Bobos on Bergen

In Brooklyn there's a block of Bergen Street, between 5th and 6th Avenues, that wasn't there a year or so ago. The block itself was there, the street, the sidewalk. People lived on it. But today, almost overnight, it has become a tightly constructed microcosm of hyper-gentrification. Urban scholars should study this block. It's a New Urbanist dream come true.

It went up as quickly and completely as a Hollywood set and exemplifies everything that "White People Like." Which, as we know, is less about whiteness and more about "Bobos in Paradise." In fact, the entire 21st-century, urban, upwardly mobile, heterosexual reproductive cycle can be completed utilizing only the new businesses on this block.



Imagine a couple, let's call them Ben and Lauren. They are 35 years old, both of them "creatives" at a multimedia design "lab." They go on their first date at Melt, which they love for its "pure, honest and sustainable" food choices and "live off the land philosophy." They marry. For the wedding, Ben buys a pair of John Varvatos Converse at the men's boutique Private Stock, because he doesn't want to look like a total douche in his tux.

They try to get pregnant. Sex becomes tense. So they head back to Bergen to do some shopping at Toys in Babeland. They pick up a vibrator for Lauren and a buttplug for Ben. It works. In a few months, Lauren is shopping at Bump, right next to Babeland, for maternity fashion. While she's browsing stretch-waisted skinny jeans and calendula nursing balm, Ben heads next door to Bergen Street Comics, that "sleek clubhouse for the sophisticated fanboy."

Little does he know, while he's reading the latest Dan Clowes book, Lauren's in Eponymy charging a Gucci handbag to the house account. They'll argue about it later, down the block, while sipping fair-trade coffees and dipping kale chips into a bowl of "live" hummus at Sun in Bloom cafe.



In time, baby Cullen will be born. Ben will rent a rugged jogging stroller at Brooklyn Ride, and while he's pushing Cullen through the bike lanes of the Brooklyn he will inherit, Lauren will stay on Bergen, taking her Pilates Garage class at Lululemon, trying to tooth-and-nail it back to her pre-baby body. Lauren considers herself a devout "Luluhead." After their morning exercise, the whole family will reunite at "artisan chic" Bark for hot dogs smothered in baked heirloom beans and oak barrel aged sauerkraut.

"Did you hear," says Ben, between gulps of his retro-hip Foxon Park diet white birch soda, "That crummy bookstore down the block is going to be a store for tweens."

"That's great," says Lauren, patting her flat tummy, "It'll really come in handy when little Sophie gets big."

"Little Sophie?" says Ben, "Really? Another baby? I guess it's back to Bump!"



I stepped off the Bergen Block (after my own browsing through comic books and personal lubricants) and wondered how something so unreal-looking could pop up in such a short amount of time. It couldn't have been an organic process, I thought. All the signs are exactly the same. What condo developer engineered this so he could stuff his brochures with pretty pictures of nearby amenities? It's like Disney's master-planned Celebration, I muttered, passing by sheets of blue plywood and the skeletons of up and coming condos.

The Brooklyn Paper reported that the engineering was done, indeed, by the Pintchik brothers of Flatbush fame. They carefully transformed the block, says the paper, "into a little slice of some small town Main Street in just two years."

I can't say what the ultimate goal is, but we all know that the Bergen Block will act as a fertile harborage for more of the same, that its commerce will attract, breed, hatch, and spread as efficiently as, well, bedbugs. It's biological class warfare--like introducing lady bugs into the garden to rid your prize roses of aphids.


Nantucket shops

Said one of the business owners on the block, "Coming here is like stepping off of Flatbush Avenue into Nantucket."

I guess if Greenwich Village has Little Wisco, Park Slope can have "Little Tucket."

Seltzer Truck

It's a rare thrill to spot the Island Beverage seltzer truck. In NY Press, Joshua Bernstein described the sight, "as if a wormhole had opened, allowing the past to intersect with the present." With its wooden cases of rattling siphon bottles strapped to the sides, it looks and sounds like a lost member of a gypsy caravan.

Recently, it turned up at 9th St. and 4th Ave. in Park Slope.



In this case, the gypsy is Ronny Beberman, described by Corey Kilgannon in the Times as driver of "the last real seltzer truck in New York, a wooden-slatted affair with crooked racks and side doors that are stuck open--the easier to strap the worn wooden cases to the side."

The other, well-known New York seltzer man, Walter Backerman, used to drive a similar truck. He updated to a step van some time ago, and recently opted for an even newer model.



These old trucks can be perilous. Beberman fell off his earlier this year while reaching for a case of cream soda at the top, and was out of commission for some time, sending his Brooklyn customers into fits brought on by seltzer deprivation. After five days in the hospital and some time recuperating at home, Ronny got back on the horse last month and resumed his route. It's good to see him back in business.

Ride along with Ronny on NY1

Park Slope Barber

Brooklyn’s Park Slope Barber shop on 7th Avenue and 4th Street is celebrating a big birthday this year--but it's not entirely clear which one.



In 1948 the Fiumefreddo family took over the business, back when it was still across the street, where falafel is now made under a tin ceiling. They inherited the leather chairs, the gas-powered hot towel steamer, the 100-year-old brass cash register, among other artifacts.

They don’t use the hot towel steamer anymore because it’s against the health code. “Back in the '60s,” one of the Fiumefreddo brothers told me, “the Board of Health shut them down because they were unsanitary. They found a lot of barbers were using them to keep sandwiches warm.”



Though the Fiumefreddos are celebrating their 60th, the shop’s birthday goes back another 40-odd years. The window says it was established in 1906, but the awning puts it at 1904. So which is it?

“The guy who did the awning got it wrong,” Mr. Fiumefreddo explained, “We just left it like that.”

So it was opened in 1906?

“Nah, 1903 actually,” Mr. Fiumefreddo laughed, “The window painter got it wrong, too.”



If it did open in 1903, that makes this barber shop a whopping 105 years old. That's just one year younger than the oldest barber shop in New Jersey and the oldest barber shop in the U.S. (both 1902, let them fight it out). I'd have to guess that being established in 1903 makes Park Slope Barber the oldest shop in New York City. Does anyone know one that's older?

More photos of Park Slope Barber shop

More barbers:

• New Barber Shop, 9th and 18th
• Clover Barber Shop, Park Slope
• Aminova's, Essex St. Market
• Atlas Barber School, 2nd and 10th

Donuts Coffee Shop

VANISHED: December 28, 2007

Unable to get to Park Slope on Friday, I sent one of my tipsters to the scene. She arrived in the afternoon and while there were still a handful of donuts in the window (including crullers cinnamon and frosted) and a couple of regulars at the counter, the owners waved her away as they stood counting their last dollars from the register.



She stood across the street and snapped a few pictures of the place, the sign already taken down, as people walked past, many of them waving in through the diner's window, saying goodbye as they headed into the Associated to do their grocery shopping.



The Associated will soon be expanding into the Donuts Coffee Shop space.

• More pics on my flickr
  
• Great shots at Gowanus Lounge
• Lost City got in for a last donut

Clover Barber Shop

VANISHING? Not yet.


my flickr

"I been a barber since seven," Ercole Riccardelli tells me in his thick Neapolitan accent as he holds a buzzing set of clippers over my head, "I was short. My grandfather gave me a step. I stood on it and put on the soap with the brush. When I was fourteen, I shaved the customers."

He's 84 now and plans to live as long as his grandfather, a man who made it to 99 (and 7 months) by never once seeing a doctor and by drinking a glass of Brioschi with lemon every morning then smoking a pipe while he watched the Naples fishermen fish before he opened his barber shop for the day.


photo by axlotl

If you go to the Clover Barbershop in Park Slope, be prepared to spend some time. Mr. Riccardelli moves very, very slowly. But his lines are straight and his hand is steady on the razor blade. When he finishes the hot-foam shave, he slaps your face with Osage oil and fans you coolingly with his towel. There aren't many places left where you can get treatment like this for little money.

Italian barbers might be the best. I used to see Sal on Mott Street, but a few years ago he closed up. First he stopped giving shaves because his hands got shaky. The next time I went back, he was gone. An upscale salon took his place. Then there's an amazing shop run by Harry Fini, but you have to go all the way to Philly for his hot towels, talk of Frank Sinatra, and the sign outside that says, "Enjoy barbering as did your dad."


Sal on Mott from Mr. Beller's


Harry's Shop from my flickr stream

Back in Brooklyn, Mr. Riccardelli's daughter has been urging him to close up shop and move to Florida, where he can enjoy the beach and swim in water as warm as the Mediterranean he longs for. But he's not ready to go just yet. "As long as my hands are good," he says, "I'll be right here."

Let's hope he lasts as long as his grandfather did.

7th Ave Books

VANISHING: August 31, 2007



This Park Slope indie may not have been around for eons, but the demise of any good used bookshop is cause for sorrow. This time it wasn't rent issues, but personal reasons. As Brooklyn Paper reports, the owner was hoping for a buyer. A recent visit to the store confirmed that no buyer has materialized and the store will be closed August 31. Brooklyn bloggers like OTBKB, BIB, and Bklyn Stories, mourn the loss.

This after I just finished reading Paul Auster's Brooklyn Follies, which takes place in and around a Park Slope used bookshop.

If anyone worries, like I do, about what might take the store's place, I think you'll be relieved. It won't be a Starbucks or a Pinkberry or a bank. This weekend the cashier told me it will be a vegan restaurant. That's not so terrible.