Prospect: A Year in the Park

Island time

To celebrate the formal opening of the resurrected Music Island and gorgeously restored Esplanade, Prospect Park has put together a very nice video tribute. If you can't get over to the park on this gloomy October morning, you can follow the project's progress below in 6 minutes (and get background here):

Here are my three favorite things about the video:

1. It gives plenty of credit to Tupper Thomas, the park's chief for 3 decades, who had the vision and energy to get the project off the ground.

2. This image of a little girl sitting atop a section of the original decorative iron fencing, whose sole remaining section (the fence, not the girl) was excavated from the mud and replicated for the Esplanade.

3. The photo of the now-demolished little old Robert Moses-era rink, which is by me. Whether I will totally love its replacement, which is rising near the lake like...a really big, new skating rink...remains to be seen, but it will have to be better than its shabby predecessor. Scroll down to the previous entry for my impressions, and misgivings.

Neck and neck

Today's Blurry Bird of the Day is a young blue heron, who was wading around the pool just above the Binnen Bridge waterfall. Thanks to the informative birder lady who identified him for me. He had a glaring yellow eye and a truly pencil-like neck.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This swan, also a juvenile (judging from his leftover mocha coloring), still retained some youthful fuzziness and thus seemed to have, by swan standards, a neck thick enough to qualify him as an avian sportscaster.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also in evidence on a bright and crisp day: a very modest-scale film shoot for "A Case of You," directed by someone named Kat Coiro. Sounds like a rom-com; they had set-dressed some bookstalls. A crew member claimed that Brendan Fraser is in the cast, but he's nowhere on their IMDB listing...a curious thing to bluff about, no?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, I would like to share one of my favorite trees on the Nethermead: I call it the Mohawk Tree. It has grown into this fantastical configuration from a blighted stump, and I like its angle and attitude. Thanks to Matthew of Backyard and Beyond for pointing out that a very cool photo of this tree by photographer Mitch Epstein—it's a silver linden, apparently—can be found here, along with lots of other arty urban tree portraits.

 

Of note: The Audubon Center and the Lefferts House both reopen this week after being closed to the public for a winter hiatus. Lefferts House is open daily from 1 to 3 p.m. over the "winter break" Feb. 18-26, offering tots old-timey Dutch games and such.

Lovely weather for...

I won't be getting to Prospect Park today to enjoy the inch or so of rain predicted. (I'm actually headed for the Cloisters, more on that later.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So in honor of the weather, here are a lady and gentleman mallard by Nicole, the photographer I met in the park this week. I felt a bit guilty for dissing mallards; they may be ubiquitous, but they are lovely.

 

 

When it's pouring rain and people complain
And things aren't worth a shucks,
Don't you yell, just say, "Well—
Lovely weather for ducks!"

Jay Livingston & Ray Evans
COPYRIGHT 1953
Famous Music Corp. (ASCAP)
International Copyright Secured
All Rights Reserved

EXTRA: PARK MYSTERY FILM SOLVED!

A delightful tale just gets better: Todd Bieber, the young New Yorker who found and developed a roll of film of some frolicsome tourists in Prospect Park, did succeed in tracking them down, and visited them in Paris. Check it out here.

Very enchanted April

It was an uncannily perfect Brooklyn Sunday. First, we caught a Buster Keaton silent, with brilliant live piano accompaniment, at the Dweck Center of the Brooklyn Public Library at Grand Army Plaza. Then, blinking in daylight, I walked home through Prospect Park. From the Lincoln Road entrance over to the Peristyle on Parkside Avenue, spring was absurdly well-sprung, starting with a pond-sized swath of violets.

I met a photographer acquaintance and her noble Dalmatian, Apollo, who is a little shy. We compared cameras and talked about dogs.

The smell of barbecue was in the air near the Drummers' Grove, along with a few other smoky top notes.

As I headed for home, more delightful "diversity on steroids":

A few yards apart under the haze of sprouting leaves, a Muslim picnic...

...and Orthodox catch...

 

...as a Spanish-speaking family's little ones enjoyed some tree-climbing. Also nearby, the Haitian guys were playing their fiercely intense domino games.

Park Slope may get this year's silly "best neighborhood" award, but my end of the park is much cooler. 

It's hard out here for a snowman

Most so-called "video art" is jumbled, unengaging rubbish by hip narcissists. And some mere "YouTube" videos rise unexpectedly to genuine art. Take 9 minutes of your day to relish this exquisite time-lapse portrait of humanity in Prospect Park. It is tender and breathtaking, and if this isn't the art of moving pictures, nothing is. Although it is set charmingly to one of my favorite classical guitar pieces (or perhaps mandolin), I recommend seeing it the first time through with the sound off. Kudos to creator Li Perez-Rey, who tells us how she did it in a comment below.

Which moment is your favorite? (Mine: Angry Guy Alone in Deep Night.)

The Snowman from Li Perez-Rey on Vimeo.

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)