Prospect: A Year in the Park

A bull in Brooklyn

The chopper hovering over the house was deafening. Okay, four choppers. What violent offender had NYPD so focused on the Parade Grounds?

A sprint across the street put me squarely in the middle of an unfolding chase worthy of a white Bronco--but this was a brown cow. Or bull, actually. A rogue bovine, presumably an escapee from a slaughterhouse truck, was loping around one of the soccer fields before a growing crowd. 

 

 

 

 

An armada of police and emergency vehicles was converging on the scene. We were cleared from the field, then told, repeatedly, to move across the street. The local news crews wouldn't budge--it's not every day you see a bull on the loose in Flatbush. "You wanna get hit with a tranquilizer dart?" bawled a cop. (No, actually, I thought, stepping back a bit.) "ACROSS THE STREET, people! Am I speakin' CHINESE?"

 

 

 

 

 

Three guys armed with dart guns and a rifle circled the wary beast, and finally a report issued. "Shit, missed it," said a local news cameraman as he struggled to set up his tripod. A soft "whoa!" escaped the crowd.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The bull was finally penned in behind some benches, where his energy barely ebbed. "Yo, cut that fence and free my homie!" yelled a guy in a do-rag. Now the bull's tongue lolled; he sank to his knees, then rallied and tried to crash over the fence. "That's right, don't give up!" said a woman. "You see the strength!"

From further back in the crowd, an activist voice roared frantically: "We have a rescue vehicle from an animal sanctuary 10 minutes away!" "Yeah, don't kill it!" others chimed in.

A lasso was produced, and Number 7741, as his yellow tag proclaimed him, was led stumbling into an NYPD horse trailer. I suspect he was en route to a Kosher slaughterhouse, given the proprietary concern with which a pair of Orthodox guys were conferring with the police brass on scene. An early report from a local blog suggests that poor 7741 will indeed make it to a farm animal sanctuary, a happy fate that has awaited several of our high-profile escapees.

I hope so. While no vegetarian, I confess I winced upon coming home and seeing the "humanely raised" Whole Foods hamburger meat defrosting on my counter.

I saw the strength.

This is NOT the first rodeo, as it were, on the Parade Grounds; read here about the now-forgotten night when the "Cat's Meow" club on Coney Island Avenue burned down, a stable caught fire, and 135 horses stampeded across this very ground!

A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?

No, actually, I wouldn't*. Even human foragers don't want to munch English ivy, poison ivy, goutweed, and other invasive plants that have run riot in now-sunny areas of Prospect Park after hundreds of trees fell victim to Superstorm Sandy.

But goats? They'll be happy to help. The park has hired a gang of experienced weed-whackers from green-goats.com, the brainchild of former dairy goat farmers Ann and Larry Cihanek. Their team of power-mowers has already gone to work in Liberty State Park and Fort Wadsworth, Staten Island, among other urban sites; this, however, is the first time that goats have come to the rescue in Brooklyn. And predictably, the media went mad.

 

 

At a press conference yesterday, park officials introduced members of the press to the eight goats who will work, in three teams, in fenced enclosures along the park's steeply hilly and overgrown eastern edge, as part of a multi-year woodlands restoration program.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In small groups, journos were permitted into the enclosure, where they giggled and scrambled and generally fell victim to the curious charm that has made goats the current darlings of Instagram.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not all members of the team were on message. One snoozed obliviously before the Opening Remarks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This guy, named Raptor, was more interested in nibbling bark than weeds. (For this reason, some young trees will get goat-guards.) Raptor is a breed called the La Mancha, bred for almost non-existent outer ears. This collegue more than made up for it with extravagantly lengthy ones.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photographers called out pleadingly to the goats in paparazzi fashion, but while some had perfected "Blue Steel" and even "Magnum," others shrugged off the attention with goatish aplomb.

    

Few visitors petted the goats, although we were not forbidden to do so, perhaps because we were warned they might have rubbed their hairy flanks on poison ivy. Undeterred, I bonded with a perfectly charming goat named Skittles. I am a goat-whisperer! (Hint: If they are scratching their backs with their horns, scratch that spot for them.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Needles to say, this being Brooklyn, concerns were voiced over the goats winding up as someone's dinner. Mr. Cihanek said he wasn't worried; the goats, he recounted, tend to bring out the protective best in people. The few who have escaped their enclosures have been rounded up and returned, often by folks from cultures fond of their culinary potential. Let's face it: People love these creatures, and not just because their four stomachs can handle 25% of their body weight in vegetation every day. The goats will remain in the park, says the Alliance, "until their work is done."

The woodlands restoration, funded by post-Sandy grant money from the National Parks Service via New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, goes beyond goats. According to the Prospect Park Alliance, historic preservation work will happen sometime in the future in the (sadly neglected) Vale of Cashmere (whose leaky pond, right, is now a mucky swamp) and also atop Lookout Hill, whose trees were decimated by Sandy.

In the meantime, there are goats!

Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey

A kiddley divey too, Wooden shoe!"

Spring Park News: Goats and crafts and GOATS?!

Stuff happenin' in Prospect Park this spring: The "minds behind Smorgasborg and Brooklyn Flea," those uber-drivers of all things hipster and gentrified, are bringing a crafts market ("curated," of course) to Grand Army Plaza, according to the Prospect Park Alliance: "Beginning Sunday, May 8, and continuing every Sunday through October, Grand Army Plaza will host a variety of local artisans, makers and designers." Hey, don't overlook the delightful little free-range Saturday artisans' market that has spontaneously generated near the Greenmarket, which I profiled here (the faces and offerings have changed but there are always a few nice booths worth looking at). 

 

Photo: Julie Larsen-Maher/Prospect Park Alliance

And then...there are going to be goats.

Yes, goats. Again, the Alliance:

"Throughout the Park, storms like Hurricane Sandy have felled or damaged over 500 trees, enabling invasive plants to thrive and further harm the natural ecosystem. In the Park's Northeast Perimeter, where over 50 trees were damaged or destroyed, goats will be working alongside Prospect Park Alliance staff to restore the woodlands. The goats will eat these invasive weeds so that the Alliance can plant new native trees and plants next spring to beautify the landscape and bolster natural habitat for birds, and ensure the Park is more resilient against future storms."

Photo: GreenGoats.com

According to this account in today's New York Times, the eight goats (from goat-deployment experts Green Goats have been hired by the Alliance for the season for $15,000 to feast away on pesky vegetation like poison ivy, which they relish, in the Vale of Cashmere. (Will that make them Cashmere goats? Just a little goat-herding humor there.) That per-goat salary is more than my honor student is likely to make on a summer job; maybe I should teach her to munch invasive plants.

No one seems to have addressed the potential peril to urban goats, even in an "enclosure"; I fear for their misuse for meat or even intimate companionship in this notoriously secluded locale. (They have done their weed-whacking thing in Liberty State Park, but this appears to be their Brooklyn debut.) The park, however, does have a robust history of ruminants, including the Long Meadow's herd of sheep (said to have had an excess of Brooklyn attitude). I wish our Brooklyn goats much luck, hope to meet them at a wool-centric "Bleat and Greet" event on May 22, and look forward to bringing you more news of their progress against botanical entropy.

All kidding aside, these Green Goat folks, from the Rhinebeck/Red Hook area, are tough and tender-hearted innovators, whose herd was tragically lost in a barn fire last year; I'm happy to know Brooklyn will be a part of their resurgence:

Desire lines

 

That's what they call those shortcut paths beaten into parkland by human feet seeking the quickest route from A to B. There used to be only one way to enter the Long Meadow directly from the crest of the path from Grand Army Plaza: a desire line worn into the slope. But the park must've smartened up, because this log-girded walkway now welcomes visitors onto the vast expanse of grass. I took this shot a few weeks ago on a balmy December day, just after we bought our Christmas wreath at the Greenmarket; who could have guessed that the balminess would last through Christmas and beyond?

 

As their parents talked in boring adult fashion, these little guys found great sport in harvesting and rearranging bark chips on the log railing. In this year that saw an ugly high-rise condo pierce "my" side of the Prospect Park treeline, the Long Meadow maintains its air of secluded mystery, opening up like a miracle as you enter from the traffic and stress of Flatbush Avenue. The Long Meadow is long enough to be shrouded in mist at one end on a foggy morning, long enough to walk and feel as if you've really discovered something, long enough to clear your brain. Here's to a coming year of joy and discovery, of peace and health to all my friends and folks in Brooklyn and beyond. May your feet beat a shortcut to your dreams.

 

 

Who ya gonna call? Not these louts.

A local blog, Park Slope Stoop, reports on a new activity for the bored, boozy young: a "Brooklyn Paranormal Society" whose waggish stated mission is "finding ghosts while inebriated." Their recent eveing in Prospect Park apparently attracted a big crowd of Bluto-meets-Venkman wanna-bes, who headed off with some paraphernalia and a "psychic" to laff it up. Here's a shot of the merry-makers on a previous trip to Fort Greene Park last month.

 

Not to go all Sam the Eagle here, but behind these tippling ignorami is the Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument, which marks the site of a crypt containing just some of the mortal remains of more than 11,500 patriots who died hideously of overcrowding, starvation, and disease after the Battle of Brooklyn.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My husband is a big fan of "ghost tours," a staple of cute historic towns; I find them hokey and tedious, occasionally brightened by a talented out-of-work actor. Either way, they're a harmless diversion; I've even thought of leading one myself, to recount some of the haunting tales of the park's lost souls as I recounted here. But am I alone in finding the jokey pretext-for-drinking thing here a bit more off-putting? On their Prospect Park ramble, the tour-goers gamboled at the sites of five modern-day murders, some quite fresh in memory. I'm sure the victims' families would be thrilled to know their loved ones live on as post-frat fun fodder. Let's acknowledge them here with respect, so that their deaths in our beautiful park, this month of the dead, may be marked by something other than snickering and getting loaded:

Patricia Shea, a 40-year-old physician's assistant from Rockaway, found strangled in the park in 1982.

 

 

 

Allyn Winslow, a 42-year-old drama teacher from Brooklyn, shot to death while resisting a group of teen-agers trying to steal his bicycle on Quaker Hill in June, 1993

 

 

 

 

William Oliver, 61, a "peaceful soul" and avid walker stabbed to death while walking in the Vale of Cashmere in April, 2006

 

 

 

 

Mohammad Afzaf (photo unavailable), 41, reportedly suffering from mental illness and possibly homeless, beaten and left for dead in a wooded area near a jogging path in July, 2008

 

 

Julio Locarno, 23, shot near the Parade Grounds in 2011 while himself facing a homicide charge

 

 

Of course, this douchebaggery has drawn a little burst of media coverage, and the next outing--to Green-Wood Cemetery--will undoubtedly be a hit. (The trip, not listed on Green-Wood's official events calendar, promises, "We’ll stroll through the cemetery, visiting points of interest, while swiggin’, gigglin’ and taking pictures...pack a flask." Perhaps the cemetery's caretakers could follow the gang with a portable urinal.) Count me out.  

All things worthwhile must end as gifts

That, anyway, is what Isamu Noguchi said late in life. "What other reason is there for art?"*

The Brooklyn Botanic Garden's gift to us this fall is an installation of the sculptor's works on loan from The Noguchi Museum in Long Island City. A few days ago, on my birthday, we wandered the BBG's Japanese Garden--itself a work of living art--to see some of them. A drenching rain had broken weeks of drought; the sky was still turbulent-looking, and everything smelled faintly of something like jasmine. Downed leaves floated across the pond.

I confess that Noguchi's strange, simple shapes leave me more puzzled than dazzled, but I enjoyed seeing them, with some knowledgeable commentary by the Garden's own guides. This one, "Strange Bird," dwells near the "turtle island" and is a sly reference to a pair of bronze cranes that have been in and out (currently out) of the Japanese Garden over the years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Daughter was reminded of the Dodo in Looney Tunes' "WackyLand" (itself a goof on modern art). Apparently Noguchi, a Japanese-American who died in 1988 at age 84, considered himself rather a strange bird, a global citizen (and longtime New Yorker) yet one who never fully resolved his identity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The sculptures are right at home in the Japanese Garden, with its design magic of "hide and reveal" and its illusion of deep vistas and distances. You spy "Mountains Forming" (1982-3) from afar, tucked out of reach above the waterfalls.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once you climb up to the Shinto shrine--itself a hidden treasure--you see it more clearly, but it's still tantalizingly out of reach. It also looks completely different--"another layer in this imaginary mountain landscape," says curator Dakin Hart of the Noguchi Museum.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My problem with outdoor sculpture in natural surroundings is that the exquisite forms of trees, leaves, and clouds, and even raindrops, tend to overwhelm the human creations. But then, Noguchi did once say that everything is sculpture. Except, perhaps, the apartment buildings that rise beyond the garden's perimeter.

 

 

 

*From Listening to Stone: The Art and Life of Isamu Noguchi, by Hayden Herrera, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015.

Porky Plateau

There was no breeze to be found on Breeze Hill when we headed up for the opening day of Smorgasburg, the oh-so-Brooklyn phenomenon of all things curated and artisanal, in Prospect Park. We had despaired of the fair's recent incarnation in the new Brooklyn Bridge Park, which we renamed "The Sun's Anvil"; it doesn't feel right to "fork over" big bucks for fancy chow and then have to eat it squatting on a dusty curb or juggle it on the hoof. With the vast acres of Prospect Park, we figured, the hungry hordes would fan out--bringing both the possibility of new audiences discovering its treasures, and pigs turning it into their personal trough.

Breeze Hill is a somewhat neglected plateau overlooking the gorgeously restored Music Grove area; in my few visits there, it has been home to dumpsters and such. It's somewhat isolated and not readily seen from outside, but the hip folks found it, following their noses to the smell of barbecue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bam! We'd barely made landfall when we encountered two manbuns and a quilt with fey young ladies weaving $10 flower crowns (an activity we deemed "very Zooey").

 

 

 

The sun beat down mercilessly, but the crowds were undeterred. Biggest draw seemed to be the "Ramen Burger." I counted 32 people waiting patiently to obtain this delicacy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The vendors are a perfect kaleidoscope of all current "new Brooklyn" obsessions: irony, meat, no meat, etc.

   

"Lawless Jerky" came in mango and curry flavors, but I opted for the classic. I am ashamed to say I paid $6 for a bag of it, but I had to reward the guy for listening to me tell him how I had a granduncle named "Lawless Loadsman." It is awfully good, but not that much better than the gas-station stuff.

As for the garbage situation, it was spiralling out of control at several locations...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...but a representative from the Prospect Park Alliance assured me that the Smorg team had been sworn to a total clean-up by day's end. (I haven't gotten over there since to verify.) These guys were trying their damnedest to keep up with the tide of cups, troughs, and plates cast off by the gourmets.

 

 

 

 

As for Where to Eat Your Stuff, the answer yesterday was: Right there. In a park of more than 500 acres, it seemed the entire crowd had jammed themselves under 3 big trees in the center of the vendors, like a herd of cows in a blazing pasture. "I guess they want to be where the action is," Spouse observed.

 

But if they'd only skibbled down a steep, uneven granite stairs to the Music Grove, they could have basked on a bench in the shade, surrounded by busts of great composers (and now, alas, overlooked by a bloating condo at the park's eastern edge).

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few folks, like these quaint corn-nibblers, did take up the option, but the glade was surprisingly empty. Park newcomers may not even realize it's there (although the Alliance was earnestly providing maps at the chief Smorg entry point).

That's a shame...because anyone who wanted to walk off their roast-pork-and-pepper sandwich (yes, I indulged in half of one from Federoff's Roast Pork) could have been here in under five minutes.

And if they'd kept going five more minutes, they could have paddled off those porky calories on the lake itself, on the fleet of new boats in bathtub-toy blue.

And if they'd walked all the way to the Grecian Shelter, as we did on our way home, they might even have snared an "inbitation" to Serenity's spooky birthday party. We declined, and headed home to digest and rehydrate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Borgasmorg on Breeze Hill!

The juggernaut that is Smorgasburg is coming to Prospect Park...to Breeze Hill, specifically. The quintessential new-Brooklyn bazaar of all things artisanal, cured, smoked, pickled, and curated will abandon its Sunday digs at the Brooklyn Bridge Park starting August 30; details here.

The family and I have a longstanding love/hate relationship with Smorg; we used to enjoy trying a few tasty noms when it was encamped in the old Tobacco Warehouse, followed by a ride on Jane's Carousel; there, at least, one could find a bit of shade while nibbling a $7 mini-slider or a $10 teeny sampler of dumplings. We'd each get one nibbly thing and split it three ways; if we really went to town, we could have easily spent $50 on lunch. Then we tried again at Brooklyn Bridge Park, but quickly retreated after trying and failing to find one of the rare seats with an umbrella. The site was "the sun's anvil" as they said in Lawrence of Arabia, and something doesn't sit right with me about paying a fortune for tasty noms and then having to eat them on the hoof, juggling paper plates and sweating bullets, or while squatting on a dusty curb. And the crowds!...like everything else in the New Brooklyn, a victim of its own success after the first blast of viral publicity.

Breeze Hill has been historically underused, despite its lovely location...I recall making my way up there a few years ago to find some gravel and sand heaps and a few dumpsters. I just hope it doesn't mean that the ways in and out will become a scorched earth of pounded-down turf and dumped containers. (Remember the bacon-fueled monstrosity that was Googa-Mooga?) And it sure would be nice if there were a few stands that served something cheap but tasty--Festivus for the Rest of Us. But that wouldn't be the New Brooklyn, would it?

Here are some ideas for the 100-plus vendors:

 

 

Slipped away

After a cool, rainy Fourth of July, Prospect Park burst into summer glory on Saturday and Sunday.

We went over to Lakeside on Sunday, 24 hours after a tragedy darkened Saturday's festivities.

 

The lake was peaceful, its surface rippled only by a family of swans. But the previous day, police divers dragged its murk for hours searching for a 2-year-old girl who wandered away from a barbecue near the Boathouse with her 4-year-old cousin, according to the New York Times and other outlets. Her father, an Uzbekistani cabbie, and her mother were tending to kabobs; in the cheerful picnic chaos, the unthinkable happened. I remember my own little girl somehow vanishing from my side once in a Babies-R-Us; I could swear I never let go of her hand, yet she managed to wander off into a playset while I got halfway across the floor before noticing she was gone.

Choppers, canine teams, and a host of concerned strangers combed the park after the boy was found alone, covered with the algae blooming on the lake's surface.

We once walked by the shore with a little girl who cheerfully strode out onto the dense mats of duckweed, thinking it was solid turf, and we laughed as she sunk in up to her shins. Was that what happened to these little ones, I wonder?

 

Little Rushona Kurbonova was lifted out by police divers about 6 p.m. After hours of anguished waiting, her distraught mother collapsed and was taken off on a stretcher. Her family will reportedly return to Uzbekistan to bury her. My thoughts and prayers are with them in this unimaginable grief, and also with these good men of the NYPD who experienced the terrible sorrow of recovering her.

Paul Martinka, New York Post

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In this short Life that only lasts an hour

How much - how little - is within our power

 

--Emily Dickinson

 

 

 

 

 

 

A 'windfall' for Lakeside?

Photo: Prospect Park Alliance

On the day the first Brooklyn snowflake falls, good news (I think). In what is being reported as a departing gesture of largesse, Mayor-for-a-bit-longer Bloomberg has apparently decided to have the city run the gigantic new Lakeside rink project for a year for free.

 

The implications of the financial arrangements (still uncommented-upon by some key players) are utterly beyond me; this is the sort of thing I had nightmares about covering if I ever became a metro or financial reporter (and lo, I am neither). Gothamist calls it a "wildly generous sweetheart deal," which sounds good to me as a Prospect Park lover/user (and sounds overdue, given our measly support from both the city and the private sector when compared to Central Park). Geoffrey Croft of the sharp-eyed advocacy blog A Walk in the Park (an organ of NYC Park Advocates) is less sanguine. He reports (in what appears to be the original source for this news):

The Alliance will be required to pay the City of New York nothing for the first year and just $100,000 beginning the second year of a 17-year deal  according to the license agreement obtained by NYC Park Advocates. The annual fee to the city increases by just a thousand dollars a year over the life of the deal culminating with $116,097 in the year 2030. The lucrative license agreement -potentially worth tens of millions of dollars over the life of the agreement - seeks to reward the public/private partnership handsomely for raising $19 million of the Lakeside Center's $74 million dollar budget, while also requiring the group to continue to raise private money for the general operation of the public park which they have done for years.

Croft takes the Parks Department and the Alliance to task for not releasing projected revenue figures for the rink; he accuses the city of trying to abdicate its responsibilities through public/private agreements that he calls "pay-to-play funding schemes" that "hand over enormous power and decision-making authority to..groups with little transparency and accountability on what is supposed to be public land."  I have a hard time picturing the Prospect Park Alliance as a secretive or nefarious presence.  Croft really loses me with this claim:

Influential park groups are increasing relying on revenues generated from parkland being diverted from the City's general fund into their coffers.

Sorry, I don't get it; how is that a bad thing? Shouldn't a reasonable amount of the revenue from Lakeside go back into historically underfunded Prospect Park? Or is the agenda here to spread the moolah evenly throughout all parks--especially to some of the even more historically underfunded parks, like poor wretched Flushing-Meadows Corona Park? (Prospect Park may play Cinderella to Central Park, but we're the envy of many obscure outer-borough green spaces with no established advocacy group.) To borrow some current agency jargon, it all seems to be a matter of "silos" and "buckets."  I will invite Mr. Croft to illuminate his objections further, and welcome others to explain the ramifications of this in language suitable to a six-year-old clutching her allowance.

Speaking of journalistic acumen, even the New York Post covered this story, and managed to work in "animal sacrificing rituals," God bless them.  See, I coulda been a metro reporter after all.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

LAKESIDE SKATING PRICES REVEALED

Okay, everyone including me "buried the lede": The NYC Park Advocates report, citing the city's license agreement they have "obtained," claims that ice rink admissions will be $5 on weekdays and $8 on weekends and holidays, with skate rental $5 at all times. That sounds about what the old rink charged, causing me to breathe a huge sigh of relief that they won't be jacking it up to Rock-Center levels. The minimum public hours of operation for skating have been set for Fridays (3 to 9 pm), Saturdays (10-10) and Sundays (10-6), with another 20 hours a week Monday through Thursday on one or another of the two rinks.