Stalk O 'Clock: Heath Ledger

I might have had my first Heath sighting coming back from the subway the other night. A nondescript blue sedan came out of one of the three garage spots in their house, angling its way out from behind the parked car blocking its exit. All I could tell about the driver was he was male.

Does Heath drive his own car, or was it an assistant? A manny, perhaps? We'll find out through further walk-n-stalks!

You win this one, gentrification!

I have to admit, I really like the new Fairway set in an old Red Hook warehouse, even though it probably means Red Hook will be the next place for normals to get priced out of and pushed back to the far reaches of Brooklyn. There are food and beverage samps aplenty for us and the kids from the projects to get a free lunch, the space is roomy enough that you don't have to move out of the way every time someone needs to get by, and you can eat on a waterfront deck overlooking the harbor.



And when my crumbling building between Fulton Mall and Fancyland finally gets sold and torn down to make way for more co-ops and condos with single-word-titled shoppes on the first floor, and I become homeless, I'm going to squat in one of these amazing trolly cars by the deck.

Another reason to love Fulton Mall

What do you think the equiv of this shirt would be over in "BoCoCa"?
My guess:

BKLYN MNSA

Wish everybody was kung-fu fighting the power

I've learned in this nabe that one-word shoppe names that give no indication as to what they sell in the shoppe= "expensive stuff." What do you guess they sell at the following local shoppes?

bird
swallow
butter
rico
layla
soula
lily
sir

Two of the above deal in furnishings and home decor, the rest, including "sir," are boutiques for women. How do you suppose they decided on these names?

Now these are what I call some store names.



Black Facts Books? I know what they sell there. Kung-Fu Videos? Why, they sell kung-fu videos.







Hair 4 You? They sell hair...for you!

Thank you, Fulton Mall, for the continuing lack of pretense.

BBBBQ

The extra Bs are for "Boerum babies."

Therese and I went to her friend's BBBBQ, where we were joined later by Reilly. On the way, we stopped at one of the few local spots we can afford to shop: the sidewalk sale on Hoyt by Atlantic. We immediately zeroed in on the Sight of the Day and Night: this amazing record.



It was quite a hit at the BBBBQ.





You know what tiny babies are good for? Pranking.



Bigger kids are good for this.



But the coolest kid there was the girl who was sneaking up on people and putting ice down their shirts and running away. We gave her suggestions of who to do it to next, and when we ran out of unsuspecting BBBBQ-goers in the room, she ran away, returned carrying her little sister, plunked her down, and put ice down her dress.

While this was going on inside, we somehow missed the guy jumping naked into the kiddie pool and flooding the patio. We stuffed our maws with food and wine, Therese and I DJ'd and rallied the crowd with Jersey pride during "Born to Run," and later Reilly made an Irish exit. All of this boils down to quite a successful BBBBQ. We could use more of such revelry in the 'hood.

Star maps, anyone? They're printed on recycled paper with soy ink.

A friend forwarded this article (prob from the NY Times).

Brooklyn’s Film Colony

THE actress Emily Mortimer and her husband, the actor Alessandro
Nivola, paid $2.45 million last month for a 25-foot-wide
four-story town house on Dean Street in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn.
The house is half a block from a town house that the actor Heath
Ledger bought for $3.6 million last September.

Jim M. Kerby, a broker with Prudential Douglas Elliman, said the
home was listed for $150,000 less than the couple paid for it.
He received offers from about a dozen interested buyers, he
said, and that drove up the price.

“I think we hit the right season,” Mr. Kerby said, describing
the reaction to the house when it came on the market in March.
“I guess it was just home-buying time. There was an incredible
frenzy. It’s a 25-foot-wide house, one of those things that
attract everybody who wants a big house. They want a wide one.”

He said the previous owners put on an unusual semi-circular
addition at the back of the house, on the second floor,
containing the kitchen and a breakfast area. Other than the
addition, which he compared to something from a spaceship, Mr.
Kerby described the home as “a classic old Greek Revival house.”

He said that at an open house in March, the proximity to Mr.
Ledger’s new home, which has a three-car garage, was a frequent
topic of conversation.

“I think everybody asked about the Heath Ledger house,” he said.
“They wanted to make sure the value was there. I pretty much let
them discover that for themselves.”

Ms. Mortimer, daughter of the British playwright and author John
Mortimer, has appeared in numerous films, including the recent
Woody Allen movie “Match Point” and in the remake of “The Pink
Panther.”

She and her husband met while filming “Love’s Labour’s Lost,”
which was released in 2000. They were married in 2003. Mr.
Nivola has also acted in “Laurel Canyon,” “The Clearing” and
several other movies.

A lawyer for the couple, Howard M. Brickner, said they planned
to move to Brooklyn from the West Coast.

***

What are the odds, I wonder, of Ms. Mortimer and Mr. Novola and Ms. Williams and Mr. Ledger hanging out with us.

We're always...there.

Ecs & I met up to work on our project, which ended up meaning sitting on the stoop and drinking beers and talking. It was too nice of a night not to. Reilly & Annie came down and we discussed Dokken and other bands that seemed super tough and heavy back then but actually only were if you were a little girl.



We were joined by across-the-way neighbor K and and his roommates. K was our most quoteable stooper, with the following gems to his credit:

"Ecs, you're on seahorse patrol."
"Guys of our race, we enjoy those things--grits and dunking basketballs."
"Ecs, if I were to call you 'Carey,' would I get choke-slammed?"



Ecs and I went for provisions at the corner produce market, which was too fancy to have K's requested "ghetto size" Bud Lite. But we did meet a neighbor on the return trip, after he complimented ecs' tattoos. When we invited him to stoop with us, he quickly seemed to regret his friendliness and explained that he was gay and liked to keep to himself. As we approached our lively stoop, as usual, it was the only spot of life on the block. He asked if we lived there, and we explained no, we were just hanging. He said, "Yeah, they're always...there."

So now we know one neighbor's opinion of us, anyway.

Famous Guest Stooperstars!!

OMG look who showed up!

All quiet on the Brooklyn front

Popped over to the stoop aka the procrastination station last night feeling out of sorts, as was Reilly, ever since our return from camping upstate (where our stooping went down around the fire).

But as she and I shared our most recent cases of Irish-mom-imposed guilt and rehashed the events of the Williamsjerk rooftop fireworks party, it was apparent that two guilty and out-of-sorts girls on the stoop for a short visit were better than us going it alone in our apartments.

But where was everybody else? After the rain (like the 1990 Nelson hit, yes) it was the most pleasant humidity-free weather you could hope for in July. All up and down the block, from 9:30 til after 10 (which must've once been prime after-dinner stooping time in a pre-reality-TV society), there was no one outside except the occasional dog-walker. Silence.



I headed home down the dark street, peeking into the tall, illuminated windows. I passed one stoop-sitter, though from the looks of her bag collection, she was homeless. As I rounded the corner, passing the geriatric center with its constant central-air hum, I wondered how many of those bedridden old folks would love to get their stoop on in the fresh air if they could. And peering in Heath and Michelle's window for several hours, I spotted no celebs. (Just kidding about that last part, heh heh, only looked for 10 seconds.)

We've got the cleanest streets of them all!

Having a car in NYC is a major pain in the ass, but a necessary one so that I can escape to places where I can afford to be near trees, and so I can tolerate ugly smelly city life a little longer without exploding. I'm going to drive Wolfgang til the wheels fall off, and I'm stuck here in Jerk-lyn for now, so that means living with alternate-side-of-the-street parking regulations.

The City of New York is Very concerned about the cleanliness of the streets in certain neighborhoods like mine. So concerned are they, that the sweeper comes by twice a week on each side of the street. This means (at best) moving your car two mornings a week if you don't have to go to work, or moving it four times a week in the evenings. And with all the construction going on 'round here, there are less spots than ever.



If you fail to comply, here's the part that's so convenient for the City of New York, you are left with a little neon-orange present on your vehicle to the tune of 60 dollars. And sometimes you are even left with an additional offering, the poster-sized neon-green "I f'd up" sticker that needs special attention to remove. (Maybe I should return the favor and completely wrap my next ticket payment in packing tape.)

I find it interesting that in places full of people with money, it seems to be super important that the street gets cleaned twice a week, and the residents provide an ongoing money harvest of parking-ticket payments, but in places populated more by working slobs like parts of Astoria, for example, the streets get cleaned...never. What? Bubonic plague? Who cares, they're poor.

So, pobres, always carefully read your parking ticket and if they made any error at all, you can challenge the ticket and probably won't have to pay. Sometimes you can cause that error to happen yourself if you happen to encounter the person writing the ticket, and when they refuse to give you a break even though you are only one minute late because they already started writing the ticket, you can bitch at them about hoping they like writing people tickets. (That only happened one time, but it ruled.)

I also just found parkingticket.com, a service that will fight your battles for you. "Haven't you had enough?" is their tagline, in red italics. YES! Fight the power!

By the way, I got my first ticket of the year this morning. (I was confused about what day it was when I parked last night because of the long weekend.) I'm gonna fight it. "Whoops! This ticket got rained on! I can't read it!" And so it goes...in one gal's frustrating Brooklyn life.

CRM on my skirt

Attention attention.
CRM, the outlet, as is says proudly in the window, is having a big sale this week. As I walked by this morning, I saw a skirt reduced from $629 to $440 and now to an amazing $319!!
And this...



Who needs thrift stores when you have outlets like these serving the neighborhood?



I got in another argument the other day with someone about the future of the FLTN Mall, that glorious strip of cheap hoop earrings, cell phones, grilles (for your mouth), Payless shoes, sleds, a conway, and a real shoe OUTLET (with its own theme song..."9.99 are you outta your mind").

I get in this argument a lot, it seems, and I feel the need to rant. Also ranting here is better than big arguments at work.






So their big complaint seems to be that the strip does not serve the interests of the surrounding neighborhood. On this premise, a big study was done last fall, focusing on ways to improve it, and lo and behold, the findings are that this is one of the most profitable strip in the Northeast, rents are as high as SOHO per SF, and they recommend changing nothing. Then came a contentious series of community board meetings where the yupsters kept digging themselves further and further into a hole trying not to appear elitist and racist.

Rich people are not the only people in this neighborhood. You already got Crt Street and Smth Street, and every other Fing street. The poorer among us really only have one street left and NOW you rich yupsters want to talk about real estate EQUITY? Or is it retail therapy equity? Are you serious?

I am sorry if you can't wear those cheap ass flip flops out to your country home on these nice summer weekends, but that's no reason to shut down a business that serves the rest of us.
Or wait, maybe it does...hmmm, can I waste city money doing a study of how much of the surrounding neighborhood shops in your damn one word shoppes? Can I get you shut down if your clientele isn't "balanced" enough? Can I shut down a McDonalds because I'm a vegetarian?
I don't know the future of the FLTN mall. But I will continue to buy fabulous earrings there for under $3. And I will continue to look awesome in them. And I think you should all do the same.

FLTN mall