Chaplin in the Park

If you're in the area this weekend, there should be a good show this Friday at Prospect Park bandshell. Not only will three Charlie Chaplin shorts be shown (The Rink, The Immigrant, and The Adventurer), there will also be musical accompaniment in the form of a 16 piece orchestra  performing new scores by Brooklyn-born composer and conductor Carl Davis, along with a violin solo.

The free performance starts at 7:30 this Friday, August 1st (tickets not required). Grab your picnic blanket, head out across the park and enjoy!

Brooklyn FD Prepares for Armageddon

Construction work is well under way on a 10 foot high chain link fence, topped with barbed wire, which will encircle the Fire Department building and antenna adjacent to the Botanic Garden's south entrance at Empire Boulevard and Washington Avenue (gmap). Apparently, the existing 8 foot high barbed wire fence and adjacent spiked 5 foot high wrought iron fence weren't sufficient protection. (The three fences are shown below with red arrows, as seen from Washington Ave, the newest one on the left.)

It's not clear what type of equipment and/or valuables are located in this building, or why it would be a target that warrants this type of triple barricade. What we do know is that the new fence significantly narrows the sidewalk, encompasses (former) street trees in its territory, and seems to broadcast a general "F--k You" to its neighbors on Washington Avenue and Empire Boulevard. Not to mention it kind of negates the "scenic route" sign at Washington Avenue.

Thanks, FDNY, for making Empire Boulevard that much more of an enjoyable pedestrian experience.

Want to express your gratitude? You can email the commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta and tell him your thoughts about this lovely addition to our neighborhood.

Nap Time for the Blog

Hey folks, we are delighted to introduce Sidney McLaren Star, a new arrival at Hawthorne Street HQ... which is our way of saying that Carrie and I are going to have to take a break from blogging for a while. I'm sure that we will periodically wake up cranky and complain about something. We may even take the time to write something nice about things we like — but if you think we're smiling it's probably just gas.

Now if you'll excuse us, we need to go learn the secret handshake for the Stroller Mafia.

Area animals crapping in Prospect Park sandbox

A member of the Prospect Lefferts Playground list reported earlier this week that her husband witnessed someone letting their dog relieve itself (the post specified #2) in the sandbox of the Lincoln Road playground. The witness informed the Parks Department, which removed the excrement in question. But “upon closer inspection," the report continued, "there was more poop found hidden in the sand."

While local parents have suggested that owners who allow their pets to poop in the playground should be fined, they don't seem to realize that dogs aren't allowed in the playground in the first place. Park rules explicitly forbid animals anywhere in the area. After all, you don't want them shitting in that scary ring of water around the sandbox either, right?

Unfortunately, I suspect that the ability of policing to curb the problem is limited; the park is also home to a number of feral cats, perhaps the more likely culprits.

PLG's Rap Repository

I am a little late getting to this but the New York Times recently did a profile of Brooklyn life by interviewing as many people as they could on one car of the Q during a typical morning commute.

Capsules of the interviewees included at least one PLGer:

By day, Nathaniel Long, born in Ohio, works in the e-commerce industry. By night, he’s a writer who chronicles Brooklyn’s underground hip-hop scene. Since moving to New York about a year and a half ago, Mr. Long, 30, has run HipHopLinguistics.com, his music Web site, out of the Prospect-Lefferts Gardens home he shares with his girlfriend. Mr. Long went to Ohio State University and studied journalism, but “coming out of school, there weren’t even any decent-paying jobs.”

I haven't listened to new hiphop since the Native Tongues era, so I should probably head over to HHL and get myself current.

(Thanks to Jessica)

NYT Celebrates the Glory of Jerk

Today's New York Times has a feature on jerk chicken. I was shocked that none of the establishments from PLG made it into the article. With such a large Jamaican population beyond the borders of PLG I obviously shouldn't have been, but I love our local jerk. (Some of it, anyway.)

The featured businesses were Crown Heights jerkery McKenzie's (Utica between Carroll and Crown), Flatbush's Boston Jerk City (Utica and Foster) and Prospect Heights' The Islands (my personal favorite Caribbean joint, at Washington between Eastern Parkway and Lincoln).

Fortunately, PLG gets a little love in the photo essay that accompanies the article. The broiler man pictured here is slide #3.

Of particular interest to me was the Jamaican Dutchy food cart, as it is parked mere blocks from my office in midtown. Who doesn't love something that makes them feel at home when they are trapped in a foreign borough?

Maple Street School featured in "Next American City"

Next Amercian City, a quarterly magazine about urban issues, prominently features the Maple Street School in its latest cover story. The article looks at co-op preschools around the country, but draws on Maple Street as a sort of model. (Download pdf)

Maple Street typifies the new face of the pre-school co-op. Located in a historically black, working-class neighborhood that has attracted wealth over the past decade, the school charges $12,132 per year per full-time student ($8,112 for half days). It is diverse economically and racially but skews toward the postboomer educated idealists who now populate central Brooklyn: 64 percent of the parents are white, 24 percent multiracial and 10 percent African-American. Almost 60 percent of the families have household incomes below $125,000, and most have two working parents.

Maybe it's just me but $12,132 seems like a lot of money for preschool; and co-ops are said to be a bargain! As a soon-to-be parent myself, I shudder to think of what a conventional preschool costs.