Who Walk In Brooklyn

Caz Dolowicz looks forward it: Ya’ll know Old Timer’s Day, right? Right?! Well, maybe you have to be an old-timer to care, since it seems approximately none of the other news sources with the ancient South Brooklyn name of Gowanus within their purview have ever noticed. The divides— chasms, really— of class, culture & ethnicity aren’t breaking stories but they do seem to have become more exaggerated in recent years. Still, it is curious, isn’t it, that a decades-long institution like Gowanus Old Timer’s Day could be so overlooked. On August 20th, 2006, Jennifer Bleyer did an estimable job reporting about Red Hook Old Timer’s Day for the New York Times. It’s hardly everything but… what is? The Music Director did “A Red Hook House Party?” last month but neglected Shabazz The Disciple’s earlier Columbia & Lorraine St anthem, “Red Hook Day,” first released as a 12 inch single back in 2003. I’m not a huge fan of chipmunk choruses— I’m more a Beach Boys fan* myself— but hey… hey! This just in: The Publisher, gesturing wildly in a Gowanus Old-Timer’s Day t-shirt; Norman Oder of Atlantic Yards Report getting his lens game on that night at the New York Public Library. Click on the photo & there it is: August 12, 2006. That’s just too funny. What Kung-Fu style is that anyway, kid?! The 37th Gowanus Old-Timer’s Day will be held this year on August 9th from noon to 8:30 p.m. at Nicholas Heyward Jr. Memorial Park, Wyckoff between Hoyt & Bond.

* She came from Bond Street & arrived at Surf Avenue & West 5th via unknown means of conveyance, although the F to the B is likely. Why? The other Brian, as in John Cale’s “Mr. Wilson,” live at Asser Levy Park. Over & over the crow flies uncover the cornfield? At least! Does she have video? Thank the ghost of Murray Wilson, she does. I’ll be candid: The Music Director fucked this one up, big time. Thankfully unafraid of a what a dude will do in a town full of “Heroes & Villians,” Lisanne McTernan, of Found In Brooklyn did not. — Brian Berger (aka The Publisher)

Caz Dolowicz was born on Sands Street in 1923. A retired New York City Transit Authority Tower Operator, he lives his wife & two cats— one grey, one orange— in Bay Ridge. He does not want your peas, your rice, your coconut oil, nor all arrogance of earthen riches but clean mono copies of Beach Boys Today! & Summer Days and (Summer Nights!!)— those he’ll take. Thanks!!!

“By the turn of the century, Fort Greene entered into a new stage of development. The real estate maps reveal a change in the type of building going on, as they show brownstones giving way to multi-story and commercial structures. As early as 1893 the Hotel San Carlos at 69 South Oxford Street appears on the map. This seems to have been around the turn of the century torn down and replaced by the Roanoke, which the Brooklyn Daily Eagle called “the first of its kind on ‘The Hill,’” and showed that the “The Hill section promises to divide with the Heights section the building of apartment houses… The building will equal the finest apartment houses in Manhattan.” The Brooklyn Academy of Music was built in 1906, the Masonic Temple in 1909 and the YMCA in 1915. By 1929 we find stores and apartment houses interspersed with private homes.

The population, too, was changing. We find an increasing number of blacks in Census Tract 179, bounded by Greene, Clermont, Atlantic and South Portland. In 1910 blacks comprised 27% of the population in the tract; in 1920, 48%; in 1940, 55%. In 1930 other census tracts, such as 181, bounded by DeKalb, Clermont, Greene and South Portland were 1% blacks. There is a high degree of segregation occurring.”

—Proposal For The Designation of Fort Greene As An Historic District (1973) by Albert Fein, Lois Gilman & Donald Simon

The Music Director adds: It’s a tough call but it seems likely the best Brooklyn hip-hop album of the summer is T.H.U.G. Angelz Welcome To Red Hook Houses, just out on Babygrande. A review is forthcoming but huge props to Hell Razah & Shabazz, the latter of whom has especially been deserving of a lot more attention; ya’ll will never think of Smith & 9th Street the same again. Play it back-to-back with Immortal Technique’s new one, The 3rd World & try not going on an All-City rampage— it can’t be done. Meanwhile, let that Brooknam rhythm & rage out the cage: “BK All Day,” blogga, courtesy the Boot Camp Clik. (Where did all these black folks come from? Oh my god, danger!)

“Little is known about Fort Greene’s first black population. There must have been blacks in this vicinity as early as 1847, when Colored School #1 was built. Seth Scheiner in Negro Mecca: A History of the Negro in New York, 1865-1920 writes that by 1860 the black population of Brooklyn was concentrated in two communities, with 53.3% living in the Borough Hall/Fort Greene area. From 1873 until about the turn of the century, there was the Nazarene (”colored, Congregational”) Church in various locations along Fulton Avenue. By 1890, according to Scheiner, the large majority of Brooklyn’s black population lived south and east along Atlantic Avenue, beginning around Fort Greene.

But the presence of blacks in the neighborhood did not mean that Fort Greene was integrated. There were separate schools for blacks and for whites. This separation of the races is graphically illustrated by an incident which occurred on Fort Greene Place in 1894. Mr. Hiram S. Thomas, a wealthy Negro from upstate, purchased a house on ‘that artistocratic thoroughfare.’ His neighbors immediately formed a tenant’s association to block his move. Mrs. Emma Onderdonk, the first woman doctor in Brooklyn, spoke for her neighbors: ‘[the] fact that Mr. Thomas was living in the neighborhood would depreciate the value of property’ and Mr. Thomas ‘ought to remain out of Fort Greene Place.’ Although blacks lived in Fort Greene, it would seem they formed a separate community with strict lines of demarcation drawn between them and the whites.”

—Proposal For The Designation of Fort Greene As An Historic District (1973) by Albert Fein, Lois Gilman & Donald Simon

The Music Director adds: Hey, have ya’ll seen any new articles on the closing of Record Express downtown on Fulton? Hook a Music Director up if so & just for kicks, or a taste of acuity, it might be instructive to see just who noted the closure of Beat Street downtown, & when. “Funny,” isn’t it, what gets noticed, huh? We usually don’t give a shit about what happens below 116th Street in Manhattan anymore but the closing of the Fulton Street Strand is a drag for readers, authors, publishers, tourists, local workers— everybody, really. It seems especially ridiculous considering all the hype in recent years about downtown living but hey, there’s always goddamn Starbucks. Rhetorical question: How often did Bloomberg ever go to the Strand? (Does he even know its there?)

Drunk on Albemarle. Drunk on Bond Street. Drunk on Cortelyou. Drunk in Ditmas Park. Drunk on Evergreen— Bushwick stand up! Drunk on Force Tube. Drunk in Gravesend. Drunk on Hinsdale. Drunk on India Street. Drunk on Jamaica Ave. Drunk in Kensington (they will get the services their property values demand). Drunk on Avenue L (the heart of Canarsie). Drunk on Mother Gaston Boulevard. Drunk on Neptune. Drunk on Old Mill Road. Drunk on Pitkin. Drunk on Quentin Road. Drunk on Rockaway Ave. Drunk at Sunnyside Avenue and Sunnyside Court. Drunk on Ten Eyck. Drunk on Utica. Drunk in Vinegar Hill. Drunk on Wortman. Drunk on Avenue X. Drunk in Yellow Hook. Drunk with Zyczymy Smacznego? Agape!

I’m just the Music Director around here but a literary item caught my eye when Norman Oder at Atlantic Yards Report reviewed Marc Eliot’s Song of Brooklyn, which oral history Brian Berger is a part of. As I heard the story, Berger blathered with the one-time Phil Ochs biographer for about an hour, mostly about the literary Brooklyn trope—he’s not a fan, mostly, with some very important exceptions—but also about the literary qualities of Brooklyn hip-hop, which I thought was a good catch. Could it be that most of the best Brooklyn writers actually… grew up in Brooklyn? Perhaps Berger will speak on this later. For now, I’ll leave ya’ll with a question: what’s the best Brooklyn hip-hop album of 2008? Buckshot & 9th Wonder, The Formula? Killah Priest, Behind The Stained Glass? Rock (from Heltah Skeltah) & his Shellshocked mixtape? In just the last couple weeks there’s been Jean Grae Jeanius (also produced by 9th Wonder), Brooklyn Zu Chamber #9, Verse 32 &, last but not definitely not least, T.H.U.G. Angelz (Hell Razah & Shabazz) Welcome To Red Hook Houses. Somewhere over Lorraine Street the ghost of Hubert Selby smiles.

Dear Sirs (BZA, Beadel, Angry M.F. & Lorraine Otsego too),

As a lifelong Brooklynite, I thought I’d “seen it all.” Did a lot of it too, in my younger days. Taxi-dancing, the numbers, after-hours joints— you-name-it, really. I dropped acid when it was legal and in 1970 I saw the Grateful Dead four nights running in Sunset Park: a different era to be sure. Hardcore shows at Zappa’s Rock Palace, shaking my ass at Odyssey 2000, seeing The Warriors at the Alpine in Bay Ridge on opening night, all sortsa crazy shit. Later I even dated one of the Gramercy Riffs— true story, he was really from Flatbush but those December-May romances are always fraught with peril, especially in Brooklyn. Anyway, it’s 2:15 a.m. here on Troy Avenue & I have, as they say, “had a few”; what of it? Lately I’ve been enjoying a trend in what the squares call “vandalism”: etch (not kvetch). Well, this woman calls etch a sign of life, goddamnit, but truthfully, I don’t know all that much about it. Perhaps WWIB can fill us coots in a little? I’m sure others share my delight & wonder at how the kids stay up these days.

L.A.M.F.,

Margaret K. Demetre
Flatlands

Speechless, mostly, Caz Dolowicz adds: Speaking of the track, as some of ya’ll were the other day, you can’t get odds any more, the gambling issue of Stop Smiling magazine is out & it’s sick. The Nick Tosches piece by The Publisher is one thing, & hey, it’s Nick— hard to go wrong, tho’ I don’t get the wine futures racket myself— but oh baby, there’s so much more! The Sisters at the orphanage said, “Blogs move in mysterious ways…”

Caz Dolowicz was born on Sands Street in 1923. A retired New York City Transit Authority Tower Operator, he lives, with his third wife, in a state of perpetual agitation in Bay Ridge, although playing with his two cats has been known to calm him. He does not want your peas, your rice, your coconut oil, nor all arrogance of earthen riches. (Motherfucker?!)

& heading for Seagate?! Scorpion wades in to explain: Events— even “good” ones? Don’t do ‘em. Sure, I’m on the streets, it’s where the action is, but the only time in the last six months I went “out” it was for the Crooklyn Dodgers (version II, from Clockers) reunion at Prospect Park & goddamn! They killed it, stand up Chubb Rock, Jeru the Damaja, O.C. & more, including co-hosts Special Ed (where’s he been?) & Buckshot (always making moves). While everyone at WWIB from The Publisher on down rocks the celebrations, concerts, cook-outs, dances, festivals, gatherings, luaus, sometimes the odd orgy or three held in Weeksvillle & Carnarsie, Mott Haven & Tremont, Broad Channel & Maspeth, Tottenville & Clifton, even Harlem & Inwood on the often forsaken island of Manhattan, ya’ll can read those things elsewhere. It might be a good read, & if it probably ain’t… that’s why we have Caz Dolowicz, Beadel Debevoise, Lorraine Otsego & Ernie Koy, Jr— still a legend, although he still owes me $20 I spotted him Aqueduct last week. (Note to the Bronx Bureau: betting on a horse named Dead Dog, what were you thinking?) As for photography, Berenice “The Abbott”/BZA threw some flicks on my desk this morning with no comment other than “put ‘em up, kid.” “Hey, what the fuck are these?” “Sea bears— Brooklyn sea bears.”

With your host, Snake, now of Vinegar Hill: Ya’ll remember Record Express downtown, right? 523 Fulton Street, stand up! The rest of us might want take a seat, however, because, whether or not a single Brooklyn blog— be it real estate, neighborhood or photo, Boerum Hill, Fort Greene or Gowanus— bothered to notice, Record Express closed last week. Why? They lost their lease. Maybe I’m just that slow without an air conditioner but Q: are we not real estate? A: We are douchebags! It wasn’t a great record store, mind ya’ll, unlike Beat Street at its best, but Record Express was thee go to spot for Kung Fu action downtown & their something-for-everything “urban culture” stock (hip-hop, reggae, r&b, musica latina, blaxploitation movies, various street & lots of commerical dvds, video games, oldies, jazz— even country, Passa Passa flix and straight up porn, etc) was at least weird, & weird goes a long way for me. I hear the store is reopening in Harlem, of all places, but why are ya’ll hearing that from one of the Five Deadly Venoms? I can’t say except 1) “Benign ethnic cleansing” in Brooklyn? Naw, never heard of it & 2) Reading (or re-) Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man couldn’t hurt anyone too much. Peace to the Record Express employees who will hopefully get to keep their jobs, if they want ‘em.

BZA adds: It’s a sloppy photo, I know, but… on the going back to Rock Rock Rockaway Beach (not Bay Ridge) steez: Betty Boop versus Scarface, who will win?

***

1940
DONALD DUCK
The Trolley Car Notebook

A small, blue marbled notebook, bound with a metal spiral at the top. In it, Duck, the pimpled, the slouching, the boy who flushed and swore when he was accused of masturbating, kept the numbers of the Fifth Avenue trolleys, the Third Avenue trolleys and the 69th Street trolleys.

This was religious, a fetish and a talisman to hold to. If his acne oozed, he had his book. A surety. He would sit at the kitchen table, eating his glassful of graham crackers and milk, and pore over the lists of scrawled figures. Gaps in every line, those missing trolleys that he had never seen, watching for months. They had to be there, motormen on them, the passengers facing each other on the wooden benches. But they were missing. Holes, spaces, filled with horizontal lines and asterisks for these lacunae.

He had seen now, for three weeks, the same streetcars each day. He knew the flaking figures on their red steel sides with an absolute intimacy. Top of 2 broken; bottom of the 7 scarred; a 9 faded… Fredo on the back of a 69th Street car one day, as Duck came around the corner. It was picking up speed and the street was crowded with trucks so that he couldn’t chase it: a missing number, he knew it, one he had looked for for months, Fredo’s tattered corduroys over the last three digits, he turning, seeing Duck, frozen, on the corner, his notebook in his hand, open, then waving, giving him the nonchalant stiff middle finger Fuck You Duck! and borne away toward Fort Hamilton Parkway.
—Gilbert Sorrentino, Steelwork (1970)

101 Things Ya’ll Won’t Learn at Bushwick Blogfest
by Angry M.F. Fisher, Food Writer

You lack the minerals & vitamins, irons & the niacin
Fuck who that I offend— bloggers sit back, I’m about to begin
About foul talk you squawk, never even walked the walk
More or less destined to get tested, never been arrested
My posting will manifest many things that I saw, did or heard about
Or told first hand, never word of mouth
What’s in the future for the fusion in the changer?
Bloggers are in danger, who will use wits to be a remainder?
When the missile is aimed to blow you out of the frame
Some will keep their limbs and some will be maimed
The same suckers with the gab about killer instincts
But turned bitch and knowing damn well they lack
In this division the connoisseur, crackin’ your head with a 4 by 4
Realize sucka, I be the comin’ like Noah
Always sendin’ you down, perpetratin’ facadin’ what you consider
An image, to me this is just a scrimmage
I feel I’m stone, not cause I bop or wear my cap cocked
The more emotion I put into it, the harder I blog
Those who pose lyrical but really ain’t true I feel
Their time’s limited, hard rocks too—

The Music Director apologizes, a little: to O.C. at least, who’s brain-splattering “Time’s Up” rocks in its original version below. Since I’m just The Music Director around here, I’m not certain what these photos from BZA mean but up top is obviously downtown, nice mix of a woman cyclist, the destruction of (the Biz Markie Memorial) Albee Square Mall & the still extant Dime Savings Bank building— can you loan me $5? On the downlow, that looks like Broadway in Williamsburg— lots of adventures & mis- around there, from The French Connection days to present. Dig the very Boricua bicycle here too. I’ve seen similarly patriotic rides in Sunset Park, Bushwick & Red Hook, Brooklyn, & all over the South Bronx. For a little more on this phenemenon, check out the superb illustrator (& reporter) Zina Saunders’ Puerto Rican Bike Men page at Overlooked New York.

WWIB Transportation Editor, Swan, explains: Ya’ll can check the record, we went for Barry early— who the hell wouldn’t have? Not the Mighty Sparrow! All three Clintons are venal, John Edwards was a stiff, Dennis Kucinich had a hot wife & no traction: please, let’s not relive the nightmare again so soon; gracias. Today, however, as the formerly beloved, mostly, Barack Obama zig-zags between shameful rightward lurches & nauseating, middle-of-the-road stumbling points, talk from Bond Street to Mermaid Avenue to Linden Boulevard to Hunterfly Road to Force Tube has sadly turned to the historic question: how long until it’s fair say to let’s impeach America’s first half-black president? The body politic of Brooklyn has been known to tolerate— hell, to birth & raise, as well as adopt— more than a few knuckleheads, numskulls, nitwits, gasbags, asshats, jerkoffs, fucktards, boobs, chumps, crooks, dopes, dupes, dubs, dipshits, lamebrains, morons, saps, simps, petty thieves, feebs & grand larcenists too so if, having vanquished the monsters, Obama in fact aspires to neo-Clintonism… the disappointment will be nothing new. Something else old, & dirty: the story of what horrible crossbreeding led to such total freaks of nature as Charles Schumer and Marty Markowitz, never mind their frightening co-existence. Come back Mayor David A. “Loose” Boody— I swear all is forgiven! (PK is very short for Parliament-Funkadelic.)

Junius Van Sinderen, Ombudsman adds: Hot on the sports corruption beat, Norman Oder of the Atlantic Yards Report has started publishing an interview with another man who dissects the plans few in the corporate media have the gumption to tackle. Who might this be? We love him on Field Of Schemes… We cheer as another cheap hustler double-faults into the Demause.net… ladies & gentleman, all the way from Flatbush U.S.A. & looking mighty spiffy, I must say, let’s give a warm blogidad welcome to seven-time South Brooklyn Press Club all-star… Neil DeMause!!

Welcome back Caz Dolowicz! Thanks, glad to be back, lots to catch up with. First, ya’ll must go see Stitching, & not just because Meital Dohan is such a great interview. I confess, I’m mostly a be-bop, big band, hillbilly & old blues guy myself but The Music Director told me some of the cooler kids will get it if I compare Scottish playwright Anthony Neilson to a great, darkly comic Scottish band like Arab Strap. Consider it done! Also done is the new Gambling Issue of Stop Smiling magazine. Guest editor Annie Nocenti outdid herself with this one & there are three (count ‘em) different covers available, including Snoop Dogg, Oliver Stone & my own personal favorite, Brooklyn-born Elliott Gould. Brooklyn is also in the house with Brian Berger’s interview with writer Nick Tosches, an excerpt of which can be read above. Nick has all sorts of connections to Kings County, by the way, including a close friendship with Hubert Selby, & a scene in his debut novel, Cut Numbers (1988), where a Dwight Street warehouse is, well… I don’t want to ruin any Red Hook surprises. In other crime news, even from where I type this warm Yellow Hook morning, no praise song is too loud to show our appreciation for Norman Oder’s use of the verb “fluffing” in an Atlantic Yards Report subhed. While probably unintentional, Oder’s sly evocation of Brooklyn-born Jerry Butler (best known for the fairly awesome, totally ridiculous Raw Talent (1984)) adds a welcome touch of whimsy to an ongoing saga (the sham accountability of the government & real estate interests in the so-called Atlantic Yards project) that should infuriate all. Lastly, a passing which would sadden many if they knew: the terrific jazz pianist, Ronnie Mathews dies on June 28th at the age of 72; fuck pancreatic cancer. Brooklynites with even passing interest in jazz of the 1960s to present probably has some Ronnie in their collection. I’m going to spin Max Roach Drums Unlimited (1966) now; others might dig up the Sterling Place All-Stars side from 1999 that Ronnie made with his Prospect Heights neighbors Richie Goods, Carl Allen & Vincent Herring. Oh, for those post-bop nights at the Up Over Jazz Cafe, especially when the awesome Billy Harper was playing! A proper Ronnie Mathews obituary will appear when when The Music Director returns from field recording in Brooklyn, Iowa (a real place).

Caz Dolowicz was born on Sands Street in 1923. A retired New York City Transit Authority Tower Operator, he has two cats to feed & a wife who’s a nurse over at Victory Memorial Hospital. With his boys over at the 5th Avenue OTB later today, Caz will say “Fuck cancer— $2 on Sun-Up, please.”