Are some Manhattanites oddly xenophobic towards Brooklyn? Not to mention Brookynites doing naked performance art, which isn't exactly a new thing. Women artists in particular have been doing this stuff since the 1960s. [VF]
Coney may be open, but Ruby's is still on hold. [Grub]
In the Panopticon Metropolis, luxury = taking a dump in front of friends, family, and the whole neighborhood. Maybe it's high-end performance art. [NYT] (See also: showcase on 7th)
Tiny narcissists get boot-camp lessons in empathy. [NYT]
Not everyone loves the iPhone. Virginia Heffernan finds it "like a lipsticky girl with a vodka drink. It usually does things in a cute way" and requires "so much attention, organization, explanation, praise, electricity." [NYT]
Atlantic Yards project leave neighborhood horribly blighted. [Gothamist]
Etherea records is very much gone. [FP]
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Hasidic Crown Heights
After reading in the news about the Crown Heights Hasidic Jewish Tours last week, I decided to embark myself. Advertised as a three-hour tour, get ready for something more like a jam-packed five hours, as knowledgeable and generous rabbi guides lead you through a world ancient and Mittel-European.
In an uncertain time, especially, this tour through Hasidic Crown Heights can be grounding. You enter another country, where the people are thinking and behaving differently, beyond the vagaries of the economy and the allure of conspicuous consumption. To take this tour is to step outside of your life for a day and to see another way.
First we got a history lesson in the Rebbes Library, a room filled with antique books and documents belonging to the Rebbes of Lubavitch, and received a frank discussion of marital relations in the women's mikvah, where wives go at night to cleanse and purify after their menstrual cycle. But the most impressive moments were spent at Congregation Lubavitch, the community's synagogue at 770 Eastern Parkway.
The women in our group went upstairs and the men went down into the main room of the shul, a hive of activity, filled with men and boys in study and prayer. Books littered the tables. Congregants wrapped their arms and heads in the leather straps of Tefillin, a leather box that holds a holy scroll.
If you are a Jewish man on this tour, someone will be happy to wrap the Tefillin to your arm and head, as Rabbi Schneerson said, "once a Jew wears Tefillin on his head--even one time in his life--he falls into a different category as a Jew." Or, as our tour guide Rabbi Epstein told us, to put on the Tefillin is to mainline a Jewish "booster shot."
The Tefillin are created at the neighborhood Hasofer. Here, in a room smelling strongly of leather and black paint, we saw how the boxes are made from kosher hides and filled with handwritten parchment scrolls. Our guide held in his hand miniature Tefillin that were made small enough to be smuggled into Nazi concentration camps so that Jewish prisoners could stay better connected to their God.
Also at the Hasofer we watched a scribe at work repairing a 100-year-old Torah scroll. Words and their letters are of extreme importance in Judaism. If one letter in the Torah is broken, it cannot be uttered. The scribe, with black ink, went line by line along the parchment, filling in the broken spaces. There are over 300,000 letters he must inspect.
Whatever your personal feelings about organized religion, you cannot deny the poignancy of spending a day in the presence of deeply devout people. Everything they do, every thought they think, is directed to one place. And all of it is done with intention. This word came up frequently in the tour. The scribe's mind must be filled with intention throughout every stroke of his pen. If a scroll is not written with intention (each word must be looked at, spoken, written, and looked at again) it will not be imbued with holy power.
This intention acts like a walking meditation. The mind is controlled and energy is channelled upwards. The animal side of man is bound in leather straps. Love and fear keep him on the path. Call it repression, obsession, an omnipotent fantasy, but you cannot be left unimpressed with the depth and passion of this way of living.
Whose life could not benefit from a little more mindful intention?
Tomorrow: The Matzoh Bakery
In an uncertain time, especially, this tour through Hasidic Crown Heights can be grounding. You enter another country, where the people are thinking and behaving differently, beyond the vagaries of the economy and the allure of conspicuous consumption. To take this tour is to step outside of your life for a day and to see another way.
First we got a history lesson in the Rebbes Library, a room filled with antique books and documents belonging to the Rebbes of Lubavitch, and received a frank discussion of marital relations in the women's mikvah, where wives go at night to cleanse and purify after their menstrual cycle. But the most impressive moments were spent at Congregation Lubavitch, the community's synagogue at 770 Eastern Parkway.
The women in our group went upstairs and the men went down into the main room of the shul, a hive of activity, filled with men and boys in study and prayer. Books littered the tables. Congregants wrapped their arms and heads in the leather straps of Tefillin, a leather box that holds a holy scroll.
If you are a Jewish man on this tour, someone will be happy to wrap the Tefillin to your arm and head, as Rabbi Schneerson said, "once a Jew wears Tefillin on his head--even one time in his life--he falls into a different category as a Jew." Or, as our tour guide Rabbi Epstein told us, to put on the Tefillin is to mainline a Jewish "booster shot."
The Tefillin are created at the neighborhood Hasofer. Here, in a room smelling strongly of leather and black paint, we saw how the boxes are made from kosher hides and filled with handwritten parchment scrolls. Our guide held in his hand miniature Tefillin that were made small enough to be smuggled into Nazi concentration camps so that Jewish prisoners could stay better connected to their God.
Also at the Hasofer we watched a scribe at work repairing a 100-year-old Torah scroll. Words and their letters are of extreme importance in Judaism. If one letter in the Torah is broken, it cannot be uttered. The scribe, with black ink, went line by line along the parchment, filling in the broken spaces. There are over 300,000 letters he must inspect.
Whatever your personal feelings about organized religion, you cannot deny the poignancy of spending a day in the presence of deeply devout people. Everything they do, every thought they think, is directed to one place. And all of it is done with intention. This word came up frequently in the tour. The scribe's mind must be filled with intention throughout every stroke of his pen. If a scroll is not written with intention (each word must be looked at, spoken, written, and looked at again) it will not be imbued with holy power.
This intention acts like a walking meditation. The mind is controlled and energy is channelled upwards. The animal side of man is bound in leather straps. Love and fear keep him on the path. Call it repression, obsession, an omnipotent fantasy, but you cannot be left unimpressed with the depth and passion of this way of living.
Whose life could not benefit from a little more mindful intention?
Tomorrow: The Matzoh Bakery
Monday, April 6, 2009
*Everyday Chatter
Good news! Nusraty Afghan Imports, ousted from Bleecker to make room for Brooks Brothers, has found a new location and will be reopening April 19. Click here for info.
A resident of Fort Greene looks around at all the baby strollers and hipsters and realizes, "I’ve been gentrified." [NYT]
On Avenue A: "She just liked groping men's private parts." [NMNL]
A little bit of Chelsea invades Carroll Gardens and the neighbors are "going to watch closely." [NYT]
Where we once had books, we now have...butts. As the Astor Place Barnes & Noble Bartonizes:
The R&S Strauss on 14th and C has finally closed, as reported a year ago. Grieve wonders what will come next to this corner. [EVG]
Life in Murray Hill, just like you imagined, complete with "Douchebag Cam." Enjoy this contemporary classic by DJ Lubell. [youtube]
What caused the crash? Greed or stupidity? [NYT]
It's spring--have some pickles! [Boogie]
A bird's-eye view of vanishing Manny's Music. [NYDP]
Keeping track of a local cobbler in Park Slope. [HIPS]
A resident of Fort Greene looks around at all the baby strollers and hipsters and realizes, "I’ve been gentrified." [NYT]
On Avenue A: "She just liked groping men's private parts." [NMNL]
A little bit of Chelsea invades Carroll Gardens and the neighbors are "going to watch closely." [NYT]
Where we once had books, we now have...butts. As the Astor Place Barnes & Noble Bartonizes:
The R&S Strauss on 14th and C has finally closed, as reported a year ago. Grieve wonders what will come next to this corner. [EVG]
Life in Murray Hill, just like you imagined, complete with "Douchebag Cam." Enjoy this contemporary classic by DJ Lubell. [youtube]
What caused the crash? Greed or stupidity? [NYT]
It's spring--have some pickles! [Boogie]
A bird's-eye view of vanishing Manny's Music. [NYDP]
Keeping track of a local cobbler in Park Slope. [HIPS]
Yankee Bars & Bowling
The Times just did a story about Stan's, the dive bar that has stood right outside the bleachers entrance of Yankee Stadium for 30 years. With the stadium rebuilt and moved, Stan's no longer has that prime real estate and the owners worry about losing business.
Stan's
Last fall, at the season's end, I visited the scruffy bunch of bars and souvenir stores outside the stadium, concerned that the change would leave them in the cold. It's not just Stan's we have to worry about.
What will happen to Ball Park Lanes?
the lanes
the front desk
Bowling alleys are vanishing all over town. One of the things that has kept this alley alive for so long is that it supplied fans with a much-needed bag check. Wrote the Times, "Ball Park Lanes has become the primary storage closet for Yankees fans carrying more than weighty expectations... John Gianos, the alley’s co-owner, figures that if someone is coming to check a bag, they might stick around for a beer. They might try a $4 burger at the grill. They might even think bowling is a good idea."
And at $5 a bag, in a world where people don't bowl like they used to, the baggage business must have been critical.
the lanes' lunch counter
the shoes
If I had to guess, I'd say the new, post-9/11 Yankee Stadium has its own bag check stations. And even if it doesn't, are people going to walk down to Ball Park Lanes to check their backpacks?
So, from the scrappy bars and souvenir shops of River Avenue, we may find another mass vanishing. They may shut down or adapt to the Stadium's upscale clientele, like the renovated Billy's, with its chandeliers and blue backlighting, attracting what another bar owner called "Midtown comes to the Bronx."
Billy's
See all my River Avenue pics here
Stan's
Last fall, at the season's end, I visited the scruffy bunch of bars and souvenir stores outside the stadium, concerned that the change would leave them in the cold. It's not just Stan's we have to worry about.
What will happen to Ball Park Lanes?
the lanes
the front desk
Bowling alleys are vanishing all over town. One of the things that has kept this alley alive for so long is that it supplied fans with a much-needed bag check. Wrote the Times, "Ball Park Lanes has become the primary storage closet for Yankees fans carrying more than weighty expectations... John Gianos, the alley’s co-owner, figures that if someone is coming to check a bag, they might stick around for a beer. They might try a $4 burger at the grill. They might even think bowling is a good idea."
And at $5 a bag, in a world where people don't bowl like they used to, the baggage business must have been critical.
the lanes' lunch counter
the shoes
If I had to guess, I'd say the new, post-9/11 Yankee Stadium has its own bag check stations. And even if it doesn't, are people going to walk down to Ball Park Lanes to check their backpacks?
So, from the scrappy bars and souvenir shops of River Avenue, we may find another mass vanishing. They may shut down or adapt to the Stadium's upscale clientele, like the renovated Billy's, with its chandeliers and blue backlighting, attracting what another bar owner called "Midtown comes to the Bronx."
Billy's
See all my River Avenue pics here
Friday, April 3, 2009
*Everyday Chatter
New Yankee Stadium a "Monument to Greed," says Joel Sherman at the Post. It's beautiful "in the way that a woman who went to the world's best plastic surgeon might be beautiful. It is supposed to remind you of the previous incarnation, and ends up feeling artificial and overdone." [NYP]
Topshop's neighbors say it with anti-consumer-madness signage. [Racked]
Kinky Jews to hold Kinky Seder in Brooklyn. [RS]
EV besieged by annoying church chimes. [EVG]
This video of talking New York street "furniture," like pay phones and newspaper dispensers, is adorable, indeed. [via Gothamist]
Car-vator building now comes with canoes? ...for getting in and out of your condo during global warming:
Topshop's neighbors say it with anti-consumer-madness signage. [Racked]
Kinky Jews to hold Kinky Seder in Brooklyn. [RS]
EV besieged by annoying church chimes. [EVG]
This video of talking New York street "furniture," like pay phones and newspaper dispensers, is adorable, indeed. [via Gothamist]
Car-vator building now comes with canoes? ...for getting in and out of your condo during global warming:
Lost Redbirds
Retired, extinct, dropped off the coast of the Carolinas to create rusty, unnatural reefs, New York City's Redbirds have vanished from the subway's tracks. Or have they?
On my trip to Flushing, while crossing the pedestrian bridge over to the park, I spotted this small flock. Just four or five cars sitting in the track yard alongside an expanse of silvery new trains.
Were they left here at the end of the last Redbird run? Are they hiding, afraid of the watery plunge?
On my trip to Flushing, while crossing the pedestrian bridge over to the park, I spotted this small flock. Just four or five cars sitting in the track yard alongside an expanse of silvery new trains.
Were they left here at the end of the last Redbird run? Are they hiding, afraid of the watery plunge?
Thursday, April 2, 2009
*Everyday Chatter
I guess people in Chelsea just aren't buying fine custom kitchens like they used to. This place just shut down:
Some good news for Coney (?): More freaks. [Gothamist]
How would you improve New York? [RS]
The affluent and/or aspirational are abandoning their trendy accessory pets in droves. [CR]
Enforced voyeurism tops a former synagogue on 7th Street. [EVG]
A regretful Wall Street programmer recalls the games traders played: "they marched into the men’s room and stood at the wall opposite the urinals. Dropping their pants, they bet $100 on who could train his stream the longest on the urinals across the lavatory. As their hydraulic pressure waned, the three traders waddled, pants at their ankles, across the floor, desperately trying to keep their pee on target. This is what $2 million of bonus can do to grown men." [NYM]
Some good news for Coney (?): More freaks. [Gothamist]
How would you improve New York? [RS]
The affluent and/or aspirational are abandoning their trendy accessory pets in droves. [CR]
Enforced voyeurism tops a former synagogue on 7th Street. [EVG]
A regretful Wall Street programmer recalls the games traders played: "they marched into the men’s room and stood at the wall opposite the urinals. Dropping their pants, they bet $100 on who could train his stream the longest on the urinals across the lavatory. As their hydraulic pressure waned, the three traders waddled, pants at their ankles, across the floor, desperately trying to keep their pee on target. This is what $2 million of bonus can do to grown men." [NYM]
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