“WE ARE IN A RECESSION!” screamed the words from my in-box back on Nov. 16, and whether it was official yet or not, the wardrobes of Brooklyn’s 20-somethings were feeling it.
Tag: Fort Greene
Recently, the door to the new and expanded Beacon’s Closet, a consignment shop now on the corner of Warren Street and Fifth Avenue in Park Slope, opened. Along with a burst of cold air came not a customer but a stink bomb.
When the Dow plummeted on Monday after Congress failed to pass a bailout for Wall Street’s many woes, Brooklyn’s creative class was already bracing itself. A downturn at the top of the food chain can’t bode well for those closer to the bottom, like the plethora of visual and performing artists that reside here.
“It’s just a drag,” said Karen Brooks Hopkins, the president of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, whose fall season opens this week. “What I feel bad about is that the arts organizations, the cultural organizations, have finally recovered from 9/11, and now this.
“I just thought the whole thing was fabulous – what a great childhood you had!,” responded my mom when I asked her why in the world she ever decided to raise her children in Manhattan. In the 1980s. On Eighth Avenue and 53rd Street. “You got to see a side of the world other kids don’t.” Words of truth from a great mom.
There he was standing in front of me giggling, arms outstretched, and totally naked. He was bald and wrinkled, like the dancing old man from those Six Flags commercials, but he was just over a foot tall and, from his mostly toothless smile, drooled a bit. His mom scooped him up and got him dressed.
What do Jasper Johns, Cindy Sherman, Annie Leibovitz and Keith Haring all have in common? Each artist has work up for sale at the 4th Annual Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM to us locals) Silent Auction.
On a recent chilly night, I was bundled up and on my way to Boerum Hill to have dinner at a friend’s apartment. As I walked down Washington Avenue the B45 bus pulled up next to me, and I hesitated. “Which would be faster, the train or the bus?” I thought. Before I could make a decision, the bus doors had shuttered. Luckily, the light at Atlantic and Washington was still red and I approached the bus and knocked on the door. The driver, a middle-aged African-American man, refused to open the door, gesturing to the next stop, three street crossings away, even though his bus was still idling perfectly in front of a designated stop. It was 15 degrees outside and I’ll admit it, I felt like the driver was sticking it to me for being white.