Got an email from Diamond Dave to signup for their Shuffleboard Tourney being held in a couple of weeks. Being that I suck at Shuffleboard I’m gonna sit this out, but maybe their are some of you out there looking desperately for a shuffleboard game like I am yearning for my dart league.
I can’t even believe it. The rumor is true! We’re getting a bowling alley and the shit isn’t in Williamsburg – it’s in Greenpoint (200 N 14th St, between Wythe and Berry (718.387.3585)!
Gothamist reported on this wonderful little bit of info and they’ve got a bunch of pics in their post. The place looks fantastic. Totally old school and they’re even gonna sell pitchers of beer. Of course, it looks like there are about ten lanes total which means that it’ll probably be virtually impossible to get a chance to play on a Friday or Saturday night, but still, it’s pretty fucking awesome.
And at this time I will reiterate once again about how I desperately want a dart league to startup in the ‘hood.
The GZA show at McCarren Park Pool that I have been hearing so much about has been canceled.
I had no plans to attend but I thought I might hangout in the Park nearby that day to hear a bit of it. GZA’s from Wu-Tang and well, I gots to represent my peeps in Shaolin.
So now the last show seems is gonna be Chemical Brothers on 9/22. One Ticketmaster site shows them with Ladytron the other with The Rub. Neither of which I ever heard of, so whatev. But according to a recent article in the NY Press, McCarren Pool might actually become a pool again.
There’s still a couple of days to get your art in The Greenpoint 100, but if you’re not the creating type you can at least appreciate it. And of course, buy it.
The Greenpoint 100: Friends of the Greenpoint Library Artists’ Benefit Saturday, September 15, 2007 11:00 am to 2:30 pm 107 Norman Ave @ Leonard St. Brooklyn, NY 11222
Emerging Greenpoint artists exhibit 100 small works donated to benefit their neighborhood branch Juried by James Wagner, Barry Hoggard and Leah Stuhltrager
Original artwork $25 each/ cash only
For more information please email friendsofthegreenpointlibrary@gmail.com or call the library at 718-349-8504
Today’s a solemn day and every year it seems less and less people remember.
Only six years later and it’s treated as any other day by most New Yorkers. Some even get annoyed when you mention it, as if bringing it up is ‘dwelling on the past’. I remember that day and I remember my friends who were lucky to be alive, the ones who walked over the 59th Street Bridge and through LIC to get home.
We shouldn’t forget. And we shouldn’t act like it’s any other day. It’s not. It’s the anniversary of what most of my generation of New Yorkers should view as the worst tragedy to happen during our lifetime. I knew only two of those who died, and I hadn’t seen either of them in years before that horrible day, but just to have been ever so slightly touched by this disaster hurts.
I have respect for every single firefighter, police officer and emergency worker that died on that day and to all those who survived. To think that these peoples jobs are to put themselves in harms way for the rest of us is just humbling. It’s become cliché to say so, but they truly are heroes.
The New York Post has a (semi) interesting article comparing the music scenes of Manhattan and Williamsburg as some sort of West Side Story.
“Manhattan hipsters are definitely more into fashion, or at least labels,” says DJ Mike Nouveau, part of Manhattan party promoters the Ruff Kids, who are often seen in clothes by the trendy brand Surface to Air. “Where someone I know might go to Barneys to buy an outfit, someone in Brooklyn will go to [used clothing store] Beacon’s Closet.”
As far as I can tell, these Brooklyn hipsters seem to be more into being utter dirtbags. I thrift with the best of them but at the McCarren Pool Modest Mouse concert Saturday night I saw entirely too many ‘hipsters’ looking like homeless derelicts. Chicks with dirty feet, guys with hair that has clearly not been washed in more than a few days, possibly weeks! Everyone smelled like ass. And not just the ‘it’s hot today so I smell like ass’, the real deal ‘you haven’t cleansed your body in a long time smell like ass’ way. It was kinda nasty.
But the worst part are the shoes. I mean, the drunk bums on the corner of Greenpoint & Manhattan Ave have better footwear than these people. In fact, I think some of these hipsters were wearing their hand-me-downs. Shoes not just with holes in them, but shoes that were literally hanging on by a thread. Sneakers that looked like they walked through a minefield or that maybe they took down off those wires in the street where they hung since 1985.
Someone please explain to me what the style is in looking (and smelling) like a homeless person.
And here I thought the bedbug epidemic was coming from twenty Poles or Mexicans living in one apartment. Duh.
Just the other night I was interviewed by a college student in regards to my history in Greenpoint for a paper she’s doing. I’d never been interviewed before (why would I be?) but it was a pretty cool experience. I told her about the things she wasn’t able to read online or find at the library. Experiences.
She was particularly surprised to hear that McCarren Park was a shithole back in the day. Which it totally was. There were no Sundays in the park with picnics, dog runs and jolly games of petanque (don’t ask me). There were hoodlums, drugs and rapists in that place. Or at least that’s what we were all told. An old girlfriend of mine went to McCarren Park with a guy and he totally forced her to second base. It was all the confirmation I needed back then.
Which by the way, Tom Gilbert has a great article on McCarren Pool in his Beside the Point ongoing piece in The Brooklyn Paper this week that is a must read. And just for shits and giggles check out the Village Voices photographic journey of The Back Tattoos of McCarren Pool. My personal fave is the “psychedelic blimp” reference.
I told her about the old man bars like Goodmans and Walkers. And how me and a few of my friends had to run and hide in the basement of Walkers one night because the cops were raiding it for underage drinking. I think I was 16. Fighting at The Pit, watching the fireworks at the Alamo and drinking 40′s at 34.
I never see any kids down by The Pit anymore. The Alamo is burned down or at least even more dilapidated than it was fifteen years ago. And all the schoolyards are chained up so tight after school hours that Houdini wouldn’t be able to get in them. I wonder where all the kids do hangout nowadays.
She was curious how everyone got along. Back in the day it was mostly the White kids, the Polish and the Puerto Ricans. It seemed like the White kids were fighting both the Polish kids and the Puerto Rican kids. But I didn’t really remember the Polish and Puerto Ricans fighting.
In fact, a bunch of them were making sweet love and created quite the baby boom of Polo-Ricans around town.
