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The Reader Interview: Back to School – At the Eye of the Storm of Controlled Creative Chaos

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The Reader Interview with Liz Phillips, Principal of PS 321

 

P.S.321, which lays claim to a full city block off Park Slope’s 7th avenue, is — and long has been — one of the hottest tickets around. Desperate parents have been known to rent second apartments, or just fake their address, to enroll their child in what is widely understood to be one of the best public elementary schools in the city. And at the eye of this storm of controlled, creative chaos is the widely admired Liz Phillips, who’s served as principal for, as of this fall, 20 years. Along the way, she’s advocated for teachers, pushed forth policies in her own school as well as others, and seeded the city with an ever-growing network of mentees.

A former editor for Knopf and Pantheon, Phillips began working at the Feminist Press not long after her children were born, and while working on an educational series for high schoolers had her aha moment: she loved producing great books, but, she realized, “a really great teacher could make do with mediocre materials… I wanted to be in that position.” Phillips enrolled in a one-year program at the Bank Street College of Education, and secured a spot student teaching with education titan Carmen Fariña, who would eventually go on to serve as the New York City Schools Chancellor. Phillips had her eye on District 15 because of their “strong leadership and emphasis on the writing process,” but it was somewhere between kismet and calculation that brought her to P.S. 321, where her daughter was currently enrolled, to teach first grade. Soon, she was mentoring other teachers on the writing process, and when an assistant principal transferred out of the school, then principal Peter Heaney tapped Phillips to take her place. She agreed, on the condition she could return to teaching if she didn’t like it. Eight years later, she took over as principal.

Liz’s philosophy, official Parent Coordinator and my ad hoc tour guide, Deb, tells me — with clear awe for the woman who has helmed this hub of progressive, pint-sized learning since well before her own children matriculated — is to always say “yes, if you can.” We snaked through the labyrinthine hallways, passing bulletin boards of welcome greetings; a teacher who taught Deb’s son over a decade ago; a classroom of students on sleek Apple desktop computers, learning not how to use the tech (of course not), but how to be better digital citizens; and a young boy painting determinedly on an easel in what was either reward or engaging punishment. Eventually, we passed the office of the Assistant Principals. I told them about my chat with Liz and joked about her “enough already!” attitude about the retirement question. Seems like she’s not planning on going anywhere any time soon, I remarked. At that, one of the APs, already half way out of the door for a meeting, ran back towards her desk and rapped on it, hard. “I need to knock on something made of real wood.” 

Congratulations on another school year! What do you love the most about back to school? 

Liz Phillips: You know, I think one of the privileges of working in education, in a school, is that every year is a new beginning and you can start fresh, and it’s really exciting. You can build on successes from the previous year but, you know, avoid problems that you figured out. And certainly just everybody’s excitement, getting to know new teachers when we have new teachers and new staff members, and seeing the children coming into school and just really feeling great. There are some kids who have some separation issues in kindergarten, but most of the kids I see in the lobby just so excited about going upstairs, seeing their friends. 

Bye mom!

[Laughs] Right. In fact, it’s funny because we allow our kindergarten parents to bring the kids into the room and today — sometimes the first graders, the beginning of the year, because they’re not used to going up alone, are a little nervous. So I was in the lobby and I saw a kid with their parent, who I didn’t know, crying, and I thought, oh, this must be a first grader who wants to go upstairs with his parent. Turns out it was a kindergartener who didn’t want his mother to go upstairs with him. 

As principal, do you feel far away from your years of being in the classroom and teaching? Is that something that you miss? 

Well, I think one of the reasons that I never left the school and didn’t want to go to work in a district office or work at central [office of the DOE] was because I feel like when you’re based in the school, you can still be connected to the classrooms. I’m clearly not a teacher anymore, but I feel like the best principals think of themselves as teachers in some ways and spend a lot of time in classrooms, and I really enjoy that time. And so I think that’s one of the reasons I wouldn’t have left the school because I think if I had then I would really miss it. 

You said in an interview that having that foundation, having that experience as a teacher, informs the work of the best principals out there. 

Look, the heart of the school — there are a lot of things that make a school great — but the teachers are with the kids all day. Having great teachers and understanding how central that is, that as a principal you have to be able to support the teachers and also, you know, work on helping them improve, whether it’s by setting up collegial relationships and having many opportunities for intervisitation for people working together, providing really high quality professional development. But I think if you haven’t been a teacher, it’s hard to understand how central that is to the success of any school.

I was sifting through all these online comments about the school, and whether it was posted six months ago or 14 years ago, the word “community” came up over and over again. I can see that that’s such an important buzzword as to how you view yourself here. What makes this a distinct community and how do you work to keep it bonded and cohesive and collaborative? 

I think that there are a lot of things and I will say, you know, we’ve had in this school very consistent leadership. The previous two principles each were here 10 years. So in the last 40 years, there have only been three principals in this school, and both of the previous principals who I’ve worked under, both of them were principals who really respected teachers. I think there’s been a sense of this school as a place where teachers can take risks, can grow, want to be part of the community. You know, a lot of what I try to set up in terms of structures, are structures that allow that. We build grade meetings into the school day, last period so that the kids are in a grade recess. So teachers can meet together. I go to all those meetings. Often principals don’t go to grade meetings, but I feel like this school is really big, and that’s another thing. I mean very few elementary schools have over 1400 students and, you know, nine classes in a grade. And so I feel like it’s really important, in terms of building the community, for me to be in tune with what’s going on across every grade. We put a lot of emphasis on professional development that not only teaches certain, you know, pedagogic skills or content areas, but that builds community. For example, Monday professional development. All teachers work an extra 80 minutes on Monday for professional development, and our first one, which is this Monday, given the holidays we’ve had, is a community-building professional development. Really the main goal of it is for people to get to know each other better in smaller groups. We’re always thinking about how can we do that. We also have tremendous parent involvement. So a lot of it is also figuring out ways to work with parents effectively, figuring out ways to balance, you know, all the different needs, needs of teachers, needs of parents, to work collaboratively to do that. We have many “friend-raising” events which, you know, a potluck supper which we have in a week, which is for mainly families, but a lot of teachers come, too. So I mean I just, I think you can set structures into place that, that focus on the importance of community.

I imagine that a lot of these things are ways to combat the issue that the school has had with overcrowding, as you mentioned. 

I will say that it’s more to combat the school being a big school than overcrowding. We actually are not overcrowded… but we’re big. [Laughs] Because we have both our main building and the mini school in the backyard. So we have enough rooms. That’s not the issue. There are some schools that genuinely cannot fit their kids. That’s not our problem. But we a very big school. For both the children and the teachers and also the parents, that means you have to, I think, be more deliberate about community building because you know, you can’t just all be together. There are nine first grades, and nine teachers can’t plan together all the time. So I do think that yes, because of the size, I know principals at schools that are much smaller where it doesn’t have to be quite as deliberate because it happens more naturally. 

I know you’re famous here for your very active parent population, so where is that balance between encouraging them to be involved but then drawing the line so it doesn’t become too much?

Yes. And I am very aware of that part — I’ve been doing this a long time. When parents come to me with ideas, my first thought is always what’s the impact of this on the teachers? This is an example from many years ago. Parents wanted more enrichments, you know, chess, arts, music. We have a lot that are DOE sponsored, but that wanted even more. Teachers felt they had enough enrichments and they didn’t have enough time with their kids. So how do you balance that? So what I did at that point is I brought it to the school leadership team — we have a really effective school leadership teams of eight parents, eight staff members — and I tried to steer it towards doing afterschool programs where parents would feel their kids have an opportunity to have more enrichments, but teachers wouldn’t feel the school day was being taken over. And so we started what’s now called Kid’s Club, where we have all these different kinds of, it could be puppet making, theater, and we have some enrichments during the school day, but to be careful… When I mentor new principals, that’s what I’m always saying. Yes, you want parent involvement, but you do have to sometimes draw limits. And as the principal, think about what’s best for the school as a whole. I will say that we have amazing parents, and I spend a lot of time, probably more time than many principals, meeting with them. But I feel like it pays off because I feel like we’ve established really great relationships, and that the parents are respectful and understand that things have to be run by me, and that there are certain things that aren’t necessarily going to happen, that we’re going to compromise. Even something like volunteering in the classroom, we have very specific times when it works for parents, you know, kindergarten choice time, or helping at lunch recess, or certainly going on trips. But it’s not like, oh you can come and volunteer any time you want in the classroom. So, you know, I think putting structures in place that allow parents to feel welcomed, like Family Fridays, which was something that I started even before, when I was the early childhood coordinator. I went to the principal with this idea which has now taken often is in schools around the city, where the first Friday of every month, we open up the whole school to all parents. So there are thousands of people in the building, and they’re in the kids’ classrooms, and they’re either reading with kids, or playing math games, or doing a project. So it’s an organized way of parents getting to see the classroom. I think parents want to see what their kids are doing, but in a controlled way that isn’t like just, oh, I want to drop in and help out with reading time.

You were so outspoken at the time for not evaluating teachers based on test scores, and then to see that move into a moratorium, did that sense of getting involved, successfully in impacting policy ever give you the desire to become more involved in the political angle of the job? outfit or was that just need to step up? 

No, I feel like there have been many times since I’ve been principal that I have been outspoken about things. Many years ago after 9/11, I wrote an article about the pledge of allegiance. And I think there were things, whether it’s about immigration and protecting kids in school, about not having guns in school, you know, armed security guards — forget about teachers, that’s just ludicrous. Those are things that directly affect the school. I am sensitive to the fact that whatever my own personal political beliefs are as a school leader, for things that are outside of education, I might get involved when I’m out of school, but I think all kids need to feel supported in school. Even with standardized testing, that can get tricky because there are parents who are so anti-testing, and talk to their kids. So kids could tease another kid for taking a test. So when we have our testing meeting in March, which we always do, I always start by saying, look, you know, we believe in being a respectful school. We’re a no place for hate school, and that carries over to how we talk about, you know, different political perspectives on something like testing, and we have to respect that different parents and different kids — and kids are mainly reflecting their parents — are going to have different points of view on it. And I feel like it is possible to be outspoken about things that you really feel are detrimental to the school and to children and still maintain an atmosphere where different perspectives are allowed. 

What’s next for you and P.S. 321? It seems like you still feel invigorated and empowered by the work. 

I do, I do. People are like, are you going to retire? [Laughs] I’m not really interested in that right now. I’m having a good time. I’m enjoying this amazing community. I will say that for the last few years, one of the energizing parts of my job has been mentoring others and I’m very proud of the fact that my last maybe five APs [assistant principals] are now principals. One just became a principal a few weeks ago, and that feels really great. Also, Carmen Fariña started a Learning Partners Project. You could apply to be a host school, which is what we were, if you had practices you wanted to share, and then other people could apply to be partners. We were part of this for four years in different configurations, but at one point we had actually eight partner schools in Sunset Park and Brownsville and Park Slope and one year in far Rockaway. And that was an opportunity for not just principals but teachers to do intervisitation and learn from each other. I really enjoy that part of the job. Last year I facilitated a District 15 group of assistant principals who had the potential to be principals. I really feel like, you know, that’s very sustaining to me to feel like, as I’ve been doing this for a long time and some of it is easier than it is for a first year principal, to be able to share best practices. But I also feel like, you know, as I said when we started, each year is a new beginning. Each year has its own challenges and it’s, you know, and I enjoy that. I feel like as a successful school, it’s not like, oh, we have brand new things coming, we take what’s been successful and we modify it and we make it better. So math is an area right now we’re paying a lot of attention to. And so that’s a little new, you know, social emotional learning is something we’ve always been committed to, but now figuring out even better ways. We started a peace path, and it’s just a method of helping kids resolve their own conflicts. That’s new. So every year there are a few new things. I believe as a principal, you have to be growing, you have to do something new, but you can’t like throw in 20 new initiatives. It’s not effective. 

 

The Slope Survey: Daniella Stromberg

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The Slope Survey returns for its 8th installment with Daniella Stromberg, a native New Yorker, born and raised in the West Village and owner of d’mai Urban Spa on Fifth Avenue. Daniella opened the spa in 2004. Working with her team to provide a neighborhood sanctuary has been both a thrilling learning experience and a true honor as well.

What brought you to Park Slope? 

I moved back to NYC in 1994. I had been living in Amsterdam and somehow returning to Manhattan just felt wrong. Park Slope was beautiful, progressive, had a great Park and seemed close to “the city” (as we called it then).

What is your most memorable Park Slope moment?  

Before opening d’mai, friends and I celebrated my new lease by drinking champagne in the old fish market before construction. It was basically just all cement – a blank canvas filled with possibility.

Describe your community superpower.  

Kindness.

 If you could change one thing about the neighborhood, what wuld it be?

I wish more of our restaurants stayed open later.

What do you think Park Slope will look like in 10 years?

Things are always changing! It’s so hard to know what this next wave will look like…I imagine even more skyscrapers. To be honest, I find them jarring right now. In 10 years, I think the waterfront and canal restoration will bring the new and old together beautifully.

What are you reading, would you recommend it?  

I’m actually re-reading “Me Talk Pretty One Day”, by David Sedaris. I love it just as much as the first 4 or 5 reads.

 What is your greatest extravagance?  

Full length cashmere bathrobe; I’ve had it for many years and it still looks and feel amazing.

If you couldn’t live in Park Slope or in Brooklyn, where would you go?  

Easy—the North Fork of Long Island!

Who is your hero, real or fictional?

I’m blown away by the student activists. They’ve given us hope that our nation really will get through this.

Last Word, What is turning you on these days?

The fact that winter is over and SPRING IS HERE.

Olivia’s Kitchen: Easy, Delicious Homemade Flat Bread Sandwich

By Filed Under: Olivia’s Kitchen, Recipes Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

It may sound intimidating to make your own flat bread but this recipe is actually incredibly simple and has a big pay off.  The recipe below is for a vegetarian version of a sandwich, but you can add some chicken or lamb with it for other delicious options.

 

 

 

 

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups of Flour

2 teaspoons of Baking Powder

1/4 teaspoon of Salt

1 1/4 cups of Whole Milk Greek Yogurt (it’s important to use full fat)

2 Tablespoons of Olive Oil

One medium Zucchini

One small Eggplant

One Red Bell Pepper

One Yellow Squash

Two Tablespoons of Olive Oil

Salt and Pepper

One Clove of Garlic

4-6 large leaves of Fresh Basil

Hummus

 

Recipe

Place the flour, baking powder, salt and yogurt in a large bowl and mix with a rubber spatula until a moist, shaggy dough forms. Dust a work surface with flour. Transfer the dough onto the work surface, sprinkle with more flour, and knead until smooth, 8 to 10 kneads.Divide the dough into 4 portions and roll each into a ball about 3 inches wide. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest for 20 minutes. Heat a griddle, grill pan, 12-inch cast iron skillet, or nonstick frying pan over medium-high heat until a drop of water immediately sizzles on contact. Meanwhile, roll out the dough.Generously dust a work surface and rolling pin with flour. Roll 1 ball of dough into a 9-inch round about 1/8-inch thick, dusting with more flour as needed to prevent sticking.Brush the pan with a thin layer of oil or use a paper towel to coat the pan with a thin layer of oil. Place the flatbread in the pan and brush the top with a thin layer of oil. Cook until puffed and golden-brown in spots, 2 to 3 minutes per side. Remove to a cutting board.While the first flatbread is cooking, roll out the next ball of dough. Cook the remaining flatbreads, making sure to brush the pan and top of the flatbreads with oil each time.

Cut all the vegetable into thin (1/4 inch) thin slices.   Crush the garlic clove.  Toss the vegetables, garlic clove and some salt and pepper in a bowl with the olive oil.  Spread out in one layer on a sheet pan and place in a 400 degree oven and roast until browned, turning once.  Should take between 15 and 20 minutes.

To assemble the sandwich spread a generous layer of hummus on the flatbread.  Layer the roasted vegetables on the hummus and top with the fresh basil leaf.

Good Wine, Good Company, Good Welcome

By Filed Under: Eat Local, Natural Selection (wine) Tagged With: , , , ,

 

A FEW OF THE BEST WINE SHOPS IN PARK SLOPE

Wine is new to me. However, coming from a specialty coffee background, I’ve naturally found myself drawn to the art of craft beverages, the art of curating and taste development. That being said, the world of craft beverages can be just as daunting as the culinary world. With so many flavor palettes, styles, and regions to choose from, any novice or expert can understand the importance of personalization when it comes to picking just the right vino to sip on – whether you’re looking to pair a bottle with food or want to try something new. Park Slope’s independently driven small business scene proves to be perfect for either party. With a small but mighty set of personally curated wines, the neighborhood’s friendly and knowledgeable business owners will easily help you pick out your next favorite bottle – and the one after that. 

 

Big Nose, Full Body

Situated right nearby the park on 7th Avenue, Big Nose, Full Body is an intimate wine shop that’s constantly bringing in new vines AND discounting you as an incentive to try them out. The gang regularly holds tastings every Saturday afternoon, plus additional ones as announced. The sun-filled space has a massive variety of both regions and price ranges to choose from, and the “staff picks” list is definitely worth taking a peek at for recommendations. If you’re on the go, chilled wines are at the ready.

Good Wine

Tastefully put (pun intended), 5th Avenue’s Good Wine is known as a “food lover’s wine shop.” A friendly staff of strong female entrepreneurs run this shop, a space that they took over nearly three years ago from its previous ownership. Not only do the ladies offer regular tastings of their selections (every weekday at 5:30pm and weekends at 4:00pm) they also have food pairing and education classes for the public. Finishing touches include homey seasonal décor and cookbooks resting above the shelves of wine selections, a mix of the owners’ own selections and neighborhood contributions. Deliveries within Park Slope require a two-bottle minimum – not too hard, right?

 

ACME Wine

ACME’s former origins as a 1930s deli are subtly hinted throughout the store; checkerboard floors, window signage for butter and cheese posted at the entrance. This cozy shop offers a large array of affordable wines from small producers around the world, and incorporates an entire wall of bottles under $14. The team also offers an extensive array of spirits that are Brooklyn and New York local, from gin to rum and whiskey, plus sake and cider for when you’re looking for sweeter buzzes. Join the email list to take advantage of tastings, plus the no-minimum wine deliveries till closing.

 

il Vino Torchio

Il Vino Torchio translates to “the wine press” in Italian, and ironically enough doubles as the namesake for this small but mighty wine nook on 4th Avenue. Argentinian-born owner Marcelo Torchio spent years strolling through grape vines back home before opening this spot in Park Slope in 2011. Hand-picked with his clientele in mind, Marcelo brings a mix of both old world and new world wines and offers tastings every Friday evening to showcase select vinos. He also curates a small but mighty selection of New York-made spirits.

 

 

 

 

Synchronous Art: His Lifeblood, His Being

By Filed Under: Personal Essay, The Arts Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

 

The light that shines through the translucent plastic is viciously sensual. The sun permeates the material and projects a candy colored pink shadow onto the wooden floor, met with varying shades of effervescent lime, intrepid orange, and delicate violet. The radiant shadows dance with one another, shifting in hue and intensity as the outside light moves from dawn to dusk.

A ten foot by four foot patchwork of pellucid materials sewn together hangs from the bay window of a brownstone in Park Slope, Brooklyn. This is the work of Marc Lafia, an artist that has made his studio the bottom floor of his family home. 

It is a quiet Thursday afternoon and the studio is vacant: not of the art, but of the artist. It is rare to experience the space without the emanating presence of Marc, who spends most days working, writing, and creating art in the various rooms of his atelier. As he innovates, he unearths himself. 

Marc’s art practice is iterative and perpetually blossoming. He’s like a conductor of a massive orchestra that he is constantly recasting, refining, and expanding. His musicians take the form of any and every material that one could imagine: sheets of silicon, latex, silk, diaphanous plastic, giant gauze, organza, metallic mylar, wooden cubes, cardboard, sheer cloth, tissue paper, textiles, zippers, pliable string, potato sacks, felt, zip lock bags, and more. The list is infinite. Marc decides how these materials will come together to form works of art, sometimes in duets, sometimes in quartets, and most often in symphonies.

A few days each week, Marc roams the aisles of Canal Plastics and Mood Fabrics, two of his go-to stores in Lower Manhattan. He can spend hours observing the highly industrialized and refined products that line the shelves of these emporiums, touching every piece of neoprene or acrylic he comes across. He examines the materials by feeling them, touching them, scrutinizing their various sizes, weights, shapes, and textures. Sometimes he knows what he is looking for, but often what he brings home is different from what he set out to buy.

Perhaps that is an apt parallel for Marc’s style as an artist. That is not to say that his work is random: not at all. It is deliberately eclectic. He knows, but he doesn’t know. He is perceptive and reflective, thinking deeply about his ideas, claims, and desires, but he often translates these preconceptions into tangible realities via of-the-moment discoveries. His work ethic is deeply in touch with the present, with his surroundings and his environment, with the materials he has at hand, with the weather of the day, with the light of the hour. 

Marc’s ever expanding toolkit of raw materials are more than just a response to his artistic visions. In fact, for him, that link is actually reversed: it is the materials themselves that garner his vision. His work certainly requires cavernous rumination, but not without the help of a physical substrate laying before his eyes to help propel his thinking forward. He will admit, and proudly so, that his materials often dictate his ideas. 

______

The next morning, a brisk December Friday, he embarks on his daily routine of waking up with the sun and walking downstairs to retrieve hot coffee with steamed milk in a mossy green mug. He then returns to his bedroom, sinks into his mattress as he leans against the blue-gray colored wall, and opens the “Notes” application on his computer. Here he keeps hundreds of documents of essays, moodboards, and nuggets of thought about his current body of work, which has yet to have a definite title. It oscillates between “In What Language to Come,” “Forms, Appearances, and Representations,” and “Experience of the Pleasant, of Reward, and of the Beautiful.” 

 

 

He spends the next few hours writing away, perhaps energized by his eccentric dream from the previous night. Marc is an avid and vivid dreamer, each night bringing a new discovery, terror, realization, or experience for him. He likes to stress that he dreams in intense color. In his last slumber, his escapade began by him walking down a hill of lusciously green grass. He says he came across a deep, dark, bottomless, aquamarine, reflective blue lake. A crisp white convertible car was dripping water in slow motion as it was pulled up by a bright orange crane. A massive crowd of people gathered to watch, and they were all wearing glossy yellow raincoats.

Though he tries not to take the content of his dreams too seriously, it is the arresting colors that stick with him throughout the day. Around 10am, he dresses in one of three typical outfits: an all white ensemble, a blue pinstripe button down shirt coupled with black trousers, or a fabulously patterned shirt paired with hazelnut colored corduroys. The constants of each day’s attire include a bedazzled black belt and a dainty neck scarf. He also always wears two beaded bracelets, one blue and one black, that were made and gifted to him in Japan two summers ago by the mother of a good friend of his, a fellow artist herself. The mother passed away a few months following Marc’s visit to her home in Tokyo, and he has worn the bracelets daily ever since.

Marc descends the two flights of stairs from his bedroom to the bottom floor, stopping briefly in the kitchen for a handful of salted nuts. He slips on his caramel brown Turkish slippers–that are so worn they need orange duct-tape to keep them from falling apart–as he crosses the threshold of his studio. The room is freezing–he calls it his “winter palace”–but he is immune to this arctic cold since he spends nearly every day in it. Sometimes he lights a fire in the backroom fireplace, which adds to the natural, earthy feeling of his space. Still, his resistance to the cold isn’t strong enough to stop him from putting on a thin black jacket for imperative warmth.

The particular brownstone inside which he has built his studio is a unique space because it is a corner house, and thus has sixteen windows on the parlor floor alone. “To me it’s like an amazing, massive camera,” Marc describes. “You’re getting almost four sides of light.”

His sensitivity to light is deeply ingrained within him, likely formed by his background in photography and film. Although his career path shifted to fine art fifteen years ago, his time in film school and utter love of photography have been integral in forming how he experiences the world, and in turn how he experiences and thus creates art. Marc’s mind is always thinking of different “shots,” constantly constructing a story and a documenting a narrative as he goes about his day, just as he was trained to do as a filmmaker. He does not passively standby and watch reality unfold, but rather actively experiences thing with an eye trained to preserve content that might be perfect material for a later project. In this vein, Marc is the epitome of a metacognitive person and thinker: in fact, one could say that he is a metacognitive connoisseur. He is always stepping back to think about how he is thinking, how he is doing what he is doing, how he is responding to the things that he feeling. His cinematic mind has become intrinsic, morphing into a philosophical locomotive that critically thinks and makes in tandem.

Marc’s current work is perhaps the culmination of years and years of retaliation against photography as it is most typically known. As someone who lived through the transition from the analog to the digital, he has become acutely attune to form. He is obsessed with the how of things, anything, more so than the what or the why. He grew up with the restriction of 35 shots on a roll of film that would take days to get developed, and fifty years later he has an iPhone with 64 gigabytes of storage that allows him to take thousands upon thousands of pictures that he can view instantly. Having witnessed such a rapid transition and expansion of the capabilities of a camera, Marc is fascinated by what a picture was, what a picture is, and what a picture can be. Evidence of this interest is clear in the titles of his last and current books: “Image Photograph,” and “The Event of Art,” respectively. 

“One of the things that interested me when I was doing a lot of photography was the physical act of printing the photographs,” Marc recollects. He goes onto describe how he’d go to galleries and play close attention to the frame that a photograph was placed in, the size of the image, the paper it was printed on, and so on. This led him to the profound realization that a photograph is also an object, a claim that he has since been working on for years on end.

“I wanted to make an image with a new kind of substrate,” he declares. That desire transpired a few years ago when Marc began to print photographs onto paper lampshades from Ikea. He found interesting ties between this new work and the traditional medium of photography when he happily remembered that all negatives are plastic–analog film is plastic, so the physical existence of a “photograph” is enabled by a palpable material.

That was the beginning of a very organic progression of zealous work for Marc, all budding and building and growing from an underlying desire to discover and create a new form of photography. He started venturing to fabric stores, on a mission to discover the possibilities that materials of all kinds would lead him to.

He started with sewing the Ikea lamp shades to a piece of colored plastic, and hung it up in his studio as a kind of experiment. He waited for the afternoon light to hit, and all of a sudden the newly made sculpture began to glow. This was his first iteration of a new kind of material “photograph.”

It’s no wonder that Marc has been making work that encompasses light, because the way that the sun gushes and blushes and bursts through the windows of his studio would fill anyone with exuberance. The late afternoon light in particular, which hits the front, western side of the room, is sure to galvanize a visceral reaction. Each hour of the day fills his studio with a different sensitivity of ambient light

Marc walks up to the pink, sheer cloth that hangs from a clothesline-like structure in the center of the room, examining it by way of touching it. He picks up a larger piece of fabric, composed of several smaller pieces sewn together, and fastens it to an opening further down the clothesline. 

It is a day in which the sun’s desire to shine is constantly wavering. One moment the sky is overcast, and the next the sun is beaming. It is during the latter that the art in the room is at its peak. A leisurely, observant meander throughout the studio reveals a myriad of shadows in every nook and cranny. Fabric pieces are hung all around the room, creating projections of light that are variable, fluctuating, mercurial, volatile, fluid, shifting.

After his first fabric experiment, he coined the term “light-sculpture,” and began making a multitude of them. “These fabrics are light sculptures in the sense that they are light sensitive, made with various kinds of plastic and polyesters,” he explains. “Each material has a different kind of opacity, transparency, and color that emits light; that lets light moves forward; that lets shards of sun ripple through.” With each new piece, he continues to explore his fascination with what happens when light is enclosed, enraptured, and held within itself. “It’s kind of like an adventure that gets very obsessive. You just keep going with it, you follow it, and it takes you where it wants to go. That’s the whole point, and that’s what I love about it.”

His studio is now full of light sculptures of all shapes and sizes and colors, all of which refract and transpose light in different ways. The way that the fabrics fold and mold into each other feels organic and animate, as if the sculptures themselves are living and breathing just like we are. “They are very alive.” 

          

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

His work reminds the viewer of something, but they are not sure exactly what it is. “It’s very oblique in a way.” The viewer wants to touch them, or at least imagine what the various materials feel like. “I want to step back from depiction, representation, and imitation, and present things as phenomena itself. From there, I can open up a space to give view to materiality and form as an object itself.” 

Marc’s work fluid, ephemeral, and ever changing. He says that he’s been trying to make something that changes as you move about it, something that sees you more than you see it. He wants to evoke a relationship between “the perceiver, and the embodied perception.” At the same time, his new work is very much about fragility, a kind of “frozen calamity physics,” as he describes. To him, it’s all about the things that are about to fall apart, and yet precariously stay together. He adamantly disagrees with the common perception that art is permanent, that it defeats time and can exist forever. For Marc, art is an experience of the moment. He is inspired by painter Marcelle Duchamp and musician John Cage, who were both interested in the idea of variability and chance. One of Marc’s essential mantras is from a Mallarmé poem: “a throw of the dice does not abolish chance.” He says that he still doesn’t quite understand what the phrase means, but he loves it nonetheless. Marc seems to be increasingly interested in dichotomies: how we as people are both so strong and so frail. He tries to echo this paradox in his work.

________

Evening comes, and Marc sits on his red reef couch in the back room of the studio reading an article called “Art and Its Surrogates.” Morrissey, his favorite musician, is blasting on speakers. He listens to “Mountjoy” over and over and over again, singing along to the lyric, “The joy brings many things, but it cannot bring you joy.”

He looks up towards his sculptures, which hang about the space without the presence of light. They are resting, sleeping, unwinding. Getting ready for tomorrow, for another day of luminescent variability. 

“You can make art with your family, in your house, on an airplane, at the beach. You can make art, do art, be art, act art. You ARE art. Art has a fullness and a robustness that is everbecoming. It’s really fun.”

His orchestra tunes its instruments, and their conductor falls into a colorful dream.

YOGA: The Four Noble Truths

By Filed Under: Bending Towards Brooklyn (Yoga), Yoga Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

What is it about the cold months in Park Slope that make Brooklyn stand out like a Charles Dickens village? With all the chaos and commotion of our city, our world and our speck in the universe, it is Brooklyn that remains unchanged. Even with new renovations, new neighbors, new schools, hospitals and restaurants, the true heart of winter lives and thrives on the streets of Brooklyn. Some of this has to do with the deep roots of our borough, the history of Park Slope and it’s surrounding neighborhoods. But, some of it also has to do with Yoga. 

Yoga has become a phenomenon in western culture. Brooklyn is no exception. This is nothing new. As human beings our attachment to the affects of yoga are great. Also, let’s face it; aside from the benefits we enjoy the community. It is in a yoga class where people find they can be alone. It is also in a yoga class that most people find they are not at all alone. So how great is our suffering during this season? How much time have we spent on our own hearts between the cool rush of holiday shopping and New Year’s promises? Winter in Brooklyn gives us the opportunity to deepen our practice in an open and more vulnerable way.

[pullquote]The four noble truths can guide us through a cold season and bring to light our own noble hearts. After all, winter is not about gifts or holidays or even resolution. Winter is about a solace we can find when we are quiet enough. [/pullquote]The true heart of winter resides somewhere between Windsor Terrace and Prospect Heights. I mean to say that if one walks through all of the neighborhoods that relate to these two places, there will be an abundance of coffee shops, a plethora of bars and a vast array of yoga studios. In the coffee shop laptops and frothy cappuccinos prepare us for our daily grinds by serving the daily grind. The bar allows us to unwind from the stressful perimeters of our work, family and home life. But it is inside the yoga studio where we may enter, remove our shoes and respect where we are in the moment. We do not try to escape the cold. Instead, we seek refuge and our own bodies feed us the warmth of our tired souls.

There are four noble truths that can be incorporated into these long months of winter; four noble truths seem to follow us on our paths to the heart. These truths ignite the cold months with a fiery reality. What we might find at the coffee shop, the bar or the yoga studio throughout the year is dukkha. Dukkha is the first noble truth in Buddhism and it roughly translates to “life is suffering”. I know, it sounds depressing right? Although this sounds awful it actually should have the opposite affect. It is a teaching that enriches the idea of impermanence. Our happiest moments can be considered dukkha because they too will end, and so we can say that our saddest moments are also dukkha. They will not last. Dukkha is significant in winter because the cold season too will end. Flowers will bloom again and so we can carry the first noble truth in our mind’s eye as a compass and as a means of letting go.

The second noble truth is tanha. Some translate this word as “craving”. This has to do with our human attachment to the things we desire, or just desire in general. Our need to attach ourselves to material objects, ideas and people create chaos within our hearts and minds. This truth has been realized on yoga mats all over the world. In Brooklyn throughout the cold months and the buying frenzies tahna sticks its tongue out at us and dares us to enjoy our lives as they are. Tahna asks us not to try and change anything but to see everything with a third eye as if we are hovering over ourselves without judgment but with a greater awakening of the spirit. It asks us not to hold on.

Nirhodha is the third noble truth and it is also an instruction on the end of suffering. It sounds so simple: just let go, stop craving things, stop attaching to things. But, I really want my cappuccino! This truth arrives at a slow pace. Through our yoga practice and meditation it comes. The need to grasp dissipates. We may awaken. We may stay asleep. But we practice. This is our path, which then leads us into the final and fourth noble truth.

The fourth truth, magga is our path. It is often referred to as the eightfold path because it is comprised of different areas and aspects of our lives and instructs us on how to walk our own path. In a nutshell it is a mindful way of living. The first three noble truths cannot exist or be realized without this one. The magga is like a sacred duty we have to ourselves and to the world around us.

The heart of winter in Brooklyn can be brutal. Or maybe I’ve just attached myself to that idea. But where there is a lull in the season, there is an opportunity to awaken on the yoga mat. The four noble truths can guide us through a cold season and bring to light our own noble hearts. After all, winter is not about gifts or holidays or even resolution. Winter is about a solace we can find when we are quiet enough. When we walk past the coffee shop, skip the bar and take off our socks at the yoga studio in order to look at our own feet, the ugliness, the beauty, the impermanence and the silent possibility of our own wonder.

 

Art by Heather Heckel

Dine Your Way Around the World in Park Slope – A New Restaurant Round-Up

By Filed Under: Eat Local Tagged With: , , , , , ,

We’ve already come to know Park Slope’s Fifth Avenue as a mecca of international cuisine, whether you’re craving the soupy comfort of a bowl of Vietnamese pho or looking for the simple glutinous New York slice of pizza. From this boulevard and beyond, more and more hopeful business owners have recently decided to take the leap of faith and establish some (extremely tasty) roots in the neighborhood. For their dreams and your stomach’s delight, here are just a few of the many new restaurants that have opened within the last year. Have you indulged in any yet?

Saigon on 5th – Borrowing recipes from his Vietnamese-born grandmother, who also used to own her own restaurants in Manhattan and Queens, her grandsons are the owners of Saigon on 5th, who grew up learning her ways in the kitchen. The duo specializes in classic, savory Vietnamese dishes, and you’ll be able to get your hot pho noodle cravings satisfied, along with other sweet, sour and tangy dishes like papaya salad, spring rolls and grilled pork chops.

 

Bar Basic – Bar Basic stands as an outlier against the overwhelming amount of natural, organic and healthy options in Park Slope by providing some good old Southern comfort dishes. When you want to go back to treating yourself on a meal out, step into this comforting, rustic chic space for hearty plates of fried chicken sandwiches and jambalaya. A good 90% of Bar Basic’s ingredients are made in-house, and there’ll also be vegan options to come.

 

Maya Taqueria – For a little taste of the California taco scene, grab a few of them at Maya Taqueria. This no-frills joint has landed in both Park Slope and the neighboring Prospect Heights, and aims to provide an authentic super-size me California style of Mexican cooking, from massive burritos to decadently garnished tacos. Everything is made from scratch too, so savor that tortilla wrap a little longer than normal, and enjoy an extra fresh kick of cinnamon in the horchata.

 

Nargis Bar & Grill – This newly opened location has quickly become a 5th Avenue favorite amongst Park Slope residents, its original Sheepshead Bay location a hidden gem and mainstay with the locals. The authentic Uzbek restaurant offers an international escape, where dishes like samsa and oxtail stew provide an exceptionally unique dining experience in the neighborhood. The escape is not only evident in its dishes but within the interior too – A brick wall adorned with old plates and shelves of even older antiques suggests that you may have stepped into your Russian grandmother’s kitchen rather than a Park Slope restaurant.

 

Sushi Lin – If you’ve always thought that you’d never get to experience Tokyo’s iconic Tsukiji Market without going there yourself, then you’re wonderfully mistaken. Chef duo Lins not only source their fish from this coveted market, they also bring in a range of stock from around the world. The goal is simple: Recreate the textures, freshness and flavors of omakase. The result: A traditional, elegant menu of artfully presented sushi, hand rolls and other savory appetizers like agedashi tofu and tempura.

 

Milk Bar – Now don’t get this Milk Bar confused with the Momofuku cereal hype. You will not be consuming pounds of sugary beverages, but rather enjoying a healthy, classic brunch experience. Its 6th Avenue location is the second addition to Brooklyn, with its nearby Vanderbilt location supporting them in Prospect Heights. Milk Bar has declared that toast is all the rage, and the menu’s stacked breads of wholesome fruits, meats and vegetables will leave you guilt-free and stuffed.

From Media to Mozzarella – Our Interview with WILD’s Marina Charny

By Filed Under: Eat Local Tagged With: , , , , , ,

It takes a lot of courage to completely change career paths. When WILD’s manager Marina Charny found herself frustrated with the PR business, she decided to take a 180 and dive head-first into the restaurant world, helping the small chain open a third location in Park Slope just last year. We chatted with Charny about the flip, how she found WILD, and what the South Brooklyn native loves about the neighborhood.

How did the company get started?

It’s all kind of random. So Miki [Agrawal] founded Wild 10 years ago. It was called Slice at the time. It happened all kind of organically. There was really no gluten-free options at the time and she was having a lot of stomach issues and health issues and she was finding that a lot of the food she was eating was making her sick, and pizza was her favorite food. So basically she’s really creative and an entrepreneur, and she was thinking, “I just wish there was an option for healthier pizza.” I don’t think she had celiac disease, but I think there was sort of a tolerance or something along those lines so she basically set out to create this great pizza. When she founded the restaurant it was called Slice and she opened it on the Upper East Side 10 years ago and it was just a regular over-the-counter pizza place. It was really cool for being one of the first 100% gluten-free places but there were other issues. She had never really run a restaurant before. So she ended up finding this great partner whose name is Walid Hammami, who’s still involved with the business, and they sort of rebranded, which took a couple of months. They changed some of the things that were going into the pizza dough. They actually simplified it. They made it what it is now, which is thin crust. There’s just a few ingredients that go into it. So yeah, long story short they basically rebranded, they changed the concept, they made it kind of the farm-to-table, sustainable organic simple from the earth ingredient type of place, which is what we do now. Changed the name. It’s not an over-the-counter pizza place anymore. It’s a full service restaurant. And then they moved downtown, so now Wild is open in the West Village. Together they opened another location in Williamsburg, and then shortly after that they came up with the idea to create a franchise.

Where did you come along in the journey?

I have no restaurant background, so a lot of people have asked me how I ended up getting involved. I was working with this journalist named Gail. She met Miki and I met Miki through her. It was like a little sort of connection and I was just really interested. She’s not even really directly involved with running the restaurant anymore. She founded this other company called Thinks, which is this period underwear company. So yeah, she’s kind of like this serial entrepreneur. She just starts companies and then moves onto something different. I was just really fascinated with her and was interested in all the different projects she was working on and when I went to check out the restaurant in the West Village I thought it was so cute and I’m from Brooklyn. All I had was this idea that the restaurant would be a nice fit in Park Slope. I just thought it was a good demographic for gluten-free, for healthy, for vegan. I saw that they had just started this franchise and that was nice because it was really small, not like a McDonalds type of situation where there’s a billion locations. I was like it might be nice to get to work closely together and just sort of pursue it, and I reached out to them and ended up getting in touch with her directly and they liked the idea of opening up a third location in New York because both she and her partner are based in New York. That was it. It was born after that. I immediately started looking for places and found this spot. It used to be a Spanish restaurant so it looks completely different. Fast forward 8 months and here we are.

What was it like building up a restaurant without any experience?

I did have it easier than it could’ve been because I had some assistance. Like I said, Miki is not directly involved anymore, her partner Walid…he still runs the other locations so I would say I had some assistance from him and we have the same menu across all three locations so the hardest part, which is designing and building a menu, that’s already been done. It was definitely difficult. I was sort of going off of my instinct and best thought process as far as designing the place, and… I don’t know. I just wanted it to be, because it has these harmonica doors, I just thought it’d be nice to have a sort of open vibe, like inviting and airy. I thought with the whole farm to table concept it might be nice to have plants and stuff like that.

Is it similar to the aesthetic of the other places?

No, all the other locations look completely different, which is funny. People comment on that. All three locations look totally different, and we’re the only location that has a full liquor license. The other ones only serve beer and wine, and then we also have the outdoor seating. So yeah, I was just navigating through the open waters as I went. I just thought I’ve been working in PR and just getting frustrated with that job and I wanted to do something different. I never owned a business before but I was thinking, now’s the time to try. You know, you get to a certain point in your life where you’re in your 40s and you have kids and you’re married and you have a house and all these responsibilities. You can’t just quit your job and chase a dream. That’s literally what I did. I quit the job I was working in and was like, let me just throw myself into this full speed ahead.

Do you live in Park Slope?

No, I live in the City on the Upper East Side. I grew up in Brooklyn. I lived in South Brooklyn my whole life. When I was finally ready to move out of my parents’ home I was like, I can’t wait to move to the city! And I lived in the city for two years before this whole restaurant thing happened and now I commute back, which is kind of silly. It’s nice to kind of distance yourself because I’m here a lot. So when I go home, I feel like I’m home. I kind of cut myself off a little bit. I think if I lived nearby I would never leave.

Do your parents come here?

They do! They always come. It’s funny because everybody knows they’re my parents but they always pay for their meals and they like to be waited on and they just want to be treated like regular customers. It’s really cute.

What’s your favorite thing on the menu?

Probably the pizzas. I mean, definitely the pizzas. They’re really good. I love pizza too. I’ve always tried to watch what I eat myself. I don’t have celiac or anything like that. I just generally try to eat healthy. I eat these pizzas almost every day and it’s nice to constantly be able to eat pizza and not feel guilty about it or feel like you’re overwhelming yourself with fat and greases and stuff like that.

Which particular pizza?

The local mozzarella is our basic margarita pizza is really good. The caprino pizza, which is our vegetarian option, is really good, and the pear gorgonzola, which is what we call our dessert pizza, those are my favorites. The wild truffle mushroom penne is really good. That’s probably my favorite pasta. The salmon is really good. I’m biased but the pizzas are definitely there.

What do you like about Park Slope as a restaurant owner?

A lot of things. We get a lot of regular customers. It’s really nice to see the same people over and over, especially the customers that have been coming here since day one. We get customers that are like, oh we were here when you first opened and now everything looks different! We were here when your bar was empty. We were here when you had a different chef and things tasted different. It’s nice that they’ve been here on this journey with us.

We’ve had customers that were like, “Oh it was a little rocky in the beginning but now everything is great and we waited it out with you and kept coming back.” We had a customer whose wife was pregnant and now she’s had the baby and it’s like you feel like you know them because they come in so often. There’s also a lot of events that happen on 5th avenue that all the businesses are invited to participate in. It’s very nice. I know that at the Wild in the city, there’s a lot of tourists so it’s busy because it’s Manhattan. It’s not like that here. It’s more community spirit, which is nice. It’s a beautiful neighborhood, and there’s so many different people.

It seems like the food scene changes here drastically? Some of which opened around the same time?

Some of those restaurants, within the time we’ve been here, which is about a year and a half coming up. Some of those restaurants have already closed, so I think two of them are already closed. It’s very competitive and it’s kind of nice that we’re slowly but surely building up our customer base and it’s nice. Challenging but rewarding.

 

https://www.wildparkslope.com

Aiming for Adventure: Get Your Skills On

By Filed Under: Park Slope Life Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

In a neighborhood rich with leaders ready to help children grow, athletically as well as creatively, wintertime activities do not have to be confined to the walls of your home. With a variety of sports, hobbies, and live shows at its disposal, Park Slope has plenty to offer every kind of family in the cold stretch between fall and spring. By Meghan Cook

Rolando Balboa, Head Coach at the Brooklyn Fencing Center, is just one of many talented instructors in the neighborhood. Balboa stated that their mission is “to make the fun and excitement of fencing accessible to Brooklynites of all ages.” Like many of the activities listed, fencing is more than a sport. When it comes to educating children, a larger part of engaging their minds is offering them “shine on their own merits.”

John Finn of Birdman Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, who recently opened a new Brooklyn location just north of Park Slope, advocated for his business by emphasizing the importance of bolstering confidence in young students. Finn maintained that defensive martial arts provide great tools to combat bullying by helping students “develop a strong sense of flow through timing and technique, not speed and strength.”

Similarly, Gordon Wormser of Aikido of Park Slope spoke on the importance of teaching young children the art of self-defense through gentle measures with “smiles and safety.” Wormser went on to say that the atmosphere of their center is disciplined, yet fun. “It offers an environment in which your child can grow physically, intellectually, and emotionally,” explained Wormser.

Ora Fruchter of Yellow Sneaker, a local group that entertains young minds with music and puppetry, also focused on the importance of building a light, comfortable environment where kids can be themselves. “At our weekly Yellow Sneaker sing-alongs you’ll find a community of people and puppets who can’t wait to have some fun, make some friends and dance it out,” said Fruchter. “We create a cozy and welcoming space that is fun and laid back for kids and their caregivers.”

This winter, consider looking into the following children’s programs local to Park Slope and enjoy the dual benefits of supporting community businesses while encouraging your kids to take on new skills.

 

Brooklyn Boulders

Arm your kids with the bravery and self-assurance to tackle obstacles and climb new heights at Brooklyn Boulders. With a ratio of one belayer paired to five kids, children are always given the consideration and care they need to ensure their safety while rock climbing. Kids Academy is available daily, while Brooklyn Boulders Adventures offer full-week programs. Both are open to children aged 5-12. Prices range from $49-$709.

Website: https://brooklynboulders.com/brooklyn/youth/

 

Gotham Archery

Located just north of Park Slope in Gowanus is Gotham Archery, a recently renovated archery facility. Gotham Archery boasts 43 lanes, equipment rentals, and introductory classes for new beginners. This activity is mostly reserved for older children as only ten and up are allowed access to equipment, per safety concerns, though children as young as 8 can participate in the Junior Olympic Archery Development program.

Website: https://www.got-archery.com

 

Birdman Brazilian Jiu Jitsu

Birdman Brazilian Jiu Jitsu boasts a brand new, state of the art facility just a few blocks up from Union St subway station. While they just opened their newest location in Park Slope on January 1st, instructor John “Birdman” Finn has been practicing and teaching the art form for many years, and offers experienced black belt instruction. Jiu Jitsu promotes team building, confidence, and dedication to technique. Open to children from ages seven and up.

Website: http://birdmanbjj.com

 

Pure Energy Martial Arts

Toronto native Tessa Gordon owns and operates Pure Energy Martial Arts, now a staple in the Park Slope Community. With a 6th degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do, Master Gordon exhibits full command and knowledge of the Korean art form, and uses her school to share and teach that ability to her students. Gordon hosts kids programs for children as young as three and for teens/adults of all belts. Programs include: Juniors, Cage Fitness, Demo Team, and Birdman Brazilian Ju Jitsu. Free trial classes available.

Website: http://www.pureenergymartialarts.com

 

Brooklyn Fencing

Right at the top of Park Slope is Brooklyn Fencing Center. Fencing is a unique skill that fosters coordination and poise. For kids with a competitive streak, Brooklyn Fencing also hosts tournaments throughout the year. The center offers child classes for kids aged 7-9, junior classes for 10-17. Levels are inclusive to fencers new to the sport as well as for the more advanced: “New Beginners,” “Intermediate & Competitive Fencers,” and “Bouting.” Private lessons are also available. Beginner group rates start at $199 a month.

Website: http://www.brooklynfencing.com

 

Ice Skating

Can’t get enough of the cold? Consider taking the kids ice-skating in the LeFrak Center at Lakeside Prospect Park. Lakeside offers two outdoor winter rinks to skate circles around your neighbors or hug the wall to your heart’s content. If you’d prefer a warmer activity, scurry inside for a hot apple cider at the Bluestone Cafe and pop on some rollerblades to skate indoors. Check back in the spring to explore Lakeside in new ways on boats and bikes. Admission to ice-skate is $7 on weekdays, $10 on weekends. Rollerblading: $6 on weekdays/$9 on weekends. Respective ice-skates and rollerblades are priced separately.

Website: http://lakesidebrooklyn.com/activities/

 

Aikido of Park Slope

Park Slope is also host to Brooklyn’s largest aikido dojo. Aikido is a Japanese martial art created in the 1900s that is protective, disciplined, and disarming; its aim is not to fight, but to neutralize opponents. Aikido’s children’s program is open to kids from ages five and over, for lessons which inspire problem solving and peaceful combat. Available at a monthly rate of $100.

Website: http://www.aikidoofparkslope.com

 

Puppet Show

For little ones with a creative spark, catch the Yellow Sneaker Puppet Sing-Alongs every Thursday at 10:30am at Sir D’s Lounge on Union Street. The musical group and their silly puppet friends join in song (both original and traditional) as they encourage children to clap and sing along. $10 for kids, $5 for each additional sibling.

Website: http://www.yellowsneakerpuppets.com

The Art of Bookselling • The Reader Interview

By Filed Under: Books, The Reader Interview Tagged With: , , , , ,

Stephanie Valdez and Ezra Goldstein of Community Bookstore

 

“You’re really catching us on quite a day,” said Stephanie Valdez when I met up with her and Community Bookstore co-owner Ezra Goldstein one afternoon early in December. Not only was the usual holiday rush upon them, there were last-minute children’s book fairs to coordinate (“it’s almost like setting up two more stores”), book orders to be completed without delay, and sniffles to be suppressed as best one could. (All sneezes have been omitted from the following conversation.) Yet the staff was in good cheer. When I arrived, Ezra was standing by the front register regaling several employees and a customer with a story. Stephanie laughed as she typed busily at the computer, while store mascot Tiny the Cat lounged with characteristic disinterest inside his basket in a corner of the window.

At the back of the store by several bowls of cat food Stephanie and I chatted before Ezra, busy with orders, joined us partway through the conversation. They spoke of current bestsellers, the books that should be selling better, that episode of “Louie,” the charm of Karl Ove Knausgaard, and a man, his chicken and Tiny the Cat.

To begin, it would be great if you could describe how you found the store when you first took over in 2011.

Stephanie Valdez: How we found it? In what condition?

Exactly, how you would describe the space.

SV: The store was much different then than it is today. Ok, how would I describe it. The owner, who’s a friend of ours, her name is Catherine, she’d moved to Albania, and she was going back and forth between here and Albania on a regular basis, and the store was being run by a couple of college students who were here trying to do their best under the very difficult circumstances. The store was in debt; it was filled with animals. We had two dogs, two cats, a bearded dragon, a bunny, and two turtles. Which made it chaotic. And physically, the store was sort of a labyrinth of shelves and nooks and crannies, and it was in need of some work. We actually bought it in 2011, but we took over in 2010, so we spent some time just fixing it up. And it was really wonderful, in a way, because the work that needed to be done was so clear. Every day you’d come in and you’d just tackle a corner. It was sort of like a fixer-upper project where you’re renovating a house, where every day you can tackle a project and turn it around and make it better. And that process was sort of a gift to us and part of why we decided to buy the store.

What would you say is the most interesting event that you have hosted?

[pullquote]We are very lucky because we are one of the few independents that we almost only sell books, we don’t have to entice people in with toys to get them to buy books. We just focus on books. We’re very lucky our audience is made up of very avid readers. We don’t have to convince them that books are a necessity[/pullquote]SV: That’s a really tough question. I’d have to think about that a little bit. Certainly our most packed ever was when we had Karl Ove Knausgaard. It’s when he suddenly got very famous, and we knew it would be packed, but it ended up being like, wall-to-wall standing-room-only for 200ish people. We’ve never hosted anything like that, before or since.

Was it in this space, in the bookstore?

SV: [Nods affirmatively] There was a line outside the door. To get him into the space we had to move people aside in order to go through. There’s actually a picture on The New York Times site of him parting the crowds to walk through this completely packed space. That was also very charming, because he ended up staying and hanging out with us for the whole evening in the garden, drinking cheap beer, which is unlike what most authors do.

What do most authors do?

SV: Especially touring authors, when they come to New York they have dinner with their agent or they go out with their friends that are local. It’s rare that they sit in the Community Bookstore garden and drink cheap beer.

Is there a writer whom you have never hosted that you would love to?

SV: I always wanted to host Marilynne Robinson. And then we actually did host Marilynne Robinson and I was judging a literary prize. And of all days, it’s the day we were hosting Marilynne Robinson that I had to be in another city, judging a prize. And I tried to make it work and there was just no way to be in two places at once, and so, I missed hosting Marilynne Robinson. Which was unfortunate. But I have hope that we will host her again.

 

 

Do you have a favorite Park Slope author?

That seems fraught.

It does!

SV: It seems like if I do, I shouldn’t say. [Pause] Probably Siri Hustvedt.

And why is that?

SV: I just love her books. They’re brainy and complex and feminist and brilliant.

Are you yourself a writer?

SV: I dabble a little bit, but I’ll say no, not currently.

I know you also manage Terrace Books. What are some of the challenges you face as you try to manage these two spaces at once?

SV: Time. Time is the biggest. Terrace Books is sort of my side-hustle. My husband runs that shop. But I do most of the book-buying. And I also do a bit of rare books out of that space, and so, that’s my side project. Bookstores require a lot of time. I mean, it’s a small space, you think, how complicated is it to run a bookstore? Somehow there are always new books and there are always new events. So, however much time we have, it doesn’t ever seem to be quite enough.

How would you describe a typical day at Community Bookstore?

SV: A typical day involves coming in, feeding the cat, turning on all the lights and the computers, and then, Ezra orders books every day, every weekday, so he works on book orders. And then the thing about working in a bookstore is that you never know what the day will bring. You never know who will show up and what questions they’ll ask and what conversations will ensue. There’s a lot of email in my job, between events and ordering books and all sorts of things. And tending the shelves, shelving books. I do less unpacking than I used to, but we get boxes and boxes of books, five days a week. So, this time of year, it can be 40 boxes of books.

Do you read all the new books that come in?

SV: Oh, I wish. We try to read as much as we can, but that just depends.

Do you try to set aside time to do so?

SV: Reading is not part of our day-job. It’s all extra-curricular. So, just like anywhere else, we have to fit it into our after hours’ time. I have a one-year-old, so, currently my after hours’ time is a little more limited than usual.

Are you reading any books to your one-year-old?

SV: Oh, yes. He’s a very avid reader so far. He’s now at the phase where he tends to want to repeat the same books.

Which can be both fun and a little maddening, I would imagine.

SV: Yeah, I’ve already memorized a shocking number of children’s’ books, which makes me realize I could have been memorizing all kinds of things all along.

Does he have a favorite?

SV: What’s his absolute favorite right now? He really likes The Quiet Noisy Book, by Margaret Wise Brown. She’s famous for Goodnight Moon. This is sort of a lost book of hers that’s been republished. And a book called Hooray for Birds [by Lucy Cousins]. Which is just about birds.

I know you mentioned [Tiny] the cat earlier as well. I’ve read a few different stories about him. Do you have a favorite?

SV: Well, my favorite was when I was hosting a story-time for an author and there was a group of toddlers sitting here on the floor and a man walked into the middle of the event and pulled out a chicken from under his coat, and put the chicken down on the ground. And within an instant, Tiny was chasing the chicken and we were chasing the chicken and Tiny to try and prevent disaster in front of this group of toddlers.

Why did this man bring a chicken to the store?

SV: I guess there was a chicken in the book and they thought it might be fun if he just showed up and brought a chicken. It was a show-and-tell type thing. But we weren’t warned about the chicken, and cats and chickens don’t really mix. And I guess he had a cat at home as well as a chicken, so, as far as he knew, cats and chickens cohabitated just fine. But our cat, Tiny, does kill birds with some regularity, so, this was not your average cat.

These were not characters from a children’s story.

SV: Exactly.

[Ezra joins]

What is your current bestseller here in the store?

SV: Is it Jennifer Egan?

Ezra Goldstein: It would be close between Manhattan Beach [by Jennifer Egan] and Sing, Unburied, Sing [by Jesmyn Ward], I think.

Are there books that you believe ought to be selling better than they are? 

EG: Well, there are a lot of books like that. But there are a couple of books that I’ve read recently that are really outstanding that didn’t make any of the best lists that should have been on the lists. One of which I’m reading now called Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor, terrific book. Another is Solar Bones [by Mike McCormack], really good book. But that’s up to us, because a lot of books that we think are really good don’t get the publicity that they deserve, because they come from small presses or they go under the radar. In general, small presses don’t get the publicity they deserve, so that’s why we exist, to put those books in people’s hands.

How do you try to find the smaller under-the-radar books?

SV: We talk a lot to those small publishers as well as talk to other readers, whether it’s other booksellers, customers who come in. We read reviews. You try to keep your ear to the ground for good things coming out.

EG: The book Reservoir 13, one of our customers told me I had to read it. And she was right.

Do you have customers coming in and asking you for books that are not currently stocked?

SV: Every day. We do a lot of books by special order, because we’re such a small store, and we can often get books within a day or two. So, yes. We often have people special-order books. And then we often take a look at them to see if that’s something we should carry.

EG: I think it’s also that it’s connected to our reputation, that we can get books and we’re really good at getting books. And also our clientele tend to be people who go very deep into backlist books, you know, books that came out 20 years ago or 30 years ago. Those are the kinds of readers that we have.

SV: Our customer base is filled with just great readers and they often recommend us books, so it is a two-way conversation.

Have you ever had a particularly unusual request?

SV: For a book?

Yes, for a book, something that was very difficult to find, that was very old, or very rare. Speaking of Terrace Books as well.

SV: Well, we don’t do rare or used special orders. So mostly, it’s just things that are out of print. I think the most frustrating thing is when there’s something that’s out of print that shouldn’t be. There have been various points in time when certain books are just out of print, and it seems like it shouldn’t be out of print.

EG: With some regularity we’ll track down a book in England that we order for people. It’ll take a month to get, but, you know, we’ll get it.

SV: We don’t really have a zany story. It’s mostly pretty prosaic.

EG: One of the great stories was that Laura Ingalls Wilder book, the original one that came from the South Dakota historical society. It got written up somewhere and became this surprise bestseller.

SV: In The Times, yeah.

EG: This poor tiny historical society in South Dakota was cranking out books. So I was calling South Dakota and we actually got—I think we got just about every copy they had. [Laughs]

What is the book that you’ve been recommending the most recently?

EG: Well, you know, it depends on who the person is. But, the Sing, Unburied, Sing, which won all the prizes, deserved them. It’s a very fine book. But it’s not for everybody because it’s a very grim and hard book. That’s the art of bookselling, is trying to match the recommendation with what people want.

I also saw that Community Bookstore was featured in an episode of “Louie” a few years ago. Have you had customers coming in and asking you about that?

SV: I actually haven’t had any inquiries lately.

EG: Not lately.

SV: Since the scandal.

EG: But a lot right after the show came out. A lot. People would come in and wander around and say, ‘Nah, this isn’t the store. It’s not big enough.’ [Laughs]

SV: It’s unfortunate. We weren’t necessarily fans of his, and a couple of years ago quite a few rumors were flying around about these allegations. So we haven’t really used that footage as publicity or anything and we met him in passing once. I don’t think we have anything especially interesting to say about him or the scandal.

EG: Although I did get to hang out with Parker Posey, so.

Is she cool in real life?

EG: Oh, yeah. She’s really neat. Yeah. She’s really nice. She was in the episode.

SV: And Chloe Sevigny as well.

EG: Yeah, Chloe Sevigny, that’s right. Both very nice.

SV: Both readers.

Did they buy anything?

EG: Yeah, yeah, oh, yeah. And the producer, who’s a wonderful woman, bought a whole big stack of books.

SV: We’ll probably continue to just keep our distance and move on.

You read a lot about the resurgence of independent bookstores nowadays, in spite of Amazon. To what would you attribute your continuing success here?

EG: A very loyal customer-base. And just being fortunate to live in a neighborhood where people like to shop small and like to see what they’re buying and like books, love books.

SV: Dedicated readers. We are very lucky because we are one of the few independents that we almost only sell books, we don’t have to entice people in with toys to get them to buy books. We just focus on books. We’re very lucky our audience is made up of very avid readers. We don’t have to convince them that books are a necessity.