The Q at Parkside

(for those for whom the Parkside Q is their hometrain)

News and Nonsense from the Brooklyn neighborhood of Lefferts and environs, or more specifically a neighborhood once known as Melrose Park. Sometimes called Lefferts Gardens. Or Prospect-Lefferts Gardens. Or PLG. Or North Flatbush. Or Caledonia (west of Ocean). Or West Pigtown. Across From Park Slope. Under Crown Heights. Near Drummer's Grove. The Side of the Park With the McDonalds. Jackie Robinson Town. Home of Lefferts Manor. West Wingate. Near Kings County Hospital. Or if you're coming from the airport in taxi, maybe just Flatbush is best.

Sunday, July 30, 2017

A Little Bit About A Lot Of Things

Most fascinating and freaky story of the past week? Queen sized beds. Yep. Tons of 'em. Unloaded and de-sheathed within the mysterious Moses Fried owned building at 205 Parkside Avenue. It's been nearly 2 decades sitting vacant, with rent-paying squatters covering the taxes, since this building was used for anything more than speculation. A few years back, plans were filed to build a "hotel" here, which, given Fried's less-than-savory reputation, fueled fears of drugs, prostitution and hourly rentals. Not so sure that scenario is still relevant, but Fried and his grandson Alan Tepper don't seem to care much what you or I think about them or their enterprises. Stay tuned. Real tuned. As in keep your eyes peeled like Idaho potatoes at a Knish Kontest.

The scaffolding came down on Lincoln Road and you'd think God had parted the Red Sea, what with the Hall Lay Lou Yah that erupted on the social media. It's meaningful to have a sidewalk back in the hands of the people, and folks are going to need some time to heal before embracing this new slice of gentrifier gold. (right next to park, right on top of the train station, next to the day care, and soon another gourmet grocery on its first floor, swank wine store around the corner, coffee and juice shops and cocktail lounges and micro-brews...hard to imagine just a decade back the nabe was thrilled just to have a single homey coffee and pastries place known as K-Dog.

Speaking of bagels (Nagle's is also right across the street), did you see that Bergen Bagels is coming to the NE corner of Maple and Flatbush? Google is no longer satisfied to provide current and historical information. It is now a fortune teller, and has Bergen Bagels on Google Maps even before it opens. Don't believe me, map it out yourself. Bergen has the real deal NY bagels and fixins you've come to expect.

An Italian place of some renown on Nostrand? It don't take Nostrandamus to predict anymore, just your handy cellular device. God knows blogs are hardly the place for breaking news. The soon-to-open Tiki Bar and rotisserie Risbo on the lower 'Bush, something or other by the Parkside Pizza folks on the NW corner of Westbury and Flattie Bush, record store, wine stores you name it. Can't keep up really, and who needs to when they come so fast and furious, with fairly predictable pickins'? And yet at least a dozen prime locations sit vacant along the 'Bush, just waiting for the "right" business at the right price.

Speaking of Nostrandamus, a certain prognosticator took a look at the entrance to the new building on Lincoln's OTHER entrance on Flatbush and noted the institutional look to the lobby. Could this be a separately configured building to house, say, homeless folks or social needs population? The City can set up these sorts of shelters wherever it wants with just a minimum of warning, like on Crown and Rogers. We shall see, friends, we shall see. And please, if it does come to pass, don't pre-judge. Folks of all stripes need a place to hang their hats and charge their cellulars.

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Culture Shock In New England

 Lest I lose you, dear reader, for going away and astray, here's the latest on the psycho squirrel of Prospect Park  and also in neighborhood news the scaffolding on Lincoln Road has finally come down from the Tom Anderson building - after nearly 4 long years. A certain prophetic gentleman whom I've tagged Nostrandamus has noted the bizarrely institutional look to the lobby of the Flatbush entrance, leading us to wonder if half the building might end up being used to house homeless folks? Were it to be so, the term "poor door" would be very much apt. Now on to the middle-aged musing...

It happens every year, with alarming regularity now. 12 years n a row to be precise. The Q pulls up stakes and heads for the hills of Western Massachusetts, to the home of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), now the single biggest museum in the country having nearly doubled in size this past year alone. It's a remarkable place, full of twists and turns and surprises at every twist and turn. Most all exhibits (save the Sol LeWitt) switch-out each year, so it's never the same. I'm ostensibly working for these two weeks, though my job seems constantly shifting and now that I'm Social Media voice I find that I'm stuck in a persona of my own making, a voice much more optimistic and utopian than the one I betray here, so I'm never entirely comfortable even in the acres of air conditioning. Such are the angsty travails of the middle-aged, middle-class, liberal arts educated white man left-leaning "cool" dad. I'd like to think I'm archetypical rather than stereotypical, and that my sense of humor distances myself from the crowd, but even my sense of humor was honed in the same DLetterman/SSilverman/LCK/LDavid/Coco stew as the rest of them, so truly there's nothing original about me at this point, not even the dogged Doubting Thomas Devil's Advocate (DTDA) air of superiority that permeates every breathing thought. I could just off myself now and save the world another mansplainer, but I want to stick around and see how this Trump thing plays out and I really do love hanging out with the family and traveling and watching the world through kids' eyes and helping the occasional fellow drunk get back on his feet. That's not to say I'm depressed. Quite the opposite. Know thyself, and you might just save yourself, since acceptance is the key, and ice cream alone is worth the price of admission to this sorry catastrophe we call modernity.

As I was saying it happens to me every damn year, all through my 40's. As soon as I leave the Bronx, and this time it was just me with the girls heading through lyme-riddled Connecticut, stopping off at friends for a dip in a refreshing private pool the comfort of which most New Yorkers will never enjoy, then on to the Berkshire hills and a bit of soft-serve from one of those ma & pa ice cream and fried clams places that stink up every northeastern town worth its Main Street and Village Green. Why clams and lobster roll anyway? We're four hours from the ocean and sorry folks it's comin' outa the freezer in a bag. Soft serve, that genuinely innovative product that launched a thousand Mr. Softy's, is a true economic leveler, as only the haughtiest of the haughty of gourmands (or lactose intolerant) could refuse its tongue-chilling goodness next to godliness. Like at interstate rest areas, the rich and poor find themselves cone-to-cone with one another, odd benchfellows to be sure, and of every political and philosophic bent to boot. Preppies and yokels, Trumpers and Bern-feelers, architects and grease monkeys, meth-heads and potheads, the Farmer and Cowman CAN be friends, and black and white rest in equal proportion and integrated on a wafer cone in a twisty confection.  Not racial black and white of course - there are precious few folks of African descent here. There is absolutely no reason why one SHOULD mix vanilla and chocolate on a cone anyway - it's like mixing coke with mr. pibb - because you really can't distinguish the flavors when they're mixed up that way, but it looks cool and you suspend disbelief even as your licking something neither chocolate nor vanilla but rather Chilla, as my girls and I call it.

Out here in rural America, even BLUE state rural America, you're once again reminded that the country is WAY white and WAY un-NYC, or as Todd from Bovina likes to say "I'd rather take a beating than spend an hour in New York," and btw he lives just three hours away. When you talk to people out here, up here, down there, you start to remember that most of America doesn't relate to the multi-culti progressive zeitgeist nor necessarily have much interest at all in the ways of the nation beyond immediate needs and concerns. Oh, people get worked up like they always have, but until the policies of State hit home, it's just so much hot air. It has always been thus - politics is always local, except on the Huffington Post (or as I like to call it "The Hourly Outrage," since that's about how often they update their absurdly huge headline). Since the founding of the Republic there's always been a sizable contingent that despises centralized national authority and can't fathom why they must pay for things they don't need out of their hard-earned (and sometimes not-so-hard-earned) dollars. Trust me you needn't argue against that line of thinking; I'm with you. It's just not hard to imagine the other side, that's all, when you're away from the dense urban group-think.

Now, as a card-carrying liberal-arts-cool-dad I wish that rural America DID care more about leveling the playing field not just at home but worldwide, since for some reason it was ingrained in me that to be a good citizen of the earth one must worry about famine across the sea and justice for folks who don't look or sound like me. But every once in awhile I'm reminded that the primary concern of every species is procreation and rearing of young, and once fed and clothed and sheltered you could probably be forgiven for thinking the rest is none of your goddamn business. This is a morally bereft legitimate way of looking at the world, and it's one of the reasons I'm surprised that DIY Libertarianism hasn't become a more major political force on its own, rather than being usurped by the GOP as part of its Confederacy of Dunces. To the "farmer stock" of my grandparents' era it wasn't even really an option to imagine otherwise; like the Ingalls fambly you set out on your own and worked hard and did with what you had. In a dire emergency you availed yourself of good ol' Christian charity. I recall my grandfather, a Republican from IL (which, I might add proudly was true of our greatest President) saying that the worst business that government can be in is the charity business, because it creates an unholy alliance between a political party and an underclass, one that can be manipulated at will by the wielding of carrots and sticks. I cede that very point to the man, though his world was pretty small and couldn't fathom the true depravity of a post-slavery post-industrial hyper-capitalist hyper-specialized mostly-urbanized mostly-demoralized society of wildly unequals.

From the Department of Duh it's worth remembering that the Wars and Great Depression changed America, and there was finally a political will to take action, BIG action, on a national scale, and to pay for it with taxes. Suddenly a wildly rich country, the U.S.A. could really pay for stuff like massive infrastructure projects and more generous welfare and even single payer healthcare for the poor and old, and progressives could now imagine a country with a solid judicial that could try to spread things more evenly and take care of its most vulnerable, and best of all (here's where my liberal heart turns cynical) create a reliable base of support for its ideology. I would argue that it was Democrats, not Republicans, who worked hardest to manipulate the electorate to their advantage. They had the brains and the media on their side, and from JFK to the assassination of Bobby and Martin it looked like nothing could stop them. The youth were digging it, some major churches were on board, the Vietnam War didn't help the conservative anti-commie cause, and Medicare and Medicaid helped ensure a base of support for progressive politics into the foreseeable future. And then...bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. An over-reach by the Left? Too much talk of revolution? Or just plain ol' fear striking the heart of the breadbasket? The country's lurch to the right started with Nixon and but for a brief hiccup caused by his paranoia, the rightward march held steady through the late '80s. The wars of these years set the stage for a new all-out negative political terrain that frankly wasn't that different from the old except in its 24-7 intensity. The energy and urgency on the Left had dissipated and the right was now promising something equal in sway to entitlements - tax cuts, unpaid for of course and with dramatic consequences to the national budget and the poor and to the rates of incarceration particularly against young men who were NEVER gonna vote for Republicans anyway.

And really when it gets down to it...aren't tax cuts and health care both entitlements, to appease the two bases? Were it not for those pesky problems of racial, ethnic and religious discrimination, well, it wouldn't be hard to fathom the need to argue those philosophic questions with civility and humility. We're being thrown bones really, to keep us in line, and it works astoundingly well for the wealthy who can hardly contain their glee when the revolution is put off for another generation.

The Trump phenomenon feels personal because that's how it's sold. You, dear liberal, are the enemy, and the current administration won't let you forget it. Your politics are elite and patronizing. You claim moral high-ground even as you take care of your own just as fiercely as any right-winger. You just do it while voicing the dying language of the Left, though there's not much revolution left in you. When you see people truly taking to the streets - whether Occupiers or Black Lives Matter or even the fiercest Bernie Bros, you feel a bit of glee but you don't join in. You're staring at your phone hoping things will go your way in the next news cycle, acknowledging but not participating, secretly hoping that things don't get TOO out of hand, because, after all, at your core, you are a Homo Sapien, a creature like any creature, primarily concerned with pro-creation, the procurement of food and shelter, and the safety and nurturing of your young. They might label you Entitled, and you might feel a pang of regret, but somewhere in your very skeleton your DNA is cheering.

You are a hairless ape with aspirations of grandeur. You are a hairy lizard making decisions based on fear. You are a hilarious mistake of evolution that might just extinguish your lineage in pursuit of what exactly? Art? Comfort? Power?

You are pathetic. And I love you, just as I'm pathetic and love myself to the degree I don't off myself, take pleasure in my young, and seek to illuminate not just my own struggle but the neighborhood, city, country and planet. There. That's all it is, dimly illuminated, with no coherent meaning or spiritual enlightenment to be gained, though you and I will vainly try like Sisyphus to achieve something, and even the greatest of you will descend like Icarus after touching the sun just enough to write a poem or song about it. And you might get a statue and a paragraph on the world wide digital magazine under History of the Human Race, but that sun will ultimately burn out your eyes and scorch your home and those wings were cheap plastic anyway.

To paraphrase this Post, as the Great Lorax once sayeth, UNLESS...






Monday, July 24, 2017

Litter Bro's

Whoa. Frat party? Really? That was the word from a Parks employee, describing the horrible mess inside the Parkside entrance to Prospect Park. According to a reliable Q reader, a party continued well 12am, and the "fraternity brothers" claimed to cops not to know that parties over 20 people need a permit, and that the Park officially closes at midnight. So rather than clean up and move on, it appears they merely skedaddled.

The Q grew up in a college town, and while frat boys have a deserved reputation for doing beer bong hits with grain alcohol and party rape (yes, an unfortunate term that succinctly defines the problem), we knew the frats to be fairly tidy, a small concession to my neighborhood given the boisterous all-night insanity. If I knew what chapter this was, if in fact it was a fraternity, I'd be shaming the hell out of them right now. Sigma Nu-isance if you ask me.

Animal House indeed.


Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Woman Has Psychotic Break: Daily News Leads With the Fact She Was Topless

The Q was called out for tastelessness in regards to his recent post about gang violence. And while I can take the criticism I just wanted to point out that it was intended as sarcasm. This time I'll just straight up tell you how I feel about the media's reporting of criminal behavior.

So you'll recognize this corner at Beekman, home to the long dormant Subway Hoagie Shoppe.

photo: Steven Rex Brown for Daily News

A woman has an episode of some kind - the result of what we do not know - and the headline from the Daily News reads:

Topless woman threatens to jump from Brooklyn building’s window before cops carry her off on stretcher

Under what circumstances is it okay to note that a disturbed woman doesn't have her shirt on? First, that's not a crime in NYC. Second, was she supposed to dress in a certain manner while losing her proverbial mind? Have some compassion folks! Thankfully no one was hurt. Damn. I hope her family didn't read that insensitive shit.

Friday, July 14, 2017

Don't Mess With Bicycle Riders

Shooting on Parkside near Parade Grounds.

2 Men in Car Shot by Cyclists Near Prospect Park, NYPD Says

Were these "cyclists" part of the alleged broader left-wing conspiracy to shut down our roadways like the recent closing of Prospect Park to ALL motorists? Read about that here.

Next time I see a pack of wanna-be Lance Armstrongs barrelling down the loop road in the Park I'll be sure to remember it's not all bike lanes and traffic calming for these guys. Sometimes these Testosterone-ays are packin', and I'm not talking about GORP in their panniers!

Actually, there's a website called AltRider that sells - bicycle panniers with holsters for your guns. I shit you not.  http://www.altrider.com/altrider-hemisphere-waterproof-soft-panniers/pid/1527

Here on my block a young man riding a bike shot and missed his target by a longshot, killing a bystander in front of her young son. There are so many things messed up about that and it still haunts me. On a bike, like it was a Western on a horse, or something like that. Easy getaway? Effing nuts.




Thursday, July 13, 2017

Council Forum - Everyone In One Place! Saturday


A Hearty Thanks Due To You

Anyone notice lately what an absolute tear the Liberal Fake News have been on as of late? Whoa! I know that we're supposed to believe there's no "deep state" or "bias." But c'mon now. Let's be honest. Don't tell me the NY Times, CNN, NBC, Google, Daily Beast wouldn't LOVE to take down these MoFo's and gather a few Pulitzers along the way?

It's called the 4th Estate. It's made up of mostly smart, patriotic, elitist and earnest folks, many, many of whom live in the neighborhood. (See. There's ALWAYS a link to Lefferts in a Q Post. Always. This morning I just thanked an NPR Correspondent for his conspiracy's good work on the country's behalf, at the B41 stop no less.)

Love this picture below. Says it all. And I don't deny it, not for a second.

Viva La Republic. There's still so much work to do. Go get 'em guys and gals! We got yer back in the upcoming elections.






Monday, July 10, 2017

Too Horrible For Headlines

Was going to make a play of words on headlines but thought better of it. Awful. Woman hit by bus on Nostrand, possible suicide. Decapitation? Not sure how that happens, but this is really horrible. No need for comment. Life, death, MTA.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/woman-decapitated-throwing-brooklyn-mta-bus-article-1.3311731


Sunday, July 9, 2017

Changes and Sames

Not a Tiki Bar, as previously reported by some fleabit rag
There it is folks. The Q's first attempt at creating a "boomerang" GIF. Just wanted to make sure you captured a bit of the bling comin' atcha from the space next to Peppa's famous jerk chicken at 736 Flatbush Avenue, what WAS Closeout Heaven that moved down the 'Bush a piece and seems not to have retained its former glory. Though there's more space in Closeout's new space, it no longer feels like a third world bazaar, and thus it doesn't speak to me and my zeal for bargaining quite as much. Still, if you need a few dozen dented cases of Capri Sun and mini bottled waters it's hard to beat. Is $49.95 a good price for a weave? Hell yeah. Maybe TOO good. And with the wildly gorgeous advertising vehicle parked outside I'm wondering if they do house calls? Let's hope this isn't the beginning of an all-out weave-war...it could get ugly out on the Flabenue, hair flying everywhere like so much tumbleweed at the O.K. corral.

So no Tiki Bar. I'm starting to think I was had! Who would do such a thing to the Q? Actually I know just who! You better write me a mai tai mea culpa to boot!

From eagle-eyed Jacob G comes word that the building on the southeast corner of Flatbush/Parkside - the one that had the killer "everything" store that included driving lessons AND notary public and now you can clearly see the old word "photostat" from the old sign now that they took the more recent one down that still had a lot of outdated language about faxes and copies - wait, what was the subject of that sentence? Oh yeah, the building won't be torn down, but rather built up at least another story, or "penthouse" as it says in the filings. Look for "luxury" rentals and new commercial tenants in a year or two. Here's the deets:
"ENLARGEMENT OF EXISTING 3 STORY MIXED USE 2 DWELLING & 2 COMMERCIAL INTO 4 STORY & PENTHOUSE 8 DWELLING AND 1 COMMERCIAL BUILDING."
There are some busy beavers (not weavers) working at the old Play Kids spot that was Shelly Linen before that, which of course is hilarious because recently moved Play Kids is owned by Shelley (and hubby Carl) but it's too soon to say whether a Shelley or Shelly will be involved in this new venture which word on the street says is coming at you from folks who own Parkside Pizza, so I guess we could probably rule out pizza place. We're talking the corner shop at 676, for those who need to punch digits into the map app.

Like most of America's children, mine love the musical Hamilton, and today I landed a copy of a copy of a bootleg DVD of the show, from back when Lin was still in the cast. You know the kind, where someone sneaks a mini camera into the theater and somehow manages to hold fairly steady throughout. But as much as I find the $500 and up prices of the musical about Democracy on Stubhub obnoxious, I feel almost worse watching this ill-gotten version. It's one thing to complain about highway robbery, quite another to commit it. There's a terrific adage in that. Actually, I think that IS it. Put in a different font and bolded, it goes:

It's one thing to complain about highway robbery, quite another to commit to it.




I have no idea when and whether that phrase will come in handy again, but I do think it could easily be applied to political policy-making back in 1789 right up to the current moment. As for the opportunity to create a verbal meme, I'm not throwin' away my shot. I'm just like a snuggly I'm warm, fluffy and huggly and I'm not blowin' away my...snot! (that worked with the kids for about 30 seconds tops. If you don't know the soundtrack and therefore that reference by heart yet, you will, yes, you will. It's basically this generation's Sound of Music.)


Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Um...

This is the part where I ask you, gentle readers, to identify what might be ill-advised about this fundraiser for one of the four primary challengers to Councilman Eugene. As a fundraiser by day myself, and someone who very much respects work on behalf of indigent clients, I feel I must disqualify myself from critique, no matter how glaring. Anyone want to chime in? Free beef patty from Jamaican Pride for the first correct response. (or veggie if you're vegetarian; chicken if you're Hindu; gluten-free slice of toast without butter available as substitution.)