Prospect: A Year in the Park

New Thai restaurant near Prospect Park!

That oughta help Google bring success to Am Thai, the new Thai restaurant that just opened on Church Avenue between Coney Island Avenue and Stratford Road. To those of us who have been rooting for this rather dismal commercial strip along once-vibrant Church Avenue to perk up, it seems like a sort of miracle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We went over tonight to patronize the establishment on their opening day, but they wouldn't let us; instead, we were invited to a party on the house! Lots of gorgeous dressed-up ladies and gents who seemed like close friends and family, plus a scattering of happily stunned neighbors, feasted on delicious sushi and spicy head-on shrimp and other delicacies while techno music thumped rapturously. Hard to believe this was the late "In-Between Eatry [sic] and Pastry," a short-lived roti shop. (When will one of our local Caribbean take-out places, with their heartbreakingly good roti and jerk chicken, offer this fare in a pleasant dining spot with real cutlery?)

 

 

 

 

I wish I'd been there this morning, when monks blessed the place and even performed a wedding! Wonderful coverage on the Ditmas Park Blog and on Prospect Park Days, whose Ditmas Deb took the great picture to the left. Deb has also been devotedly covering the park while I have been moping around the house, and I salute her dedication.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We love our sliver of Brooklyn that lies sandwiched between the Parade Grounds of Prospect Park and the historic district of Prospect Park South; to date, the only thing missing has been a vibrant shopping strip.  Poor Church Avenue, between Coney Island Avenue and the tough commercial scrum near the Q train stop, has been close to moribund; the strip has so many empty storefronts and rolldown gates that the local Business Improvement District has dreamed up a mural contest to decorate them. A few plucky restaurants (and one terrifying Chinese takeout dump) have held on; this new addition may herald a tide that will lift all boats. The sight of happy people eating and drinking is better than any mural. Good luck, Am Thai--you'll be hearing from us.

Pretty poison

Aw, what's that spunky plant willing to brave this week's balmy January weather and push up through the leaf litter? Who's giving us some welcome, hopeful green in a preview of spring? Yes...it's poison ivy, staking its claim just inside the Center Drive and dreaming of summer's bare ankles and toes to come. Sigh. goutweed! Thanks to one of the park's landscape management experts for pointing out that goutweed (Aegopodium podagraria) "is NOT a native plant, but has been very difficult for us to control. Poison ivy would have reddish new leaves, but as far as I have seen is not out in leaf yet."  Three leaves, leave it be, anyway! To learn more about goutweed's nasty habits, go here. (The stuff does look lovely in summer, though, with its snowy canopy of flowers, and according to the Plant Conservation Alliance, it is used in parts of Russia as a salad green; there should be enough locavorious vegans in Brooklyn, not to mention Russians, to get the job done.)

  

Subtler touch of green was found in the moss on these roots.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Very Large Array of dumpsters along Center Drive is unnerving, but I did like the hues of these cans.

 

Thanks to my friend and coach Artist Karen for dragging me back to the park for a long walk after a fortnight of near-paralysis in front of my computer. Without her prodding, I would have extended that funk by another day.

 

 

 

 

 

And I would have missed Tuesday's Blurry Bird of the Day: a Downy Woodpecker, frantically swaying and pecking on a phragmites. I found this ludicrous; c'mon, bird, there are still plenty of trees left in Prospect Park even after the latest round of forest surgery! But according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology:

The active little Downy Woodpecker is a familiar sight at backyard feeders and in parks and woodlots, where it joins flocks of chickadees and nuthatches, barely outsizing them. An often acrobatic forager, this black-and-white woodpecker is at home on tiny branches or balancing on slender plant galls, sycamore seed balls, and suet feeders.

That's what I aspire to be..."an often acrobatic forager"...if I can only get out of the house.

Super Saturday

Last weekend saw folks donning capes to fly around the balmy Long Meadow...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and doffing jackets to relish the warm sunshine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Three little girls took a cookie break beneath the benign gaze of James T. Stranahan, "father of Prospect Park." Their innocent enjoyment was just what he worked so hard for...although he would have been puzzled by their strange headgear.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Someone flopped in the shadow of the little shuttered guard booth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And on the park's main drive, there was palpable delight whether on foot or on wheels.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It didn't feel much like a week after New Year's Eve...and no one was sorry.

'Green Sward': I want one

Too cold for a walk in the park? You can always troll E-bay looking for archivey goodness. Usually it's postcards and stereopticon views of the historic treasure across the street from our house, but today yielded a real gem: A rare original copy of Vaux and Olmsted's 1868 plan for the Parade Grounds, the part of the park we see from our front porch.

Geographicus Fine Antique Maps describes it thus:

An extremely scarce example of Vaux and Olmstead’s map of the King County Parade Ground (today known as the Prospect Park Parade Ground, or the Prospect Park Base Ball Grounds). The Parade Ground is bounded by Parade Place, Franklin Avenue (now Parkside Avenue), Caton Avenue, and Coney Island Avenue. The Ground was designed by Olmsted and Vaux in conjunction with the adjacent Prospect Park. The Parade Ground saw its first parade in 1867 when the 11th Brigade's Howitzer Battery strutted their stuff. Although intended from the start as a military facility, sports moved in early, and by 1871 the Parade Ground was being described by Henry Chadwick as the finest free ball ground in the United States." This map was published in the 1868 edition of William Bishop’s Manual of the Common Council of the City of Brooklyn .

I love the unbroken rectangle of "Green Sward" (now a grid of soccer and baseball fields, but still green thanks to synthetic turf), and the "carriage drive" and "gravelled area." When this map was created, this land, including our home, was probably open fields. The building site "A" was first an elegantly colonnaded club house and is now a reportedly rat-infested police station; site "B" is a tiny white house that has served various functions over the years.

The price for this gem? Listed at $412.50, well out of my range, although something in me instinctively lunged for the "buy it now" button. I often feel like Tony Stark in this moment when he first spies Scarlett Johansson in Iron Man 2; my inner Pepper Potts reliably checks my impulses.

 

 Tony doesn't get Black Widow, and I don't get a map, but we can both dream.

In search of Happy Light in 2012

This winter, I'm throwing the book at SAD; I even bought a Verilux "HappyLight"®, before which I slumped in the frigid pre-dawn this morning. But I'm also determined to use Prospect Park as my full-spectrum light therapy...and to recommit to the daily park visits that prompted this chronicle three years ago. New Year's Day was spent in the HappyDark of the movies and a German restaurant, but on Monday afternoon I dragged Spouse to see the sun's last rays gild the lake.

 

 

 

 

 

And this morning, I braved the bitter wind to see the sun peer over the treeline behind the Long Meadow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The dogs were already out in force, jubilant in the bitter air. (Which reminds me: My limited edition of Park Bark: At Play with the Dogs of Brooklyn, a photo celebration of the park's dogs and their owners, is getting close to sold out! Thanks to all who ordered a copy for a holiday present, and if you'd like to get in an order (Valentine's Day approacheth), by all means go here and let me know if you'd like a dedication written on the flyleaf.)

 

 

 

 

 

WACKY TREE OF THE DAY

Monday afternoon, I spied what looked like a bunch of lime-colored, corrugated softballs in the leaves, under a thicket of thorny branches. One clung to the tree overhead. I struggled through the thorns and pocketed one to identify later. As I suspected, it was an Osage orange (Maclura pomifera). I've heard of these in the park but never found one before.

 

Here are some cool facts about Osage oranges:

* They are related to the mulberry, and are not citruses. (The fruits supposedly smell a little orangey, but mine didn't.)

* Few animals except horses eat the fleshy fruit (technically called a drupe), which is inedible and mildly poisonous to humans--but an extinct ground sloth may once have relished it as a slothalicious treat. Some folks also claim bug-repellent properties for the fruit, which exudes a milky sap (as I discovered when I sliced it open).

* Its nicknames include "hedge apple" and "horse apple." Grown as a hedge, it predated barbed wire as a way to fence in cattle.

* The tree's wood has been prized by bow-makers dating back to the Comanches for its flexibility and strength; early French settlers called it bois d'arc, or "bow wood."

* Merriwether Lewis sent cuttings of Osage orange to Thomas Jefferson.

Happy New Year...see you in the park!

Solstice lookout

Sunset, the day of the solstice; the sun was vanishing behind the buildings of Windsor Terrace by 3:30 p.m. I wanted, Druid-like, to capture its last rays, so I headed up Lookout Hill, the tallest point in Prospect Park.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lookout Hill is one of those spots in the park that one is warned against visiting alone, but when leafless, it seems exposed as well as remote. Condom wrappers and other nasty bits attest to its seclusion, but even in waning daylight I felt fairly safe with the occasional jogger...and an intrepid mom and kids who were using the hill as a family Stairmaster.

 

 

 

 

 

The flattish, circular top of Lookout Hill would be a great place for a Wiccan ceremony to worship the distant sun, but for a while I was completely alone. To the south, I could see...good grief, was that the Coney Island parachute jump? It was. Turning a few degress to my left, I looked down on the lake and away to the erstwhile fields of Flatbush where we live.

 

 

 

 

 

As I left the park, the festive decor glowed in the shadows.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BARKING MAD THANKS!

...to all who have ordered a copy of Park Bark: At Play with the Dogs of Brooklyn, my photo homage book to the canines of Prospect Park and their owners.   Go here for easy PayPal ordering...and remember, Valentine's Day is coming up fast!

'Park Bark': A love story

Meet the Book!

Just (as they say) in time for Christmas, comes Park Bark: At Play with the Dogs of Brooklyn. It's the first book of photography based on my three years of exploring Prospect Park. Of all the subjects I considered, the dogs won, hands-down.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I say in the introduction, "The idea was to visit Brooklyn's magnificent Prospect Park every day and share my discoveries. Among many treasures, from wildlife to historic architecture, I kept discovering...dogs. And to my delight, they kept discovering me, despite my being a 'cat person.' I've never had a dog, I don't speak dog, but the park's cavalcade of canines bowled me over with exuberant delight."

 

Many of the 17 portraits in the book are of "Greenmarket Dogs of the Week," a gallery of irresistible characters I've met at Grand Army Plaza. There are also lovely shots of the Long Meadow, Dog Beach, the Nethermead, and other spaces where Brooklynites cut loose on two legs or four. The book is a 5-by-7-inch hardcover with lovely color reproduction; it is $16, every copy will be signed by yours-truly-the-noted-blogger, and a bunch of copies of this very limited edition (also designed by herself) are already spoken for, so if you want to tuck this in the stocking of a dog lover, Brooklynite (current or past or future), or Prospect Park fan, please let me know FAST and I'll get one to you.

Right now, there are three ways to own a signed copy of Park Bark:

1.  Come to the home-studio sale being given by artist Karen Friedland and me this weekend, Dec. 17 and 18, at 190 Marlborough Road (near Beverly Road) in Ditmas Park; hours are 1 to 6 p.m. both days.

2. Go to Tenth Leper Press, my independent bookie-wook project, and order via PayPal.

3. Contact me at brenda (at) tenthleper (dot) us with special requests.

And if you can prove that one of the dogs in the book is yours: your copy is free!

Not one lasts

The day after Thanksgiving involved pie for breakfast. Later, I dragged the three of us to the park. A brisk mid-afternoon walk, this time of year, quickly becomes a sunset walk.

Drummers' Grove stood empty.

Oak leaves piled up against the Oriental Pavilion.

Across the lake, an animated party (bridal, apparently) worked with a photographer by the rustic shelter. He had rigged up elaborate reflectors, but none as good as the lake itself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

Seed structures everywhere...in readiness for dispersal, death and rebirth.

 

We drank coffee on the Boathouse steps as the sun sank behind the trees.

 

Good Lord, Advent starts tomorrow...just in time to ease the heart as the shadows stretch their longest.

 

 

I cried over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts.

The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper sunburned woman,

       the mother of the year, the taker of seeds.

The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes, new beautiful things

       come in the first spit of snow on the northwest wind, and the old things go,

       not one lasts.

Autumn Movement   by Carl Sandburg

 

 

 

 

Through the mist

Henry James may have thought "summer afternoon" were the two most beautiful words in the language, but I'll suggest "autumn mist" as being up there. I have been using a broken toe and a stupid Velcro boot thing as an excuse not to walk in the park (what was my excuse all summer, before I broke it?), but was lured to the Long Meadow.

Remember that perennial school assignment to collect some fall leaves and glue them to construction paper? I still want to do that every year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the distance, the off-leash dogs capered like happy ghosts...

and at closer range, did more corporeal things.

 

I've decided that, if Daughter goes away to college, I will finally get us a dog. (I tell her it will replace her and will be given her room.) Now I mentally audition dogs as they pass, preparing for the day. One thing is certain: It will be a bigger dog, not a little yapster.

Near Bartel-Pritchard Circle, a big party tent was being decorated for tonight's "Fall Bash" park fundraising gala. Too rich for our wallet at $250 a ticket (still available at the door tonight!), but I peeked inside and saw some sort of fancy stage-dressing to create a faux-park; looks like the philanthropists will have fun.

And they won't have to get their shoes as muddy as I got my Velcro bootie; a path was being laid down for them, to be covered with rolls of fake turf.

 

Flashback: Prospect Park Fights the 'Milk Wars'!

Hey, it's been a long time since we served up any Archivey Goodness! Once upon a time, you could get a farm-fresh glass of milk at this vanished fairy-tale building in the heart of Prospect Park--and thereby hangs a tale of greed, death, and, ultimately, reform.

Brownstoner's tireless urban detective Montrose Morris has a fascinating entry on the now-forgotten "Milk Wars" that raged in this and other cities from the mid-19th Century on. The park's "Dairy" or "Dairy Cottage" (like its still-standing counterpart in Central Park) kept real cows on tap, offering an alternative to the vile, adulterated milk produced on the cheap by Brooklyn producers who fed their wretched, diseased cows a diet of discarded brewery mash. Children died en masse from the bad milk, and the fight for a pure, pasteurized and reliable milk supply was a huge issue for reformers (and, of course, mothers). 

Here's a view of the Dairy in 1898. According to Prospect Park's archives:

Calvert Vaux designed the Dairy in 1869; the main structure of the building was completed in 1870. A stone building located in the Ravine, the Dairy took its name from the farm animals that grazed nearby and the fresh milk and other refreshments that were sold inside. "On the grassy slopes, bordering the Pools, which can be seen in this neighborhood, a number of cows, of choice breeds, graze in quiet and luxuriant ease, daily giving back a part of their rich food in the richer milk, which may be had at the Dairy Farm House. The park Commission invites the attention of Invalids, weakly persons, convalescents, and mothers of young children to the elevated ground east of the Long Meadow, near the Dairy." (1874)

The Dairy's status as a tourist magnet is confirmed by its appearance in packs of stereoscopic viewing cards--there are a couple for sale right now on Ebay, including this one. The wan tots here look like they could use some wholesome milk.

The Dairy stood in the Midwood, just north of Boulder Bridge, according to my guidebooks. It dispensed 11,000 quarts of fresh milk in the summer of 1871 alone, along with fresh foods including cold beef, ham and tongue sandwiches and pickled oysters. There were "retiring rooms" (rest rooms) with fireplaces, and nearby picnic tables. But the focus of picnicking moved across the Long Meadow in later years. The park's first "menagerie" opened nearby in 1890, and sadly, the Dairy was razed in 1935 when the new zoo opened on the other side of East Drive.

Thanks again to MM at Brownstoner for reviving the memory of the Milk Wars--a striking reminder that parents' concerns about what "factory farms" are turning out for our children's consumption are nothing new.