OVERFLOW Winter 2012

ISSUE 10 :: SUMMER 2011 ISSUE 12 路 WINTER 2012

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ISSUE12

WINTER

2012

CONTENTS

Great Plains

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Roulette

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Emily St. John Mandel

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Competitive Tunnelling

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Nailin' It

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Sad Stories

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The Privilege of Production

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Cursed

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Pet Portrait

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Grand Prospect Hall made our dreams come true

26 Reed Street

droppin' anchor at the Red Hook Yacht Club

Ice Milk a fashion story

28 32 38 cover photo Craig LaCourt 路 contents photo Sarah Wilmer

Thanks for the hard work!

See you in March 2012...

Please visit our website, contact our office or e-mail us for updates on locations and activities. www.gowanuscanalconservancy.org I 718.541.4378 I volunteer@gowanuscanalconservancy.org sponsored by:

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Seabox, Verizon, Liberty Industrial Gas and Welding Supply, New York Sand and Stone, emphas!s design inc. and Aguayo Realty Group. With support from NY State Senator Daniel Squadron and NYC Councilmember Brad Lander.

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C O N 4T R I 2 3

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1. Sayaka Nagata. Hello 2012! For more paintings, please visit www.sayakanagata.com and thanks! 2. Alex and Sarah: Working together for a better tomorrow. 3. Lauren Dlugosz likes books. 4. Sarah Wilmer: www.

SarahWilmer.com 5. Robert Dupree: If you want to see him neked. Google him. 6. Craig LaCourt is a Red Hook based portrait photographer, husband, papa, doggie daddy, tinkerer, and all around nice guy. See his portfolio at www.craiglacourt.com 7. Eliza Ronalds-Hannon is a freelance journalist living in Brooklyn. For more riveting information, see @eliza_r_hannon. 8. Brooke Van Poppelen is a comic, writer and actress who lives in South Brooklyn. She’s been on cable tv a bunch and co-hosts a great stand-up show at Freddy’s Back Room. Find out more at brookevanpoppelen.com—Photo by Laina Karavani. 9. Jamie Friedlander is a senior at NYU who is not yet prepared for graduation. Amidst the indecision and chaos, however, words continue to keep her sane. 10.

Patrick Lamson-Hall is a journalist and an urban planning student at NYU. He moved to Brooklyn from Portland, Oregon in August 2011. His hobbies include heroism and doing sit-ups. 11. Hannah Miet writes about crime, 8

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violence, politics and occasionally fluffy kittens. On the side, she teaches defensive driving classes to New York City cabbies. 12. Dean Haspiel is an Emmy award winning artist. He created BILLY DOGMA and illustrates for HBO’s Bored To Death. Dino has drawn many superhero and semi-autobiographical comic books and graphic novels for major publishers, including collaborations with Jonathan Lethem, Harvey Pekar, Jonathan Ames, Inverna Lockpez, and, recently, with Tim Hall on The Last Mortician for Tor.com. For new BILLY DOGMA and other cool multimedia projects and profiles, please visit TripCity.net, a Brooklyn-filtered literary arts salon. 13.

Walker Esner: You’ve been warned. www.walkeresner.com 14. Jeff Brown: Keep reading OVERFLOW! 15. Marlene Rounds: marlenerounds.com 16. Hunter Nelson is a writer/performer/illustrator based in Brooklyn. 17. Jonathan Ritzman is writer living in Crown Heights. He survived the earthquake with only a scratch. Please send free iPad offers to jritzman@gmail.com 18. John Shorb is an artist and writer working from his studio in Red Hook. 19.

Adam Krause: www.adamkrausephoto.com 20. Luca Giovanopoulos loves Cheese, Laughing, and Euro Vans.

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Great Plains

short, 30-something man in a fedora grabbed a ukulele from Barry Rust’s instrument stand at the Brooklyn Flea in Fort Greene. Its dark wood body was nothing more than an old cigar box with a scene of a farmer harvesting tobacco depicted on it. Like many others that day, the man couldn’t help but pluck the curious instrument. Out came a little ditty. The man twirled around in the stand. “It plays!” he said. He shot a sly smile at Rust. “And well!”

Rust nodded approvingly, then showed the man a secret aspect of the instrument. “It even opens up,” Rust said, unhitching the brass latch revealing the inside of the cigar box with a dark branded handwritten B. Rust.

For the past four and a half years, Rust has handcrafted an eclectic assortment of instruments at his Red Hook workshop on Lorraine and Clinton Streets, not far from the BQE. His signature piece is the cigar-box ukulele, which embodies a high level of craftsmanship with a sense of nostalgia.

Rust dusts off cigar boxes from the 40s and 50s, often imported from Cuba or other parts of the Caribbean, and makes them new for us again.

“A cigar box is just a perfect size,” he said. “I make some other instruments with the boxes. But you can’t really beat the proportions for a uke.”

Ukuleles evoke a certain intimacy. Maybe it is the size, which fits so easily in the crook of your arm.

Or perhaps its tinny sound brings back memories of Hawaiian get-aways we’ve experienced through television and movies.

“I got the idea when I found a cardboard cigar box at a rummage sale in a neighborhood woman’s living room,” Rust explained. “Somewhere, I’d seen or heard of cigar box instruments. So I decided that’s what I’d use this box for. I had never built an instrument before and didn’t even know how a ukulele worked.”

But Rust had played ukuleles, which are part of an extensive instrument collection he has methodically assembled over the last 20 years.

Banjos, fiddles, a harmonium, an accordion, spoons, an autoharp, a harmonica, acoustic and electric guitars, a melodica, xylophone, a children’s glockenspiel, and a musical saw cover the walls and shelves of his tiny garret apartment at the top of a brownstone in Fort Greene.

Rust amassed these instruments from trips to India, the Great Plains and Appalachia, where he experienced one of his favorite music genres, Old Time, in its home. These travels have fueled his desire to make the instruments he most enjoys himself.

Evenings at Rust’s apartment often end up in an impromptu jam session from his vast collection.

by John Shorb · photo Craig LaCourt During the summer, friends and acquaintances linger after parties on his roof deck. The eerie sound of a Theremin, the clacking of spoons, the sweet sound of Rust’s own ukes all mix with the pop and reggae music coming from a nearby bar and restaurant.

“Barry’s rooftop is probably my favorite place in Brooklyn,” one of his friends said. “It just always seems filled with good people and good music.

Even if I only know how to play the spoons.”

Rust grew up in a family of tinkerers. His grandfather became so interested in antique gun collecting that he built a metal shop behind his farmhouse in central Illinois. That interest grew into woodworking, and so his shop grew as well.

The tinkering spirit spread to his son, Rust’s father, who spends his free time rehabbing old earthmoving equipment, like bulldozers. Rust himself started woodworking at a young age, making candle sticks as family gifts. He spent hours spinning the candlesticks on the lathe in the workshop.

More recently, one of the most special tools from that workshop—the 60-year-old Delta table saw— made its way to Rust’s shop in Red Hook. In many ways, he has brought his family’s legacy with him.

“When I first moved here, I made a pledge to myself that I would make as much stuff myself as I could,” he said. “I brought my grandmother’s sewing machine to make my own curtains and hem my own pants.”

Rust also grows his own herbs on his roof garden.

He makes his own furniture, mosaics, and coat racks. To feed his obsession with instrumentmaking, he reads the latest issues of Fine Woodworking, watches This Old House, and picks up new ideas from YouTube videos (such as how to play the mouth harp). Rust didn’t just want to make a nice-looking instrument. As a lover of music, he wanted them to actually play.

“I guess it’s just how my mind works. I like for things to serve some purpose, on top of being beautiful. Part of the beauty comes from the fact that it can do something.”

This sentiment echoes the roots of cigar-box instruments, which date back to the 19th century.

They resurged during the Great Depression, especially in the rural South, as an accessible way to make an instrument.

In Rust’s workshop, the walls are also covered.

Only this time with tools: planers, routers, saws, screwdrivers, sanders, fretsaws, rasps, pliers, nippers, files, spokeshaves, router bits, carpenter squares, scraper planes, and, perhaps most importantly, a dust collector. His workshop always has the comforting scent of wood.

To make a ukulele, he cuts large wood pieces with his table and band saws. He then uses a jointer to flatten out parts of the wood, and makes a dovetail joint using a router for the cigar box to attach to the neck. He carves the neck with rasps, files, and an electric sander. There are many more steps, but when you watch him make one, he makes it look easy.

“I really got into music as an adult. I think it was because I realized that I only needed to know a few chords,” he said. “I could play a bunch of songs on guitar and strum and sing with my friends—it was a big breakthrough. If you don’t need to be brilliant, you can just have fun. I take a similar approach to making instruments.”

Don’t let his humility fool you, though. There is a lot of hard work. When I visited his workshop, he was sanding down ukulele necks for two hours.

Then there is the high level of craft. Rust brings a fastidious eye to this process and spent years perfecting his skills and finding the right pieces for each part of the instrument before opening up his shop for business. He carves real bone for the saddle and nuts of the uke. And he carefully chooses which cigar boxes to use from stacks of vintage cigar boxes of all brands: Osmundo, Ben Hur, La Gloria, Corina. He often names the ukulele after the cigar brand, and he mainly buys them off of eBay, which offers a steady supply.

“There are so many beautiful old cigar boxes there,” he explained. “Many of them have gorgeous detailing, and some have handwritten labels from their owners over the decades. The boxes were just born to be reused over and over.”

He sells occasionally at the Brooklyn Flea and elsewhere. Business is good. People love the ukes.

They range in price from $160 to $300.

He also makes cookie-tin banjos and coffee-tin ukuleles, as well as the occasional hurdy-gurdy, an instrument with a spinning wheel that vibrates its strings like a violin bow (he made one hurdy-gurdy out of a wooden box that originally held wine bottles).

Rust always brings a twist to each new line of instruments. Recently, he customized one ukulele for a happy customer by inscribing a few lines of a poem on the side of cigar box.

Back at the Flea, a kid came up to Rust’s line of ukuleles and stared at them longingly. “Can I pick it up?” the kid asked, not taking his eyes off of it.

“Sure, go ahead,” Rust replied. “You can play it, too. It really works.”

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Roulette

by Jamie Friedlander · photo Marlene Rounds

n a Thursday night last fall, I sat with about 70 or 80 people—most born before the Carter Administration—in an aging Art Deco theater in Boerum Hill. We listened to the curious sounds of traditional Korean Komungo and Indian Tabla, followed by Japanese Shakuhachi and Shamisen.

A large projector overhead flashed abstract, bold images during the first half of the show while the performers broke a hot sweat on stage.

Suddenly, a tall, elderly man clad in black slacks and a starched button-down stood up from the audience. He shuffled to the stage and up a set of stairs. Then he grabbed a microphone. He started singing, his lips barely moving, his voice a mix of deep opera, ventriloquism, and Tuvan throat singing. I became convinced this man had sabotaged the performance. It was clear by the sea of calm faces throughout the theater that I was the only one who thought that. Then I remembered.

I’m at Roulette, a haven for experimental music.

Strange things happen here. Nearly all of it planned.

Roulette may be new to South Brooklyn, but the venue has been around for almost 35 years. Three open-minded composers—Jim Staley, David Weinstein, and Dan Senn—launched Roulette in 1978, a few years after they graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Staley, the current president, had taken a break from college in 1972 when he had a very low number in the Vietnam draft lottery and enlisted in the Army band. While stationed in Berlin he fostered his love for avant-garde music by connecting with artists and composers from all over the world.

After college, Weinstein and Senn moved to Chicago, while Staley moved to New York. The three decided to start Roulette and had to juggle shows between Chicago and New York initially.

Staley said it was more of a “collective” at first.

In 1980, Roulette became its own entity. The men finally chose a name. “We were kicking around a lot of names, and the name ‘Roulette’ seemed to fit the bill,” said Staley. “It had that chance element and a secular sensibility to it.”

Roulette’s reputation grew quickly. Soon after opening it received $1,000 as an unsolicited donation from legendary avant-garde musician John Cage, who also attended several of the space’s earliest shows. Since then, the non-profit theater has been renowned for its unique musical experiences and group of dedicated followers.

After bouncing around Manhattan for more than three decades, it moved to a 1930s theater on the corner of Atlantic and Third Avenue in September.

Lou Reed performed on opening night.

This feels much more bizarre than Lou Reed, I thought, as I sat focused on the rapid-fire hands

of the Indian Tabla drum player. I took a break to explore the faces around me. Most were entranced, one was sleeping, and the man to my left was slowly nodding off. A virgin to experimental music, I was periodically bored but also intrigued by the intimate setting. It was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. The faces in the audience were attentive and focused.

“I think a lot of people here see experimental music and think that’s going to be nasty sounds, but sometimes people are really blown away,” said Doron Sadja, a musician and Roulette’s publicity director.

People at the show I attended were serious about their music. Before it had started, the neighborly audience goers were giddy. “Sit in the middle, honey,” said a middle-aged woman to her husband.

“This is electronic music, the acoustics will be best there.” After hearing Ralph Samuelson, the Japanese Shakuhachi player, the woman next to me, Liz Phillips—a professor of Sound and Interactive Media at SUNY-Purchase—whispered, “He’s probably the best Shakuhachi player who ever lived.” News to me.

Performance aside, however, the new space itself is stunning. Roulette initially began in Staley’s loft in 1978, and then moved to a barren gallery in SoHo. The new space is anything but a simple gallery.

Typical of 1930s Art Deco, the walls are covered with slate gray, intricate geometrical designs. The stage is vast and deep. The lush wooden floors are gorgeous, what Phillips calls, “floors people could really dance on.” The balcony still has all of the original, yet deteriorating, seats. To keep the chairs, or not to keep the chairs—a current debate at Roulette. Staley is hesitant to replace the authentic chairs, but said he probably will.

Shelley Hirsch, a long-time Roulette performer and board member who also graced opening night, was hesitant to move to Brooklyn for fear it was less accessible than Manhattan. Now that they’ve moved, however, she could not be happier. Along with Sadja and Staley, she said the acoustics are unbeatable.

“There’s no comparison,” Hirsch said. “The space in the loft was very intimate, it could only seat 75. And then Roulette expanded further into the gallery, a larger space that still had this incredible grand piano. But now, this, this is just a whole new situation.”

Hirsch dropped out of college after one year and moved to California at 18 to become a Japanese kabuki dancer. She fell into experimental theater instead. Hirsch eventually moved back to New York, got involved in experimental sound, and

can attest her passion for and involvement with experimental music to Roulette.

“I would say one performance that I saw of Jerry Hunt at Roulette in 1985 changed me,” said Hirsch.

“He’s since passed away, but I wound up spending three years doing homages to him, and virtual duets with him and his music. I was incredibly, incredibly inspired.”

Sadja mentioned that a recent show rocked his world as well. As part of the Atlantic Antic festival in South Brooklyn, Roulette participated in a twoday experiment called a Music Circus where nobody paid to get in, and nobody was paid to perform.

Ten or fifteen performers were placed around the theater—including the balcony—at once. One hundred performers contributed over the twoday period and over a thousand people attended.

There was only one rule. When to start playing and when to stop.

Sadja said the experience was unlike anything he had ever witnessed. “It’s kind of like Choose Your Own Adventure. There were moments I hated, but some I really liked. It was one of the biggest headaches ever. But it was pretty wonderful.”

Sitting on a raggedy futon with a print reminiscent of 1970s Arizona in the basement of Roulette, Sadja told me—amidst a concoction of strange music and banging construction noise—that the neighborhood surrounding Roulette has embraced the recent move. Although another experimental music theater is down the street, there is not much competition. Staley in fact acknowledged that he is glad a handful of other experimental music clubs in New York exists because it means more exposure for the art form.

Roulette does have one minor problem, however.

Funding. Although it received a generous grant from Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, the organization still needs to raise a lot of dough. Roughly $1.5 million: $125,000 annually to maintain the space and roughly $250,000 for renovations. Staley said Roulette is getting another grant from Markowitz for $600,000 soon.

“The new space is a lot more expensive, the rent is more, and we have to have more people working here,” said Sadja. “This is a bad time for the economy to be looking for money, so we’re figuring it out.”

As I perused my wrinkled concert flyer on the subway ride home, I noticed that Roulette’s mission is so strong that funding might not be a major issue.

“And let’s just say it loud and clear,” the flyer said.

“Experimental music and the adventurous arts enrich our individual lives, and move our culture forward. It’s a matter of celebration that we won’t have to wait for a century to enjoy the benefits.”

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Emily St. John Mandel

hen author Emily St. John Mandel moved from Montreal to New York at the age of 23, she was broke, had no job prospects, and was living in a ramshackle apartment with a mentally ill stranger. Worried her roommate might snap at any moment but unable to afford moving expenses, Mandel spent hours in Brooklyn cafes, drinking tea and writing her first book. Fast forward a few years and she is proof that with a lot of hard work and hope, creative goals are attainable. She has two published novels, Last Night in Montreal and The Singer’s Gun. Her third novel, The Lola Quartet, is set to come out in May 2012. Each of her books is a winning combination of gorgeous, unique imagery and nail-biting, page-turning narrative.

They are the kind of novels that will leave you emotionally fulfilled, exhausted from late-night reading marathons, and reminded that books can be the most satisfying form of entertainment. I was lucky to have this opportunity to discuss all things writing with the Park Slope author.

Born in British Columbia, Mandel was raised on an island that has a population of only a thousand people. She was homeschooled as a child, and her parents encouraged her creative interests. “I spent an enormous amount of time alone,” she said, “either building forts in the woods, reading, or creating elaborate fantasy worlds with homemade paper dolls. In retrospect, this probably wasn’t a bad preparation for writing novels.”

Although she began writing stories at an early age, Mandel was a serious dancer and studied at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre. When she realized her student loan check wouldn’t last forever, Mandel started working a series of odd jobs. “I’ve unloaded trucks at 7 a.m. I’ve spent entire days in underground stock rooms putting price stickers on martini glasses. I’ve risen at 4:30 a.m. to get to a temp job where the work consisted entirely of pasting text into Excel documents for eight hours at a stretch. There was a strange period when I was going to school, working in a café, then going back to the school to work as a janitor one night a week and on weekends.”

These experiences would eventually find their way into Mandel’s written work. While contemporary fiction is overpopulated with characters that are either writers or Creative Writing professors,

by Lauren Dlugosz · photo Robert Dupree

Mandel’s characters are a reflection of real people who have to do things they don’t enjoy in order to make rent. In The Singer’s Gun, an office assistant named Elena aptly explains the horrors of the day job to her academic boyfriend: “The initial shock of work hasn’t worn off yet. I still have these moments where I think, Come on, this can’t possibly be it. I cannot possibly be expected to do something this awful day in and day out until the day I die. It’s like a life sentence imposed in the absence of a crime.” An earlier section of the same book describes office girls in New York: “Young and talented and still hopeful but losing ground; bright young things held up by their pinstripes on the Brooklyn- and Queens-bound trains every weekday evening, heading home to apartment shares in sketchy neighborhoods and dinners of instant noodles from corner bodegas.” While Mandel’s Top Ramen days are behind her, she continues to work as an administrative assistant in a cancer research lab.

This year, Mandel sold her third novel and made enough foreign rights sales that she could have quit her day job. She appreciates the benefits and steady income, however, and advises aspiring writers to separate the value of their writing from the question of how much money they’ll earn from it. “This will sound harsh,” she said, “but I think you have to give up on the idea that you’re ever not going to need a day job, and focus on finding the day job that interferes the least with your creative life.” Despite her fear of financial instability, Mandel says she has never come close to giving up writing for a more lucrative career. “If your primary motivation is to make money, then law school is probably a better option. I know that some authors do end up making a lot of money, it’s just that I think you have to be reconciled to the very real possibility that you might never be one of them. My personal belief is that at the end of the day, the work is what matters.”

Mandel’s work is peppered with fascinating, obscure facts on unexpected topics. Her books are learning experiences that will prepare you for trivia night on the most diverse subject matter.

“Usually I’ll read an article that will spark my interest—about dead languages, say, or social security fraud—and that interest will work its way into whatever book I’m currently writing.” There are traveling circuses in Last Night in Montreal,

astrobiology in The Singer’s Gun, and the history of gypsy jazz in The Lola Quartet. While Mandel’s range of knowledge is astounding, what is most impressive is the way she elegantly weaves together information and imagery. Take, for example, this short passage that demonstrates a relationship’s unraveling: “She pressed the length of her body against him again, but so gently this time that it could have been mistaken for an accidental shifting of weight. He didn’t notice, or chose not to…She began stroking his arm instead of answering him.

His arm tensed very slightly under her fingertips.

Haptics: the science of studying data obtained by touch.”

Mandel says she is always writing a novel, and that the book ideas simply come to her. “I wouldn’t want to imply that there’s anything mystical about this,” she said. “I think that ideas for stories probably occur to everyone, and that writers are just the ones who write them down and then spend a year or two or ten developing them.” Though the initial ideas come easily, Mandel knows very little about the story when she begins writing a book. “For my first novel, Last Night in Montreal, I had an image: a car moving across a desert landscape. When I began The Singer’s Gun, I only had a premise: what if a man left his wife on their honeymoon? I’ve never done charts or outlines. That’s probably a saner way to write a book, and there would probably be fewer rounds of revisions if I knew where I was going in advance, but I think I would get bored if I knew how the book was going to end before I started writing it.” Considering the complexity of Mandel’s work, the multiple points of view and storylines, and the masterful way they all converge in the end, her abilities do seem almost mystical.

While she is writing, the reader Emily St. John Mandel keeps herself in mind. “I’m writing the kinds of books that I would want to read. I want them to be as literary as anything out there, but with the strongest possible narrative drive. I aspire to write books that are truly great.” As a selfproclaimed reading junkie, I am always happy to share a high-quality find. Mandel’s novels perfectly blend beautiful language and suspenseful mystery to investigate human behavior and relationships.

Her stories will leave you satisfied, and the images will stay with you long after you’ve read the last sentence. They are truly great books.

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NAILIN' IT

by Hannah Miet

photos Adam Krause

T

here are things I expect when I walk into a New York nail salon. I expect the radio to be on. It will be tuned to Lite FM or Del-i-lah or KTU. I will hear a song by Celine Dion and a commercial for an attorney who will represent me if I have been injured in an accident. Another human being will touch me, and this human being will be a stranger. The stranger will file and snip and paint until my fingers look flawless. While this happens, I will think of work and deadlines and missed calls and rent money. I will say, “thank you” to the woman, or occasionally the man, who held my hands in her hands. I will check to see if my nails are dry, long before they could possibly be dry. I will smudge the polish, and exit anonymously. The three salons I visited for OVERFLOW were not what I expected. In fact, they were not at all alike. It made me wonder how many other small worlds within New York City—within nail salons, bodegas with cats, and subway cars at dawn—I have entered and exited without really opening my eyes.

Diamond Nails—700 5th Avenue. South Slope.

Manicure: $5. Pedicure: $10.

Japanese pop music filled the room, playing from a mini-laptop on an unused manicure counter. A black mother watched as a male technician painted her toes red. She looked up every few moments to check on her two children, who stood and fidgeted by her side. The boy, no more than five years old, wore a blue pom-pom hat and dimples. The girl, no more than seven years old, wore a pink pompom hat and a Dora the Explorer backpack. They were factually adorable.

The mother sat in a leather chair next to my friend Roxanna. Both women had chosen red nail polish.

The boy was transfixed by Roxanna’s toes. At first he stared with his mouth agape. But eventually he worked up the courage to come closer. Carefully side-stepping the technician, he ducked down and peered into the bubbling water. Roxanna wiggled her toes above the water, as if to say “hello.”

Lili, the technician who gave me a manicure, covered her mouth while giggling. She told me that she is from Japan. She had long hair dyed auburn and dangling gold earrings and she worked fast, pushing my cuticles back and then cutting them neatly over the green glitter countertop. One finger began to bleed, and she blotted it with a tissue.

The mother and her two kids left the salon, a bell on the door ringing behind them. I watched the two pom-pom hats fade into the distance through the window, lit by purple fluorescent bulbs that spell out the word NAILS. Before Lili painted my nails (bright green), she massaged my hands with lotion, pressing her fingers into my palms and releasing tension I did not know I had. I let out a low, unexpected sigh.

“It feels good, your hands?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “My hands feel good.”

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Wink Eco Beauty Bar—602 Vanderbilt Avenue.

Prospect Heights.

“Custom blend” pedicure (with coconut and lime scented body butter and bath salts): $45 normally; $35 because of a special.

Soothing samba filled the empty space, from an iPod hooked up to surround sound. The soft voice of a man singing in Spanish pulsed, a man who I assumed to be beautiful.

The owner, Tani, also had a soothing voice. She asked me if I had any allergies and if I wanted something to drink. When I selected a “blend” from the extensive menu of services, she filled a small gold tub with water and bubbles and introduced me to Marianna, the technician that would give me a pedicure.

Marianna is a Russian Jew with a Brooklyn accent and bright blue eyes. She lives two blocks from the Cyclone.

I asked her about the different salons she has worked at in the borough. She said there are too

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many to name. She said that every neighborhood was different, but most of them attracted “the same kind of people.” She raised a spoon of salts to my face so that I could smell the lime.

“This neighborhood is more diverse,” she said.

“Though our customers are all laid back hippies.”

Marianna massaged my calves with coconut butter and told me that Wink’s products are all organic, natural, and vegan. I never thought, I said, to consider whether my (red) nail polish was vegan.

She asked me what shape I preferred my toenails to be (square), if I wanted my cuticles clipped (yes), and whether or not she was hurting me (it was hard not to moan from pleasure during the entire pedicure). Her curly hair was swept back in a wooden loop with carved, Hebrew letters. I asked what it meant. “Bless you all, or something like that,” she said.

Evening light poured in through the large window.

If I came a few hours later, I realized, the salon would be romantically dim. Most of the light comes from outside.

Marianna told me I should go to Israel on Birthright before I get too old.

The only other customer in the store was a Queens native in her late twenties who wore her hair in pigtails. She sat on a stool at a long, black table in the front of the spacious salon. A Hispanic technician filed her nails while Tani swept the floor.

I later got into an argument with the Queens native while we sat together by the nail dryers. I told her that the layout of Queens’ streets—39th Road, 39th Place, 39th Street, 39th Avenue—make no sense.

She said the layout of Brooklyn’s streets make even less sense. We eventually concluded it is easier to understand the borough you grew up in, regardless of its logic on a grid.

When my nails dried, Marianna helped me into my boots and led me to the door. Tani was tidying the pedicure area for a late evening rush hour, scrubbing the sides of the golden tub with a sponge.

Lavender Nails—244 Prospect Park West.

Windsor Terrace.

Manicure: $8 The first thing that Jackie said to me was, “Pick a color.” The last thing she said was, “Dry.” The only other thing she said was “Jackie,” when I asked for her name, and “Korea,” when I asked where she was from.

It was an hour from closing time and Jackie clipped my nails quickly, and painted them (lavender) quickly. Her eyes were distant, and something compelled me to ask if she was OK. She didn’t respond, but she briefly stopped painting. And

maybe that’s the thing that gets me about nail salons. Srangers get close enough to touch you, but you do not know what is inside of them.

I sat under the hand dryer in the windowsill next to a yellow box of Universal brand flip-top sandwich bags. In the reflection, I could see Jackie counting her money for the night, closing her drawer. KTU was playing on low: Miley Cyrus’ Party in the U.S.A. A Hispanic technician finished painting the toes of her Indian client.

“My son is going as a Power Ranger,” she said.

“The red one?”

“Yes, the Red Ranger.”

Minutes later, a man pulled up in a truck. Jackie grabbed her iPhone and her purse and another bag, which looked like it was filled with fruit. She dumped the bags in the backseat of the truck and the man drove off.

Through the window, I watched a young white girl with short hair park her bike. She took off her helmet and scratched her short hair. She lit a cigarette and stared into her iPhone.

I checked to see if my nails were dry and they weren’t. I made a fingerprint in the polish by checking too soon. Then I left, anonymously.

23

(by funny people)

by Brooke Van Poppelen

photos Walker Esner

C

hristmas Eve, 2007. I’m alone in Queens, pet sitting a Chihuahua for a newlywed couple that has dashed off to France for their anniversary. They are both blonde, attractive, and, clearly, more successful than me. They didn’t exactly say I could help myself to anything in their fridge. But I figured I would anyway. There’s nothing in the fridge.

I got married in Chicago. The wedding was around Christmas of 2004. It was our favorite time of year. The excitement of having a wedding where snowflakes would flutter gently down over us while we exchanged vows was enticing. We had purchased a tree together and I had hauled a bunch of old Christmas decorations into our apartment. They’d been bequeathed to me from my grandparents in Michigan. My husband and I really got into the season. We had both come from families that became overly sentimental during the holidays. Mine especially. My dad goes to A Christmas Story conventions on the regular.

But then something happened. That following year, I started ruining Christmas.

I try the freezer. Paquita, the Chihuahua, sits at my feet and stares expectantly up at me while I rummage through it.

Jackpot. I’ve found a box of Lean Pockets with exactly one left inside. I watch as my Christmas Eve dinner rotates on a little glass plate in the microwave and know this is some kind of new, personal low.

It began when I decided to quit taking my Zoloft prescription. A little voice buried deep inside of me had managed to get a smoke signal through my medicated mind. “Stop with the drugs!” it said.

“They’re stealing your life and personality!” It was a Wednesday, I remember. My husband was at his job that I didn’t know much about. He was a molecular biologist. He was trying to cure cancer by studying Zebra Fish. Or something. I never really asked.

While sobering up from the depression-pill bender, I realized I shouldn’t have married him.

So the first order of business was to get a haircut.

A crazy person haircut. You see, my hubby liked my long, dark wavy hair. So I decided to cut it. All of it. My hope was that he would find me unattractive and also start to have some doubts. I found a salon trained in doling out butch haircuts. I walked out the proud owner of a faux-hawk, went home, and waited.

Guilt washes over me after consuming the stolen Lean Pocket. I have a well-documented history of stealing food.

I don’t want this couple to know my fat secret. So I suit 24

up and set out on foot to find a grocery store that’s open on Christmas Eve. The closest one is across a four-lane highway.

If you can imagine, my husband was shocked when he got home that night. I burst out of the bedroom with a practically shaved head and crazed look in my eyes—“Heeeeeeere’s Johnny!” I knew it was the beginning of the end for us, mainly because I was already plotting my escape. But goddamn this man. He still loved me. He was not interested in splitting up despite several stunts I pulled. His response to my acting out was simple.

“Why? Let’s talk about it.” he said. This was not the dramatic exit I had imagined for myself. And let’s be honest. With or without drugs, I was codependent as fuck.

I still left him. It was abrupt and as impulsive as deciding to get married to someone so quickly. As we tensely split up our things I uncovered a box of leftover wedding favors. They were ornaments we painted by hand for guests to take off the beautiful and imposing Christmas tree at our reception. I quickly shoved them back into the closet wanting to forget.

I walk into Pathmark. Instrumental holiday standards pour from a tinny speaker. I scan the empty aisles for the frozen food. I buy a brand new box of Lean Pockets and also the world’s scratchiest, pre-packaged pajamas because I had forgotten to bring any. They are red and have snowflakes on them.

I spent the following Christmas completely alone in my new, empty apartment. I listened to A Charlie Brown Christmas on repeat to really drive the point home. I wanted people to feel sorry for me. But when that’s your intent, nobody does. My family certainly didn’t. Instead, they were frustrated. Like an angry 13 year old I kept saying things like, “I’m not coming home because you’re going to try and talk me out of the divorce! GAWD mom, leave me alone!” To which my mom kept saying, “Everyone just wants to see you because we love you. Please come home.” To which I replied, “Lay off! I’m having a great time here all by myself!”

Two months later, I bought a one-way ticket to New York in search of what I felt was my real life.

I scurry back across the highway and into the apartment.

I’m greeted by the nervous little Chihuahua. I replace the box of Lean Pockets. But then I realize I only need to replace one. If I replace the whole package, the newlyweds will know I took their food. Now what? Wait until morning. The answer will come, and surely you’ll be hungry again, Brooke.

One crack-head living situation on the corner of Avenue D and eight thousand dead end employment inquiries on newyork.craigslist.org made me realize what a turd of a person I was.

Here was that freedom I had thought I wanted.

The sheer stress and fear of being utterly alone weighed heavy on me. It became so clear that I suffered from a crippling dependency of significant others. None were to be found in Alphabet City.

Food became my significant other and I began to balloon into a different weight class. During this time I developed a problem that I now know and recognize as emotional eating. I hated myself for getting married, while simultaneously wishing I was still married. Every night I would wrap myself in the loving embrace of burritos and whiskey and they would rock me gently to sleep. I’d wake up filled with self-loathing as I struggled to fit into my pants. Each morning I vowed anew to get a goddamn grip. I’d pull it off during the day but then the lonely, uncertain nights would surround me. I’d be seduced by the flickering neon lights of pizza, hot dogs, Belgian fries, and Halal carts. I was a meaner, hungrier, drunker version of Anthony Bourdain minus a camera crew and paycheck.

Actually, I’m hungry now. So I heat up two more Lean Pockets. I decide that I’ll have a third for breakfast.

Christmas Eve dinner has become comical. I sit on the chair with Paquita. Her eyes bulge out at me. She daintily perches herself on my lap.“This is human food!” I yell at her with my mouth full of toxic chemicals that have been rendered into food shapes. A small crispy flake of the “pocket” flies out of my fat face and Paquita greedily snaps it up. She wants more so I throw her from my lap.

25

Another Christmas came around. It was 2006 and I couldn’t afford to go home to Michigan. I was so broke that I was methodically stealing dirt from my landlord’s potted plants in the hallway, one Dixie cup at a time, because one of my plants had tipped over and I needed the soil. This Christmas, instead of pretending people didn’t want to see me, I pretended I was having too awesome of a time in Manhattan to come back home. But the truth was that my life sucked. It’s weird how you develop a bullshit, gritty New York attitude and carry an air of superiority with you even though you’re stealing dirt. I remember walking through the Lower East Side one night. My thighs chaffed. The curbs were piled high with fish heads and diapers. A bum pissed on a wreath. I thought to myself, “The love and comfort of holidays? Who NEEDS it?!? This, this, is the real deal, man.”

26

I change into my recently purchased pajamas and hunker down onto the sofa. I look like a grumpy elf with a bowl haircut. The itchy, unwashed material is uncomfortable. I begin to scratch around the collar. Paquita has mounted my left arm and begins humping it. I catch a glimpse of this dismal scene in the black, empty television screen in front of me. I don’t like what I see.

I moved to Brooklyn the following year. Things weren’t much better. I was now a barista entrusted with keys to a cafe. I would party in Manhattan and instead of going home to Brooklyn and returning to open the store at 6 a.m. I’d let myself in to the shop at 3 a.m. and sleep under my coat. It was a great plan that had been working until one time I tripped the cafe alarm and the cops showed up.

I drunkenly explained that I was an employee.

Nothing to worry about. Business as usual.

After losing that job I resorted to doing things like dressing up as a bumble bee with 100 other broke idiots to run around Times Square for nine hours and promote Jerry Seinfeld’s Bee Movie. We were packed onto a bus at 6 a.m., antennae swaying on our head, and coached how to “swarm” and practice a group “bzzzzzzzzzzzzz.” It was mortifying. By 8 a.m. I’d had enough and asked if I could leave to use the can. I went into a Starbucks bathroom dressed as a bee, ripped the costume off, and stuffed it between the toilet tank and the wall. I took off running prison break style with my hood up, terrified my Bee Team leader would see me.

“Next year will be better,” I say to myself, not realizing next year is almost a week away. Out of the corner of my eye, I see two gray blurs dart past me from behind the television. It seems as though I will now be pet sitting for one Chihuahua and two mice. I don’t mind though. I have seen

enough movies to feel that mice are craftier than they are pesky. And I’m secretly hoping that because it’s Christmas Eve, I’ll wake in the morning and find the entire apartment transformed into a tiny, winter wonderland.

I wake up. Nothing is different. Paquita is standing on my chest staring at me. I heat up my last Lean Pocket for breakfast and place a fresh Wee Wee Pad on the floor. I wonder what everyone else’s holiday is like at that moment.

I was pretty broken. My tough girl attitude was now a sad, mean girl attitude that could cry on cue. I missed the Midwest and was wondering if this little New York charade of mine was such a great idea after all. When Christmas rolled around that year I was prepping to ruin it for myself and others. My family was once again heartbroken that I would not be home. But this time I felt somehow justified spending the holiday all by myself, since I stood to gain a staggering $200 from pet sitting in Queens over Christmas.

On Christmas day I ride a mostly empty subway car from Queens back to Brooklyn. I am now determined to try and salvage some feeling of holiday spirit. I decide to go to a Christmas service in one of the beautiful churches in Carroll Gardens to see if there would be an answer of some kind.

The church is magnificent and intimidating. I well up at the sight and sound of it all. I humbly take a seat in a back pew. I feel like a stranger invading someone’s home.

ready for anything. I open myself to a Christmas message, when the rustling begins. I look out of the corner of my eye. An emotionally disturbed man has sat right in front of me armed with a garbage bag full of crumpled papers. He starts sorting through them. Aggressively. He only takes a break to periodically stare at me and loudly proclaim that I look like Natalie Wood. Fat Natalie Wood. I grab my purse and get the hell out of there.

My phone rings. From 600 miles away I can hear my mother’s voice and feel the warmth of home radiate through my broken cell phone. “Merry Christmas” she says. “The holidays sure aren’t the same without you.” I look around me—my empty apartment is silent. The sky is gray. And for the first time, in a long time, I couldn’t… agree… more.

Is this it? Am I going to witness a profound sign and from none other than God himself ? I am

27

by Patrick Lamson-Hall

28

photos Sarah Wilmer

good building, unlike a good person, does not inevitably die. Some lucky structures cycle through growth, maturity, decline, and rebirth in the hands of a passionate visionary. Grand Prospect Hall—which rears above the Prospect Expressway like a glorious dinosaur—was built in 1893, accidentally burned down in 1900, rebuilt in 1903, and saved from entropic decay in 1981 by its current owner, Michael Halkias. For its first 90 years, the Italianate edifice was simply known as Prospect Hall by the sophisticates and sinners who caroused there. But the millions poured into its restoration by Halkias bought the the right to append the word Grand to the building’s name.

29

Halkias welcomes all comers. He hosts the Republican Party. He hosts MTV. His bread and butter clients are gyspies, Albanians, Bulgarians, and Chinese immigrants demanding the biggest cake, the pinkest champagne fountain, the brightest spotlight.

His masterpiece is a place where anyone can feel important and cherished and catered to.

The son of an immigrant, a defacto immigrant himself, Halkias understands this. “Me and my wife make people’s dreams come true,” he says.

“They want to feel like they’re in St. Petersburg or Paris before the War.” On his desk sits a 10-inch onyx tiger and a swivelnecked lamp. The lamp points at the tiger in such a way that the light blinding Halkias’ visitors appears to be coming out of the tiger’s mouth. I try several positions in my sumptuous red leather chair but am unable to avoid this effect. A probably intentional consequence of this is that Mr. H (as he prefers to be called) sits in a shadow, appearing to interrogate you, the interviewer. This impression is confirmed when, having apparently forgotten why I was there, his secretary tries to give me an employment application. The 1812 overture plays from overhead speakers.

Halkias has a broad mind and a soft Greek accent.

I ask how he came to own such an unlikely structure. “I’m a fella that...” he quietly sighs a word in Greek, sigira, “...the circumstances in my life are such that I have the ability…when I find a bunch of bones, to dress up the bones with skin.

I’ve learned to do this through the years from being poor and having nothing. Based on that skill, I had a nose. So I was able to smell things.”

In 1979, when Halkias first visited Prospect Hall, “it was desolate, worn down physically. I had to penetrate the building to find the Grand Ballroom.

The realtor didn’t want to show me. It hurt my feelings. It annoyed me that this structure should be suffering. I fell in love with her like a young lady.”

Halkias says he started work on the building even before he had signed ownership papers, shoring up the roof and sealing around domes and skylights.

We are in a room full of awards, commendations, and certificates. He is the kind of man who has stacks of books on the floor. I ask him about his childhood, in Greece and Syria, and he replies, “How do you know about Syria? You know, I was born in Pittsburgh, really. I have an American passport. My father was an immigrant…and he took us back to Greece.”

He says he returned to the United States as a teenager and began building a small empire of bakeries, apartment buildings, and an English language Greek newspaper. He bought the Hall in 1981 after hearing about it from a friend at church.

The building Halkias saved is a beautiful and imposing structure, a four-story layer cake with a tear jerking view of the Manhattan skyline.

30

The Grand Ballroom is large enough to play a professional basketball game in, with three crystal chandeliers that were painstakingly reconstructed in the days before Restoration Hardware. The parquet floor is inlaid with coded instructions that guide ballroom dancers through their rounds.

When Halkias first saw the place, the Ballroom was being used as a flea market. Buckets caught drips and the murals had been sold off to cover the heating bill. The image calls to mind the Williamsburgh Savings Bank building, which houses the Brooklyn Flea this winter in its vaulted cathedral of commerce.

The original builder, John Kolle, was the son of a German immigrant, a wealthy man, and a Brooklyn booster. He kept company with the Gold Coast society; those privileged few who could afford to commute to Manhattan in the days when Brooklyn was proudly autonomous and a daily ferry ride was too expensive for most working folks. The wealthy community in what was then known as Brooklyn Heights needed an alternative to the seedy vaudeville halls that dominated the city in those days. Halkias puts it thus: “What do you get when you cross vaudeville with money? Opera.”

Prospect Hall, in its original incarnation, resonated with the voices of the gifted of the time. Its wooden frame held an assembly hall, a theatre, a bar, a restaurant, and lodge rooms. On a fateful night in December 1900, it was a group of Knights of Columbus who had just vacated the Hall when it inexplicably caught fire and burned to the ground.

Kolle was devastated, though no one was injured.

For a time, he refused to rebuild, but pressure from a group of businessmen and politicians eventually led him to tackle the project with gusto.

Prospect Hall 2.0 was started in 1901 and finished in 1903. Unlike the old Hall, it was built with concrete and rebar and was one of Brooklyn’s first fireproof buildings. It was advertised as having multiple exits, a modern sprinkler system, and the first public elevator in the borough. The Brooklyn Eagle called it a “temple for the arts.”

In its salad days, before World War I, the Kolles filled Prospect Hall’s glamorous rooms with equally glamorous people. William Jennings Bryan once drew a crowd of 4000 there. Franklin Roosevelt aired his political aspirations. The best comedians, the best opera singers, and the best dancers, all came and caroused on the hall’s main stage. The city briefly pivoted on its hospitality, when it was used for a public meeting to discuss extending the subway to Brooklyn.

By the 1920s, classical music and opera had given way to jazz, and an upscale speakeasy was running out of the Nightclub Room. A small peephole still graces the door. There was a dance every weekend and supper club dinners on weeknights.

As early as the 1930s, the glamour had started to fade, but the Hall was still an important

center for the immigrant communities in the area. It was home to over 200 ethnic fraternal organizations that used it for dances and dinners, fundraisers and fish fries. It had a shooting range that was home to the Brooklyn Rifle Club, as well as 12-lane bowling alley. It became democratized, and many people from that era remember it as a regular haunt.

“An old lady came in here once and I asked her what she remembered most about the hall,” Halkias recalls. “She told me she had been married there. They had a ‘football wedding,’ and I asked her, ‘what’s a football wedding?’ It was a craze— they had crazes back then, you know—where after the wedding they would all go play football in the ballroom.”

Halkias describes the marathon dances of the Great Depression. “People would come and dance for twelve, fourteen hours. They would collapse on the dance floor…but whoever won would go home with a lot of money—five, ten dollars.”

In 1940, the Kolles sold the building to the Polish National Alliance, a fraternal ethnic association.

They continued using it as a dance hall, restaurant, and events space, but big band dancing was fading from the scene. By the late 50s, maintenance costs on the aging structure had begun to creep up. The restaurant closed and the owners struggled to find alternative sources of revenue. At one point they even tried hosting a boxing match. Desperate, they began to sell valuable pieces of the décor to cover basic operating costs.

Halkias has tried to track these relics down. On one serendipitous occasion, he met a man in a bank line who had bought all the murals in the Chopin Room. Many of the items stayed in the neighborhood, and he would often encounter them in other businesses. It took three years to restore the Hall, and he refuses to say how much he spent on the project.

A critic might say that the carpets are too thick, the ornaments are too kitschy, and the artwork is anachronistic even for the Victorian era. Halkias personally purchased 30 gold colored toilet seats from France for the bathrooms. The lighting in the Grand Ballroom is violently purple and illuminates plaster cornucopias that were lovingly restored to the faces of the two balcony levels and then, inexplicably, painted in boudoir colors like puce, lemon, chartreuse, and periwinkle. And yet, in a fundamental way he has captured the democratic spirit of the Hall in a way that the previous operators did not.

Last November, I watched 1200 Marines traipse up the marble steps of Grand Prospect Hall for the 236th birthday of their service. Their gold braid glinted under the soft, warm light. Most had their companions on their arms; ladies wearing purple, pink, orange, baby blue, men in tuxedos—prom clothes. In a sign of the times, a few male Marines

brought “buddies,” boyfriends they would dance close with by the end of the night.

The Marines seemed nervous at first and out of place. The party was too fine for them, the ceiling too high, the solarium too foreign. They wandered around saying “Happy Birthday” to each other, in keeping with Corps tradition. An open bar cocktail hour helped them start to relax a bit. While I waited to pee, I eavesdropped on two of them speaking with awe about a splash of gilt paint. “That has real gold in it. This place is amazing.” A phalanx of black-tied waiters drifted through the Skylight Room with puff pastries and drink trays. Scallops and eggplant sat in steam trays.

This is not a restaurant review; I am not a restaurant reviewer. Still: The food was Midwestern hotel quality—salt, oil, sugar, Sizzler. The drinks were watery.

The waiters, with their strap on bowties, were bearing beautiful trays of grease and gristle. The cheese plate (my mother laughed at me when I complained about this) was uninspired—gouda, cheddar, Swiss, cut into triangles that were just too big.

Feeling alienated and out of place in my civilian’s suit and tortoiseshell glasses, I retreated to the vacant upper balcony. From there I watched as Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James F. Amos delivered a violent and propagandistic video message, explicitly connecting September 11, the war in Afghanistan, and the Pearl Harbor attacks. The men and women beneath me listened as only soldiers can, glistening with the occasional tear, and then erupted in cheers. After, a troop of waiters swooped in with an impressive number of oleaginous looking steak dinners. The cocktail hour reopened and the likes of Rihanna, Christina Aguilera, Kelly Clarkson, and Beyonce blasted from the rafters.

All the beautiful, proud, full couples began to dance.

Watching the Marines twirl, and scarf canapés, and guzzle cosmopolitans, I noticed an obvious reality that my snobbery had been hiding from me all night—the uniformed young soldiers and their chosen companions were, down to a man, having the time of their lives. They looked glamorous and elegant and deeply, deeply in love with everything going on around them. They fit the space and filled it out and made it look whole.

Halkias is not trying to cater to my aesthetic sensibilities or, in all probability, yours. In that, he is performing a rare and valuable public service. He is one of the few truly dynamic businesspeople in South Brooklyn that still sees virtue and profit in meeting the needs of people whose tastes differ from my own. He has created a gilded fireproof harbor for our collective humanity, preserving the déclassé elegance which has always been the true, secret embodiment of many people’s American Dream.

We can take refuge in our elitism and look down on all that is gauche, but the stark reality is that every trend passes and every trendsetter becomes a fossil. Luckily, Michael Halkias has a nose for the bones that linger.

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32

by Jonathan Ritzman

Photos Jeff Brown

R

alphie Balzano stands atop a chair inside Red Hook’s VFW Post #5195 on Van Brunt Street. He reaches toward a ceiling vent and his black Fila’s barely grip his feet from falling to the sullied linoleum floor. Balzano makes the vents look new again, sucking the dust off with the club’s new Shop-Vac. If the dust could talk, it would cough. Then tell you a tale. The simple chore is a small, entertaining triumph for the old-timers in “The Post” (as they call it), and Balzano gets a few pats on the back as he sits back down at the corner seat of the bar.

Mickey Chirieleison, the club’s commander, brags about how good the bathroom smells and how nobody can wait for the new “computer jukebox” to arrive later that day. Balzano is on his second glass of Almaden Mountain Chablis. He drinks it on ice. Unlike the ceiling vent, the wine box it came in isn’t dusty at all. The patrons, though, collect the dust day after day. Billy Joel’s Piano Man plays from a small transistor sitting behind the bar.

Fittingly enough, John at the bar has made hot dogs for everyone.

The people of The Post operate outside your selfish guidelines. They are the one percent. It’s inspiring to witness firsthand—a relic in the forgotten art of community. They live for each other, even if they don’t know it. “Did Cheri have the baby? You play the ponies yet?” This is what we talk about when we talk about community.

Each day they are born back ceaselessly, together in a forgotten part Red Hook. And Ralphie Balzano floats in the center of it all.

Balzano holds court at his 26 Reed Street garage between Van Brunt and Conover Streets, just mere blocks from the VFW. It’s a bright and blustery Tuesday morning. The clump of buoys attached to the base of the flagpole out front sway a little bit. The American flag at the top end of the pole flutters as the gusts roll ashore and scrape the house. The black house on Reed Street is perched across from Brooklyn’s only Fairway Market.

It’s hard not to notice the house from anywhere on the block. It’s three small stories drenched in nautical knick-knacks. The house looks like a collage from a retired ship captain’s art portfolio.

A buoy here, a ship’s wheel there, a life ring here, a fish mount there. A few years back someone attached a sign reading Red Hook Yacht Club to the house. That’s what most people call it nowadays.

Before then, it was The Tar-Paper House, a reference to the coarse black paper that crudely coats the exterior. Balzano calls the place his “home away

from home.” It’s here Balzano concocts his recipe for retirement.

The black varsity jacket that Balzano wears reads “Hotel California” on the back. A pair of gray jeans run down to his Fila’s. Balzano, born September 11,1938, looks like a sultry Joe Namath.

When you get him to smile it’s something special.

He smokes a Kent from the soft-pack on the table.

After a small sip from his can of Budweiser he starts to talk about the house. “As far as I know, it was a toy bow and arrow factory, the ones with suction cups,” he says. “Because when I was a kid we used to hang around down here.” He has a classic Brooklyn Italian tone. It’s calm and raspy.

His “TH’s” are “T’s” “With you” is “Whichoo,” and his sentences run-into-one-long-word. He worked for the Parks Department for 22 years before retiring in 1989, not long after he fell from a roof and injured his back. He bought 26 Reed Street three years later.

Balzano continues rambling on about the house.

“After that was the water testing place, for all the buildings in Manhattan they tested the water here.

That was Keifer. Keifer products. My brother worked for them. Then after that it was Emilio’s, a mechanic shop for years and years.” Ralphie has two brothers, Sunny and Frank. Frank died in 2003 and Sunny owns, well, Sunny’s Bar around the corner on Conover Street.

Balzano sits at a small table with his back to the open garage door. He reads the fine print on a bottle of engine stabilizer. On a nice day, the garage door is an open mouth. It eats Red Hook’s daily happenings. It’s the nerve center of the place and its walls are so swollen with memorabilia that Balzano is probably losing square footage on the space. Collages of photos line the walls, as do tool chests, toys, dolls, 9/11 news clippings, and a smattering of Mets gear. It’s a clustered cornucopia of Balzano’s past. The corridor is a museum of his life that he can draw upon when

dusting off an old story. “My friend worked for the sanitation department and he’d find stuff people would throw out,” he says. “You know the old saying, ‘Your garbage is my treasure.’” If you ask him about his late brother he’ll point to a collage hanging on the wall—a memorial. If you ask him what his favorite piece in the garage is, he’ll tell you, “This baby,” and gesture to the 1960 canary yellow Chevy El Camino. “It’s fast and rare,” he’ll say. Past the El Camino toward the back is the 1960 Buick Electra convertible. Step deeper in the garage for the 1957 Lincoln Premier and beyond you’ll find an old white horse carriage that was a failed fix-up project. “My thing is cars and antiques, that’s my thing. Whatever you do, that’s your thing.”

Balzano doesn’t shy away from the attention either. He thinks his new neighbor Fairway is “a score” and likes the cleaned up direction his block is heading, even though his taxes keep going up.

Balzano recalls an older Red Hook through the filter of another Kent cigarette. “It used to be a dirt road down here,” he says. “You’d never see anybody down here. It was like a ghost town.”

He mutters with his wheezy Brooklyn tongue.

“Now tourists, they come through, I don’t charge anything. I should. Make a few dollars and pay my taxes. But I don’t.” He’s quick to add, “All nice people,” referring to the tourists. “Don’t get me wrong, beautiful people.” One quickly realizes Balzano’s inherent passion isn’t for cars or antiques, but people. His collections are stellar. But it’s the people who breathe life and the occasional cigarette into the musty hangar of his garage. He has a big family, six daughters and twelve grandkids and just last Saturday he was in New Jersey for two of his grandkids’ confirmation. If you’re around him a while, you’ll realize Ralphie Balzano treats most everyone that comes around his Red Hook garage like family.

Cousin Angela slowly walks by 26 Reed Street.

“Getting colder huh?” Balzano says, looking up 33

from the engine stabilizer. Angela agrees and takes small steps past the house. She carries on her morning walk. Minutes later, Mickey Chirieleison, the “fearless commander” of the VFW, rushes through the entryway lamenting about the repairs he needs to make to The Post. Balzano barely says hello before Mickey starts listing things. “The fire department came down and told me what I gotta do,” he says. “These three exits signs, two hand railings. I got eighty pounds of cement. I just gotta get it done and my welder won’t call me back.”

make words when he finally gets a question out.

“You got anything for me man?” he asks. He’s a scrap metal scavenger and wants spare metal to turn into a quick dollar. “You missed a score the other day,” Balzano tells him. The kid is upset, still shivering with his arms crossed. “You know how many times I came by here?” the kid says. Balzano is quick to respond. “You gotta gimme your phone number. How’my gonna get in touch with you? I got rid of two compressors. I got rid of a big sheer cutter. I need to make room in here.”

Mickey is stressed. Balzano is quick to calm him.

“Coffey Street,” he says. “Go to the welding shop down there. It’s between Richards and Dwight.”

Mickey’s never heard of it. Balzano goes on. “You know, Coffey Street. He’s the guy that did Anne Nelson’s window guards.” Mickey knows it now.

“Oh right, I’ll go there right now,” Mickey says.

Problem solved. Mickey’s feeling better about his VFW to-do list and heads back out of the garage to the welder. With a quick stop by the Tar Paper house, his day has taken an effortless turn for the better. It’s a precious, fleeting small town moment amidst Brooklyn’s surging sea of commerce and anonymity.

Balzano gets up from his chair and walks over to the side of the garage. He rustles up a crisp fourby-eight index card. He gives the kid a pen. The kid leans over to write down his number. 3-4-7… He freezes. He’s forgotten his number. Balzano takes notice and gives him some assistance. He begins to sing a jingle. “Take-your-time-it-sounds-like.”

It doesn’t help the kid. He can’t brainstorm his stormy brain. He reaches into his pocket for his cell phone and finally gets his number. “All right, I’ll call you when I got something,” Balzano assures him. As the kid motions toward the open garage door, Balzano won’t let him leave. Balzano won’t let him back to his puttering truck to scrounge more scrap metal around the neighborhood. His clothes are filthy. His demeanor is troubling. His health is off and Balzano has just one more thing to say to him. He’s disappointed as he points at the kid’s feet. “Tie your shoelace! Maaaan, you gotta buy new shoelaces, your shoelaces are falling apart.” Balzano can’t stress this enough. The kid kneels down, fastens his laces up and starts to head toward his truck. He’s halfway to the truck and Balzano starts on him again, yelling this time.

“Take care of yourself, you hear? Be careful!”

The kid walks backwards toward his truck with a

Balzano lights another cigarette when a truck gurgles to a stop in front of the house. It’s a white, dented panel-truck with Donut Shop faintly written on the passenger door. The guy sitting shotgun reaches out the window to open the door. He yells at the guy driving, “I got it man, shut the fuck up!”

He finally pours out of the truck into the street and saunters up to Balzano. He’s wearing a torn sweatshirt over a couple other shirts layering at his waist. He has an empty look in his eye and is, as Balzano later puts it, High as a kite. He struggles to

devilish grin. “You know how we do it!” he boasts.

Balzano simply replies, “Nice and easy!”

Ralph Balzano has set himself up pretty nice in Red Hook. If his taxes keep going up he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to afford the 26 Reed Street house forever. He has dreams of keeping the garage and building two apartments on top of it. A new crab shack is going up quickly right next door to the house. It’s a loud and constant reminder of the evolution occurring on the block and Balzano doesn’t seem to care. He takes things day by day; going between the garage, the VFW, and his home on Dikeman Street. The Reed Street garage is his temple by the water though. “Its my home away from home,” he says. “It’s like, when you’re home, by yourself, you get bored, what do you do? So I come down here, relax, have friends come in. We bullshit, have a few beers maybe. It makes the day go by.”

Balzano has retired with grace, and while time is the enemy of an old soul like Balzano it’s been the garage’s dearest friend. It’s a finely curated museum of the last 20 years of miscellany in Balzano’s life.

You’re a part of something when you’re inside of it. Something special. Balzano wouldn’t tell you that though. He doesn’t over think things. It’s the over thinking that plagues this dear old town. The anxious notes that dot the slope. It’s a bit much really. Wisely enough, Balzano just keeps it nice and easy in modest, old, cobblestoned Red Hook, living in the moment amidst dusty, water-colored traces of his past. When he leaves 26 Reed Street for home each day he feels complete. “And then, then you go home, you put your head on a pillow and you say ‘Ah, I had a good day, I’m gonna go to sleep.’ Then you sleep. It’s nice. It’s nice. I enjoy it.”

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photos Alexander Harrington and Sarah Wilmer

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all garments by Red Hook's Butter by Nadia www.butterbynadia.com

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by Eliza Ronalds-Hannon

Illustrations Luca Giovanopoulos

T

he average workday for a film or television production assistant begins at dawn and spans at least fourteen hours. The job involves unglamorous tasks like trash-hauling, crowdcontrolling, and driving around in circles. It offers no benefits, no stability, and no security.

It may seem strange then that Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s administration chose to subsidize this profession last year when it partnered with Brooklyn Workforce Innovations, a Gowanus non-profit that, among other things, helps poor New Yorkers launch careers in film and television with its Made in NY Production Assistant Training Program. But in fact, the move fit quite well with other policy initiatives at City Hall.

As he wraps up his three-term tenure, Bloomberg has loudly championed opportunities for the city’s minorities and working class. The Young Men’s Initiative he announced in August dedicated $127 million to the advancement of young black and Latino men. Last spring, he teamed up with a think tank to help immigrant entrepreneurs start businesses.

With Made In NY, Bloomberg has sponsored another opportunity traditionally limited to people of means, if a less obvious one: the chance to risk job security and stability to pursue a creative career.

The film industry is overwhelmingly white, behind the scenes and on screen. For years entry has been restricted to those with the privileges of industry connections, flexible schedules, and financial cushions. The typical film lover who decides to work in production is white, has a college degree, and has a backup plan. But this program says that even underprivileged New Yorkers can work in the arts.

And not everyone is happy to hear the news.

Indeed, in an industry where one’s personal network is the source for future jobs, some veterans don’t welcome the fact that these newcomers have an assisted “in.”

When Brooklyn Workforce Innovations started Made in NY in 2006, the state had just implemented a juicy set of production-friendly tax incentives. With production numbers up, the program flourished from the start. The program developed connections with local studios, and those studios now offer students short internships during a four-week training, often hiring the most impressive students after graduation. But even 44

those who find work can't exactly rest easy. The nature of the production industry dictates that all but top-level staff work on a freelance basis. They must find new work each time a gig wraps up—the dreaded plight of the permalancer.

Perhaps most importantly, Made in NY helps its graduates find and apply to jobs for the first two years after they’ve graduated, and prioritizes job placement for those in the first six months of their job search. “After that, jobs should be coming from the students’ own networks,” said Katy Finch the director of the program.

That system worked well for Hugo Pazmino, a 26-year-old from Jamaica, Queens. He graduated from Brooklyn College in 2008 and—even with a CNN internship on his resume—work didn’t come easily. When he saw a Craigslist ad for Made in NY, he figured he had nothing to lose.

Pazmino’s first job as a graduate from the program was transporting a crew back and forth from New York to New Jersey. Since then, he's enjoyed steady work and even the occasional promotion.

He's now an assistant locations manager at Sony, scouting sites for the company's TV series and pilots. James Adames is another graduate who has networked like a champ. He credits much of his career momentum to one conversation at a wrap party, with a producer who took a liking to him.

That emphasis on networking distinguishes Made in NY from other job readiness programs. In place of the saws and factories that ‘vocational training’ may conjure, the program focuses on teaching social tools. Not only does a production assistant’s permalance status demand good networking skills, the nature of assisting also requires a particular temperament.

“Production—at least entry-level—is so based on customer service skills,” Finch said. “A lot of what our training is about is set etiquette.” In fact, the city’s perceived need for more “courteous” production assistants was a major force behind the program’s inception, according to the mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting.

But even if the program was borne as much from the city’s desperation to draw industry dollars as its desire to create jobs, it is nothing if not honest about what that job entails. “In college you think you’re gonna come out and be the next director or producer of a feature film,” Pazmino said. “But that’s not the case. No one wants to hear your ideas.”

“If you’re just looking for a paycheck, do not go there,” warns Adames. “If I were to think about the money, I’d lose my mind, I’d be in an asylum somewhere, and I’d probably jump off the roof.”

Adames grew up in Washington Heights, left school before 9th grade, and spent two months on Rikers Island in 2010 for a drug charge. Though he hesitated to enlist in Made in NY because he needed a paycheck—and quick—once he signed on he was full speed ahead. But one of his first real jobs almost ended his career. On the mafia flick The Goat, Adames was a combination craft, unit, and set P.A., and the days were brutally long.

Worse, it shot two hours from the city, so Adames got only three hours of sleep each night. One morning, this routine landed him in a car wreck when he fell asleep at the wheel. “When I called to say I’d be running late, they fired me,” Adames said. Unbelievably, the company asked Adames back a week later. This time, to be safe, he lived off the unit truck, forgoing showers and using the woods for a bathroom.

As rough as this job can be, the relative health of the industry should help ambitious production assistants sleep at night—even if it is for only three hours. Though the sector reeled after the doublewhammy of a writers’ strike and market crash in 2007 and 2008, business has rallied in the past year. That’s thanks largely to the state’s decision to extend its 30 percent tax credit through 2014.

The number of pilots shooting in New York is up 240 percent this year, and eight of the new series recently picked up film here.

Meanwhile, citywide unemployment crept up to 8.8 percent last fall, so, in a bit of a twist, the members of this unstable profession now have

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more job opportunities than many New Yorkers in more established careers. And given the job placement Made in NY offers, some newcomers in the field now have greater access to jobs than long-time production assistants.

That has inspired resentment. Some veterans in the field say they don’t understand why unqualified candidates deserve a leg up when it’s hard enough to find a stable production job even with a film degree. On set, Made in NY trainees and graduates are sometimes teased about their perceived advantage “The biggest criticism is, ‘we had to hustle for our own jobs and you guys get jobs handed to you,’” Finch said. “If I had just graduated with my film degree, I would feel the same way.”

Most Made in NY graduates fight to stay in the industry, and have plans to advance. “I’m working my way up to becoming a director of photography,” said Gary Burkell, a 2008 graduate. Dorothy Hall, also a 2008 graduate, hopes to one day direct her own independent films. Each has had the opportunity to do some specialized work on set, but mostly still do entry-level work assisting camera operators, coordinating craft services, or manning an office.

And according to some industry veterans, they shouldn’t expect too much more. “It’s not a career where it’s easy to move up and get promoted,” said Will Lockwood, 28, who has worked as a production assistant for six years.

And that’s with a degree in film. Most of Made in NY graduates don’t have one of those. The organization’s mission to offer opportunities where few exist requires that most of its students lack any college education.

“We’re looking for those who are just scraping by,” Finch said. “Those who don’t have an opportunity to pursue higher education.”

Indeed, most of her graduates haven’t had that opportunity. But, in a puzzling twist on the program’s mission, a full 25 percent have. Hugo Pazmino graduated from Brooklyn College, where he studied TV and radio production.

Dorothy Hall has a degree in communications and film from City College.

Some might say that subsidizing the career development of college graduates is outside the purview of city government, or for that matter large foundations like the Robin Hood Foundation, which is the $400,000-a-year program’s biggest funder.

But the demographics of Made In NY speak to a particular moment in New York City’s economic history. With residents leaving town to find better jobs or more affordable locales, and so few industries thriving, city government is desperate to keep young people here, working, and, of course, spending.

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B

ernard was a monster of a man with a thick mustache. He owned a local postal service where he lifted weights in the back room. His face was radish red from high blood pressure and he wore a hand towel like a boa constrictor around his neck to wipe the intermittent sweat from his brow. He was a community-driven man who cared about the neighborhood and, in his self-righteous effort to make people’s lives better, told me that I should make my ladies eat oranges before we had sex. Something about “the power of citrus.” Whenever I walked in with a gal, Bernard would wink at me and blurt, “Hey man, are fresh oranges on the menu tonight?” I’d crack half a smirk, tell him to cut it out, and check my mailbox.

A few years went by like this until, one day, the staff took over the shop. Bernard was gone. I got friendly with one guy and he told me Bernard was having trouble at home. A few months later, I picked up a local newspaper and there was Bernard’s face in the police blotter. Turns out he’d put a hit on his wife and got busted. Bernard had solicited a 16-year-old employee to murder his wife for $10,000 and the young guy turned him 48

in. Bernard went to prison and the store changed hands.

The new owner, Bob, was sweet, short, and stocky, with a dapper mustache. He changed the store’s name and updated the Xerox machines.

I continued my relationship with the shop and the new staff, especially with a guy named Joe, and things were rote for a year or so. Then, Bob disappeared and Joe took over. I scratched my head

and read the newspapers for clues but there were no reports about Bob and hit men. A month later, I noticed my mail began to dwindle. First it was my magazine subscriptions and then online purchases never showed up. Finally, checks and packages were lost. I started to freak out. Within a week, the store downsized more than half its staff and would close early or fail to open with no rhyme or reason. I complained about the lack of consistency and lost mail. Joe confided to me that Bob had

gone to jail for tax evasion and swore that mail was coming in and I should be patient. I became paranoid and wondered if I’d been targeted.

See, when I first moved to Brooklyn, I had a massive fight with my local mailman because rainy days meant wet mail and I wasn’t going to have that. Never had I received wet mail when I lived in my native Manhattan. We almost came to blows when I got in his face about not covering the mailbag with the canvas flap one rainy day. “There are two things you never mess with—a man’s food and his mail!” I yelled. He refused to comply and I screamed, “My mother could’ve mailed me her hand-written last will and testament—AND THEN DIED—and your belligerent lazy behavior would’ve destroyed it!” I don’t even know where I pulled that one from, but he didn’t give a shit.

Besides, the mailman had my number and, like the police department’s blue code of silence, his kind stuck together. I was screwed. My suspicions were later confirmed when Anthony, my Italian neighbor, suggested it was highly unlikely the mailman would go through the trouble to mess with my mail on purpose but it wasn’t impossible.

“The neighborhood is like that,” Anthony said.

Did my mailman go postal? I wondered. I started to test the waters by writing fake postcards to

my PO Box and to my home address. I’d get my fake postcards delivered to my home address but none ever arrived at my PO Box. I filed an official complaint to the main post office about my missing mail and it sparked a case. Eventually, my mail stopped coming to my PO Box altogether. An investigation was launched by the United States Post Office. The investigation ascertained that it wasn’t just me that was missing mail. It was most of the customers at the shop. And, even though I had a year left on my PO Box rental, I emailed all my contacts and switched over all my subscriptions, billing, etc., to my home address. Once in a while I’d walk into the nefarious shop. Like a Mexican standoff in a spaghetti western, I’d squint at Joe, wanting to break a chunk off of him.

A few months later, the store changed hands again. Only, they kept Joe on to manage the store while the new owner set up a cell phone section and hired an all-new staff. Whatever goodwill the shop had lost with the neighborhood was being given its last rites. I couldn’t forgive the lost mail but I was morbidly curious if I still got mail. Once every two weeks I’d pop in and, sure enough, I’d get invites to parties or flyers from institutions that I forgot to alert about my change of address. So, mail was flowing again, only, it didn’t really matter to me anymore. A little while later, I noticed Joe

was gone, too. Perhaps fired? Either way, I felt it safe to declare my PO Box officially dead.

There was a yellow slip of paper with a message from management asking to update their file on me. So, I humored a nice young Latin lady, whom I’d never seen before, while she xeroxed my passport and thanked me for my cooperation.

I wondered how much rental time I had left on my PO Box and she looked up the information.

I had less than 30 days left. Too many years of haphazard mail service had finally come to an end.

I asked her about Joe’s whereabouts. She searched the premises for rubberneckers and leaned into my ear. Turns out, Joe was a drug addict and was stealing people’s mail and trashing anything, like personal heirlooms, that didn’t have resale value and pocketed the shipping monies. My worst nightmare realized. Joe’s scam would only last a few months before an investigation could inevitably be launched against the store and bust him. Joe was now on the run from the law for drug abuse and mail fraud. If they caught him, he would serve serious jail time. She made a joke about how much bad history the store had and giggled while looking up at a newly-installed security camera above our heads. Then, without skipping a beat, she pulled back into clerk mode, looked me straight in my eyes and asked, “Would you like to renew your PO Box for one year or two?”

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by Sayaka Nagata Carol Ann Caronia and Sweetheart Eighth Avenue and 8th Street, Park Slope OVERFLOW: What’s Sweetheart’s favorite thing to do?

Carol Ann Caronia: Meet new people.

OF:

What’re her favorite spots?

CAC:

She likes 7th Avenue. There’re plenty of people she can meet, and she can look in all the shops. People occasionally give her treats. She also knows how to open automatic doors.

OF:

She’s got skills!!

CAC:

She has skills.

OF:

What do you do?

CAC:

I teach chess.

OF:

Oh wow, do you do private lessons?

CAC:

I do. I also teach to kids after school.

OF:

Where do you do that?

CAC: Congregation Beth Elohim. The Berkeley Carroll School. P.S. 107.

I’ve taught in all the schools in the neighborhood. Well, virtually all the schools.

OF:

Do you ever take Sweetheart to your classes?

CAC:

Sweetheart would love to go. She loves kids. They’re her favorite thing. But the school administrators frown on the dog.

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