Darrin Siegfried closes his wine shop promptly at 10:00 p.m. every night, with Election night as no exception. “At 10:01 p.m. I hope to pop the cork of a very nice bottle of French champagne.” Siegfried owns Red, White and Bubbly LCC in Park Slope, Brooklyn. He hasn’t seen a major change in champagne or sparkling wine purchases. “A lot of people are holding off until the first results come in; they feel like they might jinx it,” Siegfried says, “but a lot of people are asking how late we’re doing deliveries, how much we have in stock and if they can put aside a case or two.”
At the threshold of a historical election, Brooklyn is tentatively planning a massive celebration. Across the borough, wine stores are experiencing an upsurge in champagne and sparkling wine purchases. “We’ve seen an increase primarily in Prosecco,” Michael Yarmark, the owner of Thirst Wine Merchants in Fort Greene says. “People are excited and nervous and definitely talking about the election and hoping they can celebrate.” If Barack Obama wins, Thirst Wine Merchants is planning on pouring champagne in the store after the election is officially called.
Even though Brooklynites plan for a celebration, the economic downturn continues to remain at the forefront of people’s minds. Scott Lyon, an employee at Sip Fine Wine Inc. in Park Slope is expecting a spike in sparkling wine under $25. “It seems like someone is going to come in and buy a bottle of sparkling wine and pop the cork and have some fun,” Lyon says.
With the election only two days away, “People are a little bit weary,” Siegfried says, “they are just hoping there will be no November surprise. People usually drink sparkling wine, but for the last two elections people have come in and asked for something really stiff to knock them out for a couple of days so they don’t have to think about what just happened. Hopefully this year will be different.”
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
For Those About to Rock from Dusk Till Dawn
Brooklyn Academy of Music
Takeover
27 September 2008
8:45 p.m.
The line of young, culture savvy, art-loving New Yorkers wraps around the corner of Lafayette Avenue and St. Felix Street at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
In addition to the already pre-sold 2,700 or so tickets, approximately 300 more are to be snapped up by the likes of Seth Garben, 17, Simon Bordwin, 17, and Sara Applebaum, 16, who traveled from Westchester, New York to participate in the academy’s Takeover.
Takeover, a mix of live music, movies, performances and video games topped off with $3 beers and four Nintendo Wii’s, is about to make its third appearance in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. From 9 p.m., when the doors open, till 4 a.m., when the doors close, Takeover participants will have free reign of the academy, bouncing from one activity to the next.
Josh Brown, 39, and Claire Myko, 31, live just around the corner from the academy in Fort Greene. The pair attended last year’s Takeover and hope this one will prove to be even an even more avant-garde and outrageous combination of culture and art.
Craig Howarth, 46, is from Ditmas Park, Brooklyn. He’s a friend of an employee at the academy and has come to see The Kingdom series of films. He is very serious as he leans seated against the building, ticket in hand. There’s no way he’s going to make it to 4 a.m., he says, but he is ready to critique the long-awaited series.
9:00 p.m.
Stream in through the front doors and receive a plastic neon green bracelet, the ticket to Takeover. Turn to the right and walk through the grand entrance which is already populated with people snatching up schedules. First on the left, beer. $3 Magic Hat, $4 water. Past that, the academy’s Opera House which will host a series of performances; first up, the Brooklyn Young Chorus.
Back out in the grand entrance to the other side of the main floor and into the movie theaters, which span the height of the building. Out the leather tufted doors and up the escalator to the café, which has been transformed into a dance floor. Plastered white molds of bodies hang from fishing line overhead while the floor to ceiling orange-lit windows boast the Fort Greene view down Lafayette. To the left, more beer, water and $4 wine.
Up the elevator in the center of the cafe to the 3rd floor – the interim floor of bathrooms and burgers, tacos and coffee. Up one more flight of stairs and enter the game room. Two ping-pong tables, four Wii, three couches and yes, more beer. The patterns on the walls, tables and couches are all basket weave meets gothic wallpaper meets Ikea home furnishings in black and forest green.
Tanja Gabrovsek, 35, and Marc Leandro, 37, are the team to beat at ping-pong and the waiting-list is already nearly 30 names long.
9:45 p.m.
Down the elevator and into the Opera House. The Brooklyn Young Chorus featuring scorer Nico Muhly fills the Opera House with Icelandic influences. The Chorus compromises of students, from age six to twenty-six at least outfitted in blue choir performance gowns. The Opera House is about 60% full. The kids have amazing tonal ranges.
Mulhy explains to the audience that his scores were Icelandic poems translated into music. Through his music he is hoping to illustrate the time when the Icelandic language was rebuilding itself. He introduces “Syllables” and the kids take it away.
10:10 p.m.
Climbing the stairs to the second floor theaters participants are decidedly winded. Popcorn and beer, yum.
The Unheavenly Host short film has already begun the academy’s smallest theater. 24 people sprawled throughout the space. Some stay and some go but all make snap decisions because tonight there is always something else going on.
Amy Poueymirou, 34, a local Brooklyn resident decided to stay through the film. She enjoyed it although she found the narrative threads a bit funny. Giggling with her two friends in the back row of the theater, her only goal at Takeover to catch all 11 films.
11:15 p.m.
Out the theater and down the elevator, which operates thanks to a Takeover staff member whose sole responsibility of the night is to press buttons. She has a chair, she says, and it’s better that way.
The golden doors open and the dance floor is packed to the sounds of DJ’s Ursula Rucker and King Britt.
11:30 p.m.
Jennifer Brogle Jones of Clinton Hill is getting’ down. The music is pumping, the people are pulsating, and the purple-blue lights offset the red DJ stage.
Joe Edelman tries to dance with Jones, and she slyly grooves towards another man, who seems decidedly disinterested in dancing with anyone but himself.
Tonight everyone gets to do what he or she wants.
11:45 p.m.
Up the elevator to the game room.
Don Boyd, 36, of Brooklyn Heights is bummed about the long list of teams waiting to play ping-pong. His beer keeps him company while he chills to the 4th floor sounds of an academy staffers ipod. The game room is packed and decidedly hotter than the rest of the building.
Saye Diebold, 34, and Larry Salamone, 34, have taken the ping-pong table from the previous champions and they are barefooted jumping up and down. Their $3 beers are stashed under the table, half full.
12:00 a.m.
Down the elevator to the main floor. Curving past the beer and water lines and into the Opera House to see St. Vincent featuring surprise guest and curator Sufjan Stevens. It is packed and almost as if the band is throwing culture at the audience, and the audience is breathing it in and eating it up.
There is a distinct feeling of enjoyment in the presence of greatness. People are out on the town and in the free-flowing environment the academy worked so hard to create.
With a radical revision of Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight,” the crowd is on its feet and Stevens and St. Vincent are at their absolute best. Unobstructed happiness fills the air.
12:20 a.m.
Out the Opera House, past the elevators and into the movie theaters. Up the stairs and up again. Short unnamed film with lines like “I think I’ll go and milk the elk” entertain the half-cocked crowd, overflowing into seats and on the floor. Everyone is friends in the dark of the theater.
12:40 a.m.
Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It. Different theater. People are either drunk, asleep or exhausted, but it’s clear they are all in it till 4 a.m. They promised.
The film seems inappropriate for the hour – people are either shocked or bored, but either way Spike Lee does not seem to be terribly entertaining. Surprisingly, people stick with it, only to discover later that Saturday Night Fever was too packed to try and get into anyway.
This is the only part of the night where it seems the academy forced culture onto people not terribly interested in it, despite Lee’s connection to the neighborhood.
2:20 a.m.
Out the theater, across the main floor and up the elevators. The woman pushing the buttons is singing to herself. She recently discovered she does not get cell phone service in the elevator.
Up one floor to the dance party. It seems as if everyone decided simultaneously they need to shake their bodies. Drinking, dancing, waking up and breathing in the body heat, DJ King Britt’s thumping house gets everyone on their feet in one way or another.
2:45 p.m.
The dance floor is sticky and slippery. People fall, spill their beer, get right back up, walk to the bar, get another beer, and get back to the dance floor. DJ Ursula Rucker takes over and shifts the mood from heart-beating house to a more hip-swaying groove. The blue-lights of the dance floor heat up. Less people fall down.
The music quickly becomes all about the beat, people seems so tired that their bodies take over and they innately sway to the music, subconsciously feelin’ it.
3:00 a.m.
Up the two flights of stairs to the game room. The line for the elevator was far too long.
Steve Barrows is from Buffalo, New York. He came to Takeover to meet up with some friends from college, all of whom he has misplaced in the course of the night. Still, a long list of teams populate the ping-pong sign-up sheet. Alas, however, many names are called until Barrows is up, and he has no one to play with but the team of 10-year-old kids whose parents are also nowhere to be found. Barrows suggests the parents ran off with his college buddies.
3:40 a.m.
Back down to the dance floor.
Dance-off. Ulises “Utron” Ortiz from Queens is shakin’ what he’s got to a circle crowd of at least seventy spectators. The second floor has thinned out a bit and the academy cleaning crew wiped down the space so everyone is firmly planted on the ground.
4:00 a.m.
Freade Zysberz from Gravesend, Brooklyn rides down in the elevator to the lobby. Lisa Locascio, 23, from Manhattan is also in the lobby. Both look exhausted. Both had lots of fun. Both know they could have time managed so much better but are excited for the night, for the people they spoke with, the cheap drinks they had, and for the infusion of culture into their lives.
Out the front door, people look for cabs or towncars to take them back to their boroughs. Some couple walk down Lafayette a couple of blocks home. No one goes for the subway. In the distance, the lights of Manhattan glow, signaling dawn is nearing.
Takeover
27 September 2008
8:45 p.m.
The line of young, culture savvy, art-loving New Yorkers wraps around the corner of Lafayette Avenue and St. Felix Street at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
In addition to the already pre-sold 2,700 or so tickets, approximately 300 more are to be snapped up by the likes of Seth Garben, 17, Simon Bordwin, 17, and Sara Applebaum, 16, who traveled from Westchester, New York to participate in the academy’s Takeover.
Takeover, a mix of live music, movies, performances and video games topped off with $3 beers and four Nintendo Wii’s, is about to make its third appearance in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. From 9 p.m., when the doors open, till 4 a.m., when the doors close, Takeover participants will have free reign of the academy, bouncing from one activity to the next.
Josh Brown, 39, and Claire Myko, 31, live just around the corner from the academy in Fort Greene. The pair attended last year’s Takeover and hope this one will prove to be even an even more avant-garde and outrageous combination of culture and art.
Craig Howarth, 46, is from Ditmas Park, Brooklyn. He’s a friend of an employee at the academy and has come to see The Kingdom series of films. He is very serious as he leans seated against the building, ticket in hand. There’s no way he’s going to make it to 4 a.m., he says, but he is ready to critique the long-awaited series.
9:00 p.m.
Stream in through the front doors and receive a plastic neon green bracelet, the ticket to Takeover. Turn to the right and walk through the grand entrance which is already populated with people snatching up schedules. First on the left, beer. $3 Magic Hat, $4 water. Past that, the academy’s Opera House which will host a series of performances; first up, the Brooklyn Young Chorus.
Back out in the grand entrance to the other side of the main floor and into the movie theaters, which span the height of the building. Out the leather tufted doors and up the escalator to the café, which has been transformed into a dance floor. Plastered white molds of bodies hang from fishing line overhead while the floor to ceiling orange-lit windows boast the Fort Greene view down Lafayette. To the left, more beer, water and $4 wine.
Up the elevator in the center of the cafe to the 3rd floor – the interim floor of bathrooms and burgers, tacos and coffee. Up one more flight of stairs and enter the game room. Two ping-pong tables, four Wii, three couches and yes, more beer. The patterns on the walls, tables and couches are all basket weave meets gothic wallpaper meets Ikea home furnishings in black and forest green.
Tanja Gabrovsek, 35, and Marc Leandro, 37, are the team to beat at ping-pong and the waiting-list is already nearly 30 names long.
9:45 p.m.
Down the elevator and into the Opera House. The Brooklyn Young Chorus featuring scorer Nico Muhly fills the Opera House with Icelandic influences. The Chorus compromises of students, from age six to twenty-six at least outfitted in blue choir performance gowns. The Opera House is about 60% full. The kids have amazing tonal ranges.
Mulhy explains to the audience that his scores were Icelandic poems translated into music. Through his music he is hoping to illustrate the time when the Icelandic language was rebuilding itself. He introduces “Syllables” and the kids take it away.
10:10 p.m.
Climbing the stairs to the second floor theaters participants are decidedly winded. Popcorn and beer, yum.
The Unheavenly Host short film has already begun the academy’s smallest theater. 24 people sprawled throughout the space. Some stay and some go but all make snap decisions because tonight there is always something else going on.
Amy Poueymirou, 34, a local Brooklyn resident decided to stay through the film. She enjoyed it although she found the narrative threads a bit funny. Giggling with her two friends in the back row of the theater, her only goal at Takeover to catch all 11 films.
11:15 p.m.
Out the theater and down the elevator, which operates thanks to a Takeover staff member whose sole responsibility of the night is to press buttons. She has a chair, she says, and it’s better that way.
The golden doors open and the dance floor is packed to the sounds of DJ’s Ursula Rucker and King Britt.
11:30 p.m.
Jennifer Brogle Jones of Clinton Hill is getting’ down. The music is pumping, the people are pulsating, and the purple-blue lights offset the red DJ stage.
Joe Edelman tries to dance with Jones, and she slyly grooves towards another man, who seems decidedly disinterested in dancing with anyone but himself.
Tonight everyone gets to do what he or she wants.
11:45 p.m.
Up the elevator to the game room.
Don Boyd, 36, of Brooklyn Heights is bummed about the long list of teams waiting to play ping-pong. His beer keeps him company while he chills to the 4th floor sounds of an academy staffers ipod. The game room is packed and decidedly hotter than the rest of the building.
Saye Diebold, 34, and Larry Salamone, 34, have taken the ping-pong table from the previous champions and they are barefooted jumping up and down. Their $3 beers are stashed under the table, half full.
12:00 a.m.
Down the elevator to the main floor. Curving past the beer and water lines and into the Opera House to see St. Vincent featuring surprise guest and curator Sufjan Stevens. It is packed and almost as if the band is throwing culture at the audience, and the audience is breathing it in and eating it up.
There is a distinct feeling of enjoyment in the presence of greatness. People are out on the town and in the free-flowing environment the academy worked so hard to create.
With a radical revision of Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight,” the crowd is on its feet and Stevens and St. Vincent are at their absolute best. Unobstructed happiness fills the air.
12:20 a.m.
Out the Opera House, past the elevators and into the movie theaters. Up the stairs and up again. Short unnamed film with lines like “I think I’ll go and milk the elk” entertain the half-cocked crowd, overflowing into seats and on the floor. Everyone is friends in the dark of the theater.
12:40 a.m.
Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It. Different theater. People are either drunk, asleep or exhausted, but it’s clear they are all in it till 4 a.m. They promised.
The film seems inappropriate for the hour – people are either shocked or bored, but either way Spike Lee does not seem to be terribly entertaining. Surprisingly, people stick with it, only to discover later that Saturday Night Fever was too packed to try and get into anyway.
This is the only part of the night where it seems the academy forced culture onto people not terribly interested in it, despite Lee’s connection to the neighborhood.
2:20 a.m.
Out the theater, across the main floor and up the elevators. The woman pushing the buttons is singing to herself. She recently discovered she does not get cell phone service in the elevator.
Up one floor to the dance party. It seems as if everyone decided simultaneously they need to shake their bodies. Drinking, dancing, waking up and breathing in the body heat, DJ King Britt’s thumping house gets everyone on their feet in one way or another.
2:45 p.m.
The dance floor is sticky and slippery. People fall, spill their beer, get right back up, walk to the bar, get another beer, and get back to the dance floor. DJ Ursula Rucker takes over and shifts the mood from heart-beating house to a more hip-swaying groove. The blue-lights of the dance floor heat up. Less people fall down.
The music quickly becomes all about the beat, people seems so tired that their bodies take over and they innately sway to the music, subconsciously feelin’ it.
3:00 a.m.
Up the two flights of stairs to the game room. The line for the elevator was far too long.
Steve Barrows is from Buffalo, New York. He came to Takeover to meet up with some friends from college, all of whom he has misplaced in the course of the night. Still, a long list of teams populate the ping-pong sign-up sheet. Alas, however, many names are called until Barrows is up, and he has no one to play with but the team of 10-year-old kids whose parents are also nowhere to be found. Barrows suggests the parents ran off with his college buddies.
3:40 a.m.
Back down to the dance floor.
Dance-off. Ulises “Utron” Ortiz from Queens is shakin’ what he’s got to a circle crowd of at least seventy spectators. The second floor has thinned out a bit and the academy cleaning crew wiped down the space so everyone is firmly planted on the ground.
4:00 a.m.
Freade Zysberz from Gravesend, Brooklyn rides down in the elevator to the lobby. Lisa Locascio, 23, from Manhattan is also in the lobby. Both look exhausted. Both had lots of fun. Both know they could have time managed so much better but are excited for the night, for the people they spoke with, the cheap drinks they had, and for the infusion of culture into their lives.
Out the front door, people look for cabs or towncars to take them back to their boroughs. Some couple walk down Lafayette a couple of blocks home. No one goes for the subway. In the distance, the lights of Manhattan glow, signaling dawn is nearing.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
A Tree Falls in Brooklyn
There he stood in his mosquito-ridden backyard at the base of the giant red oak tree knowing the time to say goodbye had come.
The tree had been like the closest of kin; it had held the basketball hoop, offered shelter from the sun, and provided a stable post for the clothesline. When a branch fell six years ago and injured a midget, David Thomas, the 52-year-owner of his Brooklyn brownstone, defended the tree. He cared for it, asking neighbors for tree trimming donations but paid the price despite the high cost.
"It is so bothersome now," Hilda Thomas, Thomas' wife said. "We had the tree trimmed. One time it cost $1,800, another time $600. And it just keeps getting bigger and bigger."
As Thomas circles the approximately 400-year-old tree, steel cane in hand, he glances up at the red oak leaves with fondness and fright. Having raised seven out of his ten children on this property, Thomas knows losing the tree will feel like losing a member of the family. The danger level of the tree, however, now outweighs the memories. "I don't know what to do about the tree. If it falls on someone it's going to kill them. If it falls on a house, it will take out the house,” Thomas said. “It's too dangerous."
Phil Abramson, press director for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, confirmed via email that Thomas’ tree “does appear to be one of the biggest trees in Brooklyn.” He added that no formal complaints have ever been filed on the tree, which Parks foresters estimate to be 63-inches in diameter.
Located in the middle of a primarily single-family dwelling brownstone block, Thomas' tree provides shade for a half dozen backyards. A couple of the higher branches also extend over the Hanson Place Seventh Day Adventist Elementary and Middle school's asphalt yard. Curtis, the school janitor who refused to give his last name, believes that the tree should be cut down. But, as Rouschel Fraser, the school secretary said, “as long as the limbs don’t fall there will be no problem.”
The problem, however, is that several limbs have fallen and destroyed parts of houses and backyards over the years. One such incident occurred several years ago when one of the tree’s branches fell and demolished Bob Grana’s back patio. Grana has lived across the yard from the tree for 39 years and owns four of the brownstones surrounding the tree. Grana is torn. “I don’t know what can be done,” Grana said, “I have spent thousands of dollars trimming this tree over the years and I have never received a penny from Mr. Thomas.”
The tree’s value extends beyond the shade and memories it provides. Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s 2006 citywide tree census stated “a full-grown healthy tree reduces about 70 times the amount of air pollution than a sapling.” Because this tree is on private property its well-being falls under the jurisdiction of the homeowner, not the city. And according to both Thomas and Grana the expenses and dangers outweigh the benefits.
Leaning against the tree, Thomas sighs. Just above his head the slight discoloration of a small patch of bark displays the remnants of initials etched into the bark long ago. Green ivy twists its way around the trunk. “This tree is simply too big for us,” Thomas muttered as he took up his cane, pushed off the tree and headed towards his house.
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