Deep In the Heart of Brooklyn: Ditmas Grafitti War

Friday, January 11, 2008

Ditmas Grafitti War

Every day, or at least every day that I have taken my younger kids to school or gone downtown to my office, I pass a building near the corner of Cortelyou Road and East 17th Street that seems to reflect the pains to which people will go to dialogue without actually talking to each other.

At first, the building had a friendly environmental type painting, the kind of thing that a building owner will commission kids or neighborhood artists to paint. Then something happened to it because someone painted over that "Don't Let Me Catch You Fucking Up This Wall" or something to that effect. Then that was mysteriously painted over. Then it was replaced by what seemed a cry of frustration - "Human Beings don't want other human being to be happy"..but whether that was by the building owner or the artist, I don't know. Then that was whitewashed over.

Next, a free-for-all seems to have ensued -- "DAMN!" WORLD WE LIVE IN!" RACIAL" "WORD IS BORN", drawings of figures, in a wide array of colors with a scattering of "LAME" LAME" LAME" painted overall, like a flock of pigeons that wait until what seem like two inches before you approach before flying away.

I looked forward to passing it out of curiosity as to what I would see next, like checking your email or links. Anyway, since I am usually passing by this display in the early morning, I haven't had a chance to stop by the building to try to quiz the owner on what exactly is going on. That is, who started what and who did what to whom. But maybe, like a lot of things in life, a little positive mystery is a good thing. I am sure the owner of the building would in fact exact a price should he catch someone in the act.

But it is very interesting to see that not only the Blogosphere is a first amendment free-for-all, and that even Flatbush real estate can serve as a palett and a place to post.

--Brooklyn Beat

1 comment:

AnonymousJanuary 30, 2008 at 11:36 AM
I live right across the street from this wall, and have watched with delight its progress over the last several months. It seems that most of the "artwork" is done by an employee of the laundromat at that corner (perhaps he's an owner or related to the owners of the laundromat?).

This guy also likes to play very loud music from his car, at all hours of the night and early morning, even when he's nowhere nearby. Maybe he sees himself as the neighborhood DJ? Whatever the case may be, I once asked him nicely to turn it down (at the time we had a young baby whose sleep was being interrupted by the music), and he launched into a tirade, asking me how long I've lived in the neighborhood. Since that incident, I've called 311 to complain about the music on a number of occasions, and I've seen the police come out to talk to him, but it doesn't seem to deter him.

My favorite graffiti he ever did was when he wrote, "East 17th Street 4 Ever!" Yeah!
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Current Reading

Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War- Tony Horwitz
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Hitch-22: A Memoir - Christopher Hitchens
Negropedia- Patrice Evans
Dead Funny: Humor in Nazi Germany - Rudolph Herzog
Exile on Main Street - Robert Greenfield
Among the Truthers - A Journey Among America's Growing Conspiracist Underworld - Jonathan Kay
Paradise Lost - John Milton
What Is Your Dangerous Idea? Thinking the Unthinkable - John Brockman
Notes from the Edge Times - Daniel Pinchbeck
Fringe-ology: How I Can't Explain Away the Unexplainable- Steve Volk
Un Juif pour l'exemple (translated as A Jew Must Die )- Jacques Cheesex
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Pale King - David Foster Wallce
David Bowie: Starman bio - Paul Trynka
Tobacco Stained Mountain Goat - Andrez Bergen
The Future of Nostalgia -Svetlana Boym
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FIrst as Tragedy Next as Farce - Slavoj Zizek
How to Survive a Robot Uprising - Daniel Wilson
Where is My Jet Pack? -Daniel Wilson
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Ice Trilogy - Vladimir Sorokin
First Civilizations
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Friends of Eddy Coyle
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Abraham Lincoln - Vampire Hunter - Seth Grahme-Smith - Entertaining and historical
Dictionary of the Khazars - Pavic
Sloth-Gilbert Hernandez
War and Peace- Leo Tolstoy
Charles Addams: An Evilution
Life in Ancient Greece
Time - Eva Hoffmann
Violence - S. Zizek
Luba - a graphic novel by Gilbert Hernandez
Life in Ancient Egypt
Great Apes - Will Self - riveting and disturbing
Lost Honor of Katherina Blum - Heinrich Boll - could not put it down
Yellow Back Radio Brokedown - Ishmael Reed (author deserving of new wide readership)
Living in Ancient Mesopotomia
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'There Once Lived A Woman Who Tried To Kill Her Neighbor's Baby'-Ludmilla Petrushevskaya - creepy stories - translation feels literarily "thin"
Mythologies - William Butler Yeats (re-read again & again)
How German Is It ? - Walter Abish
The Book of Genesis - illustrated by R. Crumb - visionary
"Flags" - an illustrated encyclopedia - wish I could remember all of these. Flag culture
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Nobody's Fool - Richard Russo
Hitler's Empire - Mark Mazower
Nazi Culture - various authors
Master Plan: Himmler 's Scholars and the Holocaust - Heather Pringle
Eichmann in Jerusalem - Hannah Arendt
Living in Ancient Rome
Traveling with Herodotus -R. Kapuszynsky
Oblivion - David Foster Wallace - Some of his greatest work
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace - still wrestling with this great book
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Renegade - The Obama Campaign - Richard Wolffe
Mount Analogue - Rene Daumal
John Brown
Anathem - Neal Stephenson - love Stephenson but tough slogging first few chapters
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ALEX COX - Alex Cox
FIASCO by Thomas Ricks
I, Fellini - Charlotte Chandler & Federico Fellini
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Judah P. Benjamin - Eli Evans - Confederacy's Secretary of State & source of the W.C. Field's exclamation
Moscow 2042 - Vladimir Voinovich - Pre-1989 curiosity & entertaining sci fi read; love his portrayal of Solzhenitsyn-like character
Gomorrah - Roberto Saviano - Mafia without the It-Am sugar coating. Brutal & disturbing
The Sack of Rome - Celebrity+Media+Money=Silvio Berlusconi - Alexander Stille
Reporting - David Remnick - terrific journalism
Fassbinder
Indignation - Philip Roth
Rome
Let's Go Italy! 2008
Italian Phrases for Dummies
How to Pack
Violence - Slavoj Zizek
Dali: Painting & Film
The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight - Jimmy Breslin
The Good Rat - Jimmy Breslin
Spook Country - William Gibson
A Blue Hand - The Beats in India - Deborah Baker
The Metaphysical Club - Louis Menard
Coast of Utopia - Tom Stoppard
Physics of the Impossible - Dr. Michio Kaku
Managing the Unexpected - Weick & Sutcliffe
Wait Til The Midnight Hour - Writings on Black Power
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Burning Down the Masters' House - Jayson Blair
Howl - Allen Ginsberg
Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
The Palace Thief - Ethan Canin
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The Wooden Sea - Jonathan Carroll
American Gangster - Mark Jacobson
Return of the King - J.R.R. Tolkien
Gawker Guide to Becoming King of All Media
Jews and Power - Ruth Wisse
Youth Without Youth - Mircea Eliade
A Team of Rivals - Doris Goodwin
Ghost Hunters -William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death - Deborah Blum
Dream -Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy - Stephen Duncombe
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Studio A - The Bob Dylan Reader

Current Listening

Alexi Murdoch Wait
Wilco Summer Teeth
Wilco The Album
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Polyrock - Polyrock
96 Tears - Garland Jeffries
Ghost of a Chance Garland Jeffries
Yellow Magic Orchestra
Mustang Sally Buddy Guy
John Lee Hooker
Black and White Years
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100 Days 100 Nites - Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings
DYLAN: 3 disc Greatest...
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Wild Palms - Soundtrack -Ryuichi Sakamoto
Dinah Washington - Best of..
Commander Cody& His Lost Planet Airmen Live at Armadillo

"Who Owns the Future?"

Jaron Lanier, author of You Are Not A Gadget, musician, i-visionary/designer/philosopher, has written a new book, "Who Owns the Future?" that will be published this month in the UK and in the US in May. As Guardian writer observes in his review: " [Lanier] tellingly questions the trajectory of economic value in the information age, and argues that there has been a fundamental misstep in how capitalism has gone digital. For Lanier, late capitalism is not so much exhausted as humiliating: in an automated world, information is more important to the economy than manual labour, and yet we are expected to surrender information generated by or about ourselves – a valuable resource – for free."

Link to the full review here.

CODA: Roubini and Saviano on "Criminal Economics" at NYU

While, last month, I previously bemoaned missing the actual discussion at NYU between author Roberto Saviano ("Gomorrah") and Economist Dr. Nouriel Roubini, happily Lia Petridis Maiello provides a thorough accounting of the conversation:

" While Saviano pointed out the vulnerability of some U.S. banks for money laundering and economic crime, and then established a connection to the financial crisis and the Italian Mafia, Roubini declared social inequality as the fundamental evil of the financial crisis and showed solidarity with the young protesters of the Occupy Wall Street movement." Full Link here

ZOMBIELAND: American Politics, 2008- Present

Paul Krugman wonders how, despite the economic crisis brought on by the free-market fundamentalism and anti-government de-regulation ethos of the Bush Administration, the current tax cut and anti-regulation fervor remains the dominent political ideology.

Link here

Frank Rich on "The Bipartisan Racket" - "If No Labels is the best our centrist political establishment can come up with to address the ills eating away at America, its culture is as bankrupt as Citigroup would be if taxpayers had allowed it to fail." Link here

And everything is going to the beat
And everything is going to the beat
And everything is going

And you said it was like fire around the brim
Burning solid burning thin the burning rim
Like stars burning holes right through the dark
Flicking fire like saltwater into my eyes
You were one inch from the edge of this bed
I dragged you back a sleepyhead
They couldn't think of something to say the day you burst
With all their lions and all their might and all their thirst
They crowd your bedroom like some thoughts wearing thin
Against the walls against your rules against your skin
My beard grew down to the floor and out through the doors
Of your eyes, begonia skies like a sleepyhead
Your head
Lyrics copyright 2007 by Passion Pit

Polyrock was an American post-punk/ new wave band formed in New York City in 1978 and active until the mid-1980s. Strongly influenced by minimalism , the group was produced by the composer Philip Glass and Kurt Munkasci. The band, led by singer/guitarist Billy Robertson (formerly of the group Model Citizen), had a keyboard-heavy, pattern-based sound strongly reminiscent of Glass's work; in fact, Glass performed on the group's album.

Polyrock's lineup also included vocalist Catherine Oblasney, guitarist Tommy Robertson, drummer Joseph Yannece, and keyboard player Lenny Aaron.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyrock

Preserving the Vision: Brooklyn Bridge

An email from Daphne Willians included the video below about "a proposed development that can ruin the views of the Brooklyn Bridge. There's a vote on April 22 which can hopefully stop this from happening. Even David McCullogh , the famous author is advocating for this cause.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34eV2nz4Jvo "

Interested readers may wish to check out the video and can contact Council Speaker Christine Quinn cquinn@council.nyc.gov / Phone: (212) 788-7210

Conact brooklyndaphne@yahoo.com for more info.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34eV2nz4Jvo

Pre-Weekend Notes

Excitement definitely in the air in downtown Brooklyn as we approach the holiday weekend. As the weekend before the big week unfolds, with, of course, the virtually back-to-back holiday celebration of the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the inauguration of the 44th Preident of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, there is palpable excitement and energy in the winter air. The opening of Notorious, which despite the cold, has lines outside the Regal Cinema on Court Street, just adds to the energy and excitement.

When we lived in Clinton Hill/Fort Greene in the 90s, it was a few blocks away from the late Biggie Smalls/Notorious B.I.G./Christopher Wallace's home on St. James Place. Our older daughter, now still studying in Europe, is pining for the fjords that she has to miss the premier of the film. As one of her teacher's said years ago, when another kid was trying to "explain" to our daughter some hip hop reference, "You don't have to explain that to her, Danielle grew up in the 'hood." Sort of. Not exactly. But, so it goes.

The late Christopher Wallace had brains, talent, and charisma to spare. Before he broke through, he survived the streets, drugs, and Brooklyn. He had a strong mom behind him. But I guess he couldn't survive his fame. The killing of Tupac Shakur was big news. But you could sense the murder of Christopher Wallace hit Brooklyn kids really hard with a heavy punch. If Barack Obama represents one story of remarkable success for Black Americans, the path taken by the late Christopher Wallace surely represented another. Rap, hip hop, or whatever you want to call contemporary Black music, has taken the world by storm. Wallace, yet another achieving kid from Brooklyn, made his mark.

I love these lines from Notorious:

Sean Combs: Yo, he got sex appeal like LL?
Wayne Barrow: A little bigger than that.
Sean Combs: What, like Heavy D?
Wayne Barrow: He's a little darker than that.
Sean Combs:: He look like Wesley Snipes?
Wayne Barrow: Oh, he ain't Wesley...

President-elect Obama is trim, vibrant, healthy, athletic, a brilliant writer, supremely self-confident. B.I.G. was big, robust, pleasure-seeking, a brilliant writer, and supremely self-confident. They each took their own path, both tinged with pathos and the blues, and each forged his own unique, individual brand.

Although President-elect Obama, clearly a brilliant, remarkable, charismatic, strong family- values-rooted guy represents a more familiar, comfortable model of success, America will always have room for and produce the creative, visionary, and healing artist, no matter how much that talent skirts with realms of danger, self-destructiveness, and violence.

Great Moments in the Sopranos #2 : We Have A Winner.

Angry mob boss Phil Leotardo (Frank Vincent) who got the squashed calabasa treatment lived in this lovely manse ostensibly located on Marlborough and Dorchester (according to the obviously prop street signs posted in front of the home.) Last week I asked if anyone had a clue where the real home stands? Well, ding-ding-ding !, we have a winner: E. Joslyn located a link, Sue's Soprano Sightings (see link below) which indicates, incredibly that the house is actually located in Newark, NJ. Ms Joslin, when beginning to poke around, thought it was in Staten Island. Others indicated it seemed like something from Dyker Heights. But apparently, Newark, NJ it is -- it sure could be a grand Flatbush home ! Thanks, Erin for the research.

My NY TIMES METROPOLITAN DIARY ARTICLE - JULY 11, 2005

NY TIMES - METRO SECTION MONDAY, JULY 11, 2005

Dear Diary:

My family was taking a stroll up Hudson Street on a beautiful evening. A young man approached, shirtless but wearing a very large snake draped around his neck and shoulders. The young man stopped to chat with an acquaintance while the snake slithered and slathered, taking in the street scene from its perch.

Close by, a mother with her 2-year-old son in a stroller was similarly engaged in a passing conversation. Her little guy, not yet jaded by the downtown scene, reached out to make nice with the undulating reptile.

Young mom, though seemingly oblivious and wrapped in conversation, didn't miss a beat, and corrected her son with downtown, seen-it-all aplomb - "Don't touch the big snake, sweetie, we're going out for pizza" - before they strolled away.

(Brooklyn Beat)

Prophetic Dreams

Last week I dreamed that my wife and I were on a fast moving train, speeding somewhere through the heartland, and the train was being chased by a tornado. Back in 1990, I had a vivid dream, never to be forgotten, that I was in my parent's apartment in Windsor Terrace, top floor, at 10th avenue and 17th street, really near the highpoint of Brooklyn. We could see the parachute jump tower in the far distance in Coney Island from that window. In my dream, from the distance, I saw a line of people, on magic carpets, flying by, hundred, thousands, millions of people, loaded down with material, boxes, weapons, etc. I will never forget that dream, and cannot think of it as anything except as a harbinger of the first Gulf War. It was essentially a huge carvan or transport of people, passing by my parents' window (I hadn't lived in that apartment for over a dozen years by that time) Do you recall any dreams that seemed to foretell the future in some cosmic and large way?