Life in Brooklyn / I Like Birds
I’m slowly getting accustomed to life in South Brooklyn. Bay Ridge might wind up being the perfect neighborhood for me, in all of its remote and eccentric charm. It’s very quiet and beautiful down here, with the stately Verrazano bridge towering over everything. My own view of the bridge is minimal. You have to crane your neck out my bedroom window to see the very tippy-top of the eastern spire over an abandoned construction site.
The fog rolls off the harbor and blankets the neighborhood with a strangely comforting regularity. It can make driving over the Verrazano feel like walking through the London streets of a Jack the Ripper story. The foghorns of passing ships lull me to sleep, or gently awake me like the distant clickety-clack of the Long Island Rail Road in the house in which I grew up.
I can’t look at the rocket launch
The trophy wives of the astronauts
Bay Ridge is about as old timey as Brooklyn gets. The bridge connects two military bases. I’m not sure what’s still housed at Fort Hamilton except for a VA hospital, but the neighborhood is dotted with armed forces recruitment centers. The local barbershops offer free haircuts to servicemen, and front lawns still display their “Support the Troops” signs, faded and yellowed.
And I won’t listen to their words
’cause I like birds
I spend most of my time in New Jersey, or on the road, for work, so, so far, Bay Ridge is more of a bedroom community for me than much of a real home. I haven’t checked out nearly enough of the local restaurants and bars. I’m a little too reliant on take-out (particularly for a nabe lacking in any Mexican food).
I don’t care for walkin’ downtown
Crazy auto car gonna mow me down
The whole driving-between-Jersey-and-Brooklyn thing has made me even less keen on ever going in to Manhattan. My car’s been in the shop this week, so I’ve been having to take the N/R to Penn Station to take the Jersey Transit. It’s an inhuman squeeze.
Look at all the people like cows in a herd
Well, I like birds
Our Congressional district is lumped in with Staten Island, and, until last year, we were the only district in NYC to send a Republican to Congress. Early on, while at brunch at a local pub, I overheard a bunch of middle-aged bellyachers complaining about the upcoming MLK holiday and speculating that with our new (BLACK!!!) president it was the first of many such holidays. Next up, Huey P. Newton Day!
I can’t stand in line at the store
The mean little people are such a bore
duck took a while to get used to the new digs. While our we were in storage, waiting to close, we stayed in a studio apartment, which greatly comforted the clingy little beast. Now in a far more spacious two bedroom, she spent her first weeks getting lost in each new room and crying. Eventually, she rediscovered the joy of windows.
Although we are once again on the second floor, this time our windows face the quiet parking lot of a church, as opposed to a busy boulevard with buses driving noisily past. Up on the window sill, duck gets calmer and actually shuts up for a change. She seemed to take a particular interest in the birds.
But it’s all right if you act like a turd
’cause I like birds
I bought a bird feeder to encourage the wee winged ones to gather by our fire escape. The bird feed label promised to attract blue jays, cardinals and other “attractive outdoor pets” (as opposed to those dead common finches and pidgeons), and, boy, did it deliver.
If you’re small and on a search
I’ve got a feeder for you to perch on
I can’t yet name every variety of bird that’s stopped by my fire escape for a quick meal. I’m not quite at the point of buying a book to recognize them, although, it occurs to me that since grandma died it does fall to someone to be the family’s resident birdwatcher.
For now, I may content myself with hanging up a second feeder and filling it with a different kind of bird feed, just to see if I can increase the biodiversity of the fire escape. Maybe I’ll add a small plant, who knows?
I’ve got a feeder for you to perch on
Yeah, I’ve got a feeder for you to perch on
(Apologies to Mark Oliver Everett)
A Real Hat
After a morning that saw me put a bid in on a spacious two bedroom apartment with a formal dining room in Bay Ridge – $10,000 down with 75% financing and a very adult activity, if ever I engaged in one – I decided to go shopping for a new hat. I’ve been wearing hats for a little over a year now: a straw hat followed by a light felt black fedora. Fashionable as it might otherwise be, a black hat clashes with the navy blazer I’ve taken to wearing lately. This is another dubious sign of maturity. As the Clash song goes, “You grow up and you calm down / You start wearing blue and brown.” A grey hat seemed in order, so I made my way to Bencraft Hatters.
Bencraft has two locations in Brooklyn. The original is located in Williamsburg, not far from where my paternal grandfather lived when he married my grandmother. It’s probably where he purchased (or, more likely, rented) the top hat he wore on their wedding day. The other, which I frequent, is in Borough Park. Inside of Bencraft, you will find the kind of intense debates, measurements and arguments over hats that made most American men heave a sigh of relief when J.F.K. attended his inauguration bare-headed. Being a Sunday, I found a dozen Jewish men (customers and salesmen) engaging in heated debates over coloring, brim size and the ever-ephemeral quality of “quality.”
A family – two older brothers and their father – fretted over the difference of a quarter of an inch of brim for the youngest of their clan. A 10-year-old girl rejected her father’s new hat as “not as good” as his last one, and chastised him for losing his yarmulke inside of a display hat and thus exposing his chrome dome to Yahweh. At the sales counter, an agitated little man complained of a barely detectable “bump” in the crown of his new hat. “I wouldn’t complain, except that this is the fourth hat I purchased from you this week,” he explained. The salesman countered, “In every hat in this store, could I find an imperfection? These are handmade hats, they will never be 100%” Finally, though, the salesman agreed to steam the hat in an attempt to work out the bump, although, he complained, Sunday was a bad day for it. He gestured to the long line of Hassidic men waiting to have their hats steamed and cleaned.
As for me, I meekly requested a grey hat in the same cheapo style as the “lite felt” fedora I was already wearing. None in my size, the salesman apologized. He did find a slightly-more-expensive Stefano. “It’s a real hat,” he explained, “as we say in the business.” Almost thirty, a real home and a real hat. How could I refuse?
Goodbye, Queens. Hello, Brooklyn
I’m not a well-traveled person. I secured a reputation of sorts in grad school, on the first day of Elaine Bernard’s global labor movements class. As we went around the room for introductions, and everyone explained who they were and where they came from (yes, yes, they were the union, the mighty, might union) and discussed their various international contacts and trips abroad, I introduced myself with a flip “Shaun Richman, AFT, Queens, NY. Frankly, I’m uncomfortable leaving Queens.” I’ve spent my entire life – nearly 30 years of it – in this fine borough, but all things have an end. I finally received an acceptable offer on my apartment. I signed the contract of sale on Friday and will be gone by November.
I’m looking to move to Brooklyn, someplace close to the Belt Parkway and the Verrazano Bridge, and within an hour of midtown by subway. Someplace quiet, pretty, affordable and in close proximity to fun. I’m not sure such a neighborhood exists. It’s the “affordable” part that’s difficult. I managed, in the end, to sell my apartment for nearly twice what I paid for it five years ago. Unfortunately, everything else went up in cost at least as much. Obvious choices like Park Slope and Fort Greene are prohibitively expensive.
I had high hopes for Sunset Park, with its ubiquitous park and skyline views. It is affordable – barely – but sleepy and undeveloped. Bay Ridge, slightly to the south, had much more appealing shopping and dining, but it’s so far from everything, I’m afraid no one would ever visit me and the neighborhood would serve as little more than a bedroom community for my Jersey commute.
Yesterday I got my hopes up about the unfortunately-named Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, but I dashed them today by visiting there. Even the nabe’s enthusiastic booster blog has trouble highlighting more than nice architecture and convenient geography:
“PLG is among the last of the neighborhoods that border Prospect Park where average working people can still (almost) afford to live… That lower price tag, however, comes with concessions – there are none of the higher-end boutiques, bars and restaurants that populate Park Slope, Prospect Heights and Brooklyn Heights.”
It was lovely, but I had a hard time locating a supermarket, a fruit stand or even a decent slice of pizza. You could call places like Prospect-Lefferts Gardens and Sunset Park “up and coming” neighborhoods, but only a fool counts on a neighborhood turnaround in troubled economic times like these. Perhaps I’m asking for too much. Perhaps simply being able to afford a roof over one’s head is the best one can hope for these days in New York. I’ve got three months until I’m out on my ass. Expectations decline on a daily basis.
Yo, Brooklyn!
I’m sure you’ve all been waiting patiently for my 2005 election cycle endorsements. The sad fact is there is not much to be excited about in the upcoming NYC elections. Freddy Ferrer has squandered much of his goodwill from the 2001 elections, and the Democratic contenders are likely to savage each other in the primary and hand Bloomberg an easy re-election. And, sadly, there doesn’t seem to be a strong independent candidacy to support.
The outlook is considerably brighter in Brooklyn, where community activist Gloria Mattera is running for Borough President. Gloria is a community activist with deep support in Park Slope, where she received 30% of the vote in a City Council election in 2001. She has been a very strong anti-war voice, and, as the Chairperson of the NYS Green Party, she has helped ensure that the party extend its message beyond environmentalism to become a true progressive champion of responsible development, community control, peace and justice and economic rights.
She is the only credible candidate in the Brooklyn Borough President race, where the incumbent, Marty Markowitz, clowns around as “Brooklyn’s biggest cheerleader,” and the Republicans probably don’t have enough support to field a candidate. Gloria’s campaign will be the highest profile campaign for an independent progressive during this election cycle, and deserves support from good people around the city.
A letter from Gloria Mattera:
Dear Friends and Supporters,Some of you may already know that I have decided to run for Brooklyn Borough President. I need your help to make this important campaign a success.
There is something serious happening in Brooklyn that we cannot ignore. The current BP, Marty Markowitz, has allowed billionaire developer Bruce Ratner to change the character of our borough for the sake of getting himself a “hometown” basketball team.
The proposed Ratner development includes 17 skyscrapers, with most over 50 stories with a token of low income housing thrown in. Even if all the housing were affordable instead of high-end, the secondary displacement effect would destroy the diversity and culture of Fort Greene, Prospects Heights, Bed-Sty and more. This is not the only scandal attached to the Markowitz-Ratner deal.
Ratner is using eminent domain to take away the homes of those living in the footprint of the development. He has bought off and gag ordered area residents. So far, the power has been removed from the City Council for the project to be reviewed by through the Uniform Land Use Review Process. Taxpayer subsidies are over one billion and climbing. This project must be stopped!
No democrat has stepped up to challenge Markowitz on his crusade of overdevelopment throughout Brooklyn so it is up to us – Green Party members and social justice activists.
The campaign is committed to raising the 50,000 dollars necessary to receive matching funds from the Campaign Finance Program. Although I raised close to 15,000 dollars for City Council and received over 50,000 in matching funds, this effort will require more. Please give as generously as you can. Print out the attached donor card and send that with your contribution made payable to: Committee to Elect Gloria Mattera 2005, 437 2 Street #1 Brooklyn, NY 11215.
Your time and involvement in the campaign is also important. Please send me an e-mail or fill out the volunteer form at www.electgloria.org to sign up for petitioning, tabling and outreach.
The campaign will also focus on other important issues – so stay tuned for more updates. I look forward to your participation.
peace & struggle,
Gloria 718 369-2998