Views of a born and bred Brooklynite. (umbrooklynborn@gmail.com) This blog satisfies my need to hear and air feelings of B'klyn from the people whose life experience were born here. Hopefully it'll balance to some of the revisionist historical musings I've seen as if Bklyn barely existed before the 90's. Brooklyn as Tabula Rasa. If we can all live as best possible while appreciating the past and neighbors we've inherited that would be great too.
ESPN announced recently they'll be shutting their signature sports restaurants across the country, but they are game for Prospect Heights!
Today Saturday the 12 they'll be World Cup Soccer viewing and ESPN zone activities along a to-be closed stretch of Vanderbilt Ave between Bergen and Dean Streets.
It's really a kick-off to the city's Summer Streets program when neighborhood roads are made car scarce in order that pedestrians and especially kids can take to the streets and enjoy communal activities. It doesn't get much more communal than the World Cup and I'm sure world soccer themed bar Woodwork on the corner of Dean and Vanderbilt doesnt mind.
Details from their release (thanks for the post ilovefranklin blog)
ESPN to screen World Cup games outdoors
at Summer Streets on Vanderbilt
The kick-off for Summer Streets on Vanderbilt begins this Saturday, June 12 with a World Cup celebration including a screening of the World Cup matches outdoors on Vanderbilt Avenue. ESPN will be sponsoring an open-air viewing of the games on a large high-definition projection cube that will be set-up in the middle of Vanderbilt Avenue between Dean and Bergen Streets. ESPN will also be sponsoring the ESPN Interactive Zone, which will include lots of games and give-aways. Outdoor screening of matches begins at 10 am with the Argentina-Nigeria match and continues at 2:30 pm when the USA faces England.
This Saturday, June 12th, and on Sundays June 20th and 27th from 12 pm to 5:00 pm, Vanderbilt Avenue between Dean Street and Park Place will trade cars for pedestrians, and honking horns for dancing beats. Four blocks of the avenue will be closed to traffic and transformed into a pedestrian plaza for the second annual Summer Streets on Vanderbilt. In addition to the World Cup events, there will be inflatable bouncy castles, face painting and hula hoop contests, capoiera and fashion shows. Local bands will take center stage and restaurants will flood into the street with outdoor dining.
Presented by the Vanderbilt Avenue Merchants District (VAMD) and the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council (PHNDC), 2010 will mark the second annual Summer Streets on Vanderbilt.
* More information about the event can be found at www.vanderbiltave.com.
* Press inquiries please contact Bianca Sultana PR at biancasultanaPR.com.
* To volunteer, contact danaeo@optonline.net or 718-772-3074.
Last year as I wandered along the NYC Marathon route I met an amazing bunch of people and one story, demonstrating the positive potential of random New York City encounters particular stood out. Here's that story in video and written form. Hope you have a good view of the Marathon.
Music:"Reach Out I'll Be There" by The Four Tops
Today's running of the New York City marathon will offer many intense and passive means of bystander participation. Some ways are almost as involved as running the race itself. But you don't have to be one of the hundreds of water bearing volunteers passing out hundreds of ounces of H2O to the masses. You don't have to play an instrument as is done at various points along the route, although it can greatly enhances the mood if you're belting out great sounds adding to the runner's sonic cacophony. You don't even need to bring a flag, although it's cool when people put on a giddy display of national backing.
However if you want low cost high impact results, I'd say pound for pound clasping hands (or giving five as we'd call it in the old neighborhood) with a marathon runner is one of the most fulfilling actions of the entire passive marathon watching experience. You, leaving your hand out to be slapped by a marathon runner you may never even see is the best is the greatest interaction for the generally uninitiated because it requires so little of the bystander. You only need extend your arm, hand and palm open, fingers spread like a wide welcoming smile. the runner stretches their hand out and in that brief contact you're able to offer good luck, hope, praise and allegiance to dozens maybe even hundreds. Which of course stimulates you as well, to embellish if nothing else. After all if you give "five" to a deflating runner who surges on after and wins, how can you not claim having had a hand in the victory?
But it's gotta be more empowering for the runner. Perhaps after six or nine or fifteen, certainly after twenty or so miles the mind must begin to peer dimly through a tunnel vision that can enhance focus but is just as able to become so transfixing as to block awareness and motivation. I imagine the runner in those fixated stretches, then a hand reaching out before them inviting, waiting passively. Then crack! It happens.
I've never run the marathon so I can't know from the runner's perspective, but it's gotta be more empowering for the runner. I've seen something happen when runner and bystander make that manual contact. Yours and their hands crash like human cymbals. A sudden jolt of focus, an explosion of unexpected encouragement. You become a pacemaker encouraging their required rhythm. And then it's over but the runner is sharper, more aware, redirected.
Amazing that it happens at all given the physics of the event. Marathon runners travel at an average of twelve miles per hour. If a moving car hit a parked car at that speed expensive damage would result. Despite the meaty mitt encircling much of our palm, it seems likely to think having somebody run their hand into yours at twelve miles an hour is gonna sting at least. So overcoming risk aversion is the first hurtle. Then there's the issue of aim. Again think twelve miles an hour. And consider it's not the comparably smooth ride of a car but the up and down, back and forth, bumpity jumpity of running. You'd be a head bobbing in a sea of bobble heads. Packed as well, so add to that a visibility limited to the back of the person a few inches in front of you. Objects are flashing into view, then gone. Salmon have an easier time locating things.
From my observations, of the hand-shake/clasps,pounds,fives I saw it was fifty-fifty between last minute sudden clasps and runners deliberate honing in on the supportive hand like a targeted missile.
During last year's marathon I was in Brooklyn, where Fort Greene tumbles down into Clinton Hill which promptly runs into Bedford-Stuyvesant. I took note of the many people giving that supportive hand to the runners. Eventually I reached the corner of Bedford and Lafayette avenues, across from KFC in what is usually accepted to still be Bed-Stuy. I noticed a spectator whose entire method of handshake, hand clasp, high five giving, separated him from the rest and that was Danny. Clearly he chose his spot, that corner where literally and sometimes figuratively the race turns. His hand remained aloft, just enough into the race as to matter, all the time I was there and I imagined long before and after. He was the Grizzly of the stream for that corner, except that instead of destroying hope with a swat he seemed to pound life and good will back into the runners he caught.
I was curious and spoke with Danny he explained that he held his hand out as a half target half energy boosting social connector because he made the runner's happy and that at the very least it made him happy. Then Shereen, the lovely woman standing beside Danny added it was also a showing of support. Shereen would know, thirteen years ago she and Danny met on that very corner.
On that day years ago Danny and Shereen exchanged numbers, courted, eventually married and have returned to that same spot every year since to continue their marathon watching tradition and share the love.
After meeting them I began to see, probably for the first time in 30 years of viewership how the New York City marathon strengthens and demonstrates that very New York City phenomon of possible, sudden, sometimes emotional bonds being created instantly between the diverse millions of New York's passing strangers. Often with lasting effect. While at the same time for those more deeply invested in New York City day in and day out, the marathon offers a warm touchstone for relationships that run and never lag.
Let's see, doo rag, check! asian tatt, check! now what else do I need to show I'm hard...?
So New York Football Giants receiver, Plaxico Burress (pictured above) shot himself in the leg, accidentally while at a club in NYC last night. (tmz)
Below are my initial thoughts;
Thought #1: stupid.
Thought #2: I know receivers don't like safeties but that's ridiculous.
Thought #3: moron.
Thought #4: it's a metaphor, not an instruction, you fool!
Thought #5: earlier that night the Giants' receiver corp told him, "you think you're fast but how fast would you be with a bullet in your leg..."
Thought #6: Loaded with free time as result of his hamstring injury, Plaxico had been catching up on his movie watching, recently checking out the Oliver Stone film "W". He enjoyed it and was then inspired to watch "JFK" (which he heard was good but had never seen due to his opinion that Kevin Costner is overvalued when compared to his output). Soon after watching the "Zapruder sequence" in JFK, Plaxico became entranced by the concept of a "Magic Bullet" one that would defy logic and change history. Later that night at an NYC nightclub his childlike curiosity and one too many fuzzy navels got the best of him, he reached into his pocket for the cold steel nestled there, focused on his injured hamstring and took a shot in the dark.
Finally, how perfect would it have been if as they wheeled Plaxico out the club the DJ played this:
Damn, so yesterday was hectic (if you were ducking shots on Fulton St) but didn't it just look beautiful out? Well today we get the funk wetness complete with megaton bombastic thunderclaps that make me wish I could see through clouds.
But enough about that, what I've been meaning to post is that two sundays past I was wandering around as I do on sundays and I saw a sign for ¢25 wings and cheap beer. So considering where they economy is headed I took it as sign of what I should get used to and walked in.
The place was Mirrors, on Grand (btw Clifton and Lafayette, Clinton Hill/BedStuy), the occasion was football watching, and the beer and wings were satisfying beyond their price points. According to the bartender the place has been open most of the year, and official since Aug.
Mirrors has the potential to be a cool lounge on sunday afternoons. I've passed by in the evening and it has a good crowd, but that sunday of two weeks ago was light. The game however was cool, flat-screen plasma crystal clear, Giants beat the Niners and the crispy wings beat the bar-b-que wings, I prefer salty to sweet.
I told a few peeps about the spot and happy to report last sunday the crowd was three times larger, but still there was room for more and wings to spare.
Ignoring my actual job I blog now for the third time today to tell you this:
I just read the story of Anthony Hewitt (pictured) a young man from Brooklyn who's not only been signed to play baseball for the Philadelphia Phillies, 1.38 millions signing bonus! He's also got as part of the deal received four years paid at Vanderbilt college where he'll study business.
The young ballplayer grew up in Crown Heights, lived on Eastern Parkway and went to PS9 among other schools.
The Daily News goes on to say Hewitt idolized A-Rod as a kid...(you're all so quick on this, there's no point to add)
A Phillies player?!? oh, it's Brooklyn phenom Anthony Hewitt. okay.
Sports hasn't really been a major component of this "UBB" blog but maybe I'll have to post a stories of the other Brooklyn born athletes who've made it to the big leagues.
Here's an example Willie Randolph the Hall of Fame bound World Series winning player and coach (shamelessly fired last month by the Mets. punks.) Not only played High School ball at Samuel J. Tilden in East Flatbush, but when I was there on the baseball team in the 80s his uniform (from 1972) was still in use. Trivia! Feel the enlightenment!
Anyway congrats Anthony Hewitt, wishing much success to you, keep Brooklyn in your heart and you'll be fine.
(Photo Credit: Chris O'Meara / Gene Puskar / Associated Press)
The Super Bowl Champ NY Football Giants will be spoken of a thousand times before I finish this posting. For those who cared to watch the game, it was at times, pure electric. I loved it as I think any New Yorker should and I accept the doubts I will attract when I say I never doubted them.
But for those of you reading this I'd like to offer you a moment unseen by the millions that happened beyond the field of Glendale, Arizona. This is was my highlight straight outta Brooklyn USA.
Ya see, I was lucky enough to be invited to a massive and annual Super Bowl party thanks to Dana, Shay and Des (as well as thanks to true blue Giant fan Leigh for introducing them to me last year) and the crowd seemed only %66 in favor of the Giants, which shocked me. And I don't know what this meant but a large number of the Patriot fans seemed to be women.
Except for one brother, one excited and vocal brother.
Late in the game the Patriots scored which put them in the lead which for some, seemed to be the setup to impending victory. That was when that (almost) lone Patriot fan who had been a one man pep squad all game, leaped into a boisterous rant, going as far at one point to insist that we all, each of us, shake his hand like men after the upcoming Giant loss.
That was his retort you see, because minutes earlier the Giants had scored what seemed to be their winning touchdown. At that time, that Giant touchdown was their first after a long period on non scoring, and it motivated all the New York fans in attendance to leap to our feet, hugging, celebrating, whooting, hollering and spontaneously breaking into that now well known political chant of "Yes We Can!" "Yes We Can!" We must have chanted for a minute solid. From my perspective, there was a whimsical glance passed from fan to fan, each of us soaked in hyperactive joy.
So yes, as mentioned the Pats did score again, and as you know the Giants did as well, winning the game. But for me that moment of celebration in that Giant room with Giant screen TVs and excited Giant Fans of various and even dark and lovely shades chanting "Yes We Can!" felt like victory and was a moment I'll remember just as much as the game.
After all if the Giants could win, anything could happen.
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