wanted to dig into.”

The Most Famous Lesbian Photographer You’ve Never Heard of — Until Now (NY Times)
“Brave, Beautiful Outlaws” focuses on her early work, during the time of her most intense political activism. Ms. Bright identifies Ms. Gottschalk as a “talented and sensitive visual storyteller,” whose work comprises a “vital contribution to the historical record.” Part autobiography, part ethnography, Ms. Gottschalk’s work counters the gross elision of the lesbian in the annals of queer history. Hers is a community of the socially and politically marginalized, fellow “freaks” and “outcasts” — many of whom were first cast out of their families of origin — those invisible to or rejected by the mainstream.

A story from the NY Post on a local figure in the neighborhood.
This NYC panhandler only accepts high-quality food (Post)
Ronald, who seemed confused about the nature of the attention he'd originally received from the reporter, and was subsequently anxious about the prospect of appearing in a newspaper, was terribly upset when I spoke to him today. He feels he's been ridiculed. Park Slope, and the exorbitantly priced Union Market are fair game in the press, but making fun of a panhandler is not.  Ronald is a well-liked figure, and puts no pressure on passers-by to buy him food or give him money. Maybe he has quite particular tastes, but don't we all?  And why not choose an opportune spot to look for a donation?
Ronald is something of a character, but he harms no-one.  And isn't character something to relish?  At Christmas Ronald likes to buy small presents for those who've helped him. We're all in this together - kindness is always the best response.

Earlier this year I posted Helena Appio's film, A Portrait of Mr. Pink, a lovely tribute to a Windrush-generation Lewisham resident and his extraordinary home.





Now you can read more about the making of the film, and the amazing response it received.

Mr Pink bought the house on Loampit Hill in 1967 and lived there until he died last year. He seems to have shared it with his wife and eight children, most of whom had left by the time the film was made.
He devoted much of his time to putting his stamp on the place. “I like beauty and I like prettiness,” he says in the film. “When I just bought it, well, it was not beautiful. But since I take it over and added myself towards it, I developed it to have a lightness. My additions make a difference, brighten it up."
“I’ve created a part of Jamaica here. Some like this house and some may not like it, I don’t know. But I know a lot of people like it and I like it myself.”