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Park Slope

Listen While You Lounge

January 4, 2023 By Kitty Guo Filed Under: Park Slope Life Tagged With: Park Slope

Welcome to the new sonic sanctuary in Park Slope

If you happen to be trudging down 5th Avenue on an icy night, seeking refuge and a stiff drink to warm your hands and heart, you can’t do better than Honeycomb. The trendy Japanese listening bar officially opened its doors mid-November, and has already proven itself to be a welcome addition to Park Slope’s late-night lounge scene. With a Rubik’s Cube-esque exterior paneled in vibrant tangerine hues and an inviting open window that spills the sound of old jazz records into the night, the bar exudes the same warmth and coziness as a Thomas Kinkade painting. But there’s just one hurdle potential patrons must overcome before gaining access to this safe haven: the door, also arrayed in glass panels, blends seamlessly into the exterior, with an unobtrusive handle that’s nearly impossible to make out in the dark. 

“Yeah, I should probably put a sign out,” owner Jon Carlson said with a sheepish chuckle. “People have been knocking on the residential door next to us looking for the entrance.” 

A mere six months ago, Honeycomb was just a twinkle in Carlson’s eye. He’d left New York during the pandemic and hadn’t decided whether he’d come back and open another business, but then a friend of his directed his attention to an up-for-rent space nestled between a real estate agency and a pizza joint. That, plus the serendipitous discovery of a vintage Japanese amplifier in his Wisconsin storage unit, planted the first conceptual seeds of Honeycomb in his mind. 

“I started researching and ran across the history of the Japanese listening bar, the kissa tradition. It started after World War II when hi-fi equipment was elevating and American jazz was blowing up,” Carlson said. “I thought that was a good idea and maybe I could do a version of that. Then I saw there’s one in Barcelona, one in Mexico City — it’s becoming a thing. So I thought, I’m just going to go with it, why not.” 

Armed with years of experience building and designing interiors, when Carlson surveyed the space, which had formerly housed another bar, he could tell that the bones were solid. But one aspect that made him anxious were the acoustics, which, of course, needed to be impeccable for a bar with such a heavy emphasis on the aural experience. The solution? Enormous slabs of MDF board perforated in a grid pattern which Carlson fabricated himself — they blanket the majority of Honeycomb’s walls and ceilings and serve to absorb and diffuse sound waves, making both music and conversation clearer and easier to hear. 

“Sometimes you go into a public space and there’s music on and it’s bouncing everywhere, you can’t really hear the music or yourself think,” Carlson said. “The music can be pretty loud in here, but you can still hear each other talk, even at normal volumes.”

Having squared away the acoustic angle, Carlson then turned his attention to other design details, such as the seating and shelving. Most of the furniture in Honeycomb was built by Carlson himself, imbuing them with a certain character that’s lacking in readymade furniture; for example, two shelves behind the bar meet at a slightly off-kilter angle due to the room’s dimensions, an aesthetic quirk Carlson then incorporated into the DJ rack and the booth seating. The result is charming yet cohesive, representative of Carlson’s particular vision. 

“The classic Japanese bars look like an extension of a living room, so I tried to make it feel like that,” Carlson said. “The design really came out of how the room functions. I just work with the room and make everything flow.” 

A good-looking set-up may help attract new customers, but what keeps them coming back are delicious drinks. Honeycomb’s menu is fairly tight and curated — some classic cocktails, some solid wine, some sipping mezcals, some rare Japanese whiskeys. As for beer, Carlson didn’t want cans and bottles scattered everywhere, so for now your only options are a pilsner, a stout, and an IPA, all sourced from Brooklyn-based brewing company Circa. But if you’re hankering for something that Honeycomb doesn’t have, you need only say the word; Carlson is very much open to suggestions. 

“The menu will continue to evolve. That’s a work in progress too: just seeing what people like and respond to, and then keep tweaking the offerings,” Carlson said. 

As for the music itself, the piece de resistance, you can rest assured that when you visit Honeycomb you’re placing yourself in the capable hands of bona fide audiophiles. Behind the DJ booth lives a floor-to-ceiling case housing an ever-expanding library of records, many of which are Carlson’s own; some date back to his high school days, while others have been picked up at small, local record shops during Carlson’s travels in the Midwest. Several of the bartenders have made contributions from their personal collections, and the DJs will oftentimes bring their own selection as well, spinning everything from Sade to Sonny Rollins. 

“Records are fun because once you have them you have them. They’re fun to look at and people like to leaf through them,” Carlson said. “With digital, with streaming, you have everything, but you actually have nothing. It’s all there but it’s not. But with a record, it’s here. It’s just going to be sitting there every day. I kind of like that.” 

Whether you’re looking to enjoy a well-made Negroni, kick back and soak in some good tunes, or impress a new date with your tasteful choice in venue, Honeycomb should be your destination du jour. Though there are still a few kinks to be ironed out (according to Carlson, people have also gotten confused attempting to locate the restroom), it seems like this new addition to the neighborhood could be a well-patronized watering hole this winter, an oasis of warmth and music amidst the cold and dark. 

Filed Under: Park Slope Life Tagged With: Park Slope

Park Slope Sustainability Guide

May 5, 2022 By Sofia Pipolo Filed Under: Park Slope Life Tagged With: Park Slope, sustainability

Spring is here! On every street, we are beginning to feel the warmth of the sun, the blossoms of tree buds, the songs of birds, and Prospect Park growing green again. We are reminded of the beauty nature brings to our lives!

Sadly, springtime also reminds me of our destructive disconnection with nature that’s ultimately led to the current global climate crisis. While, yes, this environmental emergency is not the total burden of us everyday citizens, its roots are still in our consumer practices, neighborhood framework, materialism, and daily habits.

This year’s Earth Day (April 22) theme is “Invest In Our Planet.” President of the Earth Day Network, Kathleen Roberts writes, “In 2022, we all must enter into one partnership for the planet. People, governments, and even most businesses fear change, but that status quo- the way we live today- is changing before our eyes. In building our future, individuals, businesses, governments each have a unique role – we need to act individually and together.”

Optimistically, we do have the power to redirect our personal choices; to individually and collectively reconnect and heal nature. We can bring more awareness to ourselves, to our neighborhood, to our country, and our global community— that is the lives of other humans, the lives of animals, and the Earth’s green life.

This may sound overwhelming. But worry not! We have created the ultimate guide to sustainability in Park Slope! Breaking down sustainable, environmentally conscious, and ethical alternatives to implement in your life, while supporting local businesses and building mutual aid with your neighbors in Brooklyn and around the world!

Zero-Waste Home Refills

Refill stores are radically transforming shopping for cleaning solutions, bath and body products, and other household needs. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) annually reports over 27 million tons of single-use plastic pollutes landfills, coastal areas, and oceans.

Stores like La Nature Store offer a zero-waste alternative to stocking your home. They also host recycling programs for plastic such as toiletry packaging and razors. They promote, “La Nature was founded with a goal in mind- to make eco-friendly everyday products more accessible and to encourage more people around the world to decrease their ecological footprint by switching to sustainable, zero-waste alternatives.”

Simply buy or bring in your own container, like a glass jar or spray bottle, refill it with the solution you need, then pay per ounce.

Begin going zero-waste by refilling your shampoos, dish soap, cleaning sprays, body lotions, and more at these refill options in the neighborhood:

  • –  Le Nature Store (233 5th Ave)
  • –  Annie’s Blue Ribbon General Store (232 5th Ave)
  • –  Park Slope Food Co-Op (782 Union St)
  • –  Tarzian West for Housewares (194 7th Ave)
  • –  Mazzone Ace Hardware (476 Bergen St)
  • –  Green In BKLYN (432 Myrtle Ave)Hand-Made Herbal WellnessSimilarly, herbal apothecary and botanica stores allow you to buy your spices, herbs, and other dry ingredients in bulk, often for a better deal and less waste than the supermarkets. These stores also support awareness of natural, holistic wellness, homemade and self-reliant cooking, skin-care, and healing. You’ll cultivate a deeper understanding of the ingredients you use.Take another step towards sustainability as many of these businesses even offer resources and classes on herbalism and making DIY herbal-based body and home care products.

Find sustainable organic, chemical-free, and locally sourced alternative products at these local herb stores:

  • –  Herboganic (262 Butler St)
  • –  Natural Spirit Corp. (157 7th Ave)
  • –  Remedies Herb Shop (453 Court St)
  • –  Radicle Herb Shop (394 Atlantic Ave)
  • –  Spiral Herbal Remedies (810 Washington Ave)Sustainable FashionAccording to the EPA, landfills receive a yearly average of 13 million tons of textiles; an insane amount of waste heavily caused by the fast-fashion industry’s over-production and over-consumption of clothing. The industry also contributes to water waste, plastic production, greenhouse gas emissions, and abusive labor practices, which disproportionately exploit women and girls.To minimize these abuses, we can radically transform our fashion culture. Opt for vintage, second-hand, thrifted, and re-worked fashion! The trend towards thrift and upcycled fashion has not only been praised for its environmental benefits, but for being more gender-inclusive, diversely creative, and broadening our ideas on appearance and outward self-expression.Some stores, like m.a.e Brooklyn, offer consignment options for vintage and high-end brands; a shopping alternative that invests in your neighbors, your favorite businesses, your wardrobe, and your planet.Diversify your wardrobe with vintage and upcycled fashion from the curated selections at these Park Slope stores:
  • –  m.a.e Brooklyn (362 7th Ave)
  • –  Slope Vintage (71 5th Ave)
  • –  pushcart vintage (270 Prospect Ave)
  • –  Life Boutique Thrift (66 5th Ave / 515 5th Ave)
  • –  Beacon’s Closet (92 5th Ave)
  • –  L Train (654 Sackett St)
  • –  All Almost New Clothing Inc. (68 St Marks Ave)
  • –  Out of the Closet – Brooklyn (475 Atlantic Ave)
  • –  Meshimar (433 7th Ave)
  • –  Nova’s Arc (443 7th Ave)
  • –  Allegra Vintji (58 2nd Ave)Antique Furniture and DecorSimilar criticism has begun on the “fast-furniture industry.” Referring to affordable, but cheaply-made, mass-produced furniture options— think Ikea or Wayfair; the target consumer being college students and new or short-term renters, who face a challenging combination of unstable incomes, unpredictable rent hikes, short-term subleases, often needing to move multiple times within a year. You’ve probably seen these broken dressers, dismantled bed frames, and sleeper sofas on the curb with a hand-written free sign. EPA estimates 9 million tons of discarded furniture end up in America’s landfills annually.Of course, do not blame people for buying affordable necessities; however, we must try creating environmentally conscious, sustainable alternatives! Immediately, by placing value in well-produced and maintained furniture and household products. In the long-term, easier moving options for renters and supporting affordable housing politics.Big Reuse is one local alternative! This donation-based super-reuse store stocks upcycled household necessities— from dining plate sets, to kitchen appliances, to hardware, to computer monitors, to clawfoot bathtubs, to handcrafted furniture.Big Reuse’s goal states, “NYC’s construction and demolition industry throws away nearly 7,000,000 tons of building materials annually! These materials clog our landfills, release carbon into the atmosphere, and create an artificial need for more materials to be manufactured. By salvaging usable items from demolition and remodel projects and reintroducing them to the market, we take a small step toward eliminating these significant environmental costs. Our goal is to demonstrate another option for materials diversion and hopefully inspire the city to require recycling and reuse for construction and demolition waste.”Invest in these great alternatives to sustainably furnish, remodel, and decorate your home:
  • –  Big Reuse (1 12th St)
  • –  Trailer Park (77 Sterling Pl)
  • –  Rewind Vintage (674 Union St)
  • –  Housing Works (266 5th Ave)
  • –  Yesterday’s News (428 Court St)

– Sterling Place (352 7th Ave)

Donating

Purging your home and closet has its own sustainability challenges; how do you ensure your well-meaning donations won’t end up in a landfill?

It’s difficult to know for sure, so we recommend instead of large-scale organizations, like Good Will or the Salvation Army, ensure to donate to local groups that focus on returning your pieces to your own immediate community.

Here are some neighborhood organizations doing amazing work:

  • –  Gowanus Free Store (Douglass & Bond St)
  • –  Housing Works (266 5th Ave)
  • –  CHiPS (200 4th Ave)
  • –  Out of the Closet – Brooklyn (475 Atlantic Ave)
  • –  10 Little Essentials (63 Flushing Ave)
  • –  St. Mary’s Church (233 Classon Ave)Online Community NetworksConnecting with fellow Brooklyners through Facebook Groups and other online networks to directly exchange and upcycle your clothes, houseware, or other items is an assuring way to know your things will go into good hands. Because you can literally hand it off to others!The Gowanus BuyNothing Group writes, “Give, receive, lend, share, and show gratitude in hyper-local gift economies, where the true wealth is the connections between real neighbors.”Here are some local channels to join:
  • –  Park Slope Together
  • –  Buy Nothing BoCoCa/Gowanus/Redhook
  • –  Buy Nothing Park Slope
  • –  Park Slope Plant Share
  • –  Park Slope Swappies
  • –  Park Slope ParentsMutual Aid ServicesPerhaps the most grass-roots way of transforming our community and investing in our planet is through mutual aid. Working with, donating to, and participating in mutual aid programs can help reduce textile, furniture, and food waste while supporting the immediate, necessary, and interconnected needs of our neighborhood.“Mutual aid means long-term solidarity with the community, not a momentary act of charity.”

Programs for free and affordable food, clothing, housing, healthcare, and job placement not only support individual financial and personal security, but a strong community with a safer neighborhood that values sustainability, class-consciousness, anti-racism, and radical empathy.

Gowanus Mutual Aid endlessly serves the surrounding neighborhoods. Donate or pick up from their free store on Douglass/Bond Street; their free community fridges are located at 123 3rd St and 326 6th St. Visit their website for all their programs.

Here are some other Brooklyn mutual aid groups creating sustainability and equality:

  • –  Gowanus Mutual Aid
  • –  CHiPS, Community Help in Park Slope
  • –  Brooklyn Book Bodega
  • –  Free Community Fridge
  • –  Brooklyn Relief Kitchen
  • –  The Rolling Library
  • –  Saint Lydia’s – Dinner Church
  • –  Recovery House of Worship Brooklyn

This spring let’s invest in our planet, starting inside our homes and building our network outward. Step-by-step we can use this guide come together to connect and heal. We be back in Summer for even more sustainability positiblities.

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

Dog Fight

February 1, 2022 By Kara Goldfarb Filed Under: Community, Park Slope Life Tagged With: dogs, Park Slope, Prospect Park

Advocating for a Dog Park in Prospect Park: The Start of a Journey 

Why doesn’t Prospect Park have an off-leash dog run? And how do we get one? Let’s find out. 

Though all the ways— both big and small— in which COVID changed the flow of life can hardly be quantified, one category with some concrete data revolves around pet adoptions. The Animal Care Centers of NYC shared that about 25 percent of people who had taken in dogs to foster at the start of the pandemic had adopted them permanently by June 2020. In May of 2021, a nationally representative poll of over 5,000 respondents by the ASPCA revealed that since the start of the pandemic, close to one in five households acquired a dog or cat. Based on the 2019 U.S Census, that would account for around 23 million households— with between 85-90 percent of those households reporting that they weren’t considering rehoming their pets. 

Another quantifiable change in lifestyle: as of November, only 28 percent of Manhattan office workers had returned to their desks. While we can’t predict how and when that number will change, there is an undeniableness in the ubiquitous embracement of more flexible hours and remote work. 

So what do these two things have in common? Well, with more dog owners and fewer in-office hours, it begs the question: Are there enough places where their pets are able to roam free? In some areas, yes. The Kensington Dog Run, which allows dogs to roam off-leash, opened in July 2020. The 7,000 square feet fenced-in space in the Parade Ground along Coney Island Avenue has separated areas for large and small dogs and canine-friendly turf. Though smaller in size, Jemmy’s Dog Run (currently undergoing renovations) in Madison Square Park, located near 5th Avenue and 24th street in Manhattan, is a year-round dog run with double-entry and exit gates, a ground of smooth pebbles, plenty of trees for shades, and lined with spigots to keep dogs hydrated. 

One park glaringly absent of this kind of area reserved for off-leash recreation is the hub of Prospect Park itself. And the question posed by the publisher of the PSR was: Why? The 586-acre park is surrounded by families with dogs. Yet the off-leash rules are surprisingly rigid. In the designated areas for dogs, dogs are only permitted to run free between 6am–9am, and then from 9pm–1am. Particularly in the winter, when daylight hours dwindle, the opportunity for people in the neighborhood to give their dogs off-leash exercise throughout the course of the day is a difficult task. Why exactly is this the case? Or perhaps, to jump ahead, a better question would be: How does a community— like other communities around NYC have done in the past— go about establishing a fair and proper dog park. 

That’s the mission we’ll be starting with this article series. Namely, the steps that have to be taken, the people and groups who are part of the process, the money involved, and the time scale for which a project like this needs to come to fruition. Talking to advocates and officials, digging into data, and examining past precedents along the way. 

As per the American Kennel Club, the initial stages involve creating a proposal that contains the goals, proposes location, funding, maintenance, and enforcement. According to The Bark, an award-winning publication that was started in 1997 after the two founders adopted a dog and discovered it was illegal for her to go unleashed at their local park, a task force is helpful in centralizing the process, while conducting open, public meetings.

Demonstrating need and support are vital as well. With valid statistics on dog owners, the community, and park-goers, a worded request, as well as a circulating petition, are strong documents that can be brought to the attention of local officials in a concise way, which could lead to the request for a hearing. Ultimately, patience seems to be a key component throughout. As anyone who has advocated and fought for something before knows, the combination of various opinions with the nuances of bureaucracies and the process of congealing support into a cohesive unit can feel time-consuming. It can feel frustrating.  Futile, even, at times. But something worth championing doesn’t always come easy. And hopefully the people and groups we talk with along the way will help in streamlining the major things that need to be done. 

“The new Kensington Dog Run is a testament to what our community can achieve when it comes together over a shared interest, like providing a space for our canine companions to enjoy,” Borough President (now mayor-elect) Eric Adams said in the press release when the dog run opened. He also added, “Amid an unimaginably difficult period for our city, it’s a small — but powerful — reminder that empowering communities at the grassroots level can deliver results.”

“The new Kensington Dog Run is a testament to what our community can achieve when it comes together over a shared interest, like providing a space for our canine companions to enjoy. I was so proud to work with my colleagues in government and the local community to help fund this project through the participatory budgeting process. Amid an unimaginably difficult period for our city, it’s a small — but powerful — reminder that empowering communities at the grassroots level can deliver results,” said Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams.

Stay tuned as we continue to dig down, and “bone” up on this topic. Hopefully in the end every dog will have its day. 

Filed Under: Community, Park Slope Life Tagged With: dogs, Park Slope, Prospect Park

Slope Survey: Ann Cantrell

October 26, 2021 By admin Filed Under: Friends & Neighbors, Park Slope Life, Slope Survey Tagged With: Park Slope, park slope life, Slope Survey

The Slope Survey returns for its 21st installment with Ann Cantrell.: Ann Cantrell is the owner of Annie’s Blue Ribbon General Store, on 5th Avenue between President and Carroll, which celebrates its 14th anniversary in October. She lives in Park Slope with her husband, comedian Rob Cantrell, and their daughter, a 5th grader at PS321. Ann is also an Associate Professor at FIT specializing in Sustainability and Circularity and a passionate advocate for small businesses.

What brought you to Park Slope? 

The owners of Scaredy Kat contacted me about eight years ago when they were moving to North Carolina and wanted another independent store to take their 5th Avenue space.  I had opened Annie’s in Boerum Hill (after initially looking in Park Slope) and this was the perfect opportunity as we had wanted a larger space and had so many wonderful Park Slope customers. My family and I moved here four years ago and both professionally and personally, I love being part of this community! 

What is your most memorable Brooklyn moment?  

The most memorable moment is probably when we hosted our first Egg Hunt in the backyard at Annie’s. We had spread the word but didn’t know what to expect in terms of the turnout.  I remember arriving at the shop with a dozen homemade cupcakes to find a line of people stretching down the block waiting to get in (those cupcakes were gone in a minute!) Luckily, we had enough eggs and activities for kids, the weather was beautiful, and we met so many of our neighbors who come back for the Hunt every year (weather and pandemic permitting).

Describe your community superpower.  

I am a connector and always havae been. If you are a creator or perform a service and are passionate about it, I want to share your story.  I love supporting people who are doing their own thing and doing it well. From my very first business plans for Annie’s, 10 years before I opened, I always envisioned that it would be a place for connecting with the community. That’s what general stores were ꟷ meeting spots where you’d get to know your neighbors and find exactly what you need. I love bringing people together and helping them spread joy with the best gifts.

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

I love Park Slope just as it is but do wish the drainage systems could be improved.  Many of our neighbors suffered damaged from the flooding from Hurricane Ida.

What do you think Brooklyn will look like in 10 years?

I think Park Slope will always keep its charm and sophistication. Thanks to this great community, independent stores and businesses are alive and even thriving in these tough times. I hope that this vitality continues for the next 10 years and many more.

What are you reading, would you recommend it?  

Right now, I am reading Writers & Lovers by Lily King which was a gift from a friend (so far so good!).  We did a Summer Book Club at Annie’s which was fun, and I have been tearing through novels over the past few months and buy them at Community Books on 7th (see my next answer!). 

What is your greatest extravagance?  

FREE TIME! I am a shopkeeper, a professor (I teach full time at FIT), a mom, a wife, and a friend. When I make time for myself, I treat myself by buying myself a good book from Community Books.

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

I can’t imagine not living here! My family absolutely loves Park Slope and know this is our forever home. That said, one of our favorite places outside of Brooklyn is Capitola, California. It’s an amazing small coastal town that we discovered and fell in love with on a road trip down California’s Route 1. We would love to spend more time there someday!

Who is your hero, real or fictional?

Anyone who has overcome adversity or hardship is a hero to me. I am constantly amazed by the will and determination of people to overcome tough times and it inspires me daily.

Last Word, What’s turning you on these days?

NATURE! I find inspiration through early morning walks, trips to the beach, and enjoying the four seasons. This cooler weather has me thinking about fall and hoping for a healthy and safe next few months.

Filed Under: Friends & Neighbors, Park Slope Life, Slope Survey Tagged With: Park Slope, park slope life, Slope Survey

We Don’t Deserve Dogs: Park Slope Documentary Filmmakers Connecting The World

October 5, 2021 By Sofia Pipolo Filed Under: Park Slope Life, The Arts Tagged With: Art, dogs, dogs in Park Slope, film, Park Slope

What connects us? What makes us different? What’s it like being a shepherd in the isolated mountains of Romania? Or an evening with a dog walker under the streetlights of Istanbul? And how does listening to these stories help us grow together?

From Park Slope filmmakers Matthew Salleh and Rose Tucker the new documentary We Don’t Deserve Dogs travels around the world beautifully capturing the lives of everyday individuals and their dogs. While we may never truly know what we did to deserve the unconditional love of our four-legged friends, there are sure to be life lessons in this special relationship.

The filmmaking duo of Urtext Films began their career in their home city of Adalene, Australia; and soon began developing and perfecting their own DIY hands-on way of documentary filmmaking. “When we started doing the documentary work we realized how much we could achieve just the two of us,” reflects Producer Rose Tucker. During production, Rose also manages Sound Recordist, while Matt takes the role of Director and Cinematographer. Together they’ve traveled the world intimately capturing the daily lives of individuals you may not normally see on screen. With just the two of them and sometimes a local translator as the crew, Matt and Rose are able to create a non-disruptive and personal filming experience, which reflects greatly in their work. The small, quiet details as incense smoke fill a prayer space. The rhythmic jingles of a dog’s collar tag. The friendly looks between patrons at a local pub. These natural moments make Matt and Rose’s first-person filmmaking style that much more mesmerizing, unique, and maybe a bit familiar.

Familiarity is always a starting point for Matt and Rose. Subjects that people are passionate about, things that get people talking. Their previous award-winning feature film, Barbecue (2017) covered BBQ culture across the planet. By capturing how everyday things manifest they can explore contrasts in cultures, while simultaneously connecting the things humans have in common. “It’s important to me because I come from a mixed-race background, so I’m always questioning what comes from each side,” says Director Matt Salleh. “We live in a seemingly very fractured world, and post-pandemic even more fractured. We can give insight and show commonalities in people’s lives while celebrating our unique differences.”

Of course, Park Slope is no stranger to the connective joy between fellow dog lovers. “One of the inspirations for this film is just looking out our window in Park Slope,” Rose remembers. “There are always people walking their dogs. People having relationships with each other based on their pets, visiting each other, and going to Prospect Park together.”

Filming for We Don’t Deserve Dogs took our fellow Park Slopers around the world. Traveling to 11 different countries in 9 months finding remarkable stories that would normally go untold. From Italy, Turkey, Uganda, Pakistan, Chile, Finland, Romania, Peru, Vietnam, Nepal, and Scotland; featuring 10 different languages, including some rarely seen on screen like the Acholi/

Lou language of Northern Uganda. “I think traveling when making a film is so different than traveling for tourism because you get that insight into what real life is like for people. You travel to neighborhoods you wouldn’t normally go to,” says Rose, who coordinated their travels and connections in each country.

By working with locals as tour guides, translators, and researchers they successfully sought out interview subjects and narratives. These tour guides, dubbed ‘fixers’ came from all walks of life. Some journalists, photographers, or students, all people who were embedded in the local community in some way and offered a bridge into that specific culture. For example, Matt tells about working with a female street performer in Santiago, Chile. “She created these street tours that took us to hidden parts of the city. She knew the lesser popularised history, like LGBTQ history, which meant she had to talk to people, understand the culture and people’s stories.”

Spending about 2 weeks in every country, the duo worked tirelessly, on foot, by car, and even on motorbike to capture the immersive terrains, complex soundscapes, and individual narratives. They didn’t seek to create the cliché cutesy dog film, nor interview celebrities or the boldest of personalities, but rather everyday individuals and their canine companions. Whether energetic or melancholy, spiritual or quirky, We Don’t Deserve Dogs shifts with each location’s distinct rhythms and pace of life. In Miraflores, Peru, you’ll meet young women throwing birthday parties for their adopted dogs. In Turku, Finland, support dogs for the elderly and disabled bring needed joy and cheer. In Gulu, Uganda, former child soldiers help rehabilitate street dogs as a form of trauma therapy. While directing Matt trusted subjects to share their experiences in their own voice and view. “We are not a voice-over saying what people should think about other people’s lives, we just want to show people’s lives as they are.”

While Matt and Rose feel privileged and bless to have their nomadic filmmaking lives, they have continued to find comfort in returning to Park Slope. A place that again brings together community and familiarity within the much larger New York City setting. Having immigrated to the United States four years ago, Rose expresses her appreciation, “We are lucky to have landed in Park Slope. We joke that we are more connected with our neighbors here than we were in a smaller city back in Australia. It’s a different kind of community living. In Australia everyone is in their house or in a car, here everyone is walking, sitting outside, everyone knows their neighbors and knows who works at the shops.” This aspect has also influenced the couple creatively. Not only reflecting on the immigrant experience, but the ability to find affinity, support, and friendship through genuine connection with those around us.

So here in their one-bedroom apartment, the editing process commenced for 3 months; reviewing hundred of translated transcripts, determining detailed story structure, meticulous color grading, and adding the beautiful score by composer Blake Ewing. Matt and Rose emerged from the editing cave in February 2020 (unfortunately only to return a month later for quarantine), and We Don’t Deserve Dogs made its virtual world premiere at South by Southwest 2020 Film Festival. The film is now digitally available for everyone to enjoy.

And it’s the perfect film for Park Slopers. Yes, of course, because of the dogs; but equally the showcasing of different cultures, religions, genders, and generations. “I think people in Brooklyn have a strong interest and deep respect for other cultures and want to know what’s happening around the world,” says Rose. “We made a very intentional decision to not film stories in Western countries like the U.S. or Australia. All of the stories are coming from lesser-known places. And I think people in Park Slope would be very interested in seeing for example what the relationship between a Muslim woman and her dog in Karachi [Pakistan] is like, and how that can relate to their own experience back here.”

There are no doubt commonalities seen right here in the melting pot that is Brooklyn. Every corner has a little – or more likely a lot – of history, culture, and influence from around the world. Matt expressed, “I don’t think Brooklyn would function in the way it does without all these different cultures coming together.” Matt and Rose even express how that if they find a food dish they love while traveling they have good faith in Brooklyn’s diversity they’ll be able to get it when they return home. “In filmmaking, we have this love and opportunity to travel and meet people from dozens of cultures, and they are all also right here in Brooklyn.”

If there is something special to be said about our ability to come together and blend cultures in our neighborhood, there is equally something to be said about how we can distinctly set each other apart. “We always start our films off with this positive hypothesis that there’s more good in the world than bad. Over and over again we meet people who prove that and amaze us with their stories. Their courage, their bravery, their insight into the world, how they preserve their history, how they celebrate their cultures,” Matt says when reflecting on what he hopes people will get out of the film. “So the fact our film is just listening to people talk about their lives, where they come from, and what is important in their culture, I think it’s a good first step to greater cultural understanding.”

In documenting these genuine stories, valuable kinships, and heartfelt moments from around the world, Matt and Rose’s film We Don’t Deserve Dogs follows the thread that connects us to the humanity, companionship, and unconditional love we may have with dogs and with each other.

Visit wedontdeservedogs.com to watch

Follow @urtext

Filed Under: Park Slope Life, The Arts Tagged With: Art, dogs, dogs in Park Slope, film, Park Slope

Life in Balance

September 28, 2021 By Laura Broadwell Filed Under: Books, Community, Park Slope Lit, Park Slope Reading, Reader Excerpt Tagged With: books, parenting, Park Slope

Excerpted from Tick Tock: Essays on Becoming a Parent After 40 edited by Vicki Breitbart and Nan Bauer-Maglin (Dottir Press, 2021

My daughter, Eleni, is twenty-one now, but I distinctly remember a day when she was two and I was desperately trying to convince her to put on her shoes so we could go out to play. Eleni was running around distractedly and wouldn’t listen, while my mother, then seventy-five, was repeatedly asking me unrelated questions—something about a neighbor and what we would like for dinner. As I answered my mother’s questions, she asked them again because she was hard of hearing. For what seemed to be an eternity, I found myself caught in a cycle of speaking louder and louder to a two-year-old who wouldn’t listen and to a seventy-five-year-old who couldn’t hear. To a bystander, the scene may have seemed comical, but I was not amused. 

In retrospect, that particular day was golden. The sun was shining, my father—also seventy-five—was out for a run, and my mother was still able to cook the foods of her native Greece. Though I was an exhausted, older single mother, I found immense joy in (eventually) taking my daughter out to play, and, as an only child, I reveled in the fact that my parents had finally been granted a grandchild. My family now felt whole and complete. 

In a few years’ time, things would change. 

“Ever since I was a child, I dreamed of becoming a mother; and as I crept toward forty and remained unmarried, this dream, this ambition, didn’t fade. Then when I was forty-one, a confluence of factors arose that made motherhood seem possible.”

Living in an unusually sizable apartment in Brooklyn, I had a steady job that I loved, supportive parents and friends who resided near my home, and a surprising ally in the Chinese government. Though things have changed since, there existed a window of time, a fortuitous opening, when the Chinese government allowed a single woman over forty to adopt a healthy infant—in most cases, a baby girl. (For me this was a bonus, since I intended to raise a child on my own.) On top of that, the adoption process in China was fairly straightforward; and with some luck, it appeared I could be in China within eighteen months, a new mother to a baby daughter. After much thought and reasonable trepidation, I decided to pursue this option. 

On August 16, 1999, I arrived at a dimly lit registrar’s office in central China, where I was handed an eight-month-old baby. At the age of forty-two, I suddenly became a first-time mother. I named my daughter Eleni in honor of my own mother, who had waited patiently for her first and only grandchild. Then nine days later, we flew home to New York, where my parents and friends greeted us at the airport. Eleni and I were set to begin our new life together. 

Our first two years in Brooklyn passed quickly. Eleni was a happy child, a curious child, a child who never slept. By extension, I was always exhausted, holding down a full-time job, caring for my daughter, having few spare moments to myself. But as an older mother, I viewed this juggling act and ever-present fatigue as a small price to pay for the joy of raising a child. As a parent over forty, I’d had countless years of “me time,” during which I could travel, see friends, build a career. So spending a Saturday afternoon with my parents and Eleni was more than enough to make me happy. Having my mother prepare Greek meals and bring them to our house, or seeing my dad play so energetically in the park with my daughter, fulfilled me. I was grateful for my job, grateful to reside in a neighborhood with other adoptive families and little girls from China, and grateful for the multicultural city in which I lived. By some divine stroke of luck, everything seemed in order. 

But as it happens, the best-laid plans often go awry. On September 11, 2001, when Eleni was almost three, the World Trade Center was hit by terrorists, bringing our city to its knees. Several weeks later, the magazine at which I’d worked for nearly a decade folded, citing a consistent loss of revenue. Then, in the spring of 2004, my seventy-nine-year-old father—the bedrock of our family, a man with boundless energy—was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a rare form of lung cancer. How supremely unfair it felt that a man who had valued his health and had so much to live for would be struck with such a fatal illness. Within six months of his diagnosis, my father died, leaving me with countless business affairs to look after, a broken heart, and a mother and daughter who were beyond bereaved. 

Eleni was five, almost six, when her grandpa died, so it was hard for her to comprehend how this vibrant man had left us. On the playground at school, Eleni would look up at the sky and see her grandfather’s wispy, white hair in the cloud formation above her. In class, she described his spirit as coming to her “like a wind,” helping her with her math problems. My dad was athletic, so in tribute to him, Eleni learned to play soccer and tennis. She was fast on her feet and adopted my father’s work ethic. 

My mother, on the other hand, was seventy-nine when her husband died. For years, her health had been faltering, first with coronary bypass surgery in her early fifties, then later with various issues causing memory loss and pain. My mother was surprisingly strong, having survived not only these health problems but also the shelling of Athens during World War II, yet somehow, she liked to convince everyone that she was weak, a victim who needed constant care. 

My father had been that primary caregiver, her rock—her lifeline to the world. When he died, my mother was understandably adrift. In order to protect her, my father had declined to tell my mother exactly how sick he was, perhaps believing he had more time to live than he did. But her lack of emotional preparedness and the relative speed of my father’s passing sent my mother into a tailspin. There were days when she stubbornly refused to take her medication and her memory loss worsened. There were times when she became short-tempered with Eleni and with me. 

As the weeks passed, I tried to keep our lives in Brooklyn in balance. My daughter was in first grade now, learning to read, write, and socialize. I was working from home as a freelance writer and editor, which gave me flexibility in terms of time and workflow. But every weekend, Eleni and I would run out to my mother’s house some fifty miles away to check up on her and a family friend who’d agreed to stay temporarily. My mother was sad, lonely, and increasingly confused, and it became clear she would soon need a higher level of care. The turning point came a short while later, when my mother arrived at my apartment for an extended visit. As she bent to tie her shoelaces one day, she slipped and fell, fracturing a vertebra in her back. It was the last day my mother would walk independently. She would soon need a wheelchair. 

Faced with this new set of circumstances and knowing my mother could no longer live independently, I decided to move her to Brooklyn, into a sunny assisted-care facility near my home. I hired loving professional aides to care for my mother and I visited almost daily. But although the logistics of having my mother close by made life easier, I was still wracked with guilt. I knew my mom was suffering. 

For one thing, my mother wanted to go home, and home meant her house on Long Island. Because of her deepening dementia and overwhelming grief, my mother couldn’t understand why she couldn’t live alone and why my father had left her. In an effort to comfort her and settle her nerves, I brought my mother some personal belongings, including a painting she loved of me and Eleni. I also brought my six-year-old daughter to visit her whenever possible. Sometimes Eleni would draw or play contentedly, and sometimes we would all sit together on the couch, watching TV. But on other days, both my mother and Eleni would vie for my attention while an aide was trying to talk to me. At still other times, Eleni found it too hard to visit. It was tough for her to reconcile the grandma she’d once known with the one now lying in a hospital bed. How could this be possible? 

For more than eight years, I was tasked with balancing the needs of both my mother and daughter. Early on, I decided it would be easier for me to see my mother on my own, preferably when Eleni was at school or at a friend’s house. I could sit and hold my mother’s hand or help feed her. I could take her to doctor visits, check on her medication, and talk to her aides without interruption. Eleni would come for shorter visits, after school or on the weekends. 

My days with Eleni at home and in the world were cherished times and often proved to be the antidote, the needed balance, to caring for an aging parent. As a first-time mother—and an older one, at that—I loved every stage of Eleni’s development. As she grew, my daughter played sports. She read and watched movies. She danced. She had friends. She grew taller than me and at times her grandmother barely recognized her, instead remembering her as a smaller child. While my mother drifted in and out of reality and often in and out of hospitals and hospice care, my daughter found joy in real-life activities. She was thriving, and her curiosity about the world buoyed me. 

Eleni also knew intuitively that I was doing my best in a difficult situation. From the time she was six until she was fourteen, Eleni watched as I cared for my mother as she edged closer to dying and bounced back again. She, along with family friends, helped me clear out our Long Island home with its more-than-fifty-years’ worth of possessions, and she was there on the tearful day we sold it to help pay for my mother’s care. Five years after my father’s mesothelioma diagnosis, I was diagnosed with early-stage endometrial cancer and required surgery. Eleni was there to greet me at home with her godparents on the day I returned from the hospital. I was fortunate in that Eleni had always been a considerate child and a fairly easy one to raise. And as she grew older and into her teen years, she empathetically cut me slack when my conflicting duties got the best of me. 

In hindsight, it’s hard to say how I—we, all three of us— got through those challenging years. Sometimes things fell apart, such as when an aide, Eleni, and I took my mother to a doctor’s appointment and got stranded when our wheelchair-accessible transport failed to arrive. Other times, I lost my patience; occasionally, I completely lost my temper with everyone. Eleni had hard days of her own and sometimes seemed inconsolable despite my best efforts to support her. But even in my worst moments, I was lucky enough to have a village to help raise my child and care for my aging mother. 

During those years, I thought often of my father and how he had run marathons later into life, driven by a will of steel. When he died, it felt as if I’d followed in his footsteps. My marathon, however, was of an emotional nature, a very long race that would call for a great deal of energy, determination, and grit in order to reach the finish line. But because I was an older parent in my late forties and fifties during those “sandwich” years, I was able to draw on decades of my own life experience and find wells of strength I never believed I had. 

I was also willing to refocus my priorities on both my mother and daughter, knowing I had one shot to get this right. (As a result, my career and personal life were indefinitely put on hold.) It soon became clear that I couldn’t help my mother get “better,” but I was dedicated to helping her find some measure of comfort and peace. Over time she became less verbal, making it hard to know exactly what she needed and why she held on for so long. But as one of her nurses once told me, “She has too much love. She’s not going anywhere.” As for Eleni, I had waited so long to become a mother that I wanted our experience together to be memorable. I wanted to soak up all the time we had at each stage of her journey, whether it was the big things, like going to Disney World when she was nine, or the small things, like watching Harry Potter movies on repeat. Her joy, happiness, and sound emotional development were at the top of my to-do list each and every day.

In the end, my mother chose the time and place of her passing. On February 15, 2013, on what would have been my father’s eighty-eighth birthday and one week short of her own, my mother died in the Brooklyn hospital where I was born more than fifty years earlier. In another act of perfect symmetry, she was holding the hand of my daughter, a child who was then fourteen and had been named after her, years earlier. 

It was an emotional walk home from the hospital that night. But when we arrived back at our apartment, I pulled out my mother’s wedding ring, a simple, silver band with tiny, twinkling diamonds – a symbol of my parents’ long commitment. I slipped the ring onto my hand thinking I might wear it, but it just didn’t look right on me, so I offered it to Eleni. By some stroke of magic, it fit perfectly on her long, slender ring finger, and I joked that my mother’s ring chose its wearer, just like Harry Potter’s wand chose him. 

Eleni has worn my mother’s ring religiously since that night. It traveled with her and protected her on the subways she took to high school. It swam with her and glistened in the turquoise-dappled waters of the Aegean Sea. It accompanied her to college and to a semester abroad in Italy. It has been given a new life, a new set of adventures in a modern world. My mother’s ring was one that I loved and admired during childhood, and it’s a ring my daughter wears proudly now in memory of her namesake. It’s a symbol of the time that my mother, Eleni, and I all spent together—and a symbol that we all made it through. 


Tick Tock reading at Community Bookstore on Wednesday, 10/6 at 7:30PM EDT featuring Laura Broadwell, Cathy Arnst, Jean Leung, Salma Abdelnour, and editors Vicki Breitbart and Nan Bauer-Maglin.

Filed Under: Books, Community, Park Slope Lit, Park Slope Reading, Reader Excerpt Tagged With: books, parenting, Park Slope

Park Slope Reader Presents: Slope Survey

March 5, 2019 By admin Filed Under: Slope Survey Tagged With: interview, Park Slope, pipertheater, readers, Slope Survey, theater, winter survey

The Slope Survey returns for its 11th installment with John P. McEneny.

John P. McEneny is a teacher, playwright, director and long time resident of Park Slope.  For the past twenty one years, he has been the drama teacher at William Alexander Middle School 51.  His sixth grade play, Maddie Splinter and the Aluminum Chair Rocket Ship will go up at the end of the month.  His theatre company, Piper Theatre Productions, has been in residence every July at the Old Stone House since 2005.  Piper Theatre Productions has been creating theater for and with people ages 7 to 70. Through afterschool and summer drama programing for young people, to opportunities for emerging artists, to a professional stage company that performs free productions every summer; Piper supports artists at all stages of their development and, in doing so, creates a community of artists learning and growing together.  Past productions include Sweeney Todd, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Island of Doctor Moreau, Xanadu, Priscilla Queen of Desert, Wendy Darling, Splitfoot.  pipertheatre.org

What brought you to Park Slope?

Twenty one years ago, a young John P. McEneny, started his job as a drama teacher at William Alexander Middle School 51 and found an apartment for rent across the street on the first day and he’s been there ever since, making his daily commute exactly 50 seconds.

What is your most memorable Park Slope moment?

Any evening in July when Piper is presenting a play at the Old Stone House.  It’s beautiful in all kinds of ways.

Describe your community superpower.

I can make theatre happen – and I mean like a LOT of it.

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

Bring back Press 195, Belleville, S’Nice.   If I had a wish, it would be to cast a spell over all our Fifth Avenue treasures – Leopoldi’s, Old Stone House, BAX, Miriam’s – with some protective mojo.  I love my neighborhood.

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

Hopefully more artists.  Sadly more upscale condos.  And I’m thinking more of those little free libraries in front of houses.

What are you reading, would you recommend it?  

Lincoln at the Bardo by George Saunders.  And a biography on the  ctress Eileen Heckart.

What is your greatest extravagance?

Travelling.  I went to Romania last summer.

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

I would probably return back to my people in Albany.  I have like eight generations of family history in Albany, NY.  I was the only one who got out  so it would be fitting to end up there with my Dad and siblings.

Who is your hero, real or fictional?

My heroes are all the actors and artists I get to work with – whether they be children or professionals – who stick their hearts out bravely into the dark world and make us feel, think, do.

Last Word, What’s is turning you on these days?  

My sister got me this roomba vacuum for Christmas and it is a very good robot.   It’s not exactly “turning me on”, but I am completely obsessed.  My cats are not.

Filed Under: Slope Survey Tagged With: interview, Park Slope, pipertheater, readers, Slope Survey, theater, winter survey

Your Winter Reader List: Upcoming Release and Timeless Classics Fit For the Season

February 26, 2019 By Erika Veurink Filed Under: Park Slope Reading Tagged With: books, Erika veurink, Literature, new books, Park Slope, reader, winter reader

Earlier evenings and lower temperatures combine for optimal reading weather. Tucked inside walk ups and brownstones, lining the snowy streets of Park Slope, are toppling bookshelves. They boast buzzy new novels with stunning covers, forgotten required reading from undergrad, and beloved favorites with turned in pages. Even the most seasoned of readers can feel the all too familiar uncertainty of what to read next. There’s nothing like the perfect recommendation to get you out of the decision slump. That’s where local bookstores come in. Chris Molnar from powerHouse Books (1111 8th Ave Brooklyn, NY 11215 (718-666-3049) or www.powerhouseon8th.com online) was happy to share his thoughts on what’s to come and where to begin your winter reading adventure. 

What new novels are you most excited about carrying this winter? 

I can’t wait for Tessa Hadley’s Late In The Day. In my opinion she’s without peer in the New Yorker-approved mainstream of literary fiction. Her short stories have always been marvels of concision, depth, and atmosphere, but lately has her longer work gotten just as good.  With a book club ready plot (two couples that are old friends; one dies and secrets emerge) and coming off 2015’s career-best The Past, I think this has the potential to be a real breakout for her. 

Darius James’ Negrophobia isn’t technically new, but the upcoming NYRB re-release will be a high profile event, reintroducing a brilliant satire on racism that casts a long shadow over everything from The Sellout to Atlanta to Sorry to Bother You.

Are there new authors you think would have special appeal to the Brooklyn reader?

Like a garage rock revival band, Andrew Martin’s debut novel Early Work is a book out of time, a total throwback despite all the current references to Kanye West or Only Lovers Left Alive.  The obvious heir to Philip Roth or David Gates and their cosmopolitan antiheroes, not to mention dishy literary world rom-coms like The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., it’s the kind of book that used to be omnipresent in Brooklyn, but which now has the field to itself.  It is so blithely against the topical trend that it somehow feels bold despite being a breezy, almost guilty pleasure.  Not to mention that beautiful, Balthus-featuring, Rodrigo Corral-designed cover.

Classically, is there a type of novel you find Park Slope residents are drawn to? An all-time favorite author of the neighborhood?

Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels and Knausgaard’s My Struggle series are both standards, and it makes sense – their mix of epic sweep and quotidian warmth is perfect for such an iconic yet family-oriented neighborhood.  It’s no contest, though; the all-time favorite is Haruki Murakami.  No matter the month, he’s always in the top ten bestselling authors here.  I’m not completely sure why that is, but I can definitely see something about those vanishing cats and women fitting in perfectly with the neighborhood, the mystery you feel looking down a row of beautiful, secretive brownstones at dusk.

 Along with new novels, are there any classics you can recommend readers revisit in the winter months?

You can never go wrong with Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams.  It’s so short that you can read it in one sitting, but his mastery of late-nineteenth, early-twentieth century American history is so complete that you feel transported to another time, the action so liquid, so organically strange, so true-to-life in a way that historical fiction rarely is.

Between that and Robert Caro’s riveting (and much, much longer) biography of master builder Robert Moses, The Power Broker, you can pretty much get a full curriculum in the development of America’s wilds, even if it’s just through the eyes of a fictional character and an unelected parks official.

For more recommendations, stop in the store and say hello, tell them the Reader sent you. Also, don’t be afraid to ask your  literary inclined friends. I’m excited for The Au Pair, a debut by Emma Rous and The Care and Feeding of of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray. Perennial winter favorites I find myself returning to include Fates and Furies by Lauren Gross and Teaching a Stone to Talk by Annie Dillard.

Lastly, don’t forget to check Instagram or as the book inclined community using the app refers to it as, #bookstagram. Follow @powerhouseon8th for booksellers’ most recent loves.

Art by Heather Heckel

 

Filed Under: Park Slope Reading Tagged With: books, Erika veurink, Literature, new books, Park Slope, reader, winter reader

Dispatches From Babyville: Winter Sports

January 29, 2019 By Nicole Kear Filed Under: Dispatches From Babyville Tagged With: Dispatches from Babyville, ice skating, Nicole Kear, Park Slope, sledding

 

I should have been born a bear. Or a chipmunk. Any animal, really, that hibernates in the winter. I feel a kinship to these animals who share my belief that plunging temperatures are Nature’s way of saying: “Go away! Seriously, I mean it.”

For those who don’t heed her warning, Nature has to get real: “I guess you thought I was playing around? How about a little frostbite to set you straight? Or some hypothermia? Hey, don’t let that jagged icicle impale you on your way indoors.” 

Nature doesn’t have to tell me twice. She had me at frostbite. 

When it gets cold, to say nothing of freezing, my fight-or-flight instinct is unambiguous. I flee to warmth and cocoa and couches and books and Netflix. If I could curl up in a cave, lower my body temperature and slow my heart rate to one beat every forty five seconds, I would do it. What could be better than sleeping for three months straight? Wake me when it’s spring. 

So I find it perplexing that there are many people who take freezing temperatures as an invitation to head outdoors, and to remain there for hours, and to exert themselves physically, to the point of perspiration. 

I’m talking about winter sports. 

A few caveats: First, I am not a sporty person in general. You won’t find me playing volleyball on the beach either, though it does strike me as easy, natural pathway to fun. You’re lying there in the sun, doing nothing, and you see a ball in the soft sand. Huh, might be fun to give it a whack. Why not? I get that.

Second, it is true that winter seems to serve as an activator to my anxiety, the way contact lens solution magically turns glue into slime. In spring, summer and fall, I am a generally level-headed person with reasonable worries. Add snow. ice and a five o’clock sunset to the mix and I make Woody Allen look relaxed. 

So it is that when I look at sleds, I see only broken femurs and concussions. When I look at skis, it’s all paralysis and massive head injuries. Who can tell which came first, the chicken or the egg, but it is true that I did go skiing once, when I was sixteen, and it did not go well. 

I successfully rode the lift to the top of the hill. That part was fun, I concede. Then, on my way to the starting point at the hilltop, I crashed into a tree, and broke my ski. I had to slide down the hill on my heavily-insulated butt. 

So I do not ski. Or sled, either. But since I have three kids, aged 6, 11, and 14, people are always inviting me and the kids to join them in these activities. 

No sooner does the first layer of snow settle on the asphalt then moms and dads start texting: 

“Want 2 meet @park 2 sled?”

And all I can think is, “Why?” 

It’s like asking, “Want 2 get a colonoscopy?”

I will, if I must, but I don’t want to. Similarly, I would sled, were it necessary. The thing about parenting is, you realize that there is nothing you would not do, if you had to. If I found myself in a frozen tundra and the only source of food was three miles away, I’d fashion coats for my children and I from the skins of wolves, gnaw a tree down with my teeth and construct a sleigh. Then I’d sled the hell out of those three miles. 

But for fun? No, no, a thousands times no. 

Despite my long-standing aversion to winter sports, I want my kids to have fun, nay, magical winters, and I allow for the fact that these sports may be a part of that fun. So, I have made a small exception to my policy. Every year, I take the kids ice skating. 

It’s probably just as dangerous as the other sports, but it is far easier than sledding, and a fraction of the cost of skiing. Also, the outfits are way better. Even a Grinch is powerless to resist the charm of pom-poms.

On our annual skating excursion, I put helmets on the kids, and inform them of the hazards they must avoid. The one that I’ve fixated on is the danger of falling down on your hands and knees and having your fingers severed by a reckless skater who has accumulated too much momentum to stop. It’s not the worst thing that could happen on the ice, to be sure, but it is, strangely, the most vivid scenario in my mind. So we practice popping back up to our feet from prone positions until our digits seem sufficiently protected.. 

Then, we skate. Or, more accurately, we cling to the side of the rink and expend massive, immoderate amounts of effort remaining upright. We pant and whine and laugh and do Tonya Harding impressions. Then, suffused with relief at having survived the endeavor, I hobble off the ice and buy everyone cocoa. 

And I think, There, we did it. Magical winter fun accomplished. 

When my kids grow up, I have no doubt that one of them will move to Colorado, or Alaska, or some other place where winter is supersized. One of them undoubtedly will become a professional luger. And when that happens, I will put on my wolf skin coat, and brave the snow and ice to see them. Because I must.

Until then, you’ll find me on my couch, with the thermostat working overtime. Just like the bears do. 

Filed Under: Dispatches From Babyville Tagged With: Dispatches from Babyville, ice skating, Nicole Kear, Park Slope, sledding

Barbès: The Challenge of Making Art in a Changing Neighborhood

January 22, 2019 By Sam Benezra Filed Under: Park Slope Life Tagged With: avant-garde, Barbès, Eat Local, jazz, Park Slope, sam benezra

Fairly small and sparsely decorated, Barbès is unassuming, but the bar and performance space has grown into a Park Slope institution since its opening in May, 2002. 

Barbès is well-known and well-loved locally for staging a unique combination of jazz, avant-garde, world, and classical music. Yet going into its 17th year of operation, the owners of Barbès, Olivier Conan and Vincent Douglas, are counting their lucky stars that the bar is still open. In May, 2017, the bar was nearly forced to shut down after accruing over $70,000 of debt. Like so many other local institutions in Brooklyn, Barbès had nearly fallen victim to ever-rising rents and changing demographics in the neighborhood it calls home.

In a last ditch-effort to keep the bar open, Conan and Douglas launched a crowdfunding campaign and hosted a series of benefit concerts from musicians on their record label. In an incredible show of support from community members and local musicians, Barbès managed to raise the $70,000 they needed to continue operating. 

Nearly two years later, Barbès is still chugging along and making ends meet, but its owners still express concern for the future. 

Conan and Douglas, a pair of French musicians, opened Barbès on May Day in 2002 with the goal of creating a grassroots performance space.

“It was based on an idea–we wanted to have a place that was very community-oriented,” said Conan. “The community at the time was very different from what it is now. There were a lot of musicians, a lot of artists who lived in Park Slope and we wanted to created a place where the people we wanted to play were also the people who hung out or who wanted to see the music that we brought.”

From the beginning, Conan and Douglas were committed to programming an eclectic variety of performers, representing different cultures and musical traditions from around the world. Barbès is named after a neighborhood northern Paris known for its large North African population and for the record stores that helped introduce Raï music, a form of Algerian folk music, to Western audiences.

Like its namesake, Barbès is defined by its multicultural character. In the same night, you can see Andy Statman, a prodigious Klezmer-influenced mandolin player, and Guinean Afro-jazz courtesy of the Mandingo Ambassadors, who play every Wednesday night at Barbès.

“We had an almost generalist cultural offering, but with a very special identity, and often we didn’t do the kind of bookings that most people did at the time,” said Conan. “We really tried to bring creative musicians who would want to come back and start projects at Barbès. A lot of things were born there, a lot of projects started. [It functioned] kind of like a lab.”

Recurrence is something that Barbès has prioritized over the years. The bar has given a number of artists weekly residencies over the years, creating a comfortable and communal dynamic between space, performer, and audience. “The idea of place is very important, and the audience would come see people specifically at Barbès because they thought something special would happen,” said Conan.

Barbès has also prioritized keeping costs low for its audience. Unlike many jazz bars and performance spaces in New York, Barbès does not have a drink minimum. The modest cover charges–most events are $10–go to the performers. Conan and Douglas prefer not to operate by the profit motive, though that business model has been increasingly difficult to sustain in recent years.

“The New York economy has obviously changed tremendously [since Barbès opened],” said Conan. “The model that worked in what was then an outer borough don’t work anymore. Rents have gone up, the price of doing business has gone up, the kind of clientele has changed. We still cater to the same kind of people, but they don’t live in the neighborhood anymore.”

Conan, a Paris native, moved to Brooklyn in the mid-80s. His first rent was $200 a month, a price that is pretty much unfathomable nowadays. “[Cheap rent] enabled you to be a slacker, and being a slacker is what enables you to be a good artist.”

He said that he has noticed something of an exodus of artists and musicians out of Brooklyn. There are increasingly few spaces dedicated purely to creative endeavors, and many of those that are have been pushed further into Brooklyn or into Queens. 

New York has long been known as a creative hub and a cultural center of the United States, but Conan said that he has noticed many artists fleeing city’s ever-rising rents to live in more affordable cities in the US and other part of the world–cities like Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Berlin, and even LA.

“It’s hard for young musicians to live in New York, or artists in general–people in general if they’re not in finance,” he said. “It’s become super hard to move there and actually make a life there. A lot of people are moving to New York and spend two or three years and get hungry and move on to wherever.”

The compounding pressures of doing business in Park Slope nearly forced Barbès to close in 2017, but the bar managed to stay open due to an incredible show of support from the local community.

“We were wondering whether we could continue, because we owed like $70,000, which for people like us is a huge amount of money,” said Conan. “We decided to do a crowdfunding campaign, which worked beyond our wildest dreams.”

Conan and Douglas started an Indiegogo campaign, offering vinyl and CDs from the Barbès record label and concert tickets in exchange for donations. Over 800 people offered contributions. They also organized a number of benefit concerts with bands that often played at Barbès, the biggest of which took place at DROM on June 9, 2017.

“We brought in like 300 to 350 people I think. It was an amazingly beautiful night for me personally,” said Conan. “There’s something very humiliating about going to people and saying, ‘Hey, I need money, I’m broke.’ The response was just amazing, it was, ‘No, we’re a community and we care.’”

Between the Indiegogo campaign and benefit concerts, Conan and Douglas were able to raise the entire $70,000 dollars needed to lift the bar out of debt and keep it running for at least five more years. Their lease runs out in 2022, and it is still unclear whether they will be able to keep it open beyond then. They want to avoid transitioning to a more profit-oriented business model, fearing it would change the atmosphere.

“In order to be successful financially, we’d have to get bigger players, for one thing,” said Conan. “We’d also have to impose a lot of drink minimums and rules about how much you should spend and how quickly you should spend it. We’d have to get more capitalistic than we are and that would totally change the vibe, it would totally change the way people play, and the kind of talent we would get.”

Conan said that he is unsure if they would be able to keep Barbès open beyond 2022; the bar’s survival depends on how much their rent goes up when it comes time to send its next lease. 

So Barbès looks ahead to an uncertain future, but for now it is still going strong and supplying the Park Slope community with unique musical offerings on a nightly basis. The back room is still bumping. Check it out while you still can.

Filed Under: Park Slope Life Tagged With: avant-garde, Barbès, Eat Local, jazz, Park Slope, sam benezra

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