The tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks is receiving wall to wall coverage and for those of us who lived in New York at the time that seems totally justified. The shear terror and shock of that chaotic day has not been lost on anyone who was there or within eye shot. Brooklynites will inevitably recall standing on the promenade or their roofs watching as the course of American history shifted in an explosive moment of violence. Some might remember walking across the Brooklyn bridge from their lower Manhattan offices to let loved ones know that they were okay, even though no one was okay.
The view of Manhattan from Brooklyn, always an iconic reminder that we live in one of the most exciting and vital places on the planet, was changed forever. So too was the view from our collective psyche. The last ten years have been a series of culture shocks and cultural breakthroughs. The technology we once feared would drive a wedge between humanity has instead become a hyper connective network. In a way that reaction could have something to do with the events of 9/11. The fear of being suddenly torn from someone you love or something familiar now has us forever connecting to one another. It is safe to say that on that day Brooklyn and the world got a whole lot smaller.
Brooklyn Borough Hall is a highlight location for environmentally conscience New Yorkers. It’s one of many GrowNYC Greenmarket locations. Here you can find programs and produce aimed at improving New York City’s quality of life. Back in March they began a compost. Every Saturday from 8AM to 5PM there is a food scraps collection for citizens. It will be transported to a facility to be used as amendments for fertile soil. This initiative will continue through to December so you have plenty of time to get involved.
Summer costs are already rising because of energy consumption. The compost can actually reduce costs in other areas of city life. Food can sum up to around 17% of New York City’s waste. To send it to a landfill actually increases the disposal costs. Not only that but it contributes to the emission of greenhouse gases that pollute city air. The compost can be used for planting trees and other plants in NYC parks, sidewalks, and gardens.
If you want to help out you can drop off scraps of the following foods: vegetables, fruit, non-greasy rice, pasta and cereal, coffee grinds and filters, tea bags, egg shells, and more. Place these scraps in some sort of plastic container, milk carton, or compost pails. It’s an easy summer activity to do that gives back to the community. While you’re there you can check out other things at the Greenmarket like fresh food and educational events.
It’s been a tradition for me and my friends to go to the free summer movies throughout NewYork City. One of my favorite locations, though is right by the Brooklyn Bridge. The Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy teams up with the SyFy channel to bring Hollywood favorites to Pier 1, Harbor View Lawn. The movies are sight enough, but the fantastic view of the Manhattan skyline behind the screen is beyond words.
It kicked off last month but it’s continuing until September 1st. The remaining films include An American Tail (Aug 4), Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Aug 11), Crooklyn (Aug 18), Rosemary’s Baby (Aug 25), and the public vote on September 1st. The place gets crowded pretty quick. The most popular films are the hardest to find space for so be sure to get there early! The event opens around 6PM and the movies will start a little before sundown. There will be snacks, beverages, and music available to you but I highly recommend you bring your own. Also be sure you have some sort of towel or blanket to sit on and sunglasses because the sunset gets kind of intense.
It’s all about good times and summer fun. Enjoy a nice breeze off the water, relax for the movie, and go to Grimaldi’s Pizza not too far out of your way afterward for a slice or two.
The Union Bar, which is appropriately located on Union Street in Park Slope, Brooklyn, is my new favorite spot. I recently went to hear my friends’ band, The Big Takeover, play a gig there, and we all had the most marvelous time.
Both the upstairs and downstairs of the bar are refreshingly spacious. A very sizeable crowd came out to dance a few hours away as they played, and the experience was shockingly not claustrophobic. The bar serves food and drinks; I haven’t eaten there yet, but I would certainly recommend its beer on tap. On Fridays, after the live music ends, there is a karaoke competition.
The crowning glory of the Union Bar is, without a doubt, the full size indoor Bocce court. We did not have a chance to play (waiting list was way too long), but it is yet another reason to return to the bar. The official bocce season recently ended, but you can still go to the bar and form your own unofficial team for the evening. During the season, the bar hosts league tournaments!
The Union Bar literally offers something for everyone; from the types of music it hosts and plays to the activities it offers. For more information on The Union Bar, visit www.UnionHallNY.com.
How apropos! Last night I added an I <3 NY button to my Chrome backpack to ward off the fixed-gear riding hipsters that think they’re cooler than me and today the Voice goes ahead and confirms my choice to proudly display my love for the greatest city on earth as the right one!
Maybe you don’t have the time to read through all 50, so I’ll compile my favorite 5, and maybe a personal reason for why I love living here.
5. Manhattan-Brooklyn/Brooklyn-Manhattan wars never cease to entertain. Nor do hipster-Hasid wars. Or hipsters in general.
4. The Voice broke down the majesty of the subway into catching that train right before the doors close, the incredible expanse of the MTA, and my favorite, “prewalking,” finding the right spot so that when the subway stops the doors open directly in front of you.
3. Smart people are the norm, not the exception. (Which doesn’t mean they’re sane, but at least no one’s boring.)
2. Food kept cropping up on the list, so I’ll summarize: we can get any kind of food, at any time of night, and it’s better than anywhere else in the world (even when it’s ethnic food).
1. There’s no shame in sticking your fingers in your ears like an anal weirdo when an ambulance goes by screeching. Because let’s face it, walking down the street is sometimes like attending a rock concert.
And my personal reason: Because we know that everyone else in the country wishes they had the chutzpah to live here (Brooklyn, that is; anyone can live in Manhattan).
The Archive, rest in peace, has finally been replaced. Swallow, don’t get any dirty thoughts, is a bit better suited to Morgantown 2011. Industrial lightbulbs provide arch light, the saggy cushions have been replaced by movie theatre style seating in the back and cutesy European style granite tabletopped tables, and the baristas actually know how to make a macchiato. The gorgeous red Marzocco esperesso machine glowed and bubbled, the music was recognizable without pretension, and in general, it is friendlier and less of a hey-please-watch-out-for-my-mac-book-pro-charger-cord kind of place.
For the scenesters in Bushwick, Cafe Orwell still gets it done, but for the main strip, Morgantown needed a more hostpitable cafe, one where you can actually meet someone for a date, or even better, talk about life and literature, without getting the hairy eyeball from the people sitting next to you.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved Archive. And the way I’m describing it makes it out to be the kind of cafe where everyone regards you with a sneer. In fact, people were generally friendly there, but it was the vibe that made the difference. The Archive had been in place for years, and so had the people working there. That said, I’m thankful that there’s a clean coffee slate in my new neighborhood.
For a while, the two centers of the cultural world have been Brooklyn and Berlin. The latter was called by the New York Times the cultural center of Europe just a few years ago, and after traveling to the city just after the article appeared, I couldn’t argue. And so as Brooklyn became the artistic center of New York City over the past decade, it seemed that between the European artistic capital and the American artistic capital, Berlin got extra points for the E.U. better weathering the recession, and Germany being the economic powerhouse that helped it through. No more.
Over recent months, Berlin’s “multi-kulti” paradigm has fallen by the wayside. Germany has returned to what Jurgen Habermas calls in a recent essay, “a rekindling of controversies of the early 1990s, when thousands of refugees arrived from the former Yugoslavia, setting off a debate on asylum seekers.” Turkish and other Muslim immigrants have been ostracized. And while the Arizona immigration debates have been seriously based on prejudice, they’ve stemmed from the fact that many of the state’s immigrants are illegal. And plus, Arizona is on the other side of the country. Even the Ground Zero Mosque won approval from our President. In Germany, a much smaller country, Chancellor Angela Merkel said that multi-culturalism has failed and that immigrants need to do more to assimilate.
Intolerance is the enemy of creativity. That said, this turn of events gives the crown to Brooklyn to become the Paris of the 21st century.
The College Music Journal 2010 is hitting the city by storm. With over 1200 bands, it’s hard not to find some good music to listen to. Why just last night I went to Phoebe’s off Graham and Devoe to see Soundhouse, a killer bluesy, jazzy, souly band. They rocked.
Where else will CMJ take me? Good question. For those of you just looking to hear some cool new bands and drink some beer, success is pretty easy, as the New York Times agrees. My new music quotient is through the roof. Here’s a dope video from Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. (and by the way, what’s up with all the bands named after people? Gay for Johnny Depp, Natalie Portman’s Shaved head, Sandra Bullock’s Tucked In Penis, Zach Galifianakis Is Getting Really Old). Anyway, if you’re in New York this weekend, go see music.
I’m a proud Bushwick resident and live just off Broadway between the Flushing Avenue JMZ and Myrtle-Broadway JMZ stops. Every day, I pace up and down and around my little patch of Broadway, of Bushwick, of Brooklyn, and it has everything I need to sustain me during the week. For example, there’s the wonderful Mr Kiwi’s organic grocery, where you can get a large, freshly squeezed juice for $3, friendly service, and organic fruits, vegetables, sushi, and a great selection of beers and cheeses. For Mexican food, I always go to Cholulita, which makes a mean chicken taco with hot green sauce ($2) and a great beef, turkey or veggie cheeseburger deluxe ($5). Their icy banana and strawberry milkshakes are pretty darn good, too. Down the road, there’s Fat Albert Warehouse, which seems to have everything I could ever need for my home, at a price usually somewhere between 99c and $9.99. I’ve gotten towels, coat hangers, graters, glasses, forks, crockery, measuring cups, ice cubes trays, and so much more from this 3-level warehouse, and I’ve been satisfied with it all. For brunch, I like to go to J.K. & Sons, a welcoming diner which has a hearty menu filled with eggs, bacon, sausages, BLTs, burgers, steaks, Cobb and Greek salads, and all that good stuff, along with great service and low prices. It’s all there, and it’s all on Broadway, Bushwick.
Last week was one of the first days when you can feel autumn in the air. The shadows get longer, the daylight is shorter, people are outside enjoying the warm weather because they sense that next month at this time, it won’t be the same. It was a Thursday evening, and I couldn’t bear taking the normal bike route home – I wanted to go where I’d never been before, I wanted to go to Red Hook.
This area of town is unreachable by Subway, but can be walked to from the G/F train in Gowanus. A bus also goes there. It’s full of old abandoned industry, dockyards, and warehouses. Looking down the cobblestone streets to the water, you really get a sense of old Brooklyn – before the bridge was built and before it was part of New York. It was desolate, and I was struck by a time transcending feeling. Down on the Fairway, staring out at the Statue of Liberty and Staten Island, and seeing the late summer light shimmer on the water, I didn’t even spend too long taking it in – I walked through and went to Diego’s, a nice Mexican fusion restaurant.
The tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks is receiving wall to wall coverage and for those of us who lived in New York at the time that seems totally justified. The shear terror and shock of that chaotic day has not been lost on anyone who was there or within eye shot. Brooklynites will inevitably recall standing on the promenade or their roofs watching as the course of American history shifted in an explosive moment of violence. Some might remember walking across the Brooklyn bridge from their lower Manhattan offices to let loved ones know that they were okay, even though no one was okay.
