Crazy Stable

Okay, repeat the CrazyStable catechism. What makes a great blogger? One: a passion; and two, sharing it generously with others. Today, kudos to one of the finest writers and photographers on the blogroll: Bed-Stuy Banana, a young lady who describes herself as "a yellow girl raised in a white suburb shacked up with a white boy (who) had a tan kid in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a primarily black neighbourhood in Brooklyn, New York."

A tender observer of such paradoxes, BSB set herself the task of chronicling every street in her storied neighborhood. Her stream of hauntingly beautiful images has introduced me, a fellow Brooklynite, to the heart and soul of a community into which I seldom set foot. Along the way, she has shared much else with candor: her journey to American citizenship, prickly liberalism, financial heartaches, and identity struggles. Mostly, BSB lets her pictures do the talking, but her recent post on having finally walked every one of those Bed-Stuy streets (some 173 miles over 63 weeks) was so good I will share it here. Congratulations, BSB, on a great journey, and I hope it continues, with us in tow:

Have I gotten a greater insight into what makes Bed-Stuy tick? Possibly. I do know that it is a neighbourhood of extremes, rough blocks with deserted buildings and trash and dog crap filled empty lots and a negative vibe that we speed-walked through - although there weren't many of those. Well-maintained blocks with gorgeous architecture and abundant greenery and flowers, mostly in the southern end. The Hassidic area that looks like another era and world - a world it's hard to believe is part of Bed-Stuy. Deserted industrial areas full of both hipster and gang graffiti. Mosques and a thousand and one churches of every shape and size and denomination, from an unmarked unassuming door, to impressive spires and towers that reach to the skies. Fast food restaurants, mom and pop cafes, black owned hipster restaurants, bodegas and Chinese food restaurants with bullet proof glass. Flourishing community gardens. Depressing uninspired clusters of buildings that form the projects. Storefronts with an impressive array of Obama memorabilia, chic boutiques with African art, junk shops, dollar stores. Detailed memorial murals and scribbled graffiti honouring everyone from gang members to children hit by cars.

Groups of tough-looking teenagers giving us dirty looks, laughing pre-schoolers, smiling welcoming working class neighbours, dirty white people on bikes, skinny white hipsters doing laundry, Mexicans in a block long wedding procession with a live band, black hipsters at just opened cafes and restaurants, church ladies selling red velvet cake at fundraisers. Joyful block parties, smoking barbeques in front yards with families spilling out on to the streets, pre-teens throwing eggs and water balloons at cars and bikes, pit bulls and their owners, Chinese people hanging laundry out to dry next to their cars.

It's a colourful, lively, dirty, ugly, beautiful mix - a microcosm of New York City. It's our neighbourhood. It's our home. And now we're going to do it again. Walk every street, take pictures, talk to strangers, make new friends.

Momentous and sad news for Catholic schools was buried in the last paragraph of our Brooklyn Bishop DiMarzio's most recent column for the diocesan newspaper, The Tablet: Plans are indeed afoot to turn three Catholic parochial schools in the Brooklyn Diocese into charter schools. The proposal, previously discussed in a surprise joint press conference by the bishop and Mayor Bloomberg, had only been in the exploratory stages before; this seems to represent a marked hardening into reality. Of course, the bishop didn't say which three schools, leaving the field open for the rumor-mongering and Maalox-guzzling that understandably haunt the beleagured ranks of our parochial school communities.

Jake and Elwood (above) wouldn't approve, and neither do I. The proposal has being floated as a way to "preserve" quality education in the same building, giving dibs to the formerly Catholic school's students and even its staff. In reality, it would amount to the Church leasing its building to the new public-school entity, removing any sign of religious identity, and banning religion from the curriculum (fittingly, since the school would now be funded by taxpayer dollars). The promise to preserve teachers' jobs may founder on the public-school system's requirements for certification, a technicality many of our wonderful teachers lack and could only obtain through costly further education. And the experience of Catholic-turned-charter schools down in Washington, D.C., where this new "model" was first rolled out just last year, bodes ill, not well, for "strengthening" the surviving schools. (See this article for wince-inducing details like a teacher whose classroom has an "empty nail" where a cross used to hang and kids now reciting "values" instead of prayers.)

Nonetheless, since a flip to charters could turn under-enrolled Catholic schools into ATMs for cash-strapped dioceses, the gambit is being eagerly watched by Catholic educators all over the country. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the first unholy trinity of schools to qualify for the Empty Nail Award. The diocese seems genuine in its determination to prune and eventually transform the parochial school system into a leaner, more independent constellation of "academies," along the lines of the still-thriving private Catholic high schools; it is hard to see how this sure-to-be-controversial venture will not muddy the waters of those good intentions.

Last Saturday, lunch with friends brought me to Brooklyn Heights.  There, on a tiny street called Willow Place, I was transfixed by a Mystic Crazy  Stable--an old house so compelling and fascinating that I can hardly breathe when I first spy it. No, not the one on the right, very funny (although that one has its own tales). I mean the little blue antebellum relic on the left, paint peeling ravishingly from its columns. The bizarre juxtaposition of 1840s neo-Classic and 1960s moderne was noted here some years ago in Brownstoner. An anonymous neighbor commented:

"The 'Tara' house on the left has been owned for approximately 35 years by two academics (both with impressive careers) who renovated it extensively initially and then, suddenly...stopped. Why they did so is probably not the business of Brownstoner, but to those who do visit the street and stand outside this house and make mean comments, I'd like to say, hey!--in the summertime, when windows are open, people inside can hear conversation on the street."

Mean comments? I worship the place. It looked lived-in, not Boo-Radleyish, with fresh yellow pansies in some pots out front; I willed an owner or resident to emerge and chat (no luck), and yearned for my imaginary handheld GPS/data device, the HouseHistorian, which would yield construction dates and all cool stories of record for any intriguing building in New York at curbside. (Uploading the data for every block and lot in the city would be the hard part, the technology would be easy!)

Since my gizmo doesn't exist (yet), I came home and found out what I could. Architecturally, the house is the last survivor of a colonnaded row, much like this adorable set of contemporaries that survive directly across the street (above; compare to a picture from 1936 by Berenice Abbot, here). Architecture author Francis Morrone writes of these gems in An Architectural Guidebook to Brooklyn:

The "colonnade row" was a popular concept in the Greek Revival 1830s and 1840s...Thirteen square wooden columns screen four redbrick row houses that have doorways flanked by columns of the same design, though much smaller in scale. Note that right across the street...is a single house of exactly the same design, as though it were originally a part of the row but decided it preferred living on its own and moved across the street. Actually, there was once an identical row of four houses on this side of the street, of which two were torn down and one altered beyond recognition, leaving just this one.

Bricks and mortar aren't enough when you're smitten. Like the Brother from Another Planet, I want to know what happened there just by touching the flaking columns. So I looked up my little blue survivor in the digital archives of the Brooklyn Eagle and the New York Times. In October 1856, a yellow-fever scare virtually turned the street into a ghost town. (City health officials pronounced the danger overblown.) The peaceful little house witnessed this scene of domestic violence (above)  on July 24, 1867. On April 16, 1881, it saw the arrest of one John Torpey for "having burglariously entered the cellar of John Recka's beer saloon at No. 28 Atlantic avenue, on the night of the 12th inst., and stolen a keg of beer. Justice Ferry held the prisoner for examination."

In 1878, resident Mrs. Jane Burk, aged 60, was seriously injured falling from an Atlantic Avenue streetcar. And there was real tragedy: At the turn of the last century, two children's deaths were reported here (age recorded only as "less than one year"): Nellie McKay in October 1902, and James Guilfoyle in July, 1903.

Of course, that's just what made the papers over 160-odd years. Imagine the stories that will never be told, in this or any old house you pass. Funny enough, Spouse and I happened on a real-estate agent's open house the very next day in Carroll Gardens, and we toured a brownstone (of later vintage) that had been gutted and renovated to "like-new" condition. It was luxuriously appointed but an utter bore, its ghosts all silenced.

This picture of sunset reflected in the sky over Coney Island is a tribute to a friend of Brooklyn.

I was shocked to learn this morning of the untimely death of Robert Guskind, a citizen journalist/crusader via his blog Gowanus Lounge (now offline) and as a chief contributer to Curbed.

Bob was a generous mentor to others in the fractious Brooklyn blogosphere, and used his own forum to advocate passionately and tirelessly for Brooklyn: his eponymous Gowanus, of course, but also all of brownstone Brooklyn and most especially, his beloved Coney Island. His blog was a quirky mix of personal passions as well; on any given day, it might feature a rare punk-rock video, a photographer's strange glimpse of urban street life, or the hilariously existential "Street Couch of the Day."

Most of all, though, Bob used his platform fiercely as a Fool-Killer and Weasel-Slayer, the two occupations I have come to respect most in this age of untrammeled greed and comatose consciences. He was merciless to crappy architecture, sleazy deals, and Bloomberg; he raised a flaming sword for all things old-school, unique, oddball, and endangered. His most recent crusade was to keep eagle eyes on the dangerous bloom of neglected construction sites around the borough. He will be deeply missed, as confirmed by today's tributes from fellow bloggers Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn and New York Shitty.

I was not a close friend of Bob's, but rather a friendly acquaintance; he would offer instant and open-hearted support to anything I sent his way, and was a booster of all things good, Brooklyn, and blogospherical. In person, he was pure Brooklyn, gruff, funny and kind. His quixotic fury at the slow, graceless death of Coney Island bespeaks a heart moved by things both broken and beautiful. My condolences to his friends and family at this terrible loss.