Prospect: A Year in the Park

Mere veil of cash

A fortnight ago, I managed to get completely lost in Prospect Park on the way to a members-only tour led by the Prospect Park Alliance. Late for our meet-up at Grand Army Plaza, I decided to go straight to the tour's destination, the Vale of Cashmere. It had been ages since I'd ventured into the secluded and neglected gem. 

 

Entering through a fence break on Flatbush Avenue, I stumbled on a mountain of post-Sandy mulch, a maze of ad-hoc dirt-bike jumps, and a lot of trees. I headed confidently towards the Vale...but wound up instead in the Rose Garden (above), another utterly cloistered garden of mystery. It was empty of humans (and its pools empty of water) on a gorgeous Saturday morning. In the silent sunlight, it managed a sort of David-Lynchian touch of verdant menace.

 

 

 

I thought I knew just how to get to the Vale from the Rose Garden, but instead wound up going in circles, then stumbling onto the East Drive. From this familiar vantage point, I spotted something brand-new: the Donald and Barbara Zucker Natural Exploration Area, a brilliant concept wonderfully executed using the copious deadfall from Sandy and the other weather catastrophes of late.

 

 

 

 

It's a perfect spot for city kids to remedy their "nature deficit disorder" and wallow in the unstructured beetle-poking, water-sloshing, log-jumping idylls that kids used to just do in back yards. vacant lots, or countrysides. Historically, it's also right; in the park's early days, this area near Nellie's Lawn was "the Children's Playground."

   

 

And the stream from an enticing water pump runs straight into...the Vale of Cashmere! The Vale's beautiful but deadly isolation is now broken open by a corridor of stroller moms and dads and their frolicking offspring.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And there in the Vale was the tour, led by Justine Heilner, newest member of the park's landscape design team. The reaction of the just-arrived group was one of mingled awe and muted shock...at the weed-choked ruin that should be a glorious Romantic folly with dancing fountains.

 

As we gazed abjectly at the stagnant water, Justine recounted the Vale's history. Its semi-formal design (dating from the 1890s) and even its fanciful name met with the disdain of Frederick Law Olmsted, who championed faux rusticity. Now that the Park's East Side has processed the epic arrival of the Lakeside rink, I wondered, was the Vale next in line for a make-over...and would that mean its demise to make way for another high-profile attraction?

The Vale and Rose Garden are definitely "next" on the agenda, she replied, but "next" means 5 or 10 years before any ribbon-cutting. What that ribbon will adorn is also up for grabs; there are lots of ideas on the table, from renovating the current site to creating a sculpture garden or other new use. 

All of which made me very, very jealous of the Zuckermans, whose vision for the play area could be realized with the wave of a checkbook. How I would love to bankroll the revival of the Vale! Even without Olmsted's blessing, this secret garden in its deep, leafy glacial kettle is one of the most enchanted spaces in the city. It needs "stakeholders," the current buzzword for "people who love and care for something." The current stakeholders are birders, a few dog walkers, and the furtive men who come alone and leave in pairs, hardly the robust constituency to raise dollars for sparkling fountains to dance again. It also needs sensitive oversight to maintain the just-right balance between "peacefully isolated" and "slightly scary." Even without Zuckerdollars, I can at least offer some common-sense ideas that could be done right now.

HOW TO REVIVE THE VALE OF CASHMERE AND ROSE GARDEN RIGHT NOW

* SIGNAGE! During my "lost" ramble, I asked half-a-dozen passers-by where the Vale of Cashmere was. They all looked at me as if I were nuts.

* Cool events! Wrong spot for food trucks (they're doing that at Grand Army Plaza). But how about trendy farm-to-table dinners with all those curated, artisanal Brooklyn gourmets on board? (The Vale is not, by the way, the site of the upcoming "Pop-Up Dinner," I have heard, but it would be perfect for intimate gatherings.) How about art and craft shows? Garden shows? Small-scale theatre under the stars? Folk-music coffeehouse en pleine air?

* Regular visitors! An urban or naturalist-themed book club. Photography, birding, and foraging meet-ups and workshops. Tai chi, dawn or sunset yoga.

* Market the spot aggressively for photo and movie shoots.

* Hold a photography contest for the Vale in Four Seasons.

* For the pools in the Rose Garden (which have never worked right), an open call for art installations that would put them to creative use.

* Finally, spread the word that the East Side Revival—a regular corps of dedicated volunteers who work each Monday from 10 to 2 to beautify the area—is the hottest singles opportunity for freelancers in Brooklyn, a magnet for sensitive, hunky guys and ravishing, spunky gals! (It probably is!)

Add your ideas in the comments, please!

 

The Vale in 1903

 

Distracted but never forgotten

Shaking off the torpor of this endless winter, I tagged along with Kevin Walsh yesterday on his 77th "Forgotten New York" walking tour; when Kevin does my park, I've got to be there to kibbitz and learn something new. We began at Grand Army Plaza, where the cherry blossoms frame the Quadriga if you look just right. I thought "Quadriga" meant something about the shape of the monument; Kevin said it's the type of chariot. That's why he wrote the book.

We emerged from the Meadowport Arch to the vast expanse of the Long Meadow--the longest unbroken greensward in New York City, which I had not known. (Kevin, however, learned from me that the official shepherd of the meadow's Victorian-era flock of sheep was criticized in the New York Times for drunkenness.)

Kevin's tours are full of fascinating facts; I get distracted easily, though, by the movie montages that swirl past:

Some "Inside Llewyn Davis" by the meadow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A bit of "Gleaming the Cube" near the Marylanders' monument.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And in the Nethermead, a Waldorf school outing "Far from the Madding Crowd."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We visited the Third Street panthers...but I was drawn in by the heartbreaking memorial to this youngster killed by a car.

 

Further down Prospect Park West, at the Ninth Street entrance, we admired Lafayette, but I was intrigued by the fine polish on his sword, courtesy of untold numbers of fingertips.

 

We marveled at the Camperdown Elm...while I was thrilled to capture a Common Yellowthroat among its contorted branches.

 

Through the fence, we peered into the hidden Quaker Cemetery, where Montgomery Clift is buried...and I puzzled over some ambitious stick structures just outside its confines. (No one seemed to be in residence, neither earthwork artist nor homeless person nor beaver.)

 

Many thanks to our intrepid tour guide, who generously shares his encyclopedic knowledge of New York's mysteries with his fortunate Forgotten Fans. 

One year since the mayhem

 

Hard to believe a year has passed since Sandy swept away so many lives, and homes, and places of gathering. And trees. The park was butchered, on a scale that dwarfed its previous recent ravages by Hurricane Irene. Days later, it snowed, and more fell.

In a world of instant gratification, it was a harsh reminder that trees can't be replaced with CGI. The "prospect" of Prospect Park is changed, in some places, for the rest of my lifetime. (Not for nothing that Tolkien had his Ents, the wise walking trees, distinguished by their agonizing deliberation in thought, speech, and action.) From Prospect Park Southwest, for example, where the tree above was impaled, you can now see clear from one side to the other; before, there was a mysterious wall of branches and trunks that shielded the park's heart even in winter.

The park's staff have done an incomprehensible amount of work to clear deadfall, prune damaged but salvageable trees, and plant new ones. The work is still ongoing, every day. Not a bad day to make a donation to, or join as a member of, the Prospect Park Alliance in memory of the lost Ents. 

The big time

It's been awhile--okay, since July--since I updated P:AYITP; I hate blogger apologies (with their presumption that a yearning world has been on edge since one's last entry), but blame gardening for eating up my outdoor time and Facebook for draining off the yen to share.

This past week, however, it was just about irresistible to get back in the game; our once-derelict park is, it seems, like much of Brooklyn, "hot." On a roll. Climbing the A-list.

First up, there's a book out, Prospect Park: Olmsted and Vaux's Brooklyn Masterpiece, by David P. Colley and Elizabeth Keegin Colley. It's a big, handsome, official-looking volume--one I want to own; I'm looking forward to reading it and telling you about it soon. The author/photographer team (and park queen mother Tupper Thomas) talked about it last month at the Brooklyn Public Library, and they clearly love and respect their subject.

A contentious topic that bubbled up in the Q&A after that polite event was Lakeside, the stupendously expensive and expansive new skating rink and shore restoration project. When the rest of the park still makes a poor mouth for maintenance and things like education programs at the Audubon Center, it's inevitable that some of us wonder about priorities. The New York Times, however, does not wonder; they just ran a "Critic's Notebook" paean to the mammoth project as it lumbers toward completion. (If you follow this blog, you got a preview a year ago, here.)

 

The Times was dazzled by the trendy architecture, comparing its bold design to that of the Rockefeller Center rink, and sneered at the "musty lockers and dubious hot dogs" of the ugly old Robert Moses-era rink, now demolished. Musty and dubious they were, but one thing worries me about this new eco-friendly skating paradise landing in my end of the park: What will it cost to get in? One forgave the old rink its miserable inadequacies because it was cheap; on days off from school, big families would pile up to enter. Will the gorgeous new showpiece charge Rock-Center-level admission? That'll keep out the riff-raff, I guess. Like me. The opening is now slated for December, so we'll find out soon.

And speaking of exclusive, this Friday promises a bizarre new chapter in the park's history: its first complete closure for the arrival of a (presumably airborne) U.S. president. "Prospect Park will be closed on Friday, October 25 from 12 – 6pm due to security associated with the President's visit.  We apologize for any inconvenience." says the announcement. (POTUS is visiting a nearby high school in Crown Heights.) Even in Barak-loving Brooklyn, there's been a frisson of resentment online. Just call it ObamaMooga.

Supermoon over 'Tropfest'

I'd never heard of "Tropfest," a festival of short films that began years ago in Australia, but tonight it came to the Nethermead under a gorgeous moonrise.

Parts of the Nethermead are still recovering from Googa-Mooga-induced wounds. Mercifully, this was a less hyped and frantically overcrowded event than Googa, and had more compelling content than flights of bacon (although a line of food trucks served up trendy chow; I idiotically waited for 45 minutes for a burger with, yes, bacon).

 

 

 

 

 

 

There were bands and DJs from 3 p.m. on and a great big screen, although naturally many folks found their smaller ones more compelling.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Liev Schrieber (whom I've seen only as the angry older brother in "Defiance") was a gracious and engaging host. He and his gal Naomi Watts were mobbed by pro/am camera-wielders. Malcolm Gladwell and Leonard Lopate were present as judges.

 

We could stay for only the first half of the program, enjoyed all the films we saw, but loved a super-brief, spooky one called "Capture" about an encounter with a strange camera on the Brooklyn Bridge. (Each film had to include some manner of "bridge" motif.)  It did not capture one of the top prizes, however.

 

 

 

This dog captured a chunk of food right out of the hands of an unsuspecting group of picnickers who had been heedlessly chatting in Chinese. He managed to swallow it before his owner, a beleaguered dad with an infant and preschooler in tow, could pry it out of his mouth. I love it when a dog wins once in a while.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As we left, the supermoon competed with the jumbo screen, the food trucks were still dishing out $7 hot dogs, and a happy crowd was sprawled on the grass savoring the second night of summer.

 

And flights of bacon sing thee to thy rest

Once was enough for me after last year's "Great Googa-Mooga," but Spouse was keen to go, since we had scored two of the coveted free tickets as members of the Prospect Park Alliance. And I was lured by the well-publicized "flights of bacon" in the foodie festival's central "Hamageddon" area, devoted to all things trendy and porcine.

 

 

 

Under a light rain, mostly young folks streamed onto the Nethermead, unrecognizable under its carapace of booths, stages, Port-o-Sans, fencing, and security apparatus. The mighty metal pig was back, although not a functional cooking device this year (the smoke was for show). Crowds were lighter than last year thanks to the weather--plenty, but not a crushing mob. Tent space and seating were scarce; some took shelter under the snout of the Pork Idol.

















I headed straight for the Flights of Bacon. They consisted of 7 li'l pieces from various Exquisitely Artisanal Purveyors, the sort of folks who probably grow and hew their own apple trees for smoking wood and make their own brine from reclaimed Coney Island waves. The price? $12.

 

That put me to flight.

 

 

 

 

 

However, those who did indulge attracted bacon groupies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For a mere $10 I got a tasty little pulled-pork sandwich on a bun, but it was no better than supermarket Lloyd's. Spouse got 2 petite Dumont Burgers, which looked like hockey pucks but were super-rare and exquisite; under field conditions, one could almost convince oneself they were worth $5 each.

Here were two alliances I didn't want to try.

Everybody says they're great, but I'm not tempted...at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here we see some sort of tipping point, Brooklyn-wise. Into self-parody, or beyond it?

(The dark-grey knobs are presumably the snails. "Snail and Rabbit" are two words that should only go together in a children's book about two little friends who learn that varying speeds of locomotion needn't preclude a lovely friendship.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And speaking of self-parody, these two guys from Central Casting actually seem to be excited about their only-sort-of-ironic Googa-Mooga Trading Cards. Perhaps they were saying, "I'll trade you a Daniel Boulud for a Dale Talde!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

We left after licking out a tiny $5 cup of Blue Marble ice cream; the rain and beer were producing a damp, subdued Woodstock vibe among the celebrants, who had begun to huddle under blankets with their maple cotton candy and grilled oysters. My highlight was meeting some easygoing non-Brooklynites: Charlie Smith (right), the sculptor who fabricated the Mighty Metal Pig (and various things for Burning Man and the like), and his girlfriend Sweet Stuff and his buddy Hot Stuff (or so their labels said). They're from Atlanta and seemed to be enjoying the show; for the maker of an idol to Ironic Decadence, Charlie was a nice, down-to-earth guy.

UPDATE: RAIN AND WRATH

Sunday's dismal rain has prompted the cancellation of Day Two of the GGM. Meanwhile, the ongoing, acrimonious blogosphere debate over the "pimping out" of the park to the GGM promoters--including accusations of de-facto racial exclusivity and the discomfiture of green herons--has cropped up in the New York Times here. I can't vouch for the numbers being thrown around (the park's alleged $75,000 take from the event is decried as paltry), but the broader debate over the use of parks is heating up.

Quiet riot

I confess: I've been avoiding Sakura Matsuri, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's cherry-blossom festival, for awhile now. In the rare years (like this one) when the blossoms manage to coincide with the event, it's mobbed; when the blossoms are too early or already underfoot, it's still mobbed. The point of "hanami" ("flower viewing") is admittedly to party; apparently there's a Japanese saying, "Dumplings rather than flowers." But the last time we went, we even waited 40 minutes for a Bento box.

But I won't miss the annual "running of the perennials": the BBG Members' Preview of their annual plant sale. At 4:30 sharp, garden loons descend with rusty red Radio Flyer wagons on the Cherry Esplanade, which was still madly blossoming yesterday after last weekend's orgy of hanamania. Young children did backflips on the tender grass; older ones, like mine, were pressganged into helping plant-crazed parents haul their loot.

 

 

 

I got heucheras, which thrive in my shady, arid problem patches, and 3 different kinds of cherry tomatos, because the big beefy heirlooms keep dying tragically in midseason of unnamed diseases. There's also a rose geranium and an alpine strawberry in there, an Asian eggplant and a "Labrador violet," which is dainty and not at all like a goofy drooling dog.

 

 

 

 

 

It was just about the quintessence of spring, this last day of April—cool breeze, fresh green, and overhead the lavish blooms that my college-bound daughter described at age 5 as looking like "the trees were wearing fluffy pink sweaters." And now, to kill those plants.

All photographs Brenda L. Becker

'Visual medicine'

I can't wait to see the exhibit now at the Brooklyn Public Library's Central Library (the big one at Grand Army Plaza, Reflections by Jamel Shabazz.  According to the BPL, 

"A prolific photographer of street culture in New York City, Jamel Shabazz has been documenting this borough since the 1980s.  His work is showcased throughout the Central Library, and in the Brooklyn Collection we're displaying a selection of images donated by Mr. Shabazz."

I was vaguely familiar with Shabazz's work (he did a series on hip-hop's more innocent early days titled, memorably, "Before Crack"), but didn't know he was a fellow Prospect Park obsessive. The BPL has put up a truly wonderful 5-minute slide show with Shabazz in voice-over telling us what the park has meant to him over the years—an enchanted preserve for a boy from the projects, where he wooed girlfriends, refreshed his soul, trained his body, mentored youth, and blossomed as a chronicler of people-in-the-city. He calls the park "the path of life—you meet people in search of peace. Whatever people I was suppoed to meet, I would meet."

And Shabazz sums up the whole reason I started this blog almost 5 years ago (is that possible?):

"It's great visual medicine for me."

Come to think of it, I haven't been taking my medicine regularly. Maybe a recommitment to my daily visit is just what the doctor should order.

Always some drama or other

This guest park entry will run in reverse chronological order.

Scene III: A perfect summer evening at the Old Stone House, its Revolutionary War museum serving as a staging area. An attentive Park Slope crowd turns out at twilight for an inventive and affecting original production of "The Island of Dr. Moreau" by the Piper Theater Company.  (You can catch it again next Saturday July 21 at 8 p.m. at the same venue; and it's free.)

 

 

 

 

 

Honestly, no one in the world works harder and more joyfully than young, ambitious actors. These ones threw themselves into their bare-bones show with brio on a sultry night, competing with an urban cacaphony of sirens, airplanes, and car horns. At one point, when a character onstage screamed in horror, some wag down on Fourth Avenue screamed back. The cast was unfazed.

 

 

 

 

 

Scene II: That afternoon. A few toddlers clamber over the empty stage in front of the reconstructed 1699 Dutch farmhouse. Today, it sits tucked between a lovely new playground and a swath of artificial turf for ball games, overlooking a Staples and a few blocks from the Gowanus Canal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scene I: August 27, 1776. The house is caught up in the bloodiest encounter of the Battle of Brooklyn, the American Revolution's first pitched battle. Rifle fire and the screams of fallen men rend the air around the marshy farmland, as vastly outnumbered Americans struggle to hold off British and Hessian troops.

 

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, most of Washington's army retreats from around the area of today's Prospect Park to evacuate across the East River later that night, regroup, and fight on for freedom. The defense of the Stone House meant capture or death for hundreds of patriots. But the legendary valor of William Alexander (known until that day as a vain and gouty inebriate who insisted upon the doubtful title of Lord Stirling) and the elite fighting men of William Smallwood's Marylanders regiment, may well have kept the Revolution from ending that muggy and terrifying day.

 

Everything, illuminated

An ideal summer's evening for the return of the New York Philharmonic to Prospect Park. Tchaikovsky floated over a happy crowd; we got there just as things started, and camped near the periphery.

 

Every year, it seems, people bring more babies and toddlers. For much of the second half of the bill, Respighi was pianissimo and kiddies were fortissimo. At this distance, one is forgiving.

 

 

 

 

 

Vendors were selling glowsticks and glowing mohawk-headpieces. Some of them seemed to emit a screeching sound. At least they weren't vuvuzelas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Daughter curled up on the picnic blanket and dozed under a pile of sweaters through The Pines of Rome. She awakened to remark that, now that she was 17, she was no longer a child, then settled back to sleep until the fireworks began.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I assured Daughter that no one should get too grown up, ever. As the last starbursts sunk into the night sky, everyone went "ooh" and "ahh" and applauded and cheered gleefully, as if none of us had ever seen fireworks before.