Icky in Brooklyn

Happy T-Day everyone! With a long hall pass from my school gig, I decided to combine biz with touring, and run all of my errands aboard the MTA Brooklyn buses - a sort of neighborhoods tour. From Windsor Terrace, round about here and there, and to downtown, my chariots were the B69, B75, and B67.




The B69 is relatively pleasant and got me to my errands, but for touring options, the B75 wins hands down. Starting at Greenwood Cemetery, heading down Prospect Park West, Ninth Street and Smith, this sweet ride offers a way-cool tour of Windsor Terrace, Park Slope, Gowanus (my favorite part of the trip), and Cobble Hill.



After being ferried back to Windsor Terrace by the Sweet 75, it was time to commence the second leg of the journey ... the B67 into deep Park Slope, Lincoln and 7th Ave. (I know, sounds daunting - especially with the rep the B67 has.) Suffice it to say, the notoriously-missing-and-late B67, combined with prime-Slope after school kids and nannies ... well, it was a mess. A hot, crowded, snotty, French-speaking mess. I got off ten blocks shy of my Windsor Place stop, and walked. Curiosities and fun facts follow.

1. Why are all these kids little elementary post-todds? Where are the older ones? Burning cars, I guess.
2. Why are they all speaking French? Kids & nannies included. All speaking French. WTF?
3. I saw the yellow umbrellas. They seem small. They are indeed yellow.
4. Why is the Minerva building so incredibly ugly, and who the hell would live there?

It looks like some Alias-themed high security industrial complex. Ah well, no accounting for taste. (Or French.)



(smith street and b69photos courtesy of eisenvater's photostream at flickr.com)

Brooklyn's cultural attractions have had their share of shameful and dirty dealings (including the first American performance of a certain Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, but let's not talk about that). Today, let us set our minds on a magnificent-half-mile of scandal and intrigue along Eastern Parkway.

The Brooklyn Museum was built by McKim, Mead, and White, notable architects of several beautiful-but-stuffy processional piles. In recent history, the museum is most famous for the "Sensation" exhibit of 1999.

"The Holy Virgin Mary" was a mixed media work picturing an elephant-crap Madonna surrounded by cherubim-like cutouts of the female anatomy. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani declared the show "insulting to Catholics," adding that there is "nothing in the First Amendment that supports horrible and disgusting projects."

The ongoing crap slinging (literally) raged and the cast of characters grew, involving no less than the Cardinal of St Patrick's Cathedral, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the ACLU, and PETA. Protesters outside the museum prayed, invoked the rosary, handed out vomit bags, and tossed manure in protest.



Speaking of scandal, next door, "The Palm House" and other structures at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden were also designed by the afore-mentioned eminent Victorian, Stanford White. One of the most prominent architects of the age, White was dead by 1906.

Harry K. Thaw - angry husband of White's underage lover, showgirl Evelyn Nesbit - fired three shots directly into White's face during a floorshow.

After the shots, laughter built – the audience thought it might be part of the performance. (Tough crowd.) In the poetic-justice department, Thaw blasted White on top of a building that White himself designed ... the first Madison Square Garden. And to further the irony, that building was crowned by (wait for it) a towering, golden, naked likeness of mistress Evelyn. If you care to pursue the life-as-art theme, you can see all of this portrayed in E.L. Doctrow's excellent novel (and movie, and musical), "Ragtime."

Evelyn (miraculously) settled down and stayed out of the papers for a while ... until she was was named in Brooklyn Supreme Court as one of the causes of a South First Street woman's request for divorce from her taxi-driving Williamsburg husband.

Here's to the "Sensation" exhibition! And here's to Evelyn, who provided entertainment not just for Stanford White, but for all of us.



brooklyn museum photo courtesy of apium's photostream at flickr.com
bam opera house photo courtesy of nancycz's photostream at flickr.com

I always enjoy Atlantic Yards Report. It's a great blog, always smart and timely stuff.

I think of the Atlantic Yards Project as the last-dangerous-link-in-the-deadly-chain of an uber-gentrified super-neighborhood stretching from Brooklyn Heights, down Fulton and Atlantic through Prospect Heights, to Park Slope and Windsor Terrace, downhill through Gowanus, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Red Hook, and back to the Heights. Featuring a Whole Foods, a Trader Joe's, two Targets, NYU Dorms, and the country's biggest Ikea. Brooklyn is the new Union Square.

Today AYP points out a great article by Sam Anderson in New York Magazine about the death of the Dodgers, and the loss of authentic Brooklyn. From Mr. Anderson's article ...

"At some point in the last decade, the borough scored its most lucrative contract since the Navy Yard closed: It became the main off-site production facility for Manhattan's hipness. But as any reflexively anti-Establishment blogger will tell you, what looks on paper like the dawn of a new Golden Era might actually be the death rattle of Brooklyn's authenticity.

Historically, Brooklyn has been the antithesis of everything Manhattanites value most: a handy bulwark against the voracious real-estate-industrial complex across the river. Now it's beginning to feel like an extension of Manhattan, the city's shabby-chic east wing. The colonizers' crimes against the spirit of Brooklyn are legion and heavily blogged.

Williamsburg is a hipster theme park soon to be augmented by luxury waterfront high-rises. Park Slope is a parody. There are $2.2 million brownstones in Fort Greene. The old Navy Yard now houses a film studio. Red Hook is now a dock for the world's largest cruise ship and will soon be home to the nation's largest Ikea ... we seem to have been left with the giant churning liver of gentrification, filtering out the toxins of poverty. We are witnessing the birth of post-mythic Brooklyn, an 81-square-mile metaphor for nothing."




Photo Courtesy of the Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn Collection

Today, I came across a great photoblog,
Queens Reborn - For Better of For Worse.

There's much talk about the growing proliferation of Kardboard Kondos here in Brooklyn. QRB provides us with a look at a related trend in our sister borough of Queens ... the rise of the NYC McMansion (and Mansion McNugget), giving us "a continuing tour of some of these additions to our Queens communities." The visual commentary is terrific, and the photos speak volumes.










Photos courtesy of http://queensreborn-forbetterorworse.blogspot.com