Prospect: A Year in the Park

Pictures, moving and otherwise

Yesterday was yet another in April's Interminable Winter Series, with a raw breeze blowing off the lake and making the magnolias shiver.

The woods on Lookout Hill were full of song, although a woodpecker and countless robins were the only ones I saw besides the cardinal.













These finely engineered catkins sprouted from a tree on Wellhouse Drive that had fallen but not given up. Overall, though, spring seems slow and muted; tomorrow's anticipated 70-degree sunshine should unleash pandemonium.

 

Speaking of Wellhouse Drive and Lookout Hill, here's an amazing find on E-bay: an ancient stereoview card showing the 1869 Wellhouse (still there, now used as a storage shed) with its original tower (demolished in the 1930s, according to Forgotten New York) and peaked entry hood, with the well itself in front. Note that there are practically no trees cloaking the hill behind it. Bidding is through the roof on this rare glimpse of a raw young Prospect Park; wish it could be mine.

YouTube, Ebay...if Frederick Law Olmsted were alive today, he (unlike me) would be tweeting on Twitter!

It never rains in Santa Barbara

Yes, it was another really cold one, but as a certified Star-Suckin' Film Set Groupie, I couldn't resist checking out the action in the parking lot off Bartel Pritchard Circle this morning. The signs fluttering in the 18-degree breeze said "UNMP." A crew person in the temporary village of trailers said that stands for "Untitled Nancy Meyer Project" and that Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin were in the flick. Go here for some unwholesome and very funny speculation on the content of the movie.

According to the more sober IMDB, it's "a romantic comedy in which two men vie for the affection of a woman." (Meyers wrote "Private Benjamin" and directed "Something's Gotta Give," so we're not talking indie-quirky here.) The crew guy thought they might be filming at the Picnic House, although according to Filming in Brooklyn, they're setting up at the Boathouse. Somebody should get over there with a camera, because apparently they're going to shoot an interior scene and make it rain. (A huge water truck was lumbering around.) According to my sources, the scene is supposed to take place in Santa Barbara, but Meryl wanted to shoot locally because "she lives around here." (That would be, apparently, in Connecticut.) 

"And if we need any snow scenes, maybe we'll go shoot in Santa Barbara," cracked the crew guy with cheerful resignation to the mysterious ways of Hollywood. After that, I headed off for a brief, bracing walk on the Park Slope side of the park. The pathways are mostly clear.

Seriously, if you get some pictures of the shoot, share or link us up. Meanwhile, here is blasé Brooklyn going about the business of shrugging off another celebrity incursion.

And here's a look at the 1910-vintage Tennis House, where no one is filming anything. The park doesn't seem to know quite what to do with it since BCUE vacated the premises, so it sits behind its fence, dreaming of ladies and gents playing lawn tennis in innocent summers before the Great War. That would be my movie: The Ghosts of Prospect Park.

Meet the band

Years ago, we had a neighbor named Ed, an irascible retired guy who lived right by Prospect Park, just as we do. Every Sunday night, when the drumming would start around dusk on the edge of the soccer fields, Ed would call us up in a slow Walter-Matthau-esque burn. "The drums again! Can't you hear them? Call the precinct! If we all call, they'll come and arrest them!"

We heard the drums, too, along with some sonorous horns and other contributors to a wild and throbbing beat, but they never particularly bothered us (or the cops). We figured it was some Latino guys with congas hanging out after the soccer match. (What do we know; we're Irish and Ukrainian.) Well, it turns out that the bane of Ed's existence was a Haitian "rara" band, the subject of an indie documentary we saw last night at BAM called "The Other Side of the Water."  (Thanks to sound designer and Sustainable Flatbush blogger Anne Pope for the invite.)

The film is touching and fascinating. Rara is described as "part carnival, part voudou ceremony and grassroots protest," and within genteel Haitian society it is apparently considered the devil's music. But for the young guys who gather in the park on Sunday evenings, it's a lifeline to their culture and their strife-torn homeland (and, for some, an alternative to running the streets). The story of how the group coalesced in Prospect Park back in the '90s is a great tale, and more proof of my theory that the park is a place of urban alchemy. (This is not, by the way, the Drummer's Circle; that's another scene, a free-form jam on the east side of the park.)

At the screening were the directors, crew and members of the band, who sat right behind us chuckling at their funniest lines and mingled with the audience afterwards. I told one of the drummers about Ed, and how he'd finally up and moved to Florida in disgust; given all the Haitians in Florida, we shared a subversive wish that some rara would follow him down there. And some Sunday night I am going to check out the scene on Parkside Avenue.

Meanwhile, you can catch the documentary at another screening on Friday, Sept. 12 at 10 p.m. at the Tribeca Film Center, at 375 Greenwich Street; it's part of the Urbanworld Film Festival. Ayibobo!*

* Haitian Kreyol for "Amen" or "hallelujah"

Endearing young charms

My St. Patrick's Day Park Plan was to visit the statue of Irish bard Thomas Moore in the Concert Grove. Moore, now largely forgotten, was a wildly popular poet and singer/songwriter of the early Victorian era; at least on this one day, his lyrics to "The Minstrel Boy" were undoubtedly being roared soulfully in bars all over town.

Life, however, had more interesting plans, as evidenced by the limo-lock in the Wollman Rink parking lot.



Yes, once again, it was Asian-American Bridal Monday! Today three glamorous wedding parties converged simultaneously on the grove for photos. This bride was the most spectacular, from her head (a glitter-dusted architectural masterpiece of hair design) to her dainty high-buttoned feet.

But wait! There's more!

A rag-tag band of hippies slogged past a moment later, toting protest signs festooned with bloody handprints. "It's for an indie film," one of the "protesters" explained.

Meanwhile, a few feet away, a wedding photographer perfected the "Flying Groomsmen, Smiling Bridesmaid" shot.

Nearby, a lovely young woman named Tina who was sweeping up leaves and litter observed that this was, indeed, a place where just about anything could happen. I asked her what was the strangest thing she'd seen in her four months on the job. "This elderly man who comes to the park every morning, rain or shine, with his hand down the back of his pants," she related. "He's clean, not a homeless guy; but he comes to the park, and the hand goes down the booty, starts scratching, and then he leaves it there and walks around. Now why would you come to the park to do that?" Tina's job is hard, but, she said, "Every morning I come to work and look at that" (she gestured to the glittering lake beyond the trees) "and I feel good."

Finally, and anticlimactically, I found poor old Thomas Moore up on his pedestal, bedecked with an Irish harp and some pompous carven tributes. His statue gazed down on a very different world than the one that had revered his sentimental verses; but I suspect that Moore, as a grand teller of tales, would have relished the ones playing out around him now.

Believe me if all those
Endearing young charms
Which I gaze on so fondly today
Were to change by tomorrow
And fleet in my arms,
Like fairy gifts fading away
Though would'st still be adored
As this moment thou art
Let thy loveliness fade as it will
And around the dear ruin
Each wish of my heart
Would entwine itself
Verdantly still.

--Thomas Moore (1779-1852)