RIP PhifeDawg, aka Malik Taylor and some of 90's NYC

(Above a still from the music video for "Jazz/Buggin' Out" by "A Tribe Called Quest" (1991) featuring a then mostly desolate DUMBO waterfront in the background. Of course that building behind them in this shot is being made currently, into condos.)

Phife Dawg is dead at 45. This one personally hurts.

"Phife Dawg" aka Malik Taylor was a lyricist and key member of hiphop's ground breaking group "A Tribe Called Quest"

Some folks rant about people mourning the death of entertainers or celebs, and if you're kind of fan of "A Tribe Called Quest" then Malik Taylor aka Phife Didd-dawg was the energetic essence of that, but he was also the dude I'd see on the regular in NYC. Specifically in video game arcades where he'd hold down a machine for hours, beating anyone who foolishly stepped to challenge, or just rocking the machine by himself. If you have no idea who I'm talking about let me take a few lyrics from the man himself to explain:

"Now here's a funky introduction of how nice I am Tell your mother, tell your father, send a telegram I'm like an energizer cause, you see, I last long My crew is never ever wack because we stand strong"

From "Check the Vibe" by A Tribe Called Quest
(This video shot with contours of a desolate DUMBO in the Background)

Phife on his preference of women:

"I like 'em brown, yellow, Puerto Rican or Haitian Name is Phife Dawg from the Zulu Nation Told you in the jam that we can get down Now let's knock the boots like the group H-Town You got BBD all on your bedroom wall But I'm above the rim and this is how I ball A gritty little something on the New York street This is how I represent over this here beat"

From "Electric Relaxation" by A Tribe Called Quest,

Phife On fidelity:

"Original rude boy, never am I coy You can be a shorty in my ill convoy Not to come across as a thug or a hood But hon, you got the goods, like Madelyne Woods By the way, my name's Malik The Five-Foot Freak Let's say we get together by the end of the week She simply said, "No", labelled me a ho I said, "How you figure?" "My friends told me so" I hate when silly groupies wanna run they yap
Word to God hon, I don't get down like that."

Also From "Electric Relaxation" by A Tribe Called Quest

Phife On life(kinda):

"I never half step cause I'm not a half stepper Drink a lot of soda so they call me Dr. Pepper(sad! He was referring to his indulgence of sugars that led to his diabetes) Refuse to compete with BS competition Your name ain't Special Ed so won't you seckle with the mission I never walk the street thinking it's all about me Even though deep in my heart, it really could be I just try my best to like go all out Some might even say yo shorty black you're buggin' out"

From "Buggin' Out" by A Tribe Called Quest,

Damn! Imagine being 20 years old and those lyrics play over Tribe's dope beats as you walk down the street, into the club, off to class, Phife aka #MalikTaylor made an introduction, lines for anyone feeling the vibe, especially someone young as he was then, trying to find their way.


It's very important to note these albums came out over 20 years ago, when HipHop was still a largely unknown genre, and when images of HipHop ranged from under budget to cliched. Yet A Tribe Called Quest powered by Q-Tip's fertile visual imagination, he and Phife's lyrical flows, Ali Shaheed Muhammad's dope beats and all three of their combined energies created videos which were imaginative, bugged out (sometimes literally, as shown above) and always full of Black and Brown faces.

Smiling faces, Hard Faces, Happy Faces, Dancing Faces, Living Breathing on the Block from Bk to Queens, faces. Us just living, being, us.

For a great example check out this video for "Oh My God" which was shot on Monroe (btw Marcus Garvey and Monroe *below) in Bedford Stuyvesant.

I can't begin to express what it was like in the 90's to click on "Video Music Box" (running on a public tv station channel 31 here in NYC at the time) and seeing the block my family lived on, and the people of Brooklyn I recognized as everyday people being the setting for the music of the moment. Tribe was a part of the culture that elevated an unseen NYC for millions of people.

If you're reading this and you've never heard of any of this, it could because while Phife and A Tribe Called Quest (#ATCQ) were pioneers in a jazz infused melodic hiphop that plotted the course for hundreds of lyrasis and producers to come, most notably The Roots, so you may not have heard Tribe on your radio but it didnt matter or as Phife might say:

No need to sweat Arsenio to gain some type of fame No shame in my game cause I'll always be the same Styles upon styles upon styles is what I have You wanna diss the Phifer but you still don't know the half.

From "Check the Rhime" by A Tribe Called Quest

"Rappin' is an art, coming straight from the heart So forget the chart because the action can start."
From "Hot Sex" A Tribe Called Quest (on the Boomerange Movie Soundtrack)

Me, I used to be a gamer, hardcore, and like others I'd go to the city to play the best in the land. I saw Phife regularly in the arcade. Occasionally I'd stand by and watch his gamer skills. He was totally unpretentious. A regular dude like everyone else, flexing skills at a serious hobby, concentrating mad hard, or cracking jokes.

Dudes would come and try talking him up, but usually not, cause Phife was busy leveling up. And if you know, you know how that goes. After a while my visits to the arcade were just to come and go. I'd step in and right back out cause if Phife was on deck nobody had next.

Phife is a part of my NYC, my Hip-Hop my memories. 

Seeing him struggle with diabetes in the "A Tribe Called Quest" documentary was rough, but like anyone would, I'd hoped he was recovering toward a happy ending.

45 is young. Way too young to go.

(Recent photo of Malik Taylor aka "Phife Dawg" Photo credit Andrew H Walker/Getty)

"You on point Phife?" Yo Rest in Peace man.

#RIPPhife #ATCQ #NATIVETONGUES #HIPHOP #FallenRappers #NYC #BROOKLYN #BKLYN #QUEENS #UPTOWN #BRONX #WORLDTOUR #LONGISLAND #VIBE #PEOPLESINSTINCTIVETRAVELS

(Apologies for the wack spacing throughout this, I will be overhauling this blog soon)

Oops: Live from Bedford-Stuyvesant Spike Lee/Doing the Right Thing

(Updated Sat 6/28)

Apologies.

I got the date wrong. Hopefully I'm the only person who had to miss out on the block Party.

----

"What is brooklyn?” is a question I find myself asking a lot lately. I’m willing to bet, New York being New York, that question is sincerely asked on average three times a week around the world. And that’s sincerely, add the ironic existential asks and I’m sure the question of what Brooklyn is, and my god isn’t runs like a metronome. 

For me to be wondering that, born here, having been, across the span of now five decades (I promise I’m still carded and I still think I’m supposed to be) it’s as bizarre as if I awoke this morning, swung my feet off the bed and looked down wondering, “who’s legs are these?”

But that’s where I’m at and I’m not alone. The amount of spontaneous conversations I hear and take part in on a daily basis asking the same questions, wondering as well whether we born Brooklynites are still attached to a living breathing factually member, this borough of whether we’re all suffering the pain of a phantom limb are countless. 

There are many Brooklyns. In each era for decades now, there have been many, untouched by the goings on of Manhattan, fairly oblivious to other corners of this same borough. Five decades lived and I’ve never walked the streets of Bay Ridge. I know of people who work a job, raise a family, live a life and never set foot out of Sheepshead bay, or Brownsville, or Greenpoint. It’s not unsurprising in a place like Brooklyn that has a population three times larger than San Francisco and if counted without the other four boroughs would be the 4th largest populated city in the United States.

I just watched an old episode of what I happily recall President Obama calling a “iiberal fantasy”, TV’s “The West Wing”. In this episode a congressman, and leader of the Black Caucaus tried to make the point that his constituents, young Black men in Bedford-Stuyvesant were being under-represented. The same episode referenced Colombia as proxy for a conversation about the drug war, and in a different region of the world (as well as the plot) “friendly fire” as short hand for the complexities of war. Bedford-Stuyvesant was referenced several times, each timing meaning impoverished, disenfranchised, and Black. That blanket reference doesn’t work today, barely ten years later. And that should be cause for celebration, but the problem for many people, many native New Yorkers, many born Brooklynites, is what definitions do apply to Bed-Stuy, today.

It’s good that as opposed to poverty and disenfranchisement, there are small businesses and home owners, forging new bonds and reaping dividends in Bed-Stuy. Fantastic would be if more of those people were the residents of that community that helped keep two nostrils above water when the floods of drugs, crime, and systematic neglect rained down upon that part of Brooklyn.

I recently was invited to the home of a new business partner, he a professional was telling me about the Bed-Stuy brownstown he’d recently purchased. I remarked about how great he, not of Brooklyn, must be finding it all, and I rattled of some culinary and social points of interest. He had no idea where any of these places and the streets they belonged to were. “He doesn’t need to…” I thought to myself as he told me, sheepishly the story of the people who were foreclosed on, which made his purchase possible. To say the least, I felt conflicted. Part of me wanted to look down and ask where my legs were and why weren’t they moving.

This Saturday Sunday June 29th from noon to 6p, on Stuyvesant Avenue and Quincy, Spike Lee will be hosting a block party in honor of his seminal film “Do The Right Thing”http://www.okayplayer.com/news/spike-lee-hosting-25th-anniversary-do-the-right-thing-block-party-bed-stuy.html. The block is the actual and entire block the Oscar nominated film was shot on. 

If you truly know Brooklyn’s Brownstown belt and the skirmishes contained in, or your simply old enough, you know how much of the city’s ills then and sadly now Spike packed into that film with poignance and power. You then probably know of the scene in the film where a man white of skin walks his ten speed bike, and celtics basketball jersey up the block and into that character’s new brownstone. A lot of people relate that scene from twenty-five years ago to today, especially after Spike voiced the displeasure thousands of us feel at having neighborhoods we’ve lived in redressed around and without us, earlier this year at a Pratt Institute event. I recall watching the film and not understanding how that could ever happen, I was unfamiliar and undeserving of Bed-Stuy back then, I was a teenager. Spike knew what I wish more people knew today, Brooklyn is a place where people intended to live, that had fallen on hard times (for countless reasons) and it only took (and takes) a release of the yoke holding the neighborhood down, offered to those with means, to create a market and a marketing, that would invite people with means to come back.

Sadly, and what troubles me most is how difficult it is for a lot of us to be happy about Brooklyn's fortunes. If you would have told people in 1989 that Brooklyn would be undergoing the current renaissance we'd be partying in the streets. Surely people would have to presume the problems of drug wars, underfunded schools, over policing, banking discrimination, crime, would have been resolved. But they really weren't, despite the light Brooklyn basks in today, the instrument of change in most cases is a bulldozer. Pushing away, old structures and old cultures, pushing people off the reservation, tables held for the new. Crime hasn't be solved in Brooklyn of most anywhere in New York City as much as it's been made complicated by raising rents on the poor, people who are victims crime and relative to their population, occasionally suspects in crime. The Brooklyn Bulldozer Baby & Bathwater Bloomberg Policy is what happened. And after eight years of a hostile Mayorial administration, and the near two decades of urban decay preceding that, it didn't seem so bad at first, until you saw the baby's rolling down the street and off into cold night.

Yesterday I was randomly net-surfing (see I am old) and I came across a listing on Franklin in Bed-Stuy for an apartment. Fifteen years ago members of my family used to go to substance abuse treatment a few doors down. Not a nickel to rub between them, not a pot to do anything with at a all. 

The asking price for the apartment I saw online yesterday? 1.025 Million dollars. Seriously where am I?

Well like I said, Spike is having a block party on Saturday sunday and I don’t quite know what that means or where my legs will be, but I believe they’ll be doing the right thing. If you don’t have the house you gotta have hope.

"Where Brooklyn At? Where Brooklyn At?"

Bklyn's former Fox Savoy Theatre, it's next familar swan song

I can help but imagine Joni Mitchell serenading this post.

In the days of old, when Brooklyn was the world and Bedford Avenue a rich and mighty vein laden  with auto dealerships at it's center and various lush residential neighborhoods emanating out to the ends of the borough, there stood the Fox Savoy Theatre, as seen in the photo above from July 3rd 1929, looking north, downhill on Bedford Avenue. (Photo by George Mann)

A landmark in Brooklyn and New York history, this is the New York Times announcment of the Fox Savoy's then impending debut:

This is how the former Fox Savoy Theatre looked in late 2012:

Like a lot of things in Brooklyn I've witnessed it for decades. At some point in my childhood, I noticed it was inhabited by a church named "Charity Neighborhood Baptist Cathedral" and that's how it remained, until last year. I didn't notice the sign for the church was gone until I saw the dumpsters parked out front last spring. I've been trying to find out what the history and future of the building is since then. I finally found some history:

From the website, "Cinema Treasures.org" http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/6069/

"The Savoy Theatre was the largest theatre that William Fox ever built in Brooklyn prior to the downtown Fox Theatre. Opening publicity claimed 3,500 seats, but that has been debated ever since. Some industry year books say 2,750, but I would guess more like 3,000. The Savoy Theatre has a very large balcony with minimal space between the rows.

The Savoy Theatre was built at the same time as Fox’s Academy of Music in Manhattan, with Thomas W. Lamb as architect of both. The Savoy Theatre’s auditorium is in the Adam style, with boxed seats adjoining the stage and a shallow dome in the center of the ceiling. It first opened on September 1, 1926, with Fox’s “Fig Leaves” on screen, plus six acts of vaudeville. With program changes twice a week, the Savoy Theatre was considered the Fox circuit’s top Brooklyn showcase until the 1928 opening of the downtown Fox Theatre. After that, it became just another neighborhood movie house, but playing first-run for the area.

After William Fox’s bankruptcy, the Savoy Theatre landed under the Randforce Circuit, which, to signify the theatre’s importance, moved its executive HQ to office space in the building. The Savoy Theatre carried on into the 1960’s, despite all the social turbulence in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area.
Fortunately, it escaped demolition and became the Charity Neighborhood Baptist Church. Except for removal of the marquee and alterations to the entrance, the Savoy Theatre’s interior is virtually intact, though re-painted in whitewash in most areas. Some of the original stage curtains are still hanging, and I’ve been told that old scenic backdrops are still stored in the lofts."

I don't live far from the building, my grandmother once worked in the daycare center that shares the same block, back when the it was called the "Haitian-American Day Care Center". Considering the renaissance of cultural venues reoccurring in Brooklyn today, and with Bedford still easily accessible as a wide two-way street that literally goes from one end of the borough to the other, I presumed upon seeing the church sign was gone, that the building was going to be reborn as a new mixed used venue.

That seemed plausible to me not only for the revitalization of Franklin Avenue a block west, and the increasing rents that signal old businesses being forced out and new ones welcomed two short blocks east on Nostrand, but because also the Loews Kings Theater starting renovations just last year after being a building completely unused, and destroyed by rain and squatters for decades.

Instead it turns out demolition is what is happening.



The photo I took (above) is how it looks today (Jan/2014)

The first of New York City's Fox Theater's and the last one standing will be demolished without much fanfare, it seems. There has been an effort to landmark this and other streets in the western end of Crown Heights but those efforts are still in consideration. This building wasn't fast tracked, it's going to go and leave memory and important questions in it's wake.

Questions like the ones Brownstoner commentator "Melrose Morris" wrote about in May 2013 (which I missed) (http://www.brownstoner.com/blog/2013/05/building-of-the-day-1515-bedford-avenue/):

"The church needed money to do extensive repairs, and of course, being a shrinking economically disadvantaged congregation, they didn’t have it, and there was a lis pendens on the building, as well. So they sold the building for tear down, with the developer promising that members of the congregation would be able to have a preferential standard in renting an affordable apartment there when the new housing was completed. I hope Charity got that in writing. 

I’m angry for a couple of reasons. First of all, this building should be saved and landmarked. It is a cultural icon of a movie age of old, a big part of the history of Crown Heights, the history of Fox and movie theaters in Brooklyn and America, and an important part of Thomas Lamb’s shrinking number of contributions to architecture. America has been shaped by the movies in myriad ways, and large movie houses like this are a part of that legacy.

We blew this one, from a preservation and community standpoint. We didn’t know it was endangered, the congregation didn’t reach out to the community, or to any kind of preservation entities with a cry for help, and now that’s it’s been gutted, and has a permit for demo dated last year, it’s too late to do anything but take photographs, and maybe grab a terra-cotta chunk of debris from the pile of rubble when it’s all over. Where was the community on this? No one drove, or walked by and noticed anything? And beyond that, realistically speaking, what would happen to the building had it been individually landmarked? There’s not a big demand for enormous theaters that need a lot of work. Could it have been converted to housing, or bought by nearby Medgar Evers College for their use? Would landmarking have been the right move, given all the circumstances?

I’m also angry because it seems from the numbers presented, the church got royally screwed. If they had to sell, they could have held out for much more. You can’t buy a two story run down house in Crown Heights for $575K. How can anyone justify that price for that enormous building that takes up literally half the block? I can’t help but think that the developer took advantage of a cash strapped group of poor black people who were not real estate savvy, and thought they were making a lot of money. Where were their lawyers? Where was the Community Board? Wasn’t there anyone in their congregation, or friends or family who said, “Whoa, that price is not high enough. Crown Heights is gentrifying and real estate is going up faster than the temperature on a hot day. We need to buy a new church, we have to get more than a piddley $575,000.

They are still going to get an enormous footprint to work with, and there will be a lot of units in any kind of building they do. Will some of them be affordable? Will some of the parishioners of Charity Baptist be living there? Or will it be another cool luxury condo building marketed towards the “New Crown Heights” that is straining to move east of Franklin Avenue, which is only a block from here? I guess we have no choice but to wait and see."

It seems despite the positive aspects of gentrified Crown Heights, namely an increase in community organizing and activism, no one from the neighborhood or active residents had enough of a relationship with the Charity Neighborhood Baptist Cathedral to be aware they were selling, no, essentially giving the building away. And no one from the Church apparently reached out to neighborhood thus allowed this historic building to be sold for the unfathomable price of less than $600,000.

In my opinion, everyone in Brooklyn who cares to develop over destroying significant history of the City takes a collective "L" for this one.

It's amazing how the bonds of neighborhood and community that were weaken and in some cases broken, back in the 60's, 70's & 80's still resonate today.

Despite all that has been left to ruin or otherwise lost, there are still gems and iconic elements in Brooklyn. I believe we need to be more active unless we want to keep saying goodbye to things that shouldn't go, and singing this song:

"Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot"

-Joni Mitchell

Photo Wednesday 121813 : Brooklyn Gang Land Edition

My intended post isnt ready, and I'm saving the holiday thoughts for next Photo Wednesday, it being Christ day and all. So here's some picts I came across of gang bangers in Brooklyn, of the 1950's.

Bruce Davidson is a photographer, now 80 he lives out of state, but once upon a day, he made his home in Brooklyn, and chose to photograph gang members after hearing news of gang fights in the city.

The UK's Daily Mail published this piece written by Lizzie Edmonds:

"These extraordinary photographs document the fascinating lives of a teen gang living in Brooklyn, New York, in the 1950s.

The images are part of a collection called Brooklyn Gang, and were taken by renowned photographer Bruce Davidson, 80, who has dedicated his career to documenting New York City life and culture.
This collection is especially interesting as it follows a group of teens, who called themselves the Jokers, who lived in the city in 1959."

Interesting.

And here's more info on Photographer Bruce Davidson.

The End of 5Ptz, a vibrant piece of New York City

I've been wanting to post about last month's Banksy NYC residency and it's impact, but life happened as it does, and then this happened.

(all photographs by Tiernan Morgan for Hyperallergic) 

EVIL. i dislike when "evil" is tossed around as a cause or a label, but this is straight evil, malicious, petty, intended to do nothing really more than wound and disrespect. The 5ptz building, which most of you know is an otherwise unremarkable industrial building at LIC Queen's eastern edge, made otherworldly and beautiful by the artwork it's been dressed in for over a decade has been defiled by it's owners who last night sent in workers to cruelly paint over as much of the artwork, as they could.

(all photographs by Tiernan Morgan for Hyperallergic) 

The owners recently won the right, after many appeals, to turn the land into a new development. The plans they show, make no usage of the existing structure, so why paint over this building that is scheduled to be torn down? They did it simply to be evil soulless monsters.

(all photographs by Tiernan Morgan for Hyperallergic) 

The buffing and over painting in this way is a physical, premeditated undeniable attack on art, which is an attack on the human heart. And why? To prove ownership? To forcibly demonstrate power to Meres who has been custodian and curator of the building and leader of the fight to preserve it as artists mecca and landmark? Did they cover the art to look away from the artists who've committed beauty to modern blight? Or are they like Oedipus realizing that they've screwed that which put them on the map and made the building (and to a large degree the neighborhood) a place where people would even consider WANTING to be? Did the fight over the right to make statements with paint leave them secretly longing to up their own sloppy tag, to say "fuck you we're somebody too" and at the same time physically blind themselves to the art that birthed their opportunity, attempting blind us in the process along with them?

Who cares their motivation, my desire to know why doesn't explain or excuse their desire to obscure creation, expression from the public space and the lotus-esque ways in which our spirits rebirth value out of human despair. 

I can't help but recall the transition of 11 Spring in Soho from public graf board and tag mecca to it's current luxury condo status.  I shot and produced a simple video with the help and support of Marc Schiller and the Wooster Collective, interviewing the artists and talking about the significance of that building. The owners sought out Marc to invite artists to tag up 11 Spring, dozens of them, each with their own styles, background, celebrity levels and politics were granted the time to demonstrate what that building had become, there public came, a moment was made and I believe the value of art it's inspiration to commerce were reinforced in an enriching experience. Granted there many were differences of opinion at 11 Spring, but ultimately recognition was given to the place art had made in giving that building such value that it was able to capitalize monetarily and as a result take what had become a public space for the exchange of ideas and friendships and political and personal discontent, through art, away from the public. New York City has always been a confluence of commerce, since the native Lenape came down to the rivers to trade, but there a ways to do business on a human level that add value to the transaction and the active. 

Disrespect is not only evil, it's unnecessary. 

So I'm hoping we all keep our eyes and ears open for how we as intentional and accidental members of this moment's nyc artistic community respond and when necessary participate in response to the evil disrespect of human heart that took place last night at 5Ptz. 

Brooklyn elects it's first Mayor since 1892, Bill deBlasio!

I'm happy to report what you already know, Bill deBlasio is our new Mayor of New York City.

I didn't hate Bloomberg, (Hell I've actually go a photo of he and I shaking hands) but I often disagreed with his managerial style as it was too macro&micro view for me. Blanket policies worked in my opinion on bike lanes and pedestrian plazas, but failed to consider basic human rights as in "Stop & Frisk". So thanks to democracy we get to try a new way.

I've expected Mr. deBlasio to be our Mayor since this past August. But as recently as April I would have been stunned at yesterday's election result. I expected Speaker Quinn to be a stronger more able candidate. Nobody say Weiner coming. And what he did beside remarkably demonstrating it was possible to sink his public persona lower than it was after he disgraced himself out of congress, is remind optimistic liberals that we actually had a choice other than Ms. Quinn who many such as myself saw as a Bloomberg reboot. I think it's possible without Weiner entering, we could have just as easily had a Mayor Thompson or Quinn as deBlasio.

But we got what I and 72% of voting New Yorkers wanted, a clean break, a new guy, a new day.

I also find it very fascinating, (and someone who gets paid to write and explore these topics we'll surely pick up on this) that Brooklyn largely voted this Mayor in. A Brooklyn local, diBlasio's strong showing in Brooklyn during the primary provided protection against the wide field of candidates against him. Liu took most Asian neighborhoods, Quinn took most of Manhattan below Central Park, Thompson did well in Manhattan above as well as in Queens, and Carrion diluted the vote in the Bronx. But none of those groups could overcome the Brooklyn base that came out for diBlasio.

In yesterday's voting diBlasio continued to carry Brooklyn winning over 80% of the Kings County vote.

So much is appropriately and stupidly attributed to Brooklyn. The yawn-going conversation about whether we're the "New Manhattan" or whether someplace hundreds of miles away is the "New Brooklyn" (I'm looking at you Dutchess County, give it a rest) never seems accurately describe the actual impact Brooklyn has as an incubator of new city culture, and vault for treasured NYC tradition. but in this moment when Brooklyn is so central that we rate a Presidential visit, it seems spot on that Brooklyn has elected it's first Mayor* since 1892 and the time of Brooklyn Mayor Frederick W. Wurster.

(*btw I know Giuliani was born in Brooklyn, but Staten Island voted him in the first time. I ain't claiming him and I doubt I'm alone.)

Not to be out done, another Brooklynite, Councilwoman Leticia "Tish" James has quietly become the 1st African-American woman elected to city-wide office in New York City and by her position as the new Public Advocate, she becomes 2nd in line for Mayor of New York. Fantastic!

And last but by no means least, the vote for Brooklyn District Attorney. Who's going to police the police and prosecute those who break laws, you can argue it hasn't been out going Bklyn DA Hynes (who thought he was so nice we had to vote him out twice) but going forward it's no question, our new Brooklyn District Attorney is Ken Thompson and I believe he will work hard for the benefit and protection of law abiding Brooklynites.

"Manhattan keeps on making it, Brooklyn keeps on taking it"

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

Photo Wednesday 103013 Sandy Revisited Edition

One year today Hurricane Sandy hit and this is just some of the fallen trees, damaged buildings and aftermath of flooding I saw: The Lower Manhattan being a silhoutted outline of black, the lower East River Bridges being half illuminated, the then flooded Battery Park underpass, (not to mention the south ferry subways station and the river tunnels) old steakhouse in the meat packing district cooking their inventory outside as to not let it go bad in the blackout that followed. Incredible. We survived lower Manhattan and subway tunnels flooding, and explosion at one of our main electric power stations. I remember mine and the neighborhood's lights flickering as a result. I knew that was bad but when my lights stayed on I thought the city had gotten by unscathed, little did I know Manhattan south of 28th street was suddenly and near totally dark and would remain so for days. I enjoy complaining like a lot of New Yorkers, but it really is amazing that the city got itself back together as much as it did so quickly.

Photo Wednesday 060513 | Memorial & Rose Night Edition

As a kid I noticed these one day when I decided to read them instead of passing them as I had hundreds of times previously. It was shocking to me that they had been laid decades ago, and in brought up a cheesy yet civic-prideful sense of happiness in my elementary school self. So today's Photo(s) for Wednesday come from Eastern Parkway.

The plaques were created and dedicated for Brooklyn residents who perished in "The War to End All Wars". Many of America's WWI soldiers were laid to rest overseas and so memorials like these were dedicated across the nation. Down the western end near the Museum new benches, widened sidewalks and a bike-lane have been added. Parking signs were reposted today. Included and repositioned are the World War I memorial placards. 

Over the years tree root growth, erosion and occasional vandalism have disturbed the placards and I'm happy to see there refurbishing was part of the Eastern Parkway makeover. Each placard is aligned next to a tree as they were originally. A subtle memorial as was originally intended.

Eastern Parkway the nation's 1st parkway built in 1866 expressly for "pleasure-riding and scenic driving" by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux has been undergoing successful remodeling and refurbishing for years now and it's looking great. 

From wikipedia's Eastern Parkway Entry:

The world's first parkway was conceived by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in 1866. The term parkway was coined by these designers as a landscaped road built expressly for 'pleasure-riding and driving' or scenic access to Prospect Park (also designed by Olmsted and Vaux). To these ends, commerce was restricted. The parkway was constructed from Grand Army Plaza to Ralph Avenue (the boundary of the City of Brooklyn) between 1870 and 1874. Olmsted and Vaux intended Eastern Parkway to be the Brooklyn nucleus of an interconnected park and parkway system for the New York area. The plan was never completed but their idea of bringing the countryside into the city influenced the construction of major parks and parkways in cities throughout the United States.^[4]

Speaking of trees and thoughts of days past in the vicinity of Eastern Parkway; Tonight is the Brooklyn Botanic(al) Garden's Member's Rose Night, were attending members will be treated to music in celebration of the era in which the Cranford Rose Garden opened in 1927.

From the Garden's website:

Enjoy live ragtime and jazz with Dewdrop Society. Don your best bonnet to participate in our second annual hat contest—kids can make their own at our specially equipped craft table. Picnicking is permitted and a cash bar will be available.

I'll be the one in the top-hat. Be a member enjoy the Garden. Cheers! 

Brooklyn: It Ain't Where Ya From It's Where Ya At.

"It's funny how money changes situations."

That line (which is opening lyric of Lauren Hill's) doesnt really express what I meant, what I'm thinking is it's funny when diverse sides of issues get broken down into their extreme aspects and then those extreme aspects are positioned against each other.

"Can it be that it was all so simple?"

Brooklyn was simple (wasn't it) just twenty years ago. It was the sample place it is now, rich with history (the Revolutionary War and Brooklyn Dodgers had still happened here, despite it being the Brooklyn of twenty years ago) but back then Brooklyn was so simple to peg into a whole.

It was full of beauty, Brownstones and Botanic Gardens, and danger; Brownsville shootings, beef fed beat-downs and random robberies at best. Taxi's? No, never. Had no restaurants. This was of course a judgement made by the Manhattan minded and dwelling. So did we have restaurants? By those standards nope. The restaurants in the borough went largely unseen and those visible from across the river (River Cafe & Peter Luger's) didn't belong to the Brooklyn geography they occupied (hell River Cafe is ON the river) a Micheline starred restaurant may brush up against Brooklyn suggestively in those days, but occupy, heavens no. If you wanted cheap rent and long commute and the implied danger from topics listed above, you went to Brooklyn. Once in a while a concert grew in Brooklyn that non-Brooklynites and some locals would be needlessly be nervous about attending. There was a college, somewhere, that was decent for art, or music, or science or occasionally an NCAA Basketball bracket. Which is how people I spoke with described Pratt, Brooklyn College & LIU respectively.

Basically Brooklyn was simply thought of back in the day. It wasn't a simple place it just conjured simple impressions, which lead usually to simplistic and short conversations.

Today much real estate, printed, virtual, and physical is given to the great discussion of Brooklyn, and what that means, should me, did mean, will mean. Damn B your therapy bills must be crazy.

New York Magazine ran this article with the cover copy "Brooklyn is Finished" written by Mark Jacobson back in Autumn and I wanted to tack on my comments to the piece, in this blog. It didnt bother me that I never got to it because the article in my opinion didn't need my two cents or anything it stands in my mind as the best expression of what Brooklyn was through differing eras, what it became, where it is now, and what stays unique and constent about this place.

A friend sent me this article "The Ins and Outs" written (I presume) by some of the many talented and encamped J-School grads that are easy to find around Frankin Avenue's Crown Heights these days. It's a good micro focused piece reflecting the dynamic causality and impact of large scale gentrification in the short period of time that has passed. It's very good too.

And on Friday the Grey Lady herself dedicated much space and writing talent to this piece, titled Brooklyn, the Remix: A Hip Hop Tour. Also a great piece which seems in part inspired by this art piece (in which a variant of street artist, fabricated faux street signs with classic location specific hiphop lyrics written on then, and then the artists mounts those street signs on existing poles in the name-checked neighborhoods and streets. Many of those streets have since dramatically changed often for the lifestyle betterment of some, so there is an added contrast & impact of the installations.

Personally I want to imagine a creative coup within the Grey Lady led by writers who live in the borough and had grown weary of under-informed pieces written about Brooklyn, published in her name, I'm looking at you Real Estate section. But I digress.

The New York Times piece covers various Hip Hop landmarks and emotional sign posts of their own,  around the Borough. There's mention of old Sarah J. Hale nicknamed Sarah Jail because of it's often less than civil students, which is on a stretch of dean street that is now tony and gentrified. There's a reference to the Plaza movie theater on Flatbush near Park Place which became the Plaza Twin, then the Pavilion and finally now, an American Apparel store. In the article the person who invokes the movie theater reflects with irony that he say "Do The Right Thing" in that spot.

It's a testiment to the lightning rod that Franklin Avenue has become, the 180º turn around it's undergoinf that all three pieces make references to Franklin in the case of the New York Mag article it was where the writter's grandmother lived some 50 years before code words like "Craft Beer" & "Artisanal" became synonymous with Franklin.

I was sucked into the online New York Times comments following their article. One comment by a reader going by "IRS" seemed to whine a lament, writing:

I am getting sick of articles like these. I understand the nostalgia with how life "used to be" in NYC. My neighborhood is the epicenter for some of my favorite hip hop. I get it. What people fail to acknowledge is that their NYC of the past is just a blip on the overall story of the city as a whole. This city has changed EVERY DAY, since its inception hundreds of years ago, and that is what makes it so beautiful.

People need to stop complaining and holding on to some rosy memory of what NYC "was," because "it" isn't coming back... Furthermore, those same people clamoring for the city to go back to its "gritty" days, that so many yearn for, are the same people who will complain the most when all of the street crime returns right along with it and they're afraid to walk down the street without looking over their shoulders.

It is time NYC to get over it and move on. Our city will be better for it.

I find that comment interesting because I hear it alot. It's one thing to say the past does and doesn't matter, but I'm impressed by the amount of residents ( I presume them to be new) who think it's time for people to stop having reminiseces. What an intersting suggestion, thought policing.

The conversation of this moment's Brooklyn is only halfway finished. Obviously the borough, city, country and much of the world will go on changing whether we like it, want it or not.

I think the impetus for all the dialogue is most eras take longer to switch and show visible signs. I myself often write that all these changes clearly started back in the late 70's right after the smoke cleared from the looting aftermath of 77's blackout. But the speed of change in Brooklyn, has been blinding and that's why we can't stop talking about it, besides all the other details that go into the conversation. The way a magic trick or lightning is fascinating and elicits fascinated analysis is partially because in the blink of an eye it's so dynamically different. And in Brooklyn the focus and who different groups are impacted is so extreme. There really was no breather before or after the crack era. Brooklyn was not much different that the rest of the city in 1970. By 1980 there were more extreme differences. By 1990 more so and by 2003 you could wallpaper your studio apartment with articles proclaiming Brooklyn the new Manhattan. By 2013 on some streets it is.

It's the change, its the speed, it's the cultural and socially effected and disconnected.

Basically, no one cared enough to think as deeply and consistently as people do now about Brooklyn. But I thought the NY Mag article and the NY Times HipHop remix article does a great job of pointing out a key detail of the neverending Brooklyn discussion. It's not that we want to go back to the gritty days specifically, its not that we want to close the artisanal cheese shops, its that we dont want to be resigned to the past, and a negative one at that, while we continue to live here. We who were in Brooklyn lived and exprienced like everyone else and in some cases we mined and polished social and culutral riches that are exploited and enjoyed today, in our borough and we wonder if the way we were generally ignored back then isn't happening now.

Nobody wants to be forgotten or ignored, especially not while we're still here.

And now I found what I was tying to say through the poetry often born of these Brooklyn streets.

Planet, Earth, was my place of birth
Born to be the soul controller of the universe
Besides the part of the map I hit first
Any environment I can adapt when it gets worst
The rough gets goin, the goin gets rough
When I start flowin, the mic might bust
The next state I shake from the power I generate
People in Cali used to think it was earthquakes
Cause times was hard on the Boulevard
So I vote God and never get scarred and gauled
But it seems like I'm locked in hell
Lookin over the edge but the R never fell
A trip to slip cause my Nikes got grip
Stand on my own two feet and come equipped
Any stage I'm seen on, or mic I fiend on
I stand alone and need nothin to lean on
Going for self with a long way to go
So much to say but I still flow slow
I come correct and I won't look back
Cause it ain't where you're from, it's where you're at
Even the (ghetto)

-Rakim

Fort Greene Park History Open to the Public, Bring the Kids!

Remember when the week was sunny and lovely? That all ended Wednesday. I ran the bike through some errands and came upon Fort Greene Park.

Fort Greene Park in addition to being Brooklyn's first official park & one of the larger islands of nature in the city, is a historical landmark. If you've lived in or around Brooklyn long enough you likely know something of that history. Between the Sailor's & Soldier Martyrs crypt, it's location in an historic neighborhood, it's monumental tower, once again lit each night Fort Greene Park history is hard to miss.

The first time I rode to the top I was about 17 and the city emerged upward as I climbed the park's summit. It was a cinematic reveal. This past Wednesday's sky was full of blue and warm with light, I wanted to experience the city that way, as a wide vista. The metal, glass and panorama of the city is different now but the view didn't disappoint.

What has been easy to overlook for me at least is a structure at the top of the park less monumental but vital and packed with historical artifacts. It's the comfort station, that has become the Fort Greene Park Visitor's Center. Before making off to the next errand it dawned on me nature was calling and the public restrooms in the Visitor's Center were the reason I was there.

The Visitors Center a neoclassical structure that was built in 1908 with the Monument. I'm embarrassed to say I only know it as the best free bathroom in Fort Greene. But to get to the bathrooms you need to enter and pass through the Visitor's Center and then Wednesday for the first time I really looked around and found over 200 years of history just waiting for me to notice it.

American Revolutionary period flags hang prominently from the ceiling.

Muskets and their small metal ammo are in cases around the park house, and very interesting is that many of the artifacts like the musket rounds were found in the park some as recently as in 2005.


This canon was used by the British Army during revolutionary times.

 
 The map above shows the 1873 park layout along side today's layout.

I gained all this knowledge from the Parks Department workers who were friendly hosts and happy to share the park's history. Even going so far as to show me the park turtle (he's been under the weather) and the pelt of a squirrel.
 
I won't lie, I thought the squirrel hide was gross, but interesting in that once upon a time in this very city that hide would be a form of currency.

Do yourself, a favor and stop on by the Fort Greene Visitor's Center it'd add to your perspective and possibly an even greater appreciation of Brooklyn.

For more information on Fort Greene Park and it's year long schedule of events check the Fort Greene Park Conservancy's website at http://www.fortgreenepark.org/

Crown Heights: Now - (thoughts on the 3/23 Town Hall)

New and old sights around the western edge of Crown Heights, Brooklyn. From top left: The former Brooklyn Jewish Hospital, Bicycle parking racks on Franklin in front of new cafe "Little Zelda", Residential construction on Eastern Parkway and Franklin Avenue, A lot cleared for large residential construction on Sterling Place btw Classon & Washington, A newly opened Animal Hospital on Franklin Avenue, Center, the Brooklyn Museum, Bottom LeftL a long standing bodega gets the "Mini-Whole Foods Make-Over"

On Saturday March 23rd 2013 the Crown Heights neighborhood group known as the "Crow Hill Community Association" held a Town Hall to be an open invitational forum for discussing any resident concerns. The event was held in the auditorium of the still new school building and facilitated by young volunteers, local residents and business owners. I heard a lot of sincere feeling, and quite a lot of love and admiration for Crown Heights and what struck me most was the similarities of the people of came from vastly different places to be there.

I walked into that building for the first time still thinking about what had been on this very same location not long ago. Across the street the Hospital of my birth, stood no longer a care center but an apartment complex home to one of the largest groups of tenants and of the highest rents in the neighborhood.

Besides my concern for the neighborhood I attended because recently I've followed the debate about things as seemingly trivial as whether it's fair and right for a parking space to be given to bicycles on a commercial street. It's a a proxy debate of course. It's meant to take the place of questions of why in a community that had been ignored for so long by much of the city, does the city "suddenly" care whether bikes have parking when they didn't care enough to keep an entire hospital going in a neighborhood that still needs it.

Because of the services that were cut from Crown Heights in the 70's & 80's and the resulting departure of home owners, commercial and industrial businesses and even a major clinical and surgical hospital, Crown Heights in general and in particular the streets surrounding Classon Avenue became a sort of Alamo where concerned residents worked to maintain the remaining good quality of life. One one street like Prospect Place you'd have beautiful homes and under cared for apartment buildings all being held together by the grace of residents and their willpower. Two blocks away on Bergen Street you could find crack houses and it's residents in tragic conditions.

I was one of the those residents, a kid who's family wondered aloud if moving away from it all was the best way to secure a better life, or if it was worth it to stick it out and keep guarding the fort.

Twenty-odd years later home owners began to discover that next their dutifully tended community garden, down the block from the trash cans they may have had to beg the city for, around the corner from local restaurant they faithful supported, there was a new wave entering the neighborhood. New faces, new shops, new habits bringing. Some new people, a noticeable minority of the new in my opinion came with what the kids would call swagger. Some of the new came upon what they say as a barren fertile land ready to be made in whatever image pleased them. Some of the new didn't interact with long term residents as much as might reasonably be expected of new people.

For a neighborhood of long invested concerned residents, it's not hard to see how after years of being under siege and finally beginning to see the flourishing of seeds planted in the community decades earlier, the long term residents of Crown Heights began to feel invaded.

If I had worked hard to keep something good, fighting against physical, systematic and metaphorical attack, the last thing I'd want is for someone new to come and claim that which I worked so hard to maintain. I might rather put a hood over my positions, keep them from sight, keep them for me.

However you can't hide the hood. Crown Heights and hundreds of blocks like it are changing, because to be honest the neighborhood despite the good work and good will of it's residents has been lacking for a long time. We all wanted better. Better schools, better food options, better government service and it is a damn shame and an intolerable insult that we who worked hard we're largely ignored until someone else came along.

Let us all residents of Crown Heights who witnessed the 1980's be honest; we wanted better in this neighborhood. And we knew a neighborhood that is situated like this one deserves better. Thousands of working class home owners live here. Three of the city's cultural institutions are here (Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Main Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library). Five subway lines service the neighborhood. We expected better and so I doubt most people hate that you can buy the New York Times or soy milk on Franklin Ave and on Nostrand Ave instead of having to travel a half mile to Park Slope, most people aren't unhappy that an open air drug market no longer exists on Franklin and Lincoln place. Most people aren't bothered by the fact that unlike in the 80's eastern parkway is once again beautiful tree lined and well lit. What most long term residents are bothered by about the change is the concern that this change might financially force residents out who can no longer afford local rents or prices.

And of course most long term residents still feel the stinging insult of a city that didn't have good reasons for lackluster polices in the 80's and 90's now almost instantly providing that clearly essential bicycle parking space. (for the record I'm all for the bike parking space)

So the other largely understandable thing my ears heard at the Town Hall, in the discussion I was part of was pain. That pain. That "we've keep this place whole for 20 years and made it possible for you to even have a place to move into with your new community organizing, and your "$15 dollar hamburgers" and your "craft beers" and yet "you don't even say hi when you see me in the street"

But streets, sidewalks have a tendency to go both ways.

Community means sharing obviously and their are expectations of community. It's up to the long term residents to share and correct new people in what is reasonably expectable of neighbors here But I really don't think most people moved into Crown Heights to be brow beaten. That's the challenge. To remember that despite all we have suffered, the chances that the blond girl from Kentucky who moved with four roommates next door came to personally oppress us and deprive us of a neighborhood is slight.

The changes that Bjorn from Scandinavia who moved here to become a filmmaker is purposefully trying to ignore us, as opposed to say, not sure what to expect from us and afraid he'll offend, is slight.

I think we can agree that most people moved to Crown Heights for an improvement in their lives some of which has an inversely negative effect on the lives of long standing members of the community. But on the micro level that is not a conspiracy. For the couple that moves uses their income or their inheritance to buy a house that is a plan yes, but not necessarily a plot. And just as long residing members of the community expect our new coming neighborhoods to adhere to certain basic social communal norms, (saying hello to neighbors, investing in the community interests, supporting local business) they should also expect us not to see the enemy in each of their faces and stories unless new comers to the neighborhood give us reason to.

The cat is long since out of the bag and the bag has blown away. This neighborhood wasn't gentrified yesterday last year or last decade. Gentrification started right after the embers of the burnt out buildings in Bushwich began to cool. It started when members of the city government began encouraging an environment that fostered red-lining, police cuts, social service cuts, negative redistricting and cuts to basic services. It started with a Mayor who's no longer living. It started long before most of the newest new comers were born. Long term residents of Crown Heights have a reasonable expectation that new-comers will at best contribute to the community they've come to reap the benefits of, and at least that they won't make it any worse for the community as a whole than they found it. But every newcomer and shouldn't be made the straw man for the indignities the community has suffered since the 70's.

Besides that being unfair and and foolhardy, its misdirected. Gentrifiers are people of all backgrounds and a few income levels. The average person can no better presume on appear who is a new coming hipster gentrifier than the NYPD can judge by appearance whether or not I should be stopped and frisked and arrested. In the last two years I've been accused of both out in these Brooklyn streets that I love and I guess that makes sense if its a crime to be a black man born in Brooklyn and a professional who can afford to eat out at restaurants with $15.00 hamburgers and craft beers.

I had to leave the Town Hall because of a prior commitment, but as I left I hoped for the best. There's a lot of interest in Crown Heights, a lot of positive interest and a lot of rightfully lingering pain.

The life, the edge the spark of communities like Crown Heights that draws the new like moths to a flame is available because civic minded people, most of them African-Americans and Caribbean-Americans, kept a loving torch burning for this neighborhood. They kept alive hope it'd come back from the brink. When those long term residents are excluded from conversation, from participation, that flame burns and resentment smolders.

In 1990 the corner of Classon Avenue and St Marks in what was then undisputedly Crown Heights, an enormous public school building in the classic style of New York City that can easily be found from borough to borough sat continuing it's slow and glacial decay. The decaying school was the same in 1980 and I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same in 1970.

By 2000, the old worn decayed school had been torn down. A new school building was constructed at St. Marks Place and Classon Avenue, PS 22. Part of me misses the old, because it's what I grew up with as a kid walking with his grandmother, a hospital worker, down Classon Avenue on the way to get her check cashed and for myself maybe an icy.

On Saturday March 23rd 2013, hundreds of people, local residents, renters and home-owners, black, white, brown, yellow, green purple and every other classification we can toss up, came together in the still new PS 22 school auditorium to positively consider this neighborhood. Things have changed. Some of that change is better and if we can work together we can make it better still, for all of us.

A photo taken prior to the March 23rd Crown Heights Town Hall.