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The Coastal Defense of Brooklyn: A Brief History

Mar 7th, 2010 by Caz Dolowicz

“My brother’s in the Coast Guard,” Lee told him. “That’s why we’re here. He’s stationed in Ellis Island. Port security it’s called.”

“My brother’s in Korea now.”

“My other brother’s in the Marines. They might send him to Korea. That’s what I’m worried about.”

“It’s not the Koreans you have to worry about,” Nicky Black said. “It’s the fucking Chinese.”
—Don Delillo, Libra

***

“Brothers, push these bandits over and tie them up. We’ll tell them to confess, to see if they are thieves or experienced bandits.”

“But we have no ropes!” said Sha Monk. Pilgrim pulled off some hairs and blew his immortal breath on them. At once they changed into some thirty ropes. All the brothers worked together: they pushed over the bandits and hog-tied them. Then Pilgrim recited the spell of release, and the bandits gradually regained consciousness.

Pilgrim asked the T’ang monk to take a seat above them before the three brothers, each holding his weapon, and shouting at the thieves, “Clumsy thieves, how many of you are there altogether? For how many years have you engaged in this business? How much stuff have you plundered? Have you killed anyone? Is this the first transgression? The second? Or the third?”

“Fathers, please spare our lives,” the thieves cried.

“Don’t yell!” said Pilgrim. “Make an honest confession.”

“Venerable Father,” said the thieves, “we are not accustomed to thievery, for we all sons of the good families. Because we are stupid enough to drink, gamble, and sleep with prostitutes, we have completely squandered our inheritances and properties. We have neither abilities nor money for our livelihood.”
—Journey To The West, translated by Anthony C. Yu

***

You recall our previous dealings, of course? You handled my Uncle Maurice’s will back in ‘81. We fought side by side against Bobbie and Maxine, my psycho aunts. But then, after the big victory, Mum and me had to wait nearly a year to get the house!! You said the same thing then: ’slow process,’ ‘have patience,’ blah blah, but of course what you’re really saying is ‘Hey Prendergast, we want a piece of the action.’ All right, Mr. Reynolds. IF you can guarantee to get the bulk of the green to me safe and sound ASAP you can take your cut. Within reason. If any only if. Fair? In the meantime what I need from you is an immeditate cash fuel inection, maybe 4 or 5 grand. Something to tide my over till my ship coms in. I have to tell you my current financial situation is nothing short of desperate. My savings are nonexistent. A pack of fags over here costs an arm and a leg. Because I’m perpetually BROKE and IN DEBT I’ve had to let a number of VERY IMPORTANT ARTISTIC PROJECTS rind to a halt.”
—Meredith Brosnan, Mr. Dynamite

***

Diomedes frowned and looked at him and said:

“As I see it, you need not hold this thought
of slipping through our hands, now you are in them,
accurate though your facts may be. Suppose
we let you go, or let you go for ransom?
Later, by god, you’ll come down on the ships
to spy again, or to make open war!
Resign your life at my hands.
You make no further trouble for the Argives.”

Even as he spoke, the man leaned forward, reaching
to touch his chin, beseeching; but he brought his sword-blade
in a flash down on the nape
and severed the two tendons. In the dust
the head of the still crying man was muffled.
Now they pulled off his cap of weasel skin,
his grey-wolf jacket, javelin and bow,
and Lord Odysseus held these trophies high
to Athena, Hope of Soldiers.
—The Iliad, translation by Robert Fitzgerald

***

Tony took the lump of money from his pocket and they counted it. Not bad eh, Tral? 250 clams. Yeah. How about giving me 50 now. What for? You aint going no where now. She shrugged and they went to bed. The next afternoon they went to the Greeks for coffee and two detectives came in and told them to come outside. They searched them, took the money from their pockets and pushed them into their car. The detectives waved the money in front of their faces and shook their heads. Dont you know better than to knock over a bookie drop? Huh? Huh, huh! Real clever arent you.
—Hubert Selby, Jr, Last Exit To Brooklyn

***

Brian Berger’s HiLoBrow.com tribute to Harry Belafonte appeared on Mr. Belafonte’s birthday, March 1. Robert Ryan, one of my favorite actors, was in fact a leftist and staunch champion of civil rights; his role as Harry Belafonte’s reluctant partner in Odds Against Tomorrow must be seen in that light. — Caz Dolowicz

Posted in All-City, Bay Ridge, Coffee, Coney Island, Crime, Flicks, Irish, Jazz, Literature, Manhattan, Music, Poetry, Religion, Sex, Sunset Park, Transportation, labor, politics | No Comments »

Graciously Sands Street, Howling

Feb 26th, 2010 by Kenny Wisdom

The gods were seated near to Zeus in council
upon a golden floor. Graciously Hebe
served them nectar, as with cups of gold
they toasted one another, looking down
toward the stronghold of Ilium.
— The Iliad by Homer, translated by Robert Fitzgerald

‘Don’t bother to heat the wine for me,’ said Bao-yu. ‘I prefer it cold.’

‘Good gracious, that will never do,’ said Aunt Xue. ‘You musn’t drink wine cold, or when you write your hand will shake!’

‘I’m surprised at you, Cousin Bao!’ said Bao-chi, with a smile. ‘With all your enthusiasm for out-of-the-way learning, fancy not knowing this! Wine has an exceptionally fiery nature, and therefore must be drunk warm in order to be digested. If it is drunk cold, it congeals inside the body and harms it by absorbing heat from the internal organs. From this day on you must reform! No more cold wine!’
— The Story Of The Stone by Cao Xuequn, translated by David Hawkes

MURRAY WAS HOWLING DRUNK

Mr. Hugh Murray, residing on Washington street, was howling drunk in front of the bridge at 8:15 o’clock last evening. He was also cheering. Policeman Donnelly told him to stop and he hit the officer in the mouth. Judge Walsh this morning sentenced Murray to pay a fine of $10 or go to jail for ten days on the charge of disorderly conduct, and will give him a hearing later on a charge of assault.
— Brooklyn Eagle, December 27, 1888

“Abrubtly, and with oblique intent to ruffle,” (again, The Iliad) Brian Berger’s enthusiasm for what Hugh Murray might have called “get the fuck out of my way learning”  has twice more revealed itself at hilobrow.com, this time in the warming forms of Gene Pitney and Anaïs Nin. What the …? As it was sung, nessuno mi può giudicare! — Kenny Wisdom

Posted in Chinatown, Crime, Downtown, Literature, Music, Our Italian Friends, Sex, South Brooklyn, Vinegar Hill | No Comments »

Brooklyn Chinatown: The Inside Story

Feb 19th, 2010 by Kenny Wisdom

Thereupon, the maidservants were instructed to reset the table and an elaborate spread of meat and vegetable dishes, along with other dainties of every kind, which had been prepared in anticipation of Hsi-men Ch’ing’s return, was laid before them. Sister-in-law Wu, sensing that the time had come to take flight, asserted that she did not wish to have any more wine and withdrew to Li Chiao-erh’s quarters to get out of the way.

Thereupon, Li P’ing-erh was seated in the place of honor, Hsi-men Ch’ing drew up a chair across from her and assumed the role of host, Wu Yueh-niang sat on the k’ang with her feet on the frame of the brazier, and Meng Yü-lou and P’an Chin-lien sat down at the other two sides of the table. As soon as the five of them had taken their places they started to decant the wine. They didn’t use small cups either, but called for large goblets of chased silver.

It was a case of:

First a cup for you,
Then a cup for me.

As the saying goes:

Romantic affairs are consummated over tea, and
Wine is the go-between of lust.

As the cups passed back and forth, the woman continued to drink until:

Her painted eyebrows dropped low, and
Amorous glances escaped the corners of her eyes.

Truly:

A pair of peach blossoms bloomed upon her cheeks.
Her brows and eyes proclaiming her a wanton wench.

When Yüeh-niang saw that the two of them were:

As stuck on one another as sugar candy,

and that:

The conversation was becoming rather risque,

she found it so offensive that she withdrew to her own room and sent for her sister-in-law to keep her company, leaving the other three to entertain their guest.

They continued drinking until the third watch. By that time Li P’ing-erh’s:

Starry eyes were all a blur.

Hardly able to stand on her own legs, she asked Chin-lien to accompany he to the bathroom in the rear of the compound.
Hsi-men Ch’ing, too, was:

Swaying to the east and tumbling to the west…

—from The Plum In The Golden Vase or, Chin P’Ing Mei, Volume One: The Gathering, translated by David Tod Roy (Princeton University Press, 1993)

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Kenny Wisdom adds: I’ve not been able to reproduce the orthography exactly as it appers in the late Professor Roy’s rendering but rest assured, his work— both the translation itself and ample, fascinating notes— is beyond astounding. Any and all Chin P’ing Mei enthusiasts are encouraged to “get in touch” as it were— and as it will be.

Also, the great Irish emigre writer, Meredith Brosnan, author of Mr. Dynamite and subject of Brian Berger’s now legendary Meredith Brosnan: Man & Pookah sent along a link to the UK Guardian obituary for David Hawkes, the beloved Sinologist and translator of Cao Xuquen’s Dream Of The Red Chamber (or The Story of the Stone). The original Indiana University hardcovers of Hawkes’ work are maddeningly rare but there are Penguin paperbacks available too, thankfully. How does Meredith know about David Hawkes and why didn’t Berger ask him about this before? Perhaps, as Grannie Liu cackled, “Important people have short memories”?

Photograph, “Caz Dolowicz Says Hoot Important?!” by Amber Tides, courtesy of the artist.

Posted in All-City, Chinatown, Coffee, Crime, Irish, Literature, Manhattan, Music, Sex | No Comments »

Sidney Shapiro of Brooklyn– WHOA!

Feb 11th, 2010 by Kenny Wisdom

Ya’ll know the four great classic Chinese novels, right? Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Journey To The West and Dream of the Red Chamber. We’ll discuss translations and swap drunken monk stories another post but one translator of Water Margin— also known as Outlaws of the Marsh— is one Sidney Shapiro (b. 1915), a Brooklyn born and raised resident in China since… 1949?!

On January 31 1949, when the People’s Liberation Army came marching into Beijing – heralding the imminent demise of Chiang Kai-shek’s Guomindang regime in mainland China – Sidney Shapiro, a bespectacled 33-year-old lawyer from Brooklyn, New York, rode his bicycle up to Xizhimen, the city’s north-west gate, to take a look at the soldiers.

There, he remembered years later, he saw a parade of “clean, smartly stepping, smiling young men” being welcomed by cheering crowds, and a line of American-made vehicles that the Communists had captured from Guomindang forces. Shapiro, who had spent the last year and a half in China but had been in Beijing for only a couple of months, was enchanted. “Parents held their kids higher on their shoulders for a better view,” he later wrote. “The streets were gay with flags and bunting.” The Mao era had arrived.

Journalist Michael Donohoe tells the rest of the story “The Expatriate,” published in the United Arab Emirates-based The National. I am, if briefly, flabbergasted.

For further reading, which I strongly encourage, see Kenneth Rexroth’s essays on Dream of The Red Chamber and “The Classic Chinese Novel In Translation: The Art of Magnaminity”.

The Amazon reviews of Sidney Shapiro’s Outlaws Of The Marsh translation are themselves entertaining.

Wu Tang! Wu Tang!

Posted in All-City, Carroll Gardens, Chinatown, Coffee, Coney Island, Crime, Dial J For Jewish, Literature, Sex, South Brooklyn, hip-hop, politics | 1 Comment »

Empire Boulevard Building

Feb 2nd, 2010 by Kenny Wisdom

Three things about Empire Boulevard (there are more)*: First, what’s beef? In 1989, graffiti writer JA wilding on SONI’s house as recounted in Jim Dwyer’s excellent book Subway Lives (1991): JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA. And so on. This really happened and it didn’t end there. Second, a decade earlier, there was the so-called Empire Boulevard Operation, which pitted the FBI against a massive Brooklyn-based stolen car ring helmed by fearsome Gambino crime family member, Roy DeMeo. Also a prolific hit man who often butchered his victims to make them disappear, DeMeo ran his crew out of a bar, the Gemini Lounge at Flatlands and Troy. Sometimes the Gemini Lounge had music; can ya’ll imagine the bands who played there in late 1970s Brooklyn? Third, many BK folks– myself included– still hear the throb of hip-hop, disco, funk, dancehall and other musics at the late, still lamented Empire Roller Skating Center. Just picture then 60-year-old Caz Dolowicz rolling the Empire with his Grenadian girlfriend and Michael’s “Billie Jean,” Run-DMC “It’s Like That” or even Lionel Richie’s “All Night Long” comes on the system: don’t front, you were there too! Or should wish you were.

Speaking of empires, my most esteemed colleagues, Dallas Penn and Combat Jack, in addition to holding down their own internets, are both now writing for ihiphop.com also. I’m not super familiar with the site but I follow dudes so… Most recently, CJ wonders where Michael Jackson bought those white kids and Dallas ponders the skills, and hype of Jay Electronica. I’ve not heard enough JE to really have an opinion though his beat for Nas’ “Queens Get The Money” made me take musical notice. Not wanting to get left too far behind, WWIB’s very own Brian Berger has been writing for the estimable HiLoBrow.com, where “middlebrow is not the solution.” Preach! Berger’s pieces to date include:

* writers James Joyce and Richard Brautigan

* bluesman Elmore James and country-star-turned-icon Dolly Parton

* Brooklyn-raised jazz great, activist and educator Max Roach, Boys High School Class of 1942 and so much more.

If Max were alive, I bet he could say some things about Crispus Attucks, whose more than just  the name of  a small park at Fulton and Classon, as I bet Dallas and CJ will remind folks for Black History Month. Me? I’ll be reading, whether or not Sharp Eye Washington gets my wallet back or not; I hope to hell  he does. — Kenny Wisdom

* There’s always more: take a ride on Kevin Walsh’s Forgotten New York Franklin Avenue Shuttle for starters.

Posted in All-City, Bed-Stuy, Canarsie, Clinton Hill, Crime, Crown Heights, Flatbush, Flatlands, Irish, Jazz, Literature, Manhattan, Music, New Lots, Our Italian Friends, Sex, Subways, Weeksville, West Indian, graffiti, hip-hop, labor, politics | 1 Comment »

St Mark’s Avenue Property Report

Jan 26th, 2010 by Kenny Wisdom

Boys, 9 and 10 Years Old, Are Arrested as Burglars

Police Accuse Them of Stealing Jewelry Worth $500 From Brooklyn Dwelling

Two of the youngest burglary suspects wih whom Broolyn police ever had to deal were arrested yesterday and charged with entering the home of John Bliss, at 935 St. Mark’s Avenue.

The first prisoner charged with the robbery was named Edward J. (”Red”) Gardner, nine years old, of 955 St. Mark’s Avenue. He made a defense that baffled detectives who questioned him, until they accused him of having robbed a child’s toy bank. This he indignantly denied, and named Earl Jeffs, ten years old, of 953 St Mark’s Avenue, as the looter of the bank.

The loot collected by the boys included a gold watch and chain, two lavallieres and a gold cigarette case, valued in all at $500. It was recovered in the cellar of “Red’s” home. — New York Herald Tribune, July 10, 1921

Kenny Wisdom forgot his mantra, so he am a shut up.

Posted in Bed-Stuy, Bensonhurst, Crime, Park Slope, Poetry, Prospect Heights, politics | 1 Comment »

Toni Schlesinger & Willa Cather: Women Beware!

Jan 19th, 2010 by Caz Dolowicz

The arrangements on the second— and top— floor at 37-57 82d Street were little, if any, short of ideal. The offices of Dr. Harold Schwartz, a chiropodist, occupied the front of the modest structure a block off Roosevelt Avenue in the heart of Jackson Heights, a prosperous middle-class residential district in New York City’s borough of Queens.  Adjoining his quarters was the small, windowless room in which petite, pretty, redheaded Marie Mae Gazzo gave electrolysis treatments, through which the roots of unwanted hair are surgically destroyed by use of an electric current. In this room, and the two behind it, was to take place one of the most savage and baffling double slayings in the history of the metropolis. — Steve Lennon, Detective Cases, August 1956

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Petite, pretty redheaded* Toni Schlesinger will give four of the most savage and baffling performances in the history of  metropolitan theater  soon. Finger your rosary beads, brother, and pick yourself up off the floor; a bunch of stand-up dames will be there, you want to make a good impression. See “When The World Broke In Two— A Visit With Willa Cather” at the Metropolitan Playhouse

Jan 22 – Friday, 7 pm
Jan 23 – Saturday, 4 pm (please note the afternoon time)
(no Sunday, Jan 24 performance)
Jan 25, Monday, 7pm
Jan 26, Tues, 7 pm

* I’m guessing; in fact, I’ve never seen Toni without a hat, usually a pearl gray homburg, and the few times I believe we met, she only used her code name, “Vic”; short for Victrola? Toni looks pretty tall too, but that’s part of her disguise.

Dolly Parton of Locust Ridge, Tennesee, then Nashville, once made records for RCA Victrola. In the early years, some of them were quite excellent. Brian Berger explains, at hilobrow.com, tell ‘em old Caz sent you. — Caz Dolowicz


Caz Dolowicz knows how much you loved him, mama, and was born on Sands Street in 1923. Soon he’ll be swimming in the Gulf of Mexico with photographer Amber Tides and assorted pearl gray dolphins.

Posted in Crime, Literature, Manhattan, Music, Navy Yard, Queens, Sex, South Brooklyn, Southern Thing, Wild Kingdom, politics | No Comments »

Max Roach, of Brooklyn: Younger Than Yesterday

Jan 11th, 2010 by Kenny Wisdom

Have you ever been to Hawaii? I mean Hawaii— or Hawai’i— “the big island,” as they say, because Hilo is there, although Magnum lived on Oahu, and the University of Hawaii  Press is there too, in Honolulu. I’m not sure where Hawaiian punk/noise band the Fuckin’ Flyin’ A Heads came from; neither of the two books I have at hand from or about Hawaii, Peipei Qui’s Basho and The Day: The Zhuangzi and the Transformation of Haikai (U of Hawaii Press, 2005) and The Journals of Captain Cook mention them at all. If I was online, I’d probably check the Hawaii Punk Museum but since I’m actually dictating this post to Caz from the bus station in Dubuque, Iowa (don’t ask, except White Man’s Ice Is Colder indeed, brrrrr), I can’t say for sure. Likewise, it’s unclear to me why Brian Berger recently wrote about Max Roach for a website called HiLoBrow, because we all know Max was from Bed-Stuy (word to Boys High) via a brief stay in coastal Pasqoutank County, North Carolina. Choppin’ cotton don’t be slow— better finish out your row! — Kenny Wisdom

Kenny Wisdom can’t rhyme like Oscar Brown Jr.— very few folks can. When not freezing his ass off in the Great Midwest, he lives in Flatbush, nevertheless.

Posted in Africa Talks, All-City, Bed-Stuy, Crown Heights, Flatbush, Jazz, Literature, Manhattan, Music, Southern Thing, Transportation, labor, politics | No Comments »

The Schlesinger Swindle: Big Money, Easy Dames

Jan 9th, 2010 by Kenny Wisdom

SchlesingerSwindle-WWIB

On February 15, 1956, the social spotlight flashed into General Sessions Court where a habitue of Bank Account Alley appeared before Judge John A. Mullen and pleaded guilty to two counts covering a $170,000 swindle. Originally, playboy Robert H. Schlesinger had been charged with eight counts totaling $330,00 gained by his fraud.  Schlesinger is Park Avenue with a gilt-edged P. His mother, now married to Count Albert Edward Bismarck, is known as one of the world’s best-dressed women— and the sole owner of some 12 million dollars. Who wouldn’t listen to the business propositions of a man with that much cash backing?

Schlesinger’s proposition was oil— Louisiana oil that admittedly was never in the ground. He sold three businessmen that is was, however, simply by confiding that his very mother was putting up a million bucks to get the oily ball rolling. What moneys the convinced trio chipped in, Schlesinger scattered casually about the swank chophouses and dance clubs that cater to the social register tipplers. Along the way he draped $132,000 worth of gems upon the gorgeous personage of motion picture actress Linda Christian. The oil field was flowing, all right, but gushing from the lips of Schlesinger, not the alleged Louisiana oil fields. There had been, of course, no million dollar investment by Schlesinger’s mother. — from “Park Avenue Unveiled!” by Nelson Claymore, Police Dragnet Cases, July 1956

Toni Schlesinger is almost too desirable to be real. Her forthcoming play, “When The World Broke In Two— A Visit With Willa Cather,” written perhaps for Louisiana oil money (but probably not), proves it. Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea and see for yourself at the Metropolitan Playhouse on January 22, 23, 24 or 25. Bring your mom, bring Linda Christian (is still alive and  hopefully well in Mexico), bring  Uncle Vanya too!— Kenny Wisdom

WWIB Fiction Editor Kenny Wisdom, once a playwright, is the author of Iphighenie auf Brownsville, after both Goethe and Aeschylus, numerous other dramatic works, and one musical, The Devil’s Hand Went Down To Georgia. He lives with his partner, the composer Dorothy Arnold, in Flatbush, and Treasure Island, Florida.

Posted in Brownsville, Crime, Flatbush, Latino, Literature, Manhattan, Religion, Sex | 1 Comment »

Cara Williams: A Brooklyn Sex Bomb Remembered

Dec 31st, 2009 by Caz Dolowicz

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Cara Williams: The Redhead Hollywood Can’t Handle

Meet a beauty with a whim of iron

Two of best actresses in Hollywood are Brooklyn-born redheads with tempers as fiery as their hair. One of them, Oscar-winning Susan Hayward, learned to control her emotional explosions and became rich and famous as a result.

The other, Cara Williams, is equally talented and equally beautiful. She might easily have become a reigning queen like Susan. Only Cara is a sex bomb with an awfully short fuse.

“Why do I flare up?” Cara asks, repeating an interviewer’s question. “I don’t know. It’s my natural reaction when someone rubs me the wrong way. I wish I had a nickel for every fight I’ve had since I came to Hollywood 17 years ago. Then I could retire.”

In an industry here girls are taught never to say no to a producer or director, the INSIDE STORY is that Cara is definitely unique. She has walked out on some of the mightiest movie moguls— and on parts that other actresses would have swapped body and soul to obtain.

Now 32, she has battled her way through two stormy marriages and scores of verbal duels with the top guns of Movieland. Because she never pulls punches, most Hollywood rahjahs would rather tangle with a tarantula than risk Cara’s wrath. Consequently, they reserve the choicest roles for dolls who are easier to handle.

“Cara would be a top star,” a famous director says, “If only she’d learn to button her lip.”

She inherited her flaming hair and disposition to match from her father, a newspaperman on the old Brooklyn Eagle. Her dad wrote a column on marriage and family life— but didn’t take his own advice. When Cara was a baby, her parents separated.

Her mother Florence Williams, obtained a job as manicurist in a barber shop next to Brooklyn’s famous Albee Theater. The theater manager and his wife were crazy about the pretty tot and frequently served as baby sitters while Flo was at work.

They would sometimes tie Cara to a seat in the back row of the movie house and leave her to watch the flicks. She learned to recognize all the famous movie stars almost before she could walk or talk.

Her favorite game was imitating the actors and the actresses she saw on the screen. By the time she had reached kindergarten, she was an expert mimic and her impersonations were the talk of the neighborhood.

“Cara would only have to see an actress once,” a Brooklyn neighbor recalls, “and she would have her voice and mannerisms down pat. If you closed your eyes during one of Cara’s acts, you would swear it was the actress herself talking.”

Flo wrote a Hollywood columnist about Cara’s talent. She asked for advice on whether she should try to get the little girl into the movies. The columnist replied with three little words: “Stay in Brooklyn.”
—from “Cara Williams: The Redhead Hollywood Can’t Handle,” by Ernest Frankheimer, INSIDE STORY, November 1961

Caz Dolowicz was born on Sands Street in 1923 and first saw The Ox-Bow Incident with Henry Morgan and others at the Albee Theater in 1943. More than anything in October 1961, fresh off his second divorce, Caz wanted to play horsey with Pete and Gladys.

Posted in All-City, Boerum Hill, Crime, Downtown, Flicks, Fort Greene, Literature, Navy Yard, Sex, labor | 1 Comment »

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