Park Slope Reader

Outside

The Earth is Life, and the Land is our Home: Lenapehoking and its Original Inhabitants

By Filed Under: Feature, Outside Tagged With: ,

If you live in Brooklyn, there is a decent chance you have been to Prospect Park. It is a natural sanctuary of sweeping vales, luminous ponds, dense woodlands, and dedicated athletes. The urban park embraces socialization, from large family gatherings and cultural celebrations to sponsored festivals and outdoor concerts. It does not separate society by race or class, nor age, gender, or ethnicity.

The land, as it sits today, is accessible year-round and available for people of all demographics to use. The landscape provides a public space for quiet moments of solitude and self-reflection—while providing a refuge from the noise, hustle, grime, and smell of uncollected waste that permeate in the city. For me, the park was where I found comfort during the height of the novel coronavirus pandemic. With the widespread closures of most public spaces, and the condemnation of physical interaction and public gathering, my options for finding connections were limited. Connecting to “nature” was my safest option, even if that meant connecting to the highly stylized and well-manicured topography of Prospect Park. 

“We have a tendency to want to separate our home from inside and outside,” said Hadrien Coumans, after I explained my desire to find a connection to the natural world, rather than connection through physical or civic engagement. Coumans, an adopted member of the White Turkey-Fugate family, is the co-founder and co-director of the Manhattan-based cultural organization, the Lenape Center. “The reality is that we are completely inside of our home, even when we think we are outside of our home. The earth is life, and the land is our home.” Coumans paused for a few moments before adding: “This—the reality that you’re describing— is what the Lenape people have always been acutely aware of.” 

Historical tablets, erected monuments, triumphal arches, and public artworks are dispersed throughout Prospect Park’s 585-acre oasis, honoring the people and events that have shaped and cultivated the city and community. But the history of Prospect Park—as well as the history of New York City and largely, North America—is complex. For centuries, history has been negotiated, slanted, and erased. A subtle reminder of the area’s indigenous people recently became visible. A handmade Lenape-themed placard, acknowledging rightful land-ownership, is pasted to a bronze and granite marker, commemorating Battle Pass. 

Long before European colonization, revolutionary battles, and the reshaping of Prospect Park’s rugged topography, lived the Lenape, part of the Algonquin nation, and Lenapehoking, the land they occupied. The Lenape, also called Lenni-Lenape—translating to “Original People” and later renamed by European colonizers to Delaware— are a loosely organized band of Native Americans whose tribal roots have sunk deep into the landscape of today’s New York City for more than 10,000 years. The ancestral land of Lenapehoking spans from eastern Pennsylvania to a small part of western Connecticut, and from the Hudson Valley to northern Delaware. Manahatta island meaning “hilly island,” known today as Manhattan, is at the crux of Lenapehoking. Although the Lenape are remembered for being tenacious warriors, they are also regarded for being peacemakers, earning the title of “Grandfather” tribe.  

The Lenape’s origin story begins when a great tortoise, symbolic of the earth, rose from the water and became dry. A tree grew in the middle of the earth, and brought forth a man and later a woman. The phratry clans of the Lenape, which traced their descent through the female line, included three tribal divisions determined by language and location: Wolf (Munsee), Turtle (Unami), and Turkey (Unalachtigo). As a nomadic hunter-gather society, the ancestral Lenape heavily depended on the prosperity of the land. Every ten to twelve years, after depleting the geographical location of its natural resources, the entire village would migrate to a neighboring area of Lenapehoking. Thus, allowing the land to replenish itself for future generations. 

European explorers arrived in the 16th century, with Italian explorer, Giovanni da Verrazano, leading the sail into the New York Harbor. According to some historical records, the Lenape, at first, welcomed the European explorers. They shared the land and resources and soon embraced the act of trade. By the 17th century, European corporations, including the Dutch West India Company, had materialized on the wealth of Lenapehoking and exploited the indigenous peoples. They entered into deceptive land deals, and in 1626, the Lenape “sold” the island of Manahatta to the Dutch. The concept of land-ownership was foreign to the Lenape, who believed that the earth and all of its inhabitants could only belong to the Creator. This particular land transaction, enforced with a constructed barrier wall around “New Amsterdam,” marked the downfall of Lenape society and the beginning of the diaspora. Traditional life for the Lenape was interrupted by the loss of land and the expansion of trade, creating a dependence on over-hunting and leading to a scarcity of resources and cultural value. The colonizers, bringing with them an array of deadly diseases, treated the Lenape as if they were uncivilized and disposable. They devastated the Lenape’s cultural identity and ancestral grounds through cultural assimilation —including involuntary Christian indoctrination— warfare, genocide, illegal land trades, and forced migration. Some accounts suggest that by 1750, the Lenape lost an estimated 90% of its people. The remaining Lenape succumbed to displacement, traveling west to current-day Ohio, and north to today’s New York State and Canada. 

While the Lenape are credited with influencing the history and geography of present-day New York City and surrounding areas, an intentional banishing of their identity —perpetuated by centuries of cultural whitewashing, forced removal, and genocide—have conspired to erase public knowledge of the tribe and their long presence with the ancestral homeland. 

“The erasure has caused a void, particularly to public knowledge and the understanding of the Lenape people,” said Hadrien Coumans. “Until recently, there was no consciousness of recognition that was recognizable.” 

Over a decade ago, Coumans was standing with Joe Baker, member of the federally recognized tribe, Delaware Tribe of Indians, on the Upper East Side. As the two men gazed out onto their ancestral homeland, they experienced a collective and ominous feeling that the Lenape people were facing permanent erasure from public memory. Coumans and Baker pondered how they could preserve their cultural identity and homeland for future generations. 

“We wanted to create a center that would continue our presence and be a welcoming home for the diaspora,” said Coumans. “This experience led to an urgency to continue the Lenape culture and identity.” Consequently, in 2008, the Lenape Center was born. 

The mission of the Lenape Center is to continue the culture of the Lenape and Lenapehoking through the arts, humanities, and environmental conservancy. Bringing public awareness of the Lenape presence to mainstream culture enables descendants of the diaspora to fight back against centuries of exploitation, manipulation, and erasure. Their work includes planting indigenous corn in community gardens; convening with the Brooklyn Museum to create a permanent art installation; staging an opera on the Lenape perspective of the historically misrepresented purchase of Manahatta; consulting with the architects of Tammany Hall’s turtle shell dome— symbolic of the Lenape origin story and Chief Tamanend—and an “iconic anchor to Union Square”; and finally, the organization seeks to return the “presence of consciousness” to the homeland by establishing government-to-government relations, including access to New York City’s resources, and a Living Land Acknowledgement. The acknowledgment, usually in the form of a public statement or plaque, is a simple gesture of respectfully bringing awareness and true inclusion to the indigenous inhabitants that have been deprived of their ancestral homeland and territories. Many of these territories are now occupied by physical institutions, including venues, real estate developments, schools, conference centers, stadiums, and places of worship. A Living Land Acknowledgement also attempts to correct racism— including the indigenous caricature embedded in the New York City seal— and the practices that, for centuries, have contributed to the erasure of the native people’s history, culture, and identity. 

As of today, two commemorative memorials exist in New York City, acknowledging the legacy of the Lenape. Both of the memorials contain historical inaccuracies. In recent years, Columbia University dedicated a plaque to honor the Lenape people for occupying the territory of today’s Manhattan, before the colonization of the Americas. 

Present-day descendants of the Lenape are federally recognized as “Delaware” and include members of Delaware Nation, Delaware Tribe of Indians, and Stockbridge-Munsee Community.  While some smaller bands of the Lenape descendants still live in the NYC and the Northeast, many of the Lenape/ Delaware live in one of the five sovereign nations with full federal recognition, including one nation in Wisconsin, two in Oklahoma, and two in Ontario, Canada. 

In March, when the pandemic hit New York City and much of the country, the Lenape Center decided to indefinitely cancel all public events. “This is a time to hibernate not a time to gather,” said Coumans. He noted that the Center’s virtual meetings and ongoing events, including the production of a documentary on indigenous corn, have been well received. 

I asked Coumans about the connection between environmentalism and the novel coronavirus pandemic. I wondered if he believed there was, if any, a silver lining to the disruption and widespread devastation that New York City has faced.  

“Well,” said Coumans, “the reality is that Lenapehoking or not, we cannot exist without trees or water or oxygen. These are the life-giving properties of the earth. We have to be respectful of nature to breathe fresh air.” He paused before adding: “I do hope the city continues to heal from the pandemic, and that we’ll all come away with a better knowledge of our environment.” 

We recommend that you educate yourself and if interested and able, get involved with the Lenape community. Their website explains more about the history and influence of the original “Brooklyn” people.

www.thelenapecenter.com

Editor’s note: In recent months, as nationwide protests against racial injustices and weaponized police violence have swept our country, we have seen a historic push to acknowledge the complexities of the past and to include the —often negotiated and intentionally erased—truths that affect our present. 

When I first became aware of the Lenape-themed placard atop the bronze and granite Battle Pass monument, I was immediately reminded of the brazen distortions, nods to conspiracies, arrogant lies sold as irrefutable truths, and chants of greatness, all touted by President Trump. But for one to see our country as great means that we have to side with the version of history written on the Battle Pass plaque, and not with the history of the Lenape-themed card. When we question the actions of the past, to better understand the truth, we are reminded that the definition of great is conditional and tethered to a reality that has been slanted. The pasted Lenape-themed placard juxtaposed the Battle Pass marker underscores the thickness of Brooklyn’s history while bringing into our collective consciousness the indigenous nations that New York City has long overlooked.

Best of Summer – Our Friends, The Trees: How Trees Make Brooklyn Better (2018)

By Filed Under: Local Ecology, Outside Tagged With:

An allee of London Planes

We take for granted the beauty of these verdant towers, how we come to expect their shade and fail to acknowledge their constant toil as the city’s respiring lungs and filtering kidneys.

The first time I climbed a tree, in the summer of 2008, I was working a seasonal job for the Parks Department. My job was to muscle logs and stacked branches into a chipper, but a fringe benefit was working with the climbers and pruners. These professional arborists spend their days up in Brooklyn’s urban tree canopy inspecting, pruning and sometimes removing trees. For a young guy whose interest in comic books and environmental science never really seemed to intersect, here I had found my real-life superheroes. For several weeks in the swampy heat of July, I would finish my wood-chipping route at a feverish pace to ensure I could carve out time at the end of the day to meet up with a climber, throw a rope up over a high branch and use a technique called hip-thrusting to hump my way into the tree, exploring the otherworldly environment that exists within the sprawling space of a tree’s canopy and the views it affords to those who climb it.

London plane

Five years later I was back in a harness, standing on an upper limb of a London plane tree in the middle of Grand Army Plaza, holding a dead branch in one hand as I sawed it off with the other. Below me traffic was circumnavigating the plaza and above me squirrels were making similar circles around the tree in lusty chase of one another. I was taking a test to become the junior arborist for the Prospect Park Alliance. My new boss was right beside me, dangling comfortably in his harness. I’d passed, he said, in no rush to vacate our lofty perch with views straight down Flatbush Avenue. I realized, from the vantage point of the birds, what a large role trees play in our urban existence. How we take for granted the beauty of their verdant towers, how we come to expect their shade and fail to acknowledge their constant toil as the city’s respiring lungs and filtering kidneys.

By then I was hooked on trees, taking every opportunity to defend their place in our urban environment and teach people more about them. Here’s a fact: the London plane tree, unmistakable when it sloughs off its thin beige and green bark to reveal a slippery smooth new layer, is the most common street tree in the borough of Brooklyn. The ubiquity of this tree in the city is no accident. Street trees suffer from almost every arboreal insult possible, from drought and flood to storm damage, limited growing space and constant assault by speeding vehicles. Few trees are better at withstanding these stressors than the London plane. But they also indicate that the city has a long way to go in making our streets a more habitable environment. Where trees can’t grow neither can people or communities.

Looking up into a Red Oak

The  Mighty Oak 

If street trees are a civil engineer’s answer to mitigating intense weather, then our large parks and urban forests are a naturalist’s haven for maintaining biological diversity and environmental resilience. To say nothing of the way that parks can act as a tincture to calm the soul. Starving artists, disciplined runners, stray cats, role-playing camp kids, dogs pulling their humans, Baby Bjorn-bound mothers, hyperactive chipmunks, stony-faced little-leaguers; Everyone sought respite from their frantic lives in Prospect Park. With all those people it is hard to imagine there is room for between thirty and forty thousand trees in the park. The woodlands represent the only native forest in Brooklyn.  Two hundred years ago, as Brooklyn’s population was booming its ancient woods had mostly disappeared to make room for farms. In fact, when the park was constructed in the middle of the 19th century it was on top of nearly treeless pastureland.  

Now the park’s woodlands are lush with trees, shrubs, and wildlife. The keystone species in our neck of the woods is the oak tree. Oaks come in many sub-species, adapted to specific niches like the marsh-loving willow oak or the red oak which seeks out hilltops. In all cases, the oak is the beginning of a biological chain that stretches from the fungus feeding at its roots to the plants that bask in its diffused sunlight all the way up the chain to the squirrel glutted on acorns or the Redtail hawk feasting on a squirrel.

A perfectly shaped Linden Tree providing shade

American Linden

The balancing act for urban forestry is to harness the vast positive effects of nature’s most beneficial flora while limiting the negative factors a tree can produce. Since every tree has a different profile of benefits it takes a lot of consideration to get it right. A red maple can soak up plenty of water in flood prone areas but its roots can be invasive to nearby homes. The horse chestnut is one of the most efficient carbon dioxide absorbers but its weak wood can peel apart in heavy storms.

A few months back I had to stage a defense for an American linden tree. The Linden is a great shade tree as well as a reliable flower feast for native bees. This one was decades old and its roots were lifting the sidewalk around it. The construction crew wanted to remove it. The homeowners nearby also didn’t like the pollen which littered their stoop every year. I argued to keep it. It was healthy, it was mature enough to finally be making a net contribution to its environment. We ended up saving the tree and putting a ramped sidewalk over the roots. Days later I walked up to the site, sweating under the hot afternoon sun, watching the posse of homeowners and construction workers chatting. I was making a beeline for relief to the same area they were all standing in, under the shade of that very linden tree.

Sugar Maple

In the canopy of a sugar maple

Arboriculture, the cultivation and management of trees, is ever-evolving. Climate change plays its part. Many people know that the state tree of New York is the sugar maple. Not only because I guzzle maple syrup do I love this majestic tree with eye-popping fall foliage and mature bark that evokes the wise and grizzled visage of Dumbledore’s beard. The sugar maple is a foundational part of Northeastern American culture. Literally, sugar maple timber provides much of the framework and flooring for some of the oldest structures in this part of the country. In recent years local sugar maples have been in decline. Its natural defenses consist of growing in places where the winter is cold enough to kill off most of its pests without harming the cold-hardy tree. Brooklyn used to fall more reliably into that temperate zone, but now climate change is shifting the territory of New York’s state tree outside of New York City. 

As we introduce new non-native trees to our city blocks like the Korean mountain ash or the Siberian elm we are also in the process of losing many of our critical native species. American Elms once lined neighborhood blocks, providing shade with sprawling behemoth branches. Then Dutch elm disease decimated the population. The American chestnut used to hold a more important place in our forests than the oak until the chestnut blight changed that. Now invasive pests and fungi are posing serious threats to our maples, oaks, and pines. In a world of unfettered global trade our new normal for ecology is ceaseless change.

For now, Prospect Park still feels like home in my native, ever-changing Brooklyn. Its trees make up an indelible part of my story. Prospect Park just celebrated its 150th anniversary this past fall. Does that make it old by public park standards or young in comparison to the life of an oak tree? Lately, I make it out into the Park less often, mostly losing myself in its interior, finding locations I’ve known and yet still never really discovered. 

Park Slope Nature: Spring In Park Slope

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It isn’t hard to get the impression, reading into the signs of the natural world, that every flower, tree and squirrel is as excited for the coming of spring as we humans are.

Take a walk in Prospect Park to do as the horticulturalists do and monitor the first blooms of our common perennial flowers. Snowdrops, the hearty little white bells, pushed stubbornly through snow drifts as early as February this year. In March you can expect to see tight purple bouquets of crocus sneaking out of the ground, accenting the forest floor and giving us hope that the city’s windiest month will soon be blowing in the familiar waft of warm air.

What better way to usher in a new season than by eating like it’s spring. Help jumpstart the pulse of local green markets by picking up some early spring greens like lettuce, spinach or coveted garlic scapes and ramps. Colonial settlers and modern-day wildlife would agree that the charmingly chilly days of spring can be a tricky time to meet caloric requirements. Pair the old with the new and cook up some of the staples that have been long forgotten in your pantry then finish them with leaves of spring. A quick mosey on down to Grand Army Plaza on Saturday or Bartel Pritchard Square on Sunday can pay dividends in farm-to-table fresh greens. 

If you want to eat your way through more than one hundred local and regional food purveyors than find your way up to Breeze Hill in Prospect Park for the return of Smorgasburg. The lines are long but the inventive and tasty snacks on offer come with a view. You can take your meal to go and trek down the rustic trail at the back of the market to the quiet Lullwater where herons may also be searching for a meal. Just do everyone a favor and pack out your trash. The feast begins on April 7th and continues every Sunday from 11 AM to 6 PM. 

Spring really encompasses two seasons: the abatement of winter is marked by a sticky mud season and the thirsty joy for those first sips of warm, fragrant air; then summer is around the corner.

Maybe cooped-up kids are the priority, their energetic limbs itching for activity after a winter short on sledding opportunities. Little Leaguers won’t have to wait long to start lapping those bases. The opening day ceremony hosted by the Prospect Park Alliance and the Prospect Park Baseball Association arrives on Saturday, April 6th. Park Slopers might remember the opening day parade by the throng of children marching down 7th avenue in baseball regalia, outstripping the marching band and posse of civic leaders. Anyone can join the parade which works its way to the ballfields, (best accessed around 9th street, 11th street, or Bartel Pritchard Square,) to watch the first pitch get thrown out. The day coincides with the seasonal opening of the lawns for ball players, picnickers and frisbee enthusiasts alike. 

Those who are looking to ring in the spring with something a little more grueling can sign up for one of the near constant barrage of races that loop Prospect Park starting in the warmer weather. The Brooklyn Spring Half Marathon (http://www.citytri.com/brooklyn-spring-half-marathon ) is just one option to tour the park on four consecutive loops of its 3.35 mile track. For the less competitive runner our local tri-sport provider, JackRabbit, will continue to host community runs through the park for all paces. You can meet at their 7th Ave. location on Mondays and Fridays at 6:30 PM.

Spring really encompasses two seasons: the abatement of winter is marked by a sticky mud season and the thirsty joy for those first sips of warm, fragrant air; then summer is around the corner. April is a month of transition, manifest in the fleeting, show-stopping flower blooms. Daffodils dot woodland borders and blanket the 3rd street berms in sunny yellow. Tulips add a diverse color palette to the ground, their rainbow blooms sometimes surprising the gardener who planted them. The rotund buds of magnolia trees pop open and promptly the park is a pastel wonderland. Delicate little flower nubs run up the thin branches of the redbud, wide open dogwood flowers look up to the sky, lilacs perfume the air and a score of perennial flowers from hyacinths to bluebells join the floral fray. These and more are on display in Carmen’s Garden, just in front of the Litchfield Villa on 4th street and Prospect Park West. But nothing gets the casual flower enthusiast as excited as the sight of an allée of flowering cherry trees as they burst into fecund bloom, thick cotton-candy canopies of silky pink, purple and white petals. The display at the Grand Army Plaza entrance to the park is hard to top. A loop around the long meadow will offer a more complete collection of impressive blooming plants and trees.

By the time earth day rolls around on April 28th the bees will be buzzing and the park staff will have all hands on deck planting spring trees, shrubs and flowers. Engage with the environment by coming out to Prospect Park on that Sunday for citizen science exhibitions. The Prospect Park Alliance is making it easier than ever to get involved as a student of nature with their Audubon center educational programming. Earth day also starts off the park’s volunteer season. One of the most rewarding ways to give back to your community is by volunteering with the PPA’s volunteer corps (https://www.prospectpark.org/get-involved/volunteer/) and donating your time to repair trails, pick up trash and remove invasive weeds, among other ecologically-minded projects.

If you’re familiar with It’s My Park Day, a regular May occurrence, you may be surprised to find that this year the park has upped the ante. Spring Fling, encompassing the weekend of May 18th and 19th, is a celebration of the park and all the opportunities that come with nice weather. You can still volunteer in events sponsored by REI as in previous It’s My Park tradition, but now you can also expect a family fair with educational activities at the Audubon Center and the historic Lefferts house, ensuring the weekend has something for everyone. 

By late spring the park is in full leaf, busy soaking up the sun’s rays and growing dense with greenery and life. Parkgoers are busy playing sports, taking walks and enjoying the most beautiful weather of the year. Brooklyn’s back yard is rife with opportunities from taking a kayak out on the lake to rollerblading around the drive. My personal recommendation is to simply explore the grounds. I’ve lead locals on tours that left them saying there’s an entirely different park inside of the heavily trafficked loops and zones they were used to. Getting lost in the Midwood or trying to catch a view from the top of lookout hill make Prospect Park one of the last places in the city where you can forget, for a few peaceful moments, that you are in New York City.

Fishing by the lake house Earth Day Celebration Prospect Park Alliance at the Audubon Center for annual Earth Day celebration. Enjoy fun-filled activities for all ages from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), Urban Park Rangers and the Prospect Park Alliance Landscape Management team.

Seeking Out Sweat

By Filed Under: Outside

A guide to getting fit in Park Slope

It’s summer—time to take advantage of the long, warm days and get active. Whether you enjoy team sports, structured classes, the creativity of dance, or something as simple as a neighborhood walk, Park Slope is a haven for both serious athletes and those looking for fun. If you’re seeking advice on where to go and what to do this summer, start here in Brooklyn. You’re likely to find what you want right around the corner, often at little or no cost.

Nothing could be more affordable or enticing than one of Park Slope’s greatest landmarks: Prospect Park, the famous public space designed, created, and landscaped by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in the mid-nineteenth century. Walk the full loop to cover just over 3 miles. Or step it up by running around the park’s perimeter. It’s easy to put on your sneakers and hit the pavement. Almost immediately after entering the park, sunlight lawns, distinctive buildings, and pathways shaded by grand, old trees greet visitors—all perfect for athletes who enjoy taking in outdoor scenery while keeping fit.

For those who prefer running in groups or organized races, there’s no dearth of options. Three groups organize runs and events in the park: the Prospect Park Track Club (www.pptc.org, 718-595-2049), Brooklyn Road Runners Club (www.brooklynroadrunners.org), and New York Road Runners Club (www.nyrr.org , 212-860-4455).

Bikers can also join organized events in the park. Five Saturday events will be held in Prospect Park as part of the Kissena Cycling Club’s Lucarelli & Castaldi cup series of races. These races start early in the morning on June 18, June 26, July 23, August 6, and August 7. According to club president Dan Reiner, they “represent some of the finest racing in the Northeast, and attract riders from all over the region. There are races for all levels, from beginners all the way up to professionals.” Plus, you have the chance to win custom jerseys and bib shorts if you qualify as a leader in several of the series events. Anyone interested in participating or learning more can email president [at] kissena [dot] info or visit www.kissena.info.

Two other organizers of major bike races include the Metropolitan Cycling Association (www.newyorkbikeracing.com) and Kissena Sports Project (www.kissenasports.com).

The Park itself holds classes at the Prospect Park Tennis Center. The outdoor tennis season opened on May 21. Visit the “Prospect Park Tennis Center” section of www.prospectpark.org for schedule information and details on adult group classes, beginner instruction, evening leagues, doubles nights on Thursdays, and the junior development program.

Another way to get fit and take advantage Prospect Park’s outdoor setting is to sign up for Bootcamp Republic (www.bootcamprepublic.com, 646-460-6787). This group exercise program offers ongoing three-week fitness sessions. Choose from either 6–7:30 a.m. or 7–8:30 p.m. time slots for the following periods: June 21–July 7, July 19–August 4, and August 16–September 1. When asked to tell us about the program, founder Serena Puerta emailed, “We use the natural surroundings of the park and your own body weight to get you fit! … We are a friendly (non-militaristic), motivational fitness bootcamp which is great for weight loss, toning, strengthening, and increasing endurance and energy levels.”

For those who prefer indoor classes or exercise with a practical purpose, check out 10-year-old New York Self Defense Wing Tzun and Latosa Escrima (www.BrooklynWT.com, 646-369-7704). Wing Tzun is a Chinese self-defense system that trains students to redirect an attacker’s energy against himself. Th e school also teaches Latosa Escrima, a Filipino martial arts program. While the instructors’ goal is to teach self defense rather than martial arts to working professionals, “we do keep our students in good shape,” says head instructor Sifu/Guro Edgar Rotger. “Our school works like a small community and everyone is very friendly … we have people—male and female—of all ages, 18–75.” Test out the school by taking a free trial class. Those who like what they see can register for classes held on Wednesday evenings, Sunday mornings, and Sunday evenings. Contact the school for additional details.

A few other schools that focus on martial arts include Yee’s Hung Ga (www.yeeshung-ga.com), Amerikick (www.amerikick.com/schools/brooklyn.htm), and Shihan Monte Allen’s Brooklyn Kenshikaikan Karate-Do (www.monteallenkarate. com).

If you are artistically inclined, summer is the ideal time to try Raizes do Brasil Capoeira Brooklyn‘s dance classes (www.capoeirabrooklyn.com, info [at] capoeirabrooklyn [dot] com, 646-492- 4221). It holds Saturday classes outdoors in Prospect Park and other locations. Ana Costa, the school’s co-director and an instructor, said that “Capoeira comes from Brazil (i.e. hot and tropical!). There is no better time to enjoy Capoeira than in the beautiful, humid, and hot Brooklyn summer. Sweating, training on the grass and sand, and getting a class and a sauna all for the price of one!”

Other local dance schools include Th e Dance Studio of Park Slope (www.thedancestudiops.com) and Salsa Salsa Dance Studio (www.salsasalsadancestudio.com).

Both adults and children will find dancing fun at Spoke the Hub, (www.spokethehub.org, spoke [at] spokethehub [dot] org, 718-408-3234), which runs Camp Gowanee and offers everything from ballet, musical theater jazz, ballroom and Polynesian dance to yoga, physical theater, and clowning. Elise Long, artistic director and founder of Spoke the Hub, said that while the summer program “is always mega-fun, we want kids to learn something and come away with new skills, self-discipline, and knowledge at the end of each week.” Spoke the Hub hosts students in its five professional, air-conditioned, dance and arts studios at its art centers (one on Union Street and one on Douglass Street).

Another idea for kids is to join the Brooklyn AYSO 473 soccer program. AYSO (American Youth Soccer Organization) is a nationwide non-profit organization that develops and delivers quality youth soccer programs in a fun, family environment. Th is group sponsors a two-week summer camp at the Parade Grounds in Prospect Park. Th is year’s camp runs July 5–July 8 and July 11–July 15. Staff ed by experienced, professional coaches and having an 8:1 supervision ratio, the camp provides exciting challenges to new and emerging players as well as experienced players. The camp will take players’ skills to the next level. Registration is open through mid-June. Visit www.brooklynayso.org and click on “Summer Camp” to download forms and contact information.

Finally, families can take advantage of several summer activities at the Prospect Park YMCA (www.ymcanyc.org). The director of fund development and communications, Megan King, told us that the YMCA offers a “summer camp, free monthly family events at both the Prospect Park Y and Park Slope Armory Y, and a variety of free and fee-based programs that focus on youth development, healthy living, and social responsibility.” Past monthly family events include ping pong tournaments, a “Super Get Messy Party” that encouraged family art-making, a “Sustainable Art Part” in which the kids recreated Brooklyn with found objects, and more. The YMCA makes special efforts to help kids financially through its Strong Kids Campaign, an annual fundraising program that provides financial assistance on memberships, camp and fee-based programs as well as free programming.

These are just a few of the many ways Park Slopers can get out and get in shape this summer. No matter what activity, program, or school you choose, putting in the extra effort will balance out all the BBQs to come!