Prospect: A Year in the Park

Ball of confusion

A forest of pale and youthful legs on the march, heading for Day 1 of "The Great GoogaMooga."

The hidden heart of Prospect Park, fenced off and submerged under a sea of the hip and hungry.

Messaging on a melon, part of a wall of fruit near the "UrBarn," an installation (visible in the background) by Pratt students and others to promote farm-to-table-ish, sustainability-ish things.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was, however, mostly about the beer. A line of apocalypse-refugee proportions snaked away from a stand distributing some sort of proof that you were old enough to drink. At my age, I think my face should be my passport.

 

The "line talkers" held a variety of perky signs intended to mollify the line waiters. With music within earshot most of the time, the crowd seemed fairly mellow about it all. Spouse waited almost an hour for fried chicken, but enjoyed "Holy Ghost" during the wait.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On a perfect spring day, the sun's intensity put shady spots at a premium.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was what restaurant critics often call "an attractive young crowd." Many seemed to know one other or to have descended in groups. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the "Hamageddon" section, a heavy metal band tore it up while a whole pig rotated on a spit inside this gigantic porcine idol. You have to give the founders of this feast credit for thinking big.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was fairly painless to score a "Dirty Duck Dog" with lemon-scented sauerkraut from the Craft stand, and a plate of three "fried cheesecake bombs" from a Prospect Heights restaurant called Robert. (Dog, delicious; cheesecake fryballs, kind of like fried ice cream, weirdly compelling.) At all the concessions, the workers were cranking the gourmet chow out frantically; doing this again all day tomorrow would kill me.

By 4 p.m., lots of places were running out of their esoteric specialties. Apparently, this also happened to the folks who forked over $250 for "Extra Mooga" tickets in an ultra-exclusive enclave of foodiness. Our endurance event, at least, was free (well, $12 for two duck dogs and $6 for three cheesecake balls). Altogether, Spouse and I concluded that restaurants had much to recommend them...and that we were probably about 20 years too old to truly appreciate the event. 

 

 

 

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."

Planting time in New Amsterdam

Those are sprouts of rye poking up in the little farm behind the Lefferts Historic House, Prospect Park's transplanted Dutch farmhouse. It is, basically, my dream house. It was built around 1783 a few blocks away (and moved here in 1913). The Lefferts family burned its predecessor to the ground--burned down their own house--in 1776, just before the Battle of Brooklyn, so that the British couldn't get it. And we think we're tough when we sit in a park with a sign and a bongo!

The house and garden are full of simple but immensely appealing interactive stuff for the kids.

 

Farm chores as play...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

... and the timeless appeal of Flatbush's fertile soil.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An early Dutch version of Wii.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I caught a fascinating lecture by food historian Peter G. Rose about early Dutch cooking and foodstuffs. We owe them for pretzels, cookies, and pancakes...the debt can never be repaid. I also bought Ms. Rose's book, Food, Drink and Celebrations of the Hudson Valley Dutch; it is an early pebble in a coming avalance of research for a Top-Secret Flatbush-Related Project.

 

This hearth, built outdoors for demonstrations, wasn't baking up any pretzels today, but it gives an idea of just how gutsy cooks had to be back in the days of old Dutch Vlacke Bos (Flatbush). The builders incorporated a brick from the Lefferts House, probably one made in the nearby kiln or "stone bakery" (steenbakkery) near a clay pit at present-day Rogers Avenue and Lefferts Street. Built to last.

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.

Peaches and pianos

Yes, the peaches were in yesterday at the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket, but I was too busy overbuying them to snap any "peach porn." (My AYITP entry of that title still gets lots of Google hits.) Also in was a rickety decoupaged piano from the "Sing for Hope: Pop-Up Pianos" project, returning to the city's streets again this summer in slightly altered form (and without the participation of Luke Gerram, the British artist who started it).

 

The Grand Army Plaza piano sits in one of those elegant little marble-columned shelters that, upon entry, reveal themselves to be latrines. Undeterred by the Seventies-evoking stench, a dad played (quite well) and sang (enthusiastically) the Beatles' "Michelle" while his family waited stoically.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We did our first Random Picnic, which must involve (a) no planning and (b) stuff we just bought at the Greenmarket. The proliferating food trucks around the market make this way too easy. Our current obsession is coffee (iced today) from the Love Truck, which has steamed milk and a great Sixties soundtrack blasting out.

 

I couldn't resist a $5 high-end grilled cheese sandwich from the 3-day-old "Morris" truck. I wonder why? (And why are so many food-truck guys adorable?) The sandwich was great—molten New York State cheddar on sourdough, with even more "artisanal" options available. The truck is named after his grandpa Morris.

Other options we like include the dumpling truck with faux-Maoist graphics...but we hate the juice truck, with its evil green "Pirate" juice purporting to be healthy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Armed with grilled cheese, peaches and iced coffee, we perched on our favorite hill near the park's entrance and watched the world go by.

 

Mums goeth before a fall

Hope you had a glorious holiday weekend. Mine began, as usual, at the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket, where the cushion mums were stacked in delirious ranks. Autumn-mania-wise, all the dominoes toppled last Saturday. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mums lead to pumpkins. Already, small children are obsessing over the right size, shape and stem morphology. (Note color-spectrum extension via cherry tomato in the background, very nice!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pumpkins lead to Indian corn. Or perhaps, on this Columbus Day weekend, it should be called Original Owners' Corn.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Corn leads to zany gourds. Ah, such infinite wartiness!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I bought a preposterous load of veggies, plus fragrant Concord grapes for my annual grape pie. Speaking of baking, an engaging lady named Jennie Schacht was cooking up a heavenly apple-compote with vanilla ice cream to promote her new book, Farmers' Market Desserts. (It is now officially on my Christmas list.)

What were the favorite sinful recipes of the farmers at our New York greenmarkets? According to Ms. Schacht, most of them insist their fruits are so good, they just eat them plain. Wrong answer.   

 

Hot lips at BBG

Throughout a chilly, drizzly Monday, I longed for the warm sun and scorching flavors of Saturday's Chile Pepper Fiesta at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. It has gotten bigger and hotter since our last visit 2 years ago. The guys from a restaurant called Cabrito got us started with salsas red and green (and wonderful freshly fried chips). Much of what's on the program relates only loosely to the notion of chiles, but these were the real deal. Spouse, of course, had forgotten to bring his Axid.

Vendors doled out lots of spicy concoctions, most created by small-scale and local entrepreneurs. I liked the headgear on this lady making fried Guyanese tidbits to douse with "Guyank" pepper sauce.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snow cones from "People's Pops" came in watermelon-jalapeno and roasted heirloom pepper. "Convention is overrated," said the shaved-ice maestro. We also sucked back tiny cups of rich, chile-infused hot chocolate from Tumbador that was the anti-Swiss Miss. (The chocolate-chile axis was a major theme, as herds of us waited patiently to snap up tidbits.)

 

The beer and food tent featured long lines for beer and middling chile-themed chow, but the wait was easier thanks to "Red Baraat", described as "a masala of Bollywood, brass, and bhangra beats."

 

 

 

 

 

After all that red-hot festivity, these cool blue sage blossoms beckoned near the pond.

Grape glory, pepper paradise

Hurricane? What hurricane?

The Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket starts September with a hallucinogenic colorfest. Time to spend all my disposable income on grapes that look like they escaped from a Renaissance still life.

 

Pathetic Chilean supermarket grapes, I give you the Finger Lakes salute. Make mine Canadace and Himrod.

At the farmstand of Evolutionary Organics, the peppers are out of control.

    

    

Tomorrow, the plaza will be overrun with more hot, wild colors...it's Carnival time!

Pie...and park? Together?

Talk about a few of my favorite things! Don't know how I managed to miss it, but apparently there's a midsummer event called "Pie in the Park," sort of a bake-off for a food-related good cause; this year it takes place on Sunday, August 15. I am obsessed with the park (obviously, given this blog); but a lesser known fact is that I am obsessed with pie. I have, in fact, even developed a personal philosophy called the Pieness of Pie. (Ask me about it sometime; I am working on the Parkness of Park, too.)

Judging from past photos, the gathering seems to skew towards winsome hipsters and pies containing stuff like lavender and goat cheese; my pie baking is more Dave's Mom in style, and the most exotic thing I do is put a touch of orange-flower water on my sliced apples. But I'll give it a shot, as a taster if not a competitor; Prospect Park and pie, perfect together. (The event's organizer is also seeking sponsors for a "Pie in the Park" cookbook; to learn more, go here.)