Last year Coney Island Brewing released “Seas the Day India Pale Lager,” which I tasted and reviewed. Having gotten Overpass, their first India Pale Ale, I couldn’t resist sampling them side by side (see photo above). The first thing that struck me is that, contrary to my expectation, the lager (on the left) is a deeper amber color than the IPA. Please don’t conclude from the photo that the lager produces a much more ample head. Before I poured the brews, I accidentally knocked over the lager bottle, which made it very fizzy. The IPA produced a full, foamy head which had largely collapsed by the time that on the lager had declined to the point where I could finish pouring it. As I did when I reviewed Seas the Day, I paired both brews with a spicy Vietnamese bánh mì sandwich from Hanco’s.

Before this tasting, I tried the Overpass IPA by itself. My notes were: aroma–hops predominate, with floral undertones; flavor: hop bitterness dominant throughout. When I gave my wife a sip, though, her reaction was “Malty!” As the ale warmed in the glass, I got more malt flavor.

For this tasting I let both brews sit on the table for a while so that, when I poured, they were not too far below room temperature. This time I noticed malt flavor at the start in both brews, although the hop bitterness seemed more pronounced at the finish in the lager than in the ale. As it got warmer, the IPA seemed almost toasty. But as I ate the spicy sandwich, I noticed the hop flavor in the ale becoming more pronounced again. The principal difference between the IPA and the IPL was that the latter had more pronounced fruit overtones. This seems odd given that the hop mixture in the IPA includes two varieties–Centennial and Nelson-Sauvin, that are not used in the lager and are said to impart fruit flavors.

I find the Overpass IPA a fine, well crafted example of the style; one that, if not served too chilled, has excellent hop-malt balance. Of the two, I think the Seas the Day IPL is more interesting; but why wouldn’t an unusual brew like an India Pale Lager be so?

Coney Island Brewing has also recently released a 1609 Amber Ale, 1609 being the year Europeans first set foot on what is now Coney Island. I have a bottle, and will be reviewing it soon.

Source: Self-Absorbed Boomer
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Truth is, I got nervous when I read this New York Times story. Anything that indicates the Mets are doing something other than concentrating on playing baseball, especially if it smacks of premature triumphalism, puts me on edge. Sort of like Darryl Strawberry’s rap “Chocolate Strawberry.” recorded and released in 1987, just as the Mets were beginning their as yet interminable decline from their 1986 championship.

And the Babe? Thinking about players’ publicity appearances brought to mind a story I read some years ago. It was 1942, and everything had to be about the War Effort. The Babe was to be interviewed on Grantland Rice’s radio show, so one of the questions was how sports could contribute to that effort. Rice had scripted an answer; “Well, Granny, as the Duke of Wellington said, the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.” This was rehearsed several times until it seemed Ruth had it down pat, but when the show went live, he said, “Well, Granny, as Duke Ellington said, the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Elkton.” Asked afterward why the deviation from script, Ruth said he didn’t know Wellington but did know Ellington, and while he’d never been to Eton, he married his first wife in Elkton, and would never forget that place.

Update: already the intra-squad sniping has begun.

Babe Ruth photo: Culver Images via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Source: Self-Absorbed Boomer
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Lesley Gore, who died today at 68, is most remembered for her first hit, “It’s My Party (and I’ll Cry If I Want To),” which began a successful collaboration with Quincy Jones as her producer.

She was a Brooklyn native, but her family moved to New Jersey, where she attended the private Dwight School for Girls in Englewood. She was a sixteen year old junior at Dwight when Jones signed her to Mercury Records and she recorded “It’s My Party,” which went to the top of the Billboard pop chart in 1963. Her recording and performing career continued through high school and Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied drama and literature. She later did some acting; the photo above shows her as Catwoman’s sidekick Pussycat in the TV series Batman.

My favorite of her early hits (she continued to record, perform, and write music through much of her later life; her last album, Ever Since, reviewed favorably in The New York Times, was released in 2005) is “You Don’t Own Me,” described as an “empowering, ahead-of-its-time feminist anthem” by Daniel Kreps in Rolling Stone. The video clip above shows her performing it as part of the T.A.M.I. Show in 1964, when she was eighteen.

While “You Don’t Own Me” could be seen as an “answer song” to Joanie Sommers’ 1962 hit “Johnny Get Angry” (“I want a brave man; I want a caveman”), Gore didn’t see it that way, at least not when she recorded it. She thought of it as something a man could have as easily sung to a woman. Like all of Gore’s early songs, it wasn’t written by her. It was written by two men, John Madera and Dave White.

Gore was in college when she first realized that she was a lesbian. She didn’t announce this to the public until 2005, when she was hosting In The Life, a PBS show about LGBT issues. Her death was announced by Lois Sasson, her partner of 33 years.

Addendum: Friend Eliot Wagner has this observation:

While “You Don’t Own Me” was not an answer to any particular song, it responded to an entire era. The late 50s and early 60s were full of songs which instructed women on their role viz a viz men in society: not only “Johnny Get Angry”, which you mentioned, but also “Love and Marriage”, “Wives and Lovers”, and probably the most egregious of the lot, “Bobby’s Girl”. The fact that “You Don’t Own Me” was on the air was a grand signal that even if that era was not over, it would, in fact, soon be history.

It also occurred to me that 1963, the year “You Don’t Own Me” was released, was also the year that Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique was published.

Source: Self-Absorbed Boomer
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432 Park Avenue (center in the photo above) claims the title of tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere, and second tallest building (after the new One World Trade Center) in New York City, but if measured by roof height the tallest. It’s described by its architect, Rafael Viñoly, as designed around “the purest geometric form: the square.” Not only is the building’s horizontal cross section a square, but all the windows are squares.  It dominates the midtown skyline with the grace of a colossal headless Pez dispenser, or upraised middle finger (the photo above was taken from Pier 1, Brooklyn Bridge Park). Aaron Betsky admires its “relentlessness”; I demur. Betsky also celebrates how 432 Park “represents the transformation of this and every other city into a place for the wealthy to live and play” as if driving out struggling artists and other relatively impecunious but creative people, and the inexpensive infrastructure that supports them, constitutes progress.

With bad luck, we may be subjected to more Viñoly designs, like 125 Greenwich Street, all of which will end up being pieds a terre for billionaires, with perhaps a few lower floor, smaller apartments going to mere multi-millionaires.

Viñoly discusses his design philosophy in this video. He plays piano well.

The developers of 432 Park are CIM Group and Macklowe Properties. Harry Macklowe is a developer whose company was once fined two million dollars for reckless endangerment resulting from the rapid night-time demolition of two buildings. Macklowe compares 432 Park to the Mona Lisa.

Source: Self-Absorbed Boomer
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World War I also helped to precipitate two revolutions: the Russian and the Irish. British recruitment of Irishmen to fight in the war (see poster image above) was a factor leading to the Easter Rising of 1916. As the rebel song “The Foggy Dew” declared:

Right proudly high in Dublin town
Hung they out a flag of war.
‘Twas better to die ‘neath an Irish sky
Than at Suvla or Sud el Bar.

“Suvla” and “Sud el Bar” were  disastrous amphibious landings on the Turkish coast in which British troops, including many Irish, took terrible casualties. Another verse, not included in the lyrics on the linked post, has the words

‘Twas England bade our wild geese rove
That small nations might be free.

The second line is ironic. One of Britain’s appeals to prospective recruits was to fight for “small nations,” in particular Belgium (again see poster above) that had been or might be invaded and occupied by German troops.  The irony is that Ireland was a “small nation” that wanted to be free, but Britain would not allow it to be. The term “wild geese” in the first line was originally applied to the Irish Jacobite army that was allowed to go to France following the Irish defeat by the army of King William in 1691. It was later used for Irish soldiers who served in the Royal Army in European wars.

“The Green Fields of France,” sung in the clip above by Liam Clancy and Tommy Makem, is one of the saddest songs I know. The name “Willie McBride” suggests Protestant Irish (William is not a popular name among Catholic Irish because of King William’s defeat of the Catholic rebellion in the late seventeenth century). The line “Did the pipes play ‘The Flowers of the Forest’?” at first indicated to me that he served in a Scottish regiment, as “Flowers” is a traditional Scottish lament, but the notes to this YouTube clip say it has become “[t]he traditional lament for the fallen in forces of the British Commonwealth.” So, the song was co-opted, after excising the lines

Sad day for the Order,
What’s happened to the border?
The English, by guile,
For once won the day.

We all live in the world the Great War (I still call it that; the Second World War was vastly more destructive, but the effects of the First include the Second and much more) created. I pray we do not have to see its like again.

Source: Self-Absorbed Boomer
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“Raggle Taggle Gypsy” is one of a myriad of variations on the same song found throughout England, Ireland, Scotland, and the former British colonies. I also have a version, with the title “Black Jack Davy”, by Scotland’s Incredible String Band. Another, “Black Jack David”, was recorded by Warren Smith, a rockabilly pioneer who was briefly more popular than Elvis. In his book Country: The Twisted Roots of Rock ‘n’ Roll, my erstwhile Bells of Hell and Lion’s Head companion and friend Nick Tosches tells of an interview with Smith in which Nick asked him where he got “Black Jack David.” Smith’s reply was, “I wrote it.” Nick’s next paragraph:

Cut to Athens, fourth century B.C. In his Symposium, Plato refers to an attempt made by Orpheus, mythical poet and son of Oegrus the harper and Muse Calliope, to rescue his wife from the land of the dead. This is the earliest known mention of Orpheus’s wife, Eurydice, and of his adventure in the lower world. It’s also the beginning of “Black Jack David.”

Nick then traces the Greek Orpheus legend* through various developments by the Roman writers Vergil, Ovid, and Boethius. Nick writes, “It was King Alfred’s ninth-century translation of Boethius that ushered the Orpheus myth into medieval Britain.” After this, Nick follows its development into poems and ballads in various parts of the British Isles. He notes a syncretic development in Ireland, where the story melds with pre-existing Celtic legends. Such are the roots of the many songs about the abduction and failed attempt to recover a nobleman’s wife, or sometimes daughter, that include “Back Jack David” and “The Raggle Taggle Gypsy.”

From “The Raggle Taggle Gypsy” Planxty segues into Tabhair dom do lámh, an instrumental featuring Liam O’Flynn (photo at left) on uilleann pipes. This enchanting tune is credited by Bunting in Ancient Music of Ireland to Ruairí Dall Ó Catháin, a chieftain from County Tyrone whose reputation for skill as a harper and composer may be second only to that of the great Turlough O’Carolan. The story behind Tabhair dom do lámh, as told in Ask About Ireland, is that Catháin was traveling in Scotland when a noblewoman, Lady Eglinton**, thinking him to be a simple itinerant musician, demanded that he play a tune. Angered by her effrontery, Catháin refused. When Lady Eglinton learned of his high status, she apologized, and he composed Tabhair dom do lámh for her.

My friend Larry Kirwan’s band Black 47 gives the translation of Tabhair dom do lámh as either “Give me your hand” or “Let’s be friends.” Another source, Donal O’Sullivan, in his Carolan: The Life, Times, and Music of an Irish Harper, quoted by “Sarah” in the comment thread under a post about the tune in The Session, in turn quotes Arthur O’Neill as claiming Catháin’s original title for it was the Latinized Da mihi manum, which also translates as “Give me your hand.” The tune was later used for an Irish rebel song, “White, Orange and Green” (the colors of the Irish flag) which you can hear by Spailpin here. Later, the Wolfe Tones performed it as “Give Me Your Hand,” with lyrics that seem both a simple love song and a plea for reconciliation between the sectarian factions in Northern Ireland; hear it here.

In the first comment in the thread below The Session post, “Zina Lee” includes this:

I’ve read the following regarding this tune: Note that the tune is pentatonic until the final phrase. The mixolydian seventh appears four measures from the end, while the fourth does not appear until the final measure.

Maybe this explains why, when I asked the uilleann piper who played at our wedding if he could play Tabhair dom do lámh, he politely declined, saying it was too difficult.

The musicians in the video above, other than Liam O’Flynn on the pipes, are: Christy Moore on guitar and vocal; Andy Irvine on tenor mandola (I was introduced to Andy by my date following his solo performance at the old Eagle Tavern on West 14th Street in 1989, and later learned that my future wife and her date were there the same evening); and Dónal Lunny on Irish bouzouki (as the linked Wiki tells, Lunny owned the first bouzouki specifically made for use in Irish music; he later became a member of The Bothy Band).
__________

*The Orpheus legend bears an interesting resemblance to the Biblical story of Lot and his wife. In the Orpheus tale, the hero is told that he may lead his wife back to the land of the living so long as, on the way, he does not turn to look at her. He does, and she disappears. In the Bible story, Lot and his wife are allowed to escape the destruction of Sodom on the condition that they not look back toward the doomed city. She does, and is turned to a pillar of salt (Genesis 19:26).

**The linked source spells her name “Eglington”; others spell it “Eglinton,” which I think is correct. There is an Eglinton Castle in North Ayrshire.

Source: Self-Absorbed Boomer
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A few weeks ago I noticed Brooklyn Brewery’s “Dry Irish Stout” on a shelf at my local supermarket. This piqued my curiosity. “Dry” isn’t a word I’ve associated with stout. I decided to get some and compare it to the stout I, and most people, know best: Guinness. I know there are some of you who, seeing the photo above, are saying, “Why do this at home?” Bottled stout isn’t stout as it should be, drawn slowly from a tap. I’ll grant you that. My excuse is that I didn’t have time to go bar-hopping until I found one that had both kinds on tap. Also, my wife needed some bottled stout to use as a marinade for the corned beef we had with cabbage, potatoes, and carrots for our pre-St. Patrick’s supper tonight (see below):

I did the tasting this afternoon. The bottles were kept a little below room temperature until I was ready to pour. Here are the results:

Guinness

Color: very dark brown.

Head: ample and long lasting.

Aroma: malty, with hint of floral.

Taste: black coffee with a hint of caramel; some hop bitterness in the finish.

Brooklyn Dry Irish

Color: dark brown, a slight shade lighter than Guinness.

Head: small, brownish white; collapsed quickly (see photo at top, taken shortly after the Brooklyn stout was poured; the Guinness had been poured earlier). According to the brewery’s website, this stout differs from Guinness and other widely marketed Irish stouts in that no nitrogen is added to enhance the head.

Aroma: floral, with a hint of berries.

Taste: initially tart and fruity; no strong coffee or chocolate taste (my wife, trying it without having had Guinness first, said she tasted chocolate; perhaps my palate was skewed by having just tasted Guinness). A pleasant but subdued hop bitterness at the finish.

The verdict: not a real contest, as these are very different beers. I like them both, and they went equally well with our corned beef repast. Brooklyn Brewery also makes a Black Chocolate Stout that might make for a better head to head (as it were) comparison to Guinness.

Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig oraibh!

Source: Self-Absorbed Boomer
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In my walks across the Brooklyn Bridge and back over the past year or so, I’ve noticed that couples have been writing their names on padlocks and attaching those locks to the fences beside the pedestrian walkway, as shown in the photo above.

Sometimes, a lock displays a  plea instead of an acknowledgement of existing commitment.

Some messages are too long to put on a padlock, so they get written on the bridge itself.

Source: Self-Absorbed Boomer
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A couple of weeks ago I tried Coney Island Brewing Company’s “Seas the Day” India Pale Lager. Now I’ve also had their Mermaid Pilsner. It’s good beer.

Pilsner (or Pilsener) is a style of lager–a lager being any beer made with bottom fermenting yeast–that originated in the city of Pilsen, or Plzeň, in what is now the Czech Republic. What distinguishes Pilsner from other lagers is that it is made with lighter colored malts, resulting in a golden, as opposed to a deep amber or brown, color. It usually also has a more pronounced hop flavor than other lagers. Most mass market American beers are made in the Pilsner style. Some, like Budweiser, have a forward hop flavor while others, like Coors, have a more subdued one.

For a food pairing I decided on something less spicy than the bánh mì I had with “Seas the Day.” I chose a “Smokin’ Henry” from our local deli, Lassen & Hennigs. It’s made with smoked turkey, Black Forest ham, cheddar, bacon, lettuce, tomato, and Russian dressing. For a bit of spice, I had some of Trader Joe’s cheddar and horseradish flavored chips on the side.

While I was waiting for my sandwich to be made, I took a look at Lassen & Hennigs’ beer selection, and saw Mermaid Pilsner among their offerings.

The beer has a rich golden color, a shade darker than most American Pilsners, but similar to that of Pilsner Urquell, the original Pilsner from Plzeň. The head was moderate, creamy, and fairly long-lasting. The aroma was hoppy, with slight malt undertones and jasmine-like overtones. The flavor was a well balanced blend of hop bitterness and malt warmth, with a suggestion of spice and a pleasant, melon like finish. The beer worked well with the flavorful food, but would also be enjoyable on its own.

Unlike Czech or German Pilsners, which adhere to a purity law that allows only the use of barley malt, Mermaid Pilsner, like “Seas the Day,”  is made with a combination of malts. There is regular two-row barley malt, the staple of most fine beers, along with Cargill’s “EuroPils,” also made from two-row barley, but with a distinctive “grassy” flavor. There are also two non-barley malts: rye and wheat. It’s the rye that imparts the hint of spiciness.

Mermaid Pilsner takes its name from Mermaid Avenue, one of Coney Island’s main thoroughfares, and from the Mermaid Parade, an annual Coney Island event.

This is a well made and thoroughly enjoyable beer, equal to most and better than many imports and American craft-brewed Pilsners.

Source: Self-Absorbed Boomer
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A few days ago I started out with the iPod playing Gram Parsons’ haunting, autobiographical “In My Hour of Darkness,” with Emmylou Harris on harmony vocal, from Gram’s posthumously released album Grievous Angel (audio clip with still of album cover above); next came “My Dear Companion” from the Trio album by Dolly Parton, Emmylou, and Linda Ronstadt (live performance video below). It’s easy for me to speculate that “My Dear Companion,” on which Emmylou takes the lead vocal, was chosen by her as a tribute to Gram, her late musical companion and friend.
 

I never met Gram Parsons, but I knew of him before he became famous. While I was a student at the University of South Florida I became friends with several students who had known him in his home town, Winter Haven. They told me about this brilliant, talented guy who was a folk singer, and who performed with his group, the Shilohs, at the Derry Down, a night club for teenagers that was owned by his stepfather. I heard that he was at Harvard, and, later, that he had dropped out and started a group called the International Submarine Band along with fellow Havenite Jon Corneal. I was thrilled when, in my second year of  law school, I read that he had joined my favorite rock group, the Byrds. I bought their newest album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo, which includes what has become his signature song, “Hickory Wind”. I followed his career as he left the Byrds and, along with another former Byrd, Chris Hillman, formed the Flying Burrito Brothers, then had a solo album, GP, which introduced to a wide audience the voice of Emmylou Harris. His death from a drug overdose in 1973 saddened me enormously.

Source: Self-Absorbed Boomer
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I damn near vandalized my briefs when I read the first sentence of Binky Philips’ Huff Po piece:

I first met Lou Reed at the Holiday Fundraiser Fair at Grace Church in Brooklyn Heights, the day after Thanksgiving, 1967.

Lou at the Grace Church Fair? My wife has been a stalwart Fair worker for maybe the last thirteen years or so. Of course, 1967 was well before our time here in the Heights. I was starting my first year of law school in Cambridge, Massachusetts and she was a sixth grader at a Catholic school in Lynn, a few miles away. Had we been introduced at the time, and told that we would someday be married, we would both have been very surprised, perhaps even (at least in her case) horrified. (I would probably have thought: “Well, she’s not the upper middle class WASP princess of my dreams, but she is pretty.” She might have thought: “What an pretentious, pseudo-intellectual twit.”)

Anyway, Lou was not present in person at the ’67 Fair. Mr. Philips, fourteen at the time, “met” him in the form of a stack of the first Velvet Underground LPs (you can always get some really good stuff at the Grace Church Fair; trust me), one of which he bought, took home, played, and didn’t like. He described Lou’s vocal delivery as “Bob Dylan with a Brooklyn hitter accent.” Two years later, stoned, and with a friend, he pulled the album out, played it, and SHA-ZAM! He was converted.

Later, Mr. Philips had several in person encounters with Lou, almost all of them in music stores. In one of these, he did manage a brief, inconsequential conversational exchange about a guitar. I was once (apart from the Detroit concert) in Lou’s presence. This was at a party, sometime around the ’70s-’80s cusp, in the then edgy (now touristy) Meat Packing District. My friend Charlie (not to be confused with Binky’s friend Charlie) pointed him out to me, standing maybe twenty feet away. I resisted the temptation to introduce myself, knowing I was not cool enough to merit his attention.

Mr. Philips writes that he was in the Grace Church Choir (by which he presumably means the Youth Choir) for three years. Among his choir mates at that time likely would have been Harry Chapin and Robert Lamm, later keyboardist, vocalist, and songwriter for Chicago.

Source: Self-Absorbed Boomer
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When I was an associate at LeBoeuf, Lamb, “fifty state survey” was a dreaded assignment. It meant going to the library (no Lexis or Westlaw in those days) to determine the law governing some abstruse matter–say, eligibility of liability insurance on exterminators for export to the unlicensed or “surplus lines” market–in each of the fifty states and the District of Columbia. The good people at Zagat (yes, I really do like them) had a much more enjoyable task: finding the “unique regional sandwich” that best characterizes each state, as well as D.C. For the New York sandwich, I expected them to choose pastrami on rye with mustard, served with a half-sour pickle, and would have considered that a worthy option. Instead, I was surprised and delighted that they looked to the western end of the state and chose beef on weck (photo above). As I’ve posted here before, I came to love this sandwich years ago, during my tenure at LeBoeuf, when I was working on client matters in the Buffalo area.

In our neighboring state of Connecticut, Zagat picks another favorite of mine, the Connecticut lobster roll (photo above). There’s more about it here. Not surprisingly, the Maine version gets the nod as the Pine Tree State’s characteristic sandwich.

My old home state, Florida, gets what it ought to: the Cuban sandwich. The one Zagat chose to feature, however, doesn’t look like any Cuban I’ve ever had. That’s probably because it comes from a cafeteria in Miami, not from my old home town, Tampa, the Ur of el Cubano. My first, and therefore iconic, Cuban came from the Silver Ring Bar in Ybor City, an establishment that failed to survive the transformation of Tampa’s Latin Quarter into a corporatized tourist mecca. There’s a lively discussion in the comments on the Zagat piece about what a proper Cuban should, or should not, include. The Zagat description fails to mention what I consider the sine qua non: that the sandwich be pressed in a plancha, a device resembling that used to press panini.

My wife wanted to know what Zagat considers the characteristic sandwich of her home state, Massachusetts. She was amused and pleased to know that it’s the fluffernutter, a variant of the PB&J with Marshmallow Fluff in place of the jelly. Evidently the  General Court (what they call the legislature in the Bay State) and Governor made it the Commonwealth’s official sandwich. Zagat tells us that Marshmallow Fluff was invented in Somerville (though it’s now made in my wife’s hometown, Lynn) by a man named Archibald Query, who sold it door-to-door. Somerville now has an annual Fluffernutter Festival, and it seems we just missed National Fluffernutter Day. Did Congress and the President actually agree to proclaim that? Ah, for the days when they could find common ground on important matters.

The Zagat folks threw a few curves. For my native state, Pennsylvania, one might well expect the Philly cheesesteak, no? No. The “cheesesteak” award goes to…drumroll…Idaho. I put cheesesteak in quotes because the version Zagat chose is made with chicken and bacon. Turning to Philly, Zagat anoints as the Keystone State’s sandwich a hoagie made with roast pork, melted provolone, and broccoli rabe. It looks and sounds delicious, so the next time I’m down there I’ll try to find time to visit Tommy DiNic’s at the Reading Terminal Market.

Source: Self-Absorbed Boomer
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My Brooklyn Heights Blog colleague made this video. He gave it the title “A Tale of Two Bridges” because it includes scenes of and on both the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, but it concentrates on the latter, lesser known span. Lesser known, that is, until recently, according to this New York Times article. The Times piece attributes its new found popularity on the fact that its Brooklyn anchorage is next to DUMBO (“Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass”), a neighborhood that has undergone roughly the same evolution that SOHO in Manhattan did starting about two decades earlier: from decaying industrial area to place where artists could occupy cheap if not yet quite legal loft spaces to trendy Bohemian neighborhood to pricey place for the rich but hip, combined with office space for tech companies.

I have a particular affection for the Manhattan Bridge: it was my first crossing of any of the East River bridges. This happened in 1954, when I was eight years old.  My parents and I had just returned from England, where my dad, a U.S. Air Force officer, had been stationed for three years. We came by ship, and debarked at the Brooklyn Army Terminal. There we boarded a bus to Penn Station that took us by way of Flatbush Avenue (when we turned onto this broad thoroughfare my dad, an Indiana native who had spent some time in New York City early in World War Two, said “This is Flatbush”: noticing some low-lying shrubbery in a planter box on the median, I thought I knew what he meant) to the Manhattan Bridge, where I was thrilled by the view of the Brooklyn Navy Yard and East River traffic.

The  Manhattan Bridge was the last of four East River bridges–the others, in order of completion, are the Brooklyn (1883), the Williamsburg (1903), the Queensboro (now officially the “Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge”; also known as the 59th Street Bridge and as such immortalized by Simon & Garfunkel; March, 1909)–to be completed. The Manhattan Bridge was partially opened late in 1909, but not fully opened until 1912. It was designed by Leon Moisseiff, who was also involved in the design of the Golden gate Bridge and the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia, but whose reputation was blotted by his having been the principal designer of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, a.k.a. “Galloping Gertie” (caution: the linked video may give you nightmares, though it may also warm the hearts of dog lovers).

Source: Self-Absorbed Boomer
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Unfortunately, the United States is now in danger of going for scrap. The S.S. United States Conservancy, headed by Susan Gibbs, granddaughter of William Francis Gibbs, the marine architect and engineer who designed the great ship, is trying to raise funds to save her.  I’m hoping she may be preserved as a floating museum and perhaps hotel at a pier along what used to be “ocean liner row” on the west side of Manhattan, where she used to dock.

Update: The Conservancy has a Facebook page. Please consider giving them a “like.”

Source: Self-Absorbed Boomer
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/tzVM/~3/uNfRs6kZWaI/british-pathe-newsreel-ss-united-states.html

Call me a chicken, call me a princess, and call me a spoiled brat. I may indeed be all of those things, but what I’m not is a pioneer. And though I am a great admirer of the pioneer lifestyle (you pay how much in Crown Heights?), I know myself well enough to know that if there is not a decent nail salon, grocery store, or a decent place for toro tartare, I’m not interested. Posh? Perhaps. I’m
just not a nowheresville kind of girl and freely admit it.

But one thing I can’t abide by is a sort of mass marketing of life. This week’s announcement of J. Crew arriving on my corner, my sweet little block of happiness in Brooklyn, had me down. What’s currently at this location is a lovely little grocery store, which I frequent 3-4 times a week- to have my favorite brand of coconut water and that Love Crunch granola I so love steps from my apartment is very important to me. A preppy version of life is not.

As someone who has made a career in marketing, I have always admired J. Crew’s moxie- Mickey Drexler is a retail savant and Jena Lyon’s vision of quirky and well bred New Yorkish/Americana is undeniably charming. It’s true I have not bought something in J. Crew in years- it’s not my style at all and am much more at home in the Gap, Rag and Bone, Madewell, and more independent stores with less well known names. And if Jena and co have done a ton in terms of exporting their brand to the masses, well good for them. It’s just that my neighborhood does not need anything of the kind, at least in my mind. If you read the tweets of this week (some admitting some guilt for being excited about the ability to not leave the neighborhood for a polka dot bikini, while others are mourning
the loss of a favorite grocer), you know that Brooklyn is now becoming a borough divided, and the J. Crew addition is the official jump the shark moment we all knew would come.

And with all New York real estate, retail is all about location. J. Crew’s decision to be in Cobble Hill is not at all shocking- it’s an affluent neighborhood of white young families who love wearing stripes and boyfriend jeans. But what stings the most is that they should have looked for a spot on Atlantic Avenue, an artery running through the neighborhood where mass chains like Urban Outfitters and Barneys and PetSmart coexist with old school favorites like the excellent Middle Eastern food emporium Sahadi’s with newer yet less mass additions like Steven Alan and Jonathan Adler, who still enjoy multiple locations but are more or less well loved New York brands that are still small enough to feel “authentic”. (Jonathan Adler less so…) Instead, the Crew is coming to Court Street, and though we have a Trader Joe’s on the corner of Atlantic and Court, the intrusion of such a huge retailer moving one block deeper into Cobble Hill just feels wrong (there’s also a lot of big market retail in downtown Brooklyn, but for some reason that feels well placed and in service of the bustling neighborhood where many people come to work each day in the courthouses and municipal buildings).

If you are not familiar, Court Street and Smith Street are the two major drags of my neighborhood, and though there are Starbucks and chain drugstores on both of them, there are not national retailers of the fashion variety on those streets, and I wish it would stay that way. I’ve often thought it would be lovely to have an Organic Avenue or Juice Press in the neighborhood, and although that’s bourgeois as hell, they are still local New York businesses that would fit in perfectly with the health conscious and wealthy denizens of the neighborhood. Even a Rag and Bone would be cooler- sure their $300 denim jackets are beyond the reach of most of us, but they produce in America and are one of those brands that though getting bigger,still have some indie cred.

What’s funny to me is how much I wanted big retail when I lived in Miami. If you told me that a J. Crew was opening up in Coconut Grove or Coral Gables, I’d be pretty excited. Because that would mean I lived somewhere on the map, where a brand such as that would feel we were worthy of their Italian ballet flats. Instead, I watched as big stores like Ann Taylor and Bath and Body Works would shut the doors, as well as Banana Republic. This was shocking to me- in NYC you never see big stores like that shut their doors, unless they are consolidating.  And having worked in Coconut Grove for 7 years, I craved a decent shopping experience when I needed a break or felt like taking a lunchtime stroll.

But in Brooklyn, it’s a little different. I lived in Cobble Hill many years ago, after a rather terrible breakup that left me devastated and looking for change. I moved into an apartment on Bergen Street between Smith and Hoyt, right down the street from my (still) beloved Brooklyn Inn, a lovely old local haunt with deliciously substantive bloody marys and a great jukebox. I had a roommate, a working fireplace, and a view of a gorgeous courtyard from a beautiful bedroom I painted blue. My share of the rent? $550. In the late 1990s, Cobble Hill was about to become what it is today, but back then there were only two decent restaurants, not a ton of boutiques, and the simple yet ominous refrain of “whatever you do, don’t mistake the G train for the F” and “never eat sushi in Brooklyn”. But as I recuperated from my failed relationship, I grew to love the neighborhood- it’s outdoor book vendors, its leafy beauty, and low buildings that allowed me to breath and see the sky. But when my roommate decided she wanted her boyfriend to move in, I moved out. And took his apartment in Manhattan, a little studio on the Upper East Side which cost me more than double the rent of what I was paying in Brooklyn. Cut to now.

It’s 2013 and I’m back in New York after (too) many years away, and now Brooklyn is a brand and not a neighborhood. It’s true I live in what Hannah on “Girls” calls “grown up Brooklyn”- my husband and I don’t have children but apparently everybody else in our neighborhood does. I left what many deem paradise (sandy beaches, palm trees, warm weather) in Miami to come to my own version of Bali Hai in Brooklyn (charming old brownstones, fruit and flower vendors, a great bookstore, and lots and lots of trees). 

When we were moving back, we flirted with living in Manhattan but quickly realized at this stage in the game, we were nothing if not Brooklyn bound, and with our ten pound terrier in tow we got our piece of the brand, complete with a yard (a yard!), a spiral staircase leading to our bedroom, and hardwood floors. We are beyond happy in the neighborhood- sure we are paying an insane amount of rent but walking Khan down Clinton or Henry Street on a sunny afternoon and enjoying the solitude is worth it.

I’m glad I don’t live in Williamsburg or somewhere cooler than cool- I have always enjoyed going out in a neighborhood like that, and then coming home to my not so cool but pristine piece of paradise, thus my former obsession with the Upper East Side and its proximity to Central Park, and our little rent controlled apartment on Sixth Avenue and Spring, on the right side of West Broadway where Italian coffee shops could coexist with trendy shops and restaurants. Most of those are gone in Soho now- crushing.

What I love most about New York is the small stores that thrive because they offer a great product, service, or latte. Sure the Barnes and Noble up the street has a huge selection of books, but browsing through the racks and tables at Book Court is just so much more enjoyable. And yes the multiplex on Court may have every new release, but the Cobble Hill Theater has better popcorn and is way more charming on date night than a big box movieopolis. And though struggling neighborhoods love the influx of a big retailer to service the neighborhood and create jobs and opportunities to buy better goods, we don’t need that in our spot. To me, it’s way more important to support small business and the Main Street vibe I have come to love. Because sometimes more means a whole lot less.

I guess my point is you don’t really move to Brooklyn to shop at J. Crew. Although you just knew stores like that would inevitably come- I think we knew it as early as when “Sex and the City” was still on the air and Miranda hitched up her white collar pants and moved the whole brood to a townhouse in Brooklyn. The writing was on the wall then, and it’s definitely on the wall now. It’s no secret my neighborhood is more West Village than around the way, and if any brand of mass can come into the neighborhood and somehow manage to fit in, it’s J. Crew. I love what they did with their men’s store in Tribeca, it’s small and bespoke and clubby and fits in with the neighborhood. But what I never want to happen is what happened in Soho- once a favorite enclave of artists, it’s now a gigantic mall. If that happened to my neighborhood, I’d have to leave, and perhaps consider a career as a pioneer. Or just move to Crown Heights; it’ll probably be ready for me by then. XO.

Source: the world according to sherimaven
http://sherimaven.posthaven.com/there-goes-the-neighborhood-a-j-crew-grows-in-brooklyn

We got an up close look at some brewing ingredients. This is crushed pale barley, which gives beer and ale their malt richness.

These are pelletized hops, which give the brews flavor. According to Tyler these are Chinook hops, native to the Pacific Northwest. The other two ingredients are yeast, which reacts with the barley to cause fermentation in the presence of the fourth, and most voluminous ingredient: water. “Our local water supply is very good,” Tyler said. “We use it, and run it through a big Brita filter.”

This is one of several brews we sampled. It’s the amber ale, which has a deep red color. The brewery calls it “Red Right Return” after the navigational mnemonic that says to keep the red buoys to your right (or starboard) while entering a harbor. I liked it, as I did all of the brews we sampled, which included a blonde ale called “Beach Blonde” which had more flavor than I expected, an IPA, and a porter.

Unfortunately, Cape Cod Beer isn’t available beyond an eighty mile radius of the Brewery, as it isn’t Pasteurized, and has to be kept refrigerated. The next time we’re up there, we’ll take a cooler chest so we can bring some home.

Source: Self-Absorbed Boomer
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/tzVM/~3/JcJ6lgzKDgk/cape-cod-beer.html

How do you tell an Englishman from an Irishman? It’s in how they propose marriage. An Englishman says, “Dahling, I love you. Will you marry me?” But an Irishman says, “Mary, how would you like to be buried with my people?”

Happy St. Patrick’s day.

Source: Self-Absorbed Boomer
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/tzVM/~3/kmW2AuzoCRs/the-clancy-brothers-and-tommy-makem.html

You decide.

He even did what people stereotypically claim Jews do:  Elvis got a nose job (for the record, no-one in my family [Schlussel is Jewish] has had this procedure).

She also quotes from a Jewish Weekly article that traces his descent from his great grandmother, the daughter of Nancy Burdine and Abner Tacket, “the Jewess Martha Tacket.” This made me recall an anecdote I read years ago about the late Democratic honcho and prominent lawyer Robert Strauss. When he was a student at the University of Texas, a fellow student remarked about a photo of Strauss’ fiancée, “What a pretty Jewess.” Strauss replied, “You sumbitch, she’s a pretty girl”

Source: Self-Absorbed Boomer
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/tzVM/~3/6-yEAS_oxEc/elvis-was-jewish-thats-emmes.html

Source: Self-Absorbed Boomer
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/tzVM/~3/FIO-qxbtUB0/live-blogging-hurricane-sandy-from.html

Two weekends ago, as I was walking between Piers 5 and 6 in Brooklyn Bridge Park, I saw the refrigerated container ship Duncan Island, of the Ecuadorian Line, departing from the nearby Red Hook container port (despite earlier predictions, it has survived). According to Shiptracking, a most helpful tool for ship buffs, she was bound for Antwerp.

Yesterday morning I looked out my kitchen window and saw an old friend heading into the Governors Island Channel toward the East River and her customary dock at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. I quickly changed from PJs to exercise clothes and ran out to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade where I got this photo of Alice Oldendorff, accompanied by a McAllister tug. Alice is a particular favorite of Will Van Dorp, publisher of Tugster: a Waterblog, where he once posted another photo I took of Alice heading up the East River. For some reason Shiptracking gives no information about where she came from; I can only surmise that she’s bringing her usual cargo of crushed stone from Canada, likely loaded at Halifax.

Source: Self-Absorbed Boomer
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/tzVM/~3/4429BvRbwyQ/duncan-island-departs-alice-oldendorff.html

First, we didn’t see an abrupt end-of-season collapse. The lads had the good grace to tank immediately after the All Star break, sparing us fans any unduly prolonged, then cruelly smashed, expectations. Indeed, now that any hopes of a post-season are safely gone, they seem to be having a bit of a late season rally. Playing the Pirates helps.

Second, we have, for the first time since Frank Viola did it 22 years ago, a twenty game winner in the unlikely (I like the word “unlikely” in connection with the Mets: the first Mets game I attended, in the summer of 1985, was won by a two run homer off the “unlikely bat” of Howard Johnson) guise of knuckleballer R.A. Dickey. His is an unusual story for the Mets: instead of a star free agent who, upon donning the blue and orange, quickly did an impersonation of the Wonderful One-Hoss Shay on the centenary of Earthquake Day, he was a much traveled journeyman pitcher who found his stride–or should I say his sling?–with the Amazins.

I’m tempted to fall back on the comforting mantra–“Wait’ll next year!”–of Brooklyn Dodger fans a half century plus a decade ago. But I know it ain’t gonna be so. Nevertheless, I’ll remain loyal.

Photo: Newsday.

Source: Self-Absorbed Boomer
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/tzVM/~3/3wEigeOy5dc/two-good-things-about-mets-this-year.html

Framingham, Massachusetts (population 68,318 as of the 2010 census) sits roughly halfway between Boston and Worcester (a city with which my connection is even more tenuous).  It’s been designated one of America’s 100 best small cities by CNN. It has its normal share of annoying inhabitants, both human and animal, but it’s certainly no hellhole. It was at least for a time the home of Crispus Attucks, considered by some the first casualty of the American Revolution. In the years leading up to the Civil War it was, in common with my adopted home, Brooklyn Heights, a center of the antislavery movement. It has a large Brazilian immigrant community, so you can probably get good bacalhau and feijoada there.

The video starts, over a portentous repeated strum, with an aerial view of a treeless suburban spread of Malvina Reynolds’ ticky-tacky houses, evidently somewhere in the high plains or desert, certainly not New England. Then, with a hissing snare crescendo, we’re transported down to one of these houses, where the protagonist lies asleep, at first still, then agitated. Cut to the band, shot in near darkness, appearing to be the spectral figures who disturb his sleep. A voice begins a droning chant:

He was a company man, on the lifetime plan,
He gave them forty years; they gave him a watch…

What follows are evidently stock scenes from 1950s movies or Father Knows Best style TV sitcoms, as our protagonist has breakfast with his pretty wife and adorable toddlers, then leaves for work. We then get, as the droning voice continues, scenes of factory workers lining up to punch their time cards and views of huge industrial plants, mostly of kinds that never existed in or anywhere near Framingham. As we shift to the interiors of these plants and see workers doing repetitive tasks, and the voice drones on, we do get one glance of what appears to be an auto assembly line, something that Framingham actually had for a time. The voice shifts out of its monotonous drone into a shriek, then a bellow:

This is what I DO! This is what I AM! I want to LIVE FOREVER, in FRAMINGHAM! 

What, no retirement home in Florida? No, Framingham forever! Then the yelling ends, and we get keening guitar as the workers leave the plant, our protagonist arrives home, his darling daughter removes his shoes and puts on slippers as he reads the paper, and the family goes to the dinner table. There, Dad seems glum as he picks at his food, perhaps contemplating the Meaninglessness Of It All, or mulling over the gambling debts he’s run up without his wife’s knowledge, or both. The kids are excused, and Mom looks concerned. Cut to exterior, where we see the bedroom light going out. Nothing like a roll in the hay to chase away those existential blues, but we suspect it ain’t in the cards. 

What seems odd about this product of the late 1980s is that it mocks an America that was, if not entirely a thing of the past at that time, well on its way out: an America of plentiful manufacturing jobs that paid well enough to provide middle class comfort, and gave a reasonable expectation of lifetime employment. Also strange is the repeated description of the protagonist as a “company man.” A time card punching assembly line worker in the Northeast in those days would have considered “company man” an insult: he would be a “union man,” and proud of it.

Nice Strong Arm came from Austin, and moved to New York after the success of their first album, Reality Bath (“Framingham” is from their second, Mind Furnace). What made them pick on Framingham? I suspect they just needed a three syllable name to fill out the measure of those last shouted lines. Allentown would have done as well, but Billy Joel had already claimed it.

And now, for something completely different:

Jamestown, New York is a city about half the size of Framingham (2010 population 31,146). I got to know it well in the 1970s when, as a LeBoeuf associate, I did work for a client there.  Jamestown was a furniture manufacturing center, and Maddox Table was one of its largest employers. If you follow the link immediately above to the first installment of my LeBoeuf saga, you can read about my first visit to Jamestown and find the “Maddox Table” video embedded there as well.

“Maddox Table” is from 10,000 Maniacs’ first album, The Wishing Chair, which was produced by Joe Boyd, who had produced albums by several English folk-rock groups, including Fairport Convention. This should tell you we’re a long way from noise metal. The lyrics, by Natalie Merchant, tell of the drudgery of factory labor (“The legs of Maddox kitchen tables/ My whole life twisted on a lathe”) by an immigrant worker (“My first English was/ ‘Faster, boy, if you want your pay'”). As in “Framingham” we have a contrast with after work life, but here it’s a tale of courtship, with Vaudeville, movies, and Sunday trolley rides to Bemus Point, then an amusement park, now a more upscale attraction.  Ms. Merchant does give us some inscrutable lyrics: whatever does “Oh, my Dolly was a weak/ Not a burdened girl” mean?

Perhaps the most important contrast with “Framingham” is that “Maddox Table” recognizes the role of unions in factory workers’ lives:

To your benefit we strike or bargain,
With the waving fist a union man,
Not just for
Smokes, spirits, candy, and cologne,
But for
Automobile keys,
Cash in the bank,
And the deed
On a place called home.

Then, there’s the video. Instead of stock stuff from various repositories, we have scenes from the real Jamestown, from 1940 according to the text accompanying the video, though apart from the vehicles it looks as if it could as easily be from the 1950s. It shows the people of Jamestown at work and at play, and some of the scenes (particularly of the shirtless guy in the newspaper printing plant) show people who actually seem to be enjoying their work. I’m guessing this was a Chamber of Commerce production, intended to display the city’s best side. One disturbing aspect is the complete absence of anyone who isn’t white. Maybe this reflected the reality of Jamestown in 1940 (it didn’t in the 1970s, as I can attest) or maybe it was a deliberate editorial move.

“Maddox Table” is a song about a real place, made by people who knew it well. It doesn’t shy from the hardships of factory work, nor overly idealize what’s to be enjoyed outside of work. The accompanying video may present an airbrushed version of Jamestown as it was, but at least it takes us there.

Source: Self-Absorbed Boomer
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/tzVM/~3/OWPyZXClab0/framingham-by-nice-strong-arm-and.html

This sort of thing isn’t supposed to be happening. I was delighted by their season opening sweep of the Braves, but I recalled a similar occurrence some seasons ago, after which the Mets quickly demonstrated what statisticians call regression toward the mean. I thought that was happening when the Mets lost their second two to the Nats, including the vaunted Santana-Strasburg match-up. I couldn’t watch the game, as I was working. After seeing the 4-0 score, I asked Kristin, charming Chip Shop bartender and fellow Mets fan, if Santana had re-injured his shoulder. “No,” she said, “he’s all right. They just never hit for him.”

I’ll confess to being puzzled by this “run support” thing. The implication is that the batters dislike a pitcher, so, in games when he’s pitching, they (subconsciously, we hope) don’t see the ball as well, or take a little off their swings. But if it’s the ace pitcher who typically doesn’t get support (as with Santana), then a more straightforward explanation is that schedules often produce ace-to-ace match-ups, so the batters will facing the opposing team’s best pitcher, as the Mets may have been with Strasburg.

In another few weeks, I may look back on this post with embarrassment. For now, I’m enjoying the ride.

Source: Self-Absorbed Boomer
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/tzVM/~3/8evSSgG1oGc/break-up-mets.html

Here is a closer photo of the label. “Sorachi Ace” is the kind of hops used in making the beer.

When I pulled the cork, there was a nice little “pop.” I made the mistake of pouring a bit too fast, which resulted in a huge head. After allowing it to collapse enough to pour more beer, I settled down to drink and eat. Here are my tasting notes:

Color: deep amber.

Head: big, creamy, long-lasting.

Aroma: citrusy, hoppy, with floral overtones.

Taste: rich, not overly bitter, toasty, suggestion of apricots in the finish. After I wrote those tasting notes, I did a web search for “sorachi ace hops” and got this. While the article stresses a lemony quality of the hops, the comment by Ben (scroll down) refers to ” a really creamy, cloying, buttery element” that seems to agree with my “rich” and “toasty.”

Bottom line: an interesting, well made beer that stands up to flavorful food like BBQ pork. It would also be good to savor on its own.

Source: Self-Absorbed Boomer
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/tzVM/~3/b96YoAaPGEA/brooklyn-brewerys-sorachi-ace-beer.html

“I’ve always had wanderlust,” the 28-year-old Berke said in a recent phone interview. “I’m always on the move. It’s one of the things that’s really killing me about running the site professionally—I can’t ever leave.”

After attending college at Rutgers University in New Jersey, Berke briefly moved home to write for a trade magazine before skipping town for Lima, Peru. He returned, unemployed, a short time later, and noticed a gaping journalistic hole in Sheepshead Bay. But straight up reportage wasn’t always what he had in mind.

His initial idea, he said, was a blog “where you’re snarky, and making fun of the neighborhood, and complaining about it.” As he progressed, he found himself doing otherwise, if for no other reason than his readers demanded a more serious venture.

“On top of that, I kind of saw the neighborhood in a different way, and started to really enjoy being here,” Berke said. “And now I think it’s one of the best, most beautiful neighborhoods in the whole city.”

He spends his days now covering community board meetings; investigating complaints about building violations; testing out the various authentic immigrant-owned restaurants in Sheepshead Bay; and managing the small staff of writers that works for him. Last year, Sheepshead Bites was named Best Local Blogger in L Magazine‘s “Best of Brooklyn and Manhattan” roundup. Though a ride into midtown Manhattan can take upwards of 45 minutes to an hour, Berke insisted his beachfront community is “very much” a part of the city.

“I hate when people say, ‘It’s really far away,’” he said, in response to my observation that, well, it is. He added, “At the same time, we do get a bit of quiet, and spaciousness, and a kind of beauty the city doesn’t get.”

Sheepshead Bay, in Berke’s view, has an “anti-hipster” attitude; nobody is there to be an urban explorer. The population has changed since his childhood, both in number and in makeup, and is now comprised mostly of Asian and Eastern European folks, along with holdover Irish and Italian immigrants from an earlier era.

Hoping to illustrate this change, Berke told me, “Emmons Avenue used to be a place for great seafood, particularly Italian seafood. Now it’s huge for Turkish food—the best Turkish food in the city is on Emmons Avenue.”

Gone are the so-called five-and-dime stores of his youth, replaced by cell phone huts, drug stores, and other generic establishments. Rent and apartment prices have increased with the market, but also because of what Berke believes is a different sort of gentrification.

“If you run through the markers of gentrifications—the building development, the rise in real estate, the pushing out of an older population, an older demographic, and all of that—it’s all there,” he said. “But it’ll never be called gentrification because the ones doing it are immigrants, and they’re pushing out an old, blue-collar class.”

photo courtesy of Adam Lerner Photography

One of his biggest gripes about Sheepshead Bay is the lack of respect it gets from the city government. For instance, the bay itself is rapidly filling up with sand, “for various environmental reasons,” according to Berke, and needs to be dredged. “The community has been requesting the city dredge it for most of my life,” he said. “And it ignores us.”

Berke is also frustrated by the tourism “renaissance” in neighboring Coney Island and Brighton Beach. While he doesn’t expect Sheepshead Bay to become a tourist destination, per se, he thinks the area should be included in promotional materials for the region. “There’s also things to do in Sheepshead Bay, like recreational fishing, dinner cruises, and an excellent array of waterfront restaurants,” he said, though he was unwilling to name his favorite. (“I run a business,” he explained.)

Not long ago, Sheepshead Bites celebrated its third birthday with a party that drew more than 300 people, and Berke, who recently launched the Bensonhurst Bean, is already planning on more events, like a Brooklyn Cyclones game on August 19 dedicated to Sheepshead Bites. He’s also closely monitoring the release this week of Russian Dolls on Lifetime, a Jersey Shore-style reality show that follows the lives of various members of the Russian-American community in South Brooklyn.

“A lot of people are angry about it, especially when it comes to local Russian leaders,” Berke said. “A lot of people don’t care, and want to be engaged in the voyeurism. The consensus across-the-board is that this is in no way representative of Russians.”

As he follows this story and hordes of others, Berke’s goal is to “fill in the gaps” of news coverage in Sheepshead Bay, a neighborhood largely underserved by the mainstream media—not that he wants (or needs) their attention.

“The vision of the site from the very start of me doing it professionally wasn’t just to build an online community for people to learn about and talk about Sheepshead Bay,” he said. “It was to also create a sense of community, and implement it on the ground.”

Besides, he added, “If there’s some place I’m going to be stuck, it’s definitely not the worst place.”

Coming from a Brooklyn native, that’s one hell of an endorsement.