Prospect: A Year in the Park

Girding for Googa

My hip and happenin' Spouse! Through his alertness and vigor, we have secured 2 tickets to The Great Googa-Mooga Festival, a free-but-sold-out extravaganza of food and live music in Prospect Park this weekend. The line-up of chefs definitely overshadows the musical acts (including Hall & Oates, the underwhelming* headliners).

The entire affair is starting to scare me, based on its wild hype (including this reverently snarky account in the New York Times calling it part of a "gastronomic summer of love"). It sounds as if Williamsburg will uproot, like Howl's Moving Castle, overshadow the Long Meadow, and touch down. In one particularly disturbing development, we have been alerted that "Line Talkers" in purple, Barclay's-Arena-sponsored T-shirts, will be on hand to tell us about menu choices up ahead. Are those like Navajo code-talkers, only for banh mi and panini? Dear Lord, what kind of apocalyptic lines are they expecting for foie-gras donuts and duck rolls?

 

 

 

According to the event's organizers (the merry pranksters at right), "Approximately 75 food vendors, 35 brewers, 30 winemakers and 20 live music performances will be on hand to help us relish some of life’s greatest pleasures—gathering with friends and neighbors to eat, drink, talk, laugh, dance, linger and just . . . be together." Personally, I can't wait to see the prices for all these artisanal noms and craft microbeers.  

A MICRO-RANT: If I am shelling out $20 for an al-fresco lobster roll with organic endangered wildflower sprouts and a touch of lavender foam, I want to eat it at a nice table with a clean bathroom nearby, one with running water and, preferably, a set of previous users smaller and less...free-spirited...than the population of Burning Man. The whole groundlings thing, with mobbed Port-O-San visit followed by lots of hand sanitizer, just doesn't jive with the exquisite haute-cuisine picnic angle for me.

In a slightly discordant note amid all that mellow vibe, for an incredible $250, you can get exclusive "Extra Mooga" tickets, including lectures on "Molecular Mixology" and "Textures of Rhubarb," along with the chance to worship at the shrines of Ruth Reichl, Anthony Bourdain, and other luminaries and, for all I know, personally butcher a heritage pig or a fast-food executive. (No word on whether this ransoms you out of the Port-O-San scene, however.)

But I quibble. Perhaps tomorrow you will see me crowd-surfing with a sprig of cilantro hanging off my lower lip, waving a draft lager brewed from hummingbird tongues and sobering up with some shade-grown, dolphin-safe macchiato. If you failed to score tickets, let's agree on a spot near the fence, and I'll toss you over a $40 sausage or something.

'READY FOR MARTY'?

* Hall & Oates belong to a category of act that we call "Ready for Marty," in reference to Borough President Marty Markowitz's long-running series of free summer concerts featuring well-loved but often fading pop acts. Markowitz, who relishes his role as B-list impresario, once mused aloud before a concert, when a crowd member shouted a suggestion for the line-up (Kenny Loggins, if memory serves): "Yeah...he's about ready for us."

When the robins come

Are robins becoming more numerous? Every spring, there seem to be more of them. This guy was taking a violent bath in the park's lake.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Freshly storm-soaked and chilly, Prospect Park at sunset was subdued and lightly populated. Spring green, a thousand shades of it, is everywhere, along with splashes of delicate white.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's surprising how many trees glow red in their first tender foliage. This maple on Nellie's Lawn was one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The baby leaves on this oak blushed, too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Almost home, in the Parade Grounds, I happened on this sidewalk memorial. A quick Googling revealed that Tamon Robinson was a beloved employee in a Fort Greene "Connecticut Muffin" coffee shop where, curiously, we just stopped in last Sunday after catching a movie at BAM. We had wondered about the oaktag memorial poster in the window; apparently the young man was run down by an NYPD squad car last week under mysterious circumstances and later died. Not surprisingly, his grieving family is seeking answers. How he came to be mourned among the ballfields of Flatbush, or by whom, I do not know.

 

If I shouldn't be alive

When the Robins come,

Give the one in Red Cravat,

A Memorial crumb –

If I couldn't thank you,

Being fast asleep,

You will know I'm trying

With my Granite lip!                                      

                            --Emily Dickinson

Turbo-spring

Two weeks of late May mysteriously land in the middle of March, and I manage not to get over to the park more than once or twice. The reason: My own garden has been bursting out and yelling at me to perform every manner of service for it. A dozen rosebushes alone have been screeching to be pruned, and without the excuse of being miserable in the cold, I have been their slave.

But I've got to get over there because all sorts of stuff is going on. From my front porch, I can see that the trees are greening up, smudged with verdant pastel, a full month ahead of schedule. And that's not all.

* The Lakeside project is shaping up to be pretty damn amazing. Here's the Animated Architect Sketch; I love the snowy part, and the part where the trees drop down magically on Music Island. And the part at the very beginning where the Robert Moses crap building just disappears. (Thanks to the Q at Parkside blog for the heads-up.)

* The "Googa-Mooga" festival is stirring wild interest among the hip; it's some sort of food and music fest on May 19 and 20 that mysteriously, while "free," requires a ticket of extraordinary scarcity. Spouse has managed to acquire at least one of these prized tickets, which has him very excited even though we have yet to learn what bands are playing. Oh well: The festival's website proclaims that "food is the new rock," so we can dance along to the artisanal pickles.)

 
  * And on March 31, the Carousel reopens for its hundredth anniversary. It's been given a nice tune-up by Todd W. Goings, a carousel doctor (what a dream job!), nicely profiled here. (Photo, right: Chester Higgins, New York Times)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* At the Prospect Park Zoo, the Golden Tamarins have a wee baby riding around on their blond backs. (Photo: Julie Larsen Maher/WCS)

 

 

Meanwhile, check out a nicely researched gem on the park's mysterious Vale of Cashmere at the wonderful history blog of the Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklynology. This is the long-gone "Children's Shelter." The Vale, that haunted and troubled gem, looks very different than the playground envisioned by Vaux and Olmsted. Time to get over there and see for myself.

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.

With love and squalor

We're both park bloggers and advocates, yet we still haven't met. No matter, here's another shout-out to intrepid Marie Viljoen of the Prospect Park Litter Mob. She has now begun a blog chronicling the brave exploits of her small band of squalor-battlers. She is not only willing to wade in and rescue the park's lush nether regions from revolting debris, but also takes gorgeous photos of the beauty and incongruous filth (her montage, left), and she writes like an angel:

Tuesday, first day of summer in the Northern Hemisphere and we headed back into the woods of Prospect Park. The longest day.

I never sleep the night before these litter mobs. I don't know why. I now expect it, so perhaps it is self-fulfilling. Three hours, max. I am not nervous, I just don't sleep. Vince brings me coffee early, I am queasily awake. We walk to the subway, I am grumpy and tired. Once in the woods it is forgotten.

The beautiful stewartia flower are open. We looked at them near the Audubon Center beside the pea-green lake upon which two swans and five fluffy cygnets sailed, pursued sluggishly by a box of pink gum. A turtle was laying her eggs in the grass. I had never seen such a thing.

I missed the Mob again last Tuesday, but I'll make it one of these weeks. Frankly, I've been getting to the park with shameful infrequency, and the surreal treasures that the Mob uncovers alongside the nasties are a reminder of all that I'm missing.

UNFORGOTTEN FLATBUSH ON FOOT--TOMORROW!

By the way, the Parade Grounds and the park's southern edge will kick off a walking tour tomorrow led by another urban hero, Kevin Walsh of Forgotten New York. Kevin's tours tend to sell out, but there may be some places left on this one, which wends its way into the absurdly beautiful Prospect Park South historic district. There'll be a pit stop at a familiarly blogged-up domicile called the Crazy Stable, where your bloggeuse will share some exclusive tidbits on life in the green heart of Brooklyn, and offer cookies and lemonade to the masses. Hope to see you there!

Arch-enemies and friends

Hats off to the New York Times' "Streetscapes" columnist Christopher Gray for his impassioned tour of Prospect Park's not-quite-derelict arches in last Sunday's paper, and for his walking "requiem" tour last night to follow up. Gray's cri de coeur about the graffiti in the Meadowport Arch makes a nice counterpoint to the Brooklyn Museum's recent moaning about having to cancel a scheduled exhibit on such  "street art" (boo-freakin'-hoo):

 

At first glance it appears that the 19th-century paneling of its long, cedar-sheathed tunnel is, by some miracle, almost intact, although damaged. But a stone plaque in the ground makes it clear: This marvelous, inspiring work, a 100-foot-long Grand Central Terminal waiting room of polished cedar, with rounded benches and a cross-vaulted pavilion, was lovingly recreated in 1988, barely a generation ago.

Now, after all that intention, money and effort, Meadowport Arch is a madeleine for New York of the 1960s and 1970s. The graffiti vandals have sprayed their way through the interior, and the city has seen little choice but to paint over four long runs of the casing. Only the topmost ones, out of reach, are intact, almost perfectly so — reminders of the humane sensitivity of the original design. The paint job is slapdash, with drips on the benches, but that only reflects the native tragedy — that we had this beautiful, democratic thing, freely given to all, and yet destroyed it.

The arch’s fragmentary survival recalls Charlton Heston’s encounter with the postapocalyptic remains of the Statue of Liberty on the beach in “Planet of the Apes” — “You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you!” There’s no point asking the Department of Parks to fix it if the civil order is such that civic beauty cannot survive the barbarians.

 

I think he's being a bit harsh about the condition of the arches, but then I'm comparing today to the 1970s, when one would have expected each archway space to have conjured Mr. Heston in the Valley of the Lepers in Ben-Hur. When I wrote about the Meadowport Arch in 2008 here, I found evidence of a lone but bookish sleeper, and felt simple gratitude that any wood furnishings survived at all in the vaulted space. Shows you how a child of the Seventies defines deviancy: anything short of a smoking ruin or an open-air asylum seems gentrified.

 

Anyway, I wish I'd been able to tag along on the march last night; it looks like quite a crowd turned out. We have lived for decades in a world where Lexan and welded steel, not mortised cedar, is the stuff of public amenities; it's nice to see how many people care for the delicate bits that somehow remain. More coverage of the walk can be found at Backyard and Beyond.

 

Photo, left: Prospect Park Flickr stream

Weiner in the Park: An eerie foreshadowing

Flashback to August, 2008: A now-infamous Congressman shows up (here, with well-liked and inoffensive NY State Assemblywoman Rhoda Jacobs) for the Prospect Park Parade Grounds' annual "Night Out Against Crime." The post is chilling in its prescient synopsis of the character of "Weiner-Dog," a nasty name (from "Welcome to the Dollhouse") that we dubbed him with during his years of grasping for the mayor's office.  My encounter with Rep. Anthony Weiner lasted only long enough for a politely requested photo op, but his persona chilled me: "Weiner-Dog managed a 1/15th second shutter-speed autosmile before cutting me dead," I wrote.

Actually, his eyes reminded me of someone's description of Jerry Lee Lewis, "like a dead rattler on a highway." The guy came off as not just arrogant, but creepy; why would a supposedly glad-handing pol treat an earnest middle-aged lady blogger in Flatbush like crap? Turns out, according to today's Times, that he gives the same respectful treatment to his Congressional colleagues and staffers...and we all know how he treats the women in his life.

Now to get back to the park...where I never set foot during our first heat wave this week. Time to go look for more rattlers.

PARK WILDLIFE IN PERIL...

...of having human children lose precious opportunities to learn about and appreciate them!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm just messing with ya here, folks...trying to figure out the mystery of online buzz whereby the culling of Prospect Park's wildly overpopulating geese becomes a cause célèbre, while the elimination of its nature-education programs for more than 11,000 Brooklyn schoolchildren a year has met with...well, it's too early for crickets. Let's just say the Audubon Center's programs, as they fall under the budget axe, are apparently going "into great silence."

So I'm appealing to those tender souls, including local media types, who worked up a fine lather of outrage over the geese: How about a little interest in the programs for our human children? Or at least in the programs that would mold their character to value the park and its wildlife? The kids of the borough of Kings have a raging case of "nature deficit disorder"; take it from a former docent. Many of them are afraid of grass, think squirrels are rats, and instinctively throw rocks at geese and other living things because no one has ever told them not to. Programs like the ones at the Boat House, whose Audubon mission was announced less than a decade ago, are rare in Brooklyn (unlike geese) and well worth fighting for.

Or do we want our kids' understanding of wildlife limited to tossing Cheerios at the lake shore poultry population?

The flowering of Salem Fields

The metaphors of Spring are not subtle...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...especially when life springs from rock that holds in the dead. This is Salem Fields Cemetery in Cypress Hills, a fascinating neighborhood perched on the Graveyard Greenbelt that knits together Brooklyn and Queens, and it is our Guest Park of the Day.

 I picnicked there yesterday on my lunch hour from a teaching gig, just as the Victorians used to do at Green-Wood Cemetery before they had nearby Prospect Park. This gate was locked, but the main arch at Jamaica and Euclid Avenues stood open on a cool and glorious noon.

 

 

This magnolia's vigor seemed shocking against a landscape of blue sky and tombstones. The cemetery is a German-Jewish one, mostly; I didn't happen upon them, but buried here are William Fox (the "Twentieth Century" film magnate), Harry Guggenheim (founder of Newsday), and impressario Lee Shubert (he of the Broadway "alley").

 

 

 

 

A broken column is a classic bit of funerary iconography for life cut short, but nature made its own version after our recent rough weather with this broken tree. How much more eloquent it is than any statuary!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These charming cherubs probably signify a child's tomb. The countless children in old cemeteries always make me wonder how parents' hearts held up in those days before routine vaccinations and antibiotics, when you could bury one little one after another.

 

 

 

 

This more mature angel sighed nearby. The cool breeze seemed to blow away melancholy, just leaving wistfulness. My eye was drawn to the stone by my mother's unusual name, Mathilde, here a grieving mother for a five-year-old girl.

 

The inscription read:

WIR LIEBTEN DICH IM LEBEN

WIR LIEBEN DICH IM TOD

GOTT GAB DICH

GOTT NAHM DICH

GOTT LINDERE UNSERE NOTH

 

 

 

 

Translated by Google, that means:

We loved you in life

We love you in death

God gave you

God took you

God alleviate our distress

 

As I sat eating my turkey sandwich amid the deceased, and pondering the short life of little Evelyn Sophie, Father Mark Lane was blessing an even tinier casket at our family's Catholic parish church in downtown Brooklyn—that of little Louis Dewayne Mosely, who was recently beaten to death in foster care and would that afternoon be interred in the cemetery across the street from Salem Fields. “We don’t have any rewind button on life," said my pastor. "No matter how much justice demands it, it doesn’t happen.” 

This same pastor once described a mystery as "a truth so deep that we can never reach the bottom, no matter how often we go back to the well." With each passing year, I find myself more grateful for the well of springtime.

Right: Window, mausoleum interior, Salem Fields Cemetery

The bloody nexus of Prospect Park

Crooke Avenue and Parade Place, in Flatbush, Brooklyn, three blocks from my home. These don't look like the Gates of Death, do they? They lead from a phalanx of handsome apartment buildings into a beautifully renovated playground in the historic Parade Grounds section of Prospect Park. Come, let's take a walk on a chilly day at sunset in late March.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First, we must cross the soccer fields, where play never ceases. We're headed for that little house in the distance. It's a comfort station with a cute decorative relief of squirrels on it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here we are. It's quiet now, this broad passage between the playing fields. They're green again, after this morning's spring snow melted away. The picnic benches would be inviting if it weren't so cold...oh, and if people didn't keep getting shot to death here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Look behind the tree. Candles flicker in a beer box. It must be a shrine for Julio Locarno, a 23-year-old who fell here the previous night, shot multiple times. He was allegedly no saint: released just recently on bail from Riker's, and a suspected accomplice in the shooting of a man named Jason Green outside a Soho nightclub last summer. Green, an EMT, had in turn been accused, with his partner, of allowing a pregnant woman to expire of an asthma attack in a downtown Brooklyn lunch spot; his shooting, however, seemed to arise from an unrelated fracas over a parking space, according to news reports.

 

I keep getting the police-blotter reports, the chain of violence, mixed up. A line from the Prince of Verona jangles in my head:

     
Romeo slew him, he slew Mercutio;

Who n ow the price of his dear blood doth owe?

Perhaps Aslan will know. Did this young man who seemed to have lived and died in a web of violence have a soft spot for C.S. Lewis' tale of glorious redemption? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Look down, what are we standing in? It's sticky and candy-red; I doubt blood would look like this after almost 24 hours, but I wonder what it is, then.

Step back; it looks as if someone has tried to wash away the night's carnage, doesn't it? The storm drain must have come in handy.

 

 

Otherwise, the only traces of homicide are a few bits of crime-scene tape fluttering on the fence. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I know, you're asking: "But Brenda from Flatbush, why don't you do guys do something?" Flashback: Last August, after another murder, and a stabbing, and another shooting, all took place right here, at Crooke Avenue and Parade Place in or just outside the Parade Grounds, I joined a group of deeply concerned neighbors on a walk-through with local officials. They included State Senator Rhoda Jacobs, some executive from the MTA (we were also worried about the desolate nearby subway entrance), and assorted minor political types. We begged, not just for a stepped-up police presence, but for security cameras and extra lights.

We got vague promises, but no security cameras or other changes. Two foot patrolmen and one Park security vehicle went past as I stood there, but it hadn't been 24 hours yet. The blood, or whatever, will dry, and so will the interest. After all, this was Julio, not one of the little middle-class schoolchildren who play soccer a few feet (and a vast gulf) away under their parents' watchful eyes every Saturday. People like Julio, and the livery car driver who also died here, are invisible once the blood dries. I guess they will bury Julio, and I will go back to living in that weird urban denial, three blocks from the bloody nexus and the gates of hell.

Or maybe now somebody will pay attention. Would you like some bleach for your shoes?

Note: Comments are welcome, but must adhere to the standards of civility and charity I expect from conversations at my family dinner table, or else they will be deleted. If you have dined with me, you will know that gives you a wide but not infinite latitude.