Prospect: A Year in the Park

The independents

A Fourth-of-July visit to the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket brings intriguing encounters with a host of independent-minded types. For instance, the fellow who rode this Danish-made Bullitt cargo bicycle across several European countries before heading to Prospect Park. He insisted it was a cinch to ride with one's stuff stowed down in front.

At the Long Island winery tasting table, the lovely Ann Marie Borghese was handing out samples of an apple-scented rosé produced at Borghese Vineyard out in Cutchogue. Yes, her husband is related to the cosmetics royalty, and yes, she used to be a model.

And at the cooking demo table, chef Jacques Gautier, owner of Palo Santo in Park Slope, was slurping an unctuous homemade mayo onto freshly mandoline-sliced zucchini studded with sliced garlic scapes; it made a nice appetizer spooned onto rounds of fresh baguette. "Couldn't you also use a vinaigrette?" asked a health-conscious observer. "Yes," he replied patiently while adding more mayo, "but it wouldn't be as delicious."

I didn't make it back to the park until about 10 p.m., on the way home from "First Night" at the Brooklyn Museum. Crowds were pouring out of the barbecue area near Parkside and Ocean Avenues, dragging an astounding array of cooking and picnicking gear into waiting cabs, vans, cars, and shopping carts for a weary and satiated trip home.

Mad Men

My second non-Prospect Park dalliance yesterday was Madison Square Park. It's a nexus of weird history, Manhattan's and my own family's, and I contemplated it while shambling around sucking on a caramel shake (or, as I call it, "heroin"), from the park's own legendary Shake Shack.

The Ballad of Mother Met (A Madison Avenue Rag)

Ah, memories swirl around the Met Life tower (now getting the finger from that bizarre sliver condo-under-construction on 23rd Street). Some member of my family has toiled for "Mother Met" on and off from the dirty Thirties through the go-go Eighties, eating a furtive lunch in Madison Square Park under the glaring eye of the great clock to avoid serfdom in the company cafeteria (with its free "dinner" at lunchtime). My mother left high school a few months before graduation to work in their loan department at the depths of the Great Depression in support of her fatherless family. She got $13 for a six-day work week as a file clerk, prying through folders full of sad stories of men who drained their life insurance policies just to survive. Each morning, she passed jobless men selling apples in the park; all her life, she recalled how she couldn't meet their eyes. (And we think we have it rough now.) In the Seventies, my dad, a field agent, took a job in the home office, and so did Spouse for an ill-fitted few years before he found  his niche in the wacky world of non-profits. And here also was my first paying job, as a temp in data entry. I spent the summer of my 16th year typing in long lists of U.S. Steel employees and their dependents, and skirted the park because its splintered benches were occupied by homeless guys and reeking, mumbling bag ladies. (No Shake Shack then, but I could probably have gotten real heroin if I'd wanted it.) On my last day and last hour that August of 1974, I typed in the names of the entire family of Napoleon Bonaparte, and raced out the door into the park's hallucinatory heat in a rapture of freedom.

Yesterday, in the habit of AYITP, I took a closer look at the park, now a well-manicured oasis tended by work crews and studded with sponsorship plaques. There is a spacious dog run, although it is barren and malodorous compared to the dog paradise of Prospect Park's Long Meadow. But amid city traffic and noise, it offers precious respite for Corgi snoodling.

At the park's northern edge, there is a damn cool monument to the guy who said (sort of), "Damn the torpedos, full speed ahead!" The story of Civil War naval hero David Glasgow Farragut is incredible: He joined the navy at age 10 or so, was given charge of a ship at age 12, and was the first U.S. Admiral ever. The sculptor was Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who would have made a great Oscar-night dress designer judging from these windswept sea-goddesses. The architect was Stanford White, who was shot to death across the street at the old Madison Square Garden by the jealous millionaire husband of his mistress, the ravishing Evelyn Nesbit. And the crab plaque in yesterday's entry is inlaid at the base of it all.

So many parks, so little time.

Doughnuts at twilight: A Dutch reverie

Before our latest snowfall is completely vanquished by a thaw, behold an impossibly serene shot of the 1783-vintage Lefferts Historic House taken last week by its education curator, Elyse Newman. To date, AYITP has given this fascinating homestead too little attention. Here's a glimpse of life in the surrounding village, from the nostalgic history-cum-memoir The Social History of Flatbush published in 1881 by then-elderly family member Gertrude Lefferts Vanderbilt:

"Thus Flatbush was pleasantly and picturesquely encircled with woods; its little group of houses surrounded by gardens and farms, its chimney-tops and roofs projecting from among the trees, and the spire of its church forming the central object in the view, it presented a beautiful picture of rural life, of peace, quiet and comfort...
          Did any of our readers ever hear old people speak of "keeping schemeravond"? The word means twilight. Before the days of gas and when there were bright wood fires on the hearth, the family would gather around the fireside to talk over the events of the day, a neighbor sometimes dropping in to join the family circle; that was keeping schemeravond.  Our people made these cheery kitchens the gathering places of the family...the children chattering in the chimney corner, and the father, and perhaps the "groetvader," smoking their long pipes, lighted by coals from the fireplace. Later in the evening the tankard of cider would be brought in, baskets of apples, a basket of nuts for the children to crack, and the platter of fresh doughnuts."

Note: With great sadness, we mark the untimely death of Robert Guskind, worthy Brooklyn blogger of Gowanus Lounge, who was a kind supporter of AYITP. I've written about Bob on my other blog, CrazyStable, here.

Cold comfort

 Love-sick—or simply sick of love—on Valentine's Day? At the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket, you could say "Comfort me with apples," like Solomon in his song (verse 2, chapter 5), or Ruth Reichl. In the King James Bible, the singer also implores, "Stay me with flagons," (you could do that at the market today too, there were tastings from Paumonok Winery, although the flagons were plastic spit-cups). However, in the New American Standard Bible, this verse is inexplicably translated, "Sustain me with raisin cakes," as if the bard of Scripture had suddenly developed a craving for a granola bar.  This lovely loaf from Bread Alone was not a raisin cake, but it would have warmed my heart.

I love the seasonal perspective here: We are still in the time of root vegetables, but look far enough ahead, and the flowers are beckoning.

I'm not a huge primrose fan, but they were a heart-cheering sight on a cold grey day.

GREENMARKET DOG OF THE DAY

Yes, it's been too long! Meet Comet, a well-insulated pug out for his constitutional. Comet is a four-year-old guy who (surprise, surprise) loves people food and treats. His face-furrows are superb, actually forming a little arrow pointing down to his wet black nose. He didn't mind that I mushed them all together, rotated his ears, and otherwise did all that irresistible pug-snorgling stuff.

Forest for the trees

Yes, they are local (the people, from Brooklyn, and the trees, from the Finger Lakes), and yes, they are going only one way: home for Christmas. Some of the trees were destined to twinkle in a high-ceilinged brownstone parlor. Ours, a perfectly shaped balsam with cones still attached,came home to a century-old frame house in Flatbush.

Some chose more easily portable specimens, including this rather Byronic-looking gentleman and his insulated companion.

I wonder what the Greenmarket looked like today from this rooftop aerie atop an elegant old apartment building on the other side of Grand Army Plaza?

I didn't notice these details either when I took this shot with freezing hands today. (The streets were so icy that little old ladies were tumbling and being righted by concerned passers-by.) Here's the original shot at right.

Too cold to recruit a Greenmarket Dog of the Week this morning; few dogs were abroad on the plaza. But this brave chef from Bussaco, a restaurant on Union Street in Park Slope, was cooking up curried heirloom squash served with a dab of fresh ricotta. (It was delicious; if that's what he can accomplish in a booth on a hot plate, the chow at his restaurant must rock.) When asked how he was holding up in the frigid air, he replied that he was from Minnesota.

Salad, baker, movie maker

     

Yes, these are the salad days at the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket. I've been trying to economize by buying whole heads of lettuce and washing their muddy selves, but today I fell for the mesclun, all washed and dainty. It's the second Saturday in a row that I haven't had the Child along to grudgingly drag bags of produce and I miss her, even her sighs of exasperation. Spouse nobly filled the breach. We've been indulging in Food that Child Dislikes (mussels, pesto, cabbage—no, not all together), but we'll be awfully glad when she returns from her stay in the mountains.

Today's demo chef was breadmeister Daniel Leader of Bread Alone, whipping up grilled flatbreads and selling his books. I almost bought this one, then remembered I have already got several tantalizing bread cookbooks that I never use.

Watching Leader pour olive oil over his hands and then stretch and flip this delicate dough onto first one grill and then another, I remembered why my bread-making books sit on the shelf: It's all in the wrist action. If I tried this, I'd have charred dough gobbets dripping like a Dali watch through the grill rack. The finished product was crunchy and tasty.

 

      

As we were leaving, Spouse spotted indie-flick favorite John Turturro out with his young son (cute kid, not shown) looking over tomatoes.  I wasn't sure it was him at first, he looked so tan; but Spouse should know, since he went to high school with John's brother Ralph.

GREENMARKET DOG OF THE WEEK

Napoleon is a white Golden Retriever; his owner says it's an unusual English bloodline, and this gentle boy is indeed the color of Devonshire cream. He's two years old and has a big head shaped like that of a James Thurber cartoon dog, with a Thurberesque air of quiet loyalty to go with it.

Man is troubled by what might be called the Dog Wish, a strange and involved compulsion to be as happy and carefree as a dog.

—James Thurber

Cartoon: Thurber House

Peach porn (and other delights)

Presenting that rarest of delicacies, the white peach. It has the perfume of roses. For years, I could only find them at the Greenmarket. Then they started growing and shipping them from California, but those supermarket imposters tend to be mealy (and don't smell like roses). My passion for them has led to accusations that I resemble Kramer of Seinfeld in his passion for the "Mackinaw peach" (which was, by the way, a screenwriter's invention).

Today's market at Grand Army Plaza was also a showcase for local nectarines, those fuzzless peach cousins. Heresy, but I actually prefer a good California nectarine to most Eastern ones; they are more succulent. The problem with any nectarine is that it isn't a peach; the best thing about it is permission to say the word, "nectarine."

I liked these orbs, but they pushed me a little too quickly into autumn-cookery mode. Too soon to think of hearty cabbage and onion soup; it's still ratatouille season, time to pretend we're heedless Mediterraneans and not dour people of the North. This is better, at right: supersized tomatillos (peach shown for scale).

Before we leave the subject of peach porn and related depravity, a confession: This morning, I accidentally bought $10 worth of yellow plums.  The Greenmarket ain't cheap, but this was ridiculous, and unintentional: I saw the sign clearly, "$4.50/lb."...and picked out what my deluded idiot brain thought was a pound, intending to use them for a golden fruit tart. Gave them to Spouse to purchase, whereupon he uncomplainingly handed over $10. Apparently Spouse thinks I am the sort of person who goes around tossing out $10 bills for a bag of designer Japanese plums. I actually managed to get angry with him for not thinking, "She can't be serious," and putting half of them back.  All I can do now is make one hell of a great fruit tart...

GREENMARKET DOGS OF THE WEEK

Who can resist an odd couple? On the left is May, an American bulldog. Nuzzling her con amore is Luigi, an Italian greyhound who made her acquaintance only moments beforehand. Moments later, they parted along with their respective humans.

Shalom, Salaam

Returning to Brooklyn from peaceful, pristine Fort Collins, Colorado—consistently voted one of America's most "livable" cities—was hard enough; returning from bone-dry mountain sunshine to a suffocating blanket of New York humidity made it worse. But Prospect Park came through on my first full day back in town, delivering precisely the sort of acid-trip diversity you can't get in just any city, however livable: Arabs and Jews rocking out happily within earshot of each other.

The Arab-American Heritage Festival was everything street fairs should be and usually aren't, starting with the food. That bakhlava-like pastry with the dusting of fresh pistachio  was consumed by me seconds after being photographed; the custard filling was ethereal.

Grilling kebabs perfumed the air.

The Arabic culture on display was a mix of the exotic and the disarmingly assimilated. Bouncy castles and face-painting were familiar staples. 

 

  

An impromptu souk offered gauzy scarves and Chinese-made Nefertitis.

Families relaxed and socialized. The men sat in groups and smoked hookahs. (At folding tables, so did a few non-Arabic-looking women; were they rent-a-hookahs?) Young ladies displayed a spectrum of engagement with traditional Islamic dress; cell phones, giggling and gossip remain central with or without a headscarf.  

From the festival, I took a three-minute walk to another world in the Prospect Park bandshell to hear a "Celebrate Brooklyn!" program of recording artists for JDub, an indie Jewish music label. I missed Golem and their "gypsy folk rock," but caught two offbeat acts. One was Soulico, a Tel Aviv DJ crew who rapped electrifyingly in reggae-flavored Hebrew. (I think the guy on the right is Axum, an Ethiopian guest vocalist.)

Next came The Sway Machinery. They describe their music as "ritualistic Afro-pop and cantorial blues," which is to say, indescribable; the band, dressed like early Elvis Costello in dare-you-to-laugh suits and ties, blasts through frantic horn-laden tunes anchored by guitarist Jeremiah Lockwood (who, yes, sings like a cantor). Aside from one family in the audience, there wasn't a yarmulke in sight, just words and music emerging from the diaspora through surprising new voices.  

Even in a heat wave, it was good to be back home.

The dead Quakers will see you now

It figures. I cycle over in the sticky heat to one of the rare tours of Prospect Park's Quaker Cemetery, and by the time I get there, there's a 40-minute estimated wait on line. At the 10-acre cemetery, which predates the park and contains some 2,000 Friends' graves, living Quakers were offering re-enactments of some of the interred residents, but I couldn't tarry that long with dinner guests on the way.

Maybe next time. In the meanwhile, I took this picture through the open gates; within, photography is apparently discouraged. (Oh, well; the headstones are reportedly very plain, and they won't tell you where Montgomery Clift is buried.) It was an interesting crowd; I chatted with a very cool woodworker from nearby Windsor Terrace, while behind me, a fellow assured a companion that he must attend next year's "Dark Shadows" convention. 

At least I hit the greenmarket this morning.  Gooseberries were there, along with the more familiar blueberries.

And, in a bonanza of wacky botanical structures, adjacent booths were selling exotica. One was the mushroom guy from Madura Farms in Goshen, displaying what appeared to be alien body parts.

             

 There was also an entire booth devoted to orchids, the Star Trek props of the flower world.

The first local peaches are in, by the way--smallish, but still peachy.

Summer and smoke

 
  The blessed sunshine of an early Memorial Day weekend was still in abundant supply at 7:30 p.m. While the evening was a little too cool to feel quite like summer, the air over the picnic grounds near Ninth Street was thick with the perfume of starter fluid and charred meat. And the ground was thick with people and their mobile campsites, many of which included balloons celebrating various events.



As I cycled around the park, I pondered the subtleties of selecting a picnic spot. Grilling is allowed in only a few sections of Prospect Park, and those areas lay under a haze of mouthwatering smoke, with what looked like thousands of picnickers feasting in closely packed quarters. But even non-grillers tended to cluster in crowds. Some chose areas in jarring proximity to the hubbub of the Coney Island Avenue traffic circle, just inside the fence.

When I was young, my family took perverse pride in seeking out the most remote and scenic location possible for the old cooler and blanket. Triumph was secured when we managed to find a Perfect Spot out of sight and earshot of another human being. Looking back, I realize we carried this (and many other preferences ) a bit far. But I still find myself baffled by picknickers who seem to put no premium on seclusion, despite their evident good cheer.

AYITP ON TV!

My park explorations are featured on a segment of "A Walk Around the Blog,"  Monday, May 26 at 9 p.m. on Cablevision channel 69 and Time-Warner Cable channel 56. It will be rebroadcast Thursday at 1 and 9 p.m. and Friday at 3 and 11 p.m., and is already posted on their site. (Thanks to Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn for the heads-up.) They do a nice job with these little features, in which bloggers explore their communities on camera.  I look okay aside from my curious gait (or as some concerned observers call it, my "limp"), but as yet I have been blessedly spared knowing what the heck I said, because Charlie the Kitten seems to have chewed through my computer's speaker cable. I will have to trust that Prospect Lefferts Gardens blogger Charles and I engaged in sparkling banter about development issues. Thanks to the producers for the opportunity!