Vlacke Bosh Chronicles: Post-Storm Sociability

The most amazing quality of New York is its fantastic resiliency. Friday night after work at Sycamore on Cortelyou Road.

Post-Storm New York: Ways to Help

Despite the emerging efforts of FEMA and Red Cross, many opportunities to help still exist.

A comprehensive rundown of Volunteer opportunities and ways to help from our colleagues at the Ditmas Park Patch:

http://ditmaspark.patch.com/articles/post-sandy-update-where-to-volunteer-in-brooklyn

The World Keeps Turning

Sundown following a 90 degree beach day in Yaffo near Tel Aviv, Israel. November 3, 2012

Photo by Danielle Moghadam

CODA: Storm Giving You Gas? Just Wait.

Fuel analysts blame distribution issues that are by-products of Hurricane Sandy -- including power outages that prevent transport of fuel from storage facilities to trucks to local stations -- and not actual fuel shortages as among the principal reasons for lines at the pump and empty stations throughout the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area. It could result in a temporary price spike at the fuel pump and take several days, possibly a week, to stabilize.  

More details here .

CODA: Storm Fatalities in Ditmas Park

Emergency Service and Medical Examiners staff at site of fatalities of two local residents killed last night during Hurricane Sandy by a falling tree while walking their dog on Ditmas Avenue and East 18 - East 19th Streets. The dog was taken in by a neighbor.

Details on the young couple are now available-- Jessie Streich-Kest and Jacob Vogelman. Ms Steich Kest was a teacher at Bushwick HS for Social Justice and Mr Vogelman was a graduate student at Brooklyn College. Sincere condolences to their familes. Link here

Photos  by Tony Napoli Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn

Storm Coda: Trees Down Across Q/B Train Tracks at Avenue H

Huge tree fell across tracks in both directions near the Avenue H Stop

Photos by Tony Napoli

Local tragedy: www.ditmas park.patch.com reported about two local residents and their dog who were killed when they were struck by a falling tree at Ditmas Ave and E 18 th and E 19 th streets

Storm Surge NYC: 1960

West and Cortlandt Streets, near World Trade Center area during Hurricane Donna 1960. The current storm surge is projected to be higher.

New York City Waits for Sandy

New York slated for hard hit

http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/xxxx/703958

National Hurricane Center Tracking

More details here 

A Wainy Wednesday in New Yawk: "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway"

It's Positively 'Brooklyn Bucolic' at Flatbush's Landmark Subway Station

Photo by Tony Napoli

The Landmarked Avenue H Subway Station Gets a Touch of the Down Home with Architect/ Designer/Artist Ed Kopel's "Brooklyn Bucolic" winner of the 2007 Arts in Transit Award from the NYC Transit Authority. Of course, since "postmodernism" has become the new reality, the chairs, "ironically" (ouch) are rendered in Bronze and don't actually rock. But they are a pleasure to the eye, adding a further touch of country-ish charm to the quaint Avenue H subway house.

Artisans at Work: Polich Tallix Fine Art Foundry

that rendered designer Ed Kopel's vision

From the Foundry's website: "Brooklyn Bucolic, Kopel’s installation, is inspired by the unique element of the station house’s front façade: it’s wraparound porch. Seven fixed and brightly patinated bronze Shaker style rocking chairs in varying sizes able to accommodate children and adults, scatter the north and east side of the house. Each original rocking chair, slightly different than the next, were hand carved in maple by JP Parnas Woodworking out of Massachusetts. Molds were made of every chairs’ element, followed by waxes, and eventually they were cast in bronze. The subtle bend of the chairs’ profiles up to the detail of the wood texture and lattice woven seats translated beautifully into metal."

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Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn asked Mr. Kopel a question about this work and his thoughts on design:

Q: As an architect who is also an artist, is utility important in design?

Mr. Kopel responded: For me, there is no architecture without utility. But how does one define utility or, for that matter, function? Is something considered useful if it provokes a thought or a mood or is just pleasing to look at? I think so but I also think that good design is approachable, understandable, and directly applicable to our everyday lives. So called "paper architecture" may be useful in the academy and may be great design but is not, in my mind, architecture.

More on the foundry that rendered the work here and the designer, architect Ed Kopel here and the New York City Transit Authority's Arts for Transit and Urban Design website here

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SIDEBAR: Additional Reading and Background on the Avenue H Station:

Avenue H is a local station on the BMT Brighton Line of the New York City Subway. Located at Avenue H between East 15th and East 16th Streets on the border of Midwood and Flatbush, Brooklyn, it is served by the Q train at all times. Among the many pleasures of our family's move from Fort Greene and Clinton Hill in the late 1990s to Fiske Terrace is the wonderfully pronto, el rapido, subway service that we enjoy, ensuring relatively quick access to the rest of Brooklyn and Manhattan via the Q or B.

The Avenue H station was opened around 1900 as Fiske Terrace, a two-track surface station serving the new planned community of Fiske Terrace in Midwood, Brooklyn. The station house, also known as the headhouse, through which the station is entered, is a landmarked wood frame structure built in 1905 as a real estate office of the T.B. Ackerson Company to sell homes in the new community. It was converted to railroad use in 1907, at the same time that the station was renamed "Avenue H." The campuses of Brooklyn College and Midwood High School are nearby.

In 2003, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced plans to demolish the structure, citing its wood construction as a fire hazard. The community intervened, emphasizing the building's historic importance, architectural significance, connecting to the adjacent community and the fact that several other wooden station houses on the subway system had been given landmark status earlier.

The Old, Pre-Renovation Avenue H Station

On June 29, 2004, the station house was designated a landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. This allows renovations inside, but preserves the major structure and exterior. The contract to "restore the landmark station control house" as well as rehabilitation of the platforms and other stations structures was advertised for bids by the MTA for January 2007.

In designating it for Landmark Status, the Commission indicated: "The Avenue H station on the BMT line [...] is the city’s only shingled wooden cottage turned transit station house. Often compared to a country train stop, it originally served as a real estate sales office for developer Thomas Benton Ackerson to sell property in the adjacent neighborhood of Fiske Terrace, an early twentieth century example of planned suburban development. The structure, with a hipped and flared roof and wraparound porch, evokes in miniature the area’s Colonial Revival and Queen Anne houses. After nearly a century of commuter traffic, the Avenue H station remains in service and retains much historic fabric, from a corbelled chimney to peeled log porch columns. It is one of a very small number of wood-frame station houses surviving in the modern subway system, the only station adapted from a structure built for another function, and the only surviving station from Brooklyn’s once-extensive network of surface train lines, which had originally attracted Ackerson and numerous other developers to the area.

--Tony Napoli for Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn

Coda: Hey, We Coulda Been a Contender

The Future is Unwritten: City & State's 40 Under 40 Rising Stars

Photo by Tony Napoli

Political journal City & State hosted a reception for its list of 40 under 40 Rising Stars last night at Sprig, a restaurant in the Lipstick Building in midtown.   The event reflected the young and energetic group of winners which included a great  mix of up-and-coming players in NYC politics, government, media, and business.

As twilight falls on the Mike Bloomberg mayoralty, and with the continuing evolution of Andrew Cuomo's governance of the Empire State, and the complex political dynamic in the media and on the campaign trail as President Obama seeks to stretch "44" into "45" despite a stubbornly intransigent economic recovery and global upheaval and conflict, it is clear and reassuring that, in New York City at least, the Next generation of talented and dedicated movers and shakers are already taking the stage. 

(Coda/Cautionary Note: the Lipstick Building is the former home of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities. Inhabiting the 17th -19th floors, the multi-billion dollar ponzi scheme was "financially engineered" from the 17th floor, which reportedly had no more than 24 employees.)

--Anthony Napoli

CODA: Paint It (in the) Black - Stones Choose Newark Over Barclay Center

The Rolling Stones will celebrate their 50th anniversary in the New York area but it will be at the Prudential Center in Newark not at the new Brooklyn Barclay's Center reports Gothamist .. while the bottom line is no doubt a factor in the decision, it will be interesting to hear the rationale since there was a flurry of hype and hooplah in anticipation of the decision ever since the tour was first announced late this summer. Whether there have been intensive, ongoing negotiations or whether this was in the bag all along remains to be seen.  For the record,  Prudential reports 17,500 capacity for end-field style concert seating; Barclay 19,000. So, somewhere in the numbers, Prudential appears to have come up with the better deal.

Looks like they'll be no Junior's cheesecake for you, Sir Mick.  Nevertheless, DITHOB is still merrily grooving on the Stone's new, terrific single, "Doom and Gloom"....

"Doom and Gloom": New Rolling Stones' Single

Lyric video above. Now available for download on iTunes. Despite early word in late August, and a renewed buzz over the last couple of days, still no news on the Barclay Center performance in Brooklyn, U.S.A., before the end of the year. Watch the skies!