Primrose & WTF Coffee Lab - Two Cafe Visions in Brooklyn

Over the past few weeks, I stopped into two recent cafe additions to the still-shifting Brooklyn neighborhoods of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill - Primrose and WTF Coffee Lab.  However, a number of differences in texture, attitude, and sadly, espresso quality, divides these two.  But despite the quality differences, the two cafes are great examples of differing takes on the cafe, and the different purposes they serve, even though they are just a short walk or bike ride from each other.

Review: Opera - Dog Days - David Little & Royce Vavrek

Dog Days is an excellent, terse, tense, disturbing and new opera, composed by David T. Little with libretto by Royce Vavrek, based on a short story by Judy Budnitz.  The work was created for the Peak Performances series at Montclair State University in New Jersey, about 15-20 miles outside Manhattan.  The story revolves around a family, and a man in dog costume, played by a raggedly smart John Kelly, attempting to survive through what seems to be either a nuclear winter or war-ravaged land.  The setting exists entirely in the family home, extending to the immediate area outside the house.  

Review: Van Leeuwen - Boerum Hill Brooklyn - New Mexico Mocha

Van Leeuwen is best known throughout the city as the operation dispensing haute ice cream and (attempted) well-crafted espresso via bright yellow trucks.  But they also maintain two brick-and-mortar stores in Brooklyn, one in the increasingly hip Polish enclave of  Greenpoint and one on the edge of the brownstone neighborhood of Boerum Hill near Cobble Hill.  

The Boerum Hill store on Bergen off Smith is conveniently located next to the F/G stop.  The store is naturally well-lit, but not overly bright - the front being almost entirely glass, including the door, with thin lead borders around the panes.  The whole effect is that of being in a neighborhood in Amsterdam or East London.  The cafe itself is rather small, with tables to the left upon entry and the espresso bar and ice cream area to the right.  The baristas are young, what passes as edgy these days, and don't really belong in the neighborhood that has increasingly become home of the organic white affluent Brooklyn parent.  Ordinarily, I drink espresso. But for some reason - maybe the shift in seasons - I opted for a drink called a New Mexican Mocha. 

Brooklyn Book Festival - 9/23/12 - Joyce Carol Oates, et al

One of the premier readings/panel events at the 2012 Brooklyn Book Festival, consisted of "American Masters" Bernice L. McFadden, Joyce Carol Oates and Colson Whitehead.  As expected, the primary draw was the literary star Joyce Carol Oates.  The event took place within the cavernous confines of St. Ann's Church, and the audience filled most of the pews, including the balcony and lower sides.

Repurposing at Swoon's "Pearly's Beauty Shop"

Saturday night I attended a party/event in LIC called "Pearly's Beauty Salon" produced by the street artist Swoon.  A number of artists, including Swoon herself, were enlisted to provide various beauty services - some more traditionally qualified than others in their particular "beauty" area. The event also had basement with a DJ that attracted various grooving partygoers - many of them artists and eurotrash, although not at the same time.  Twice outside during the night, women dressed in semi-burlesque 18th C. French aristocratic get-up performed acrobatics on silk ropes, twirling softly and, at times, erotically, in mid-air between and through each other.  The party was a benefit for the space it was in, with proceeds to be used to help convert, or, as the narrative recited - to "repurpose" the space into an arts and performance center.

Along the theme of "repurposing", one of the artists, who was adhering bindi's to the foreheads of lovely attendees, was disseminating pamphlets on "repurposing."

distant rumblings

random upturnings
they relate to dissatisfaction
a million hoodies
representing decimated landscapes
of racist cultures
hidden through the dissatisfaction of trampled underlings
perceived victimhood
nonexistent
guilt-ridden histories
unamended
distanced from community

my man jerry rivera
or little jerry rivera as they used to call him back in the bronx
left his gaping face hole open
emitting bilious nonsense
the speak of victimization
of self-recrimination
directed outward
directed to the self that he hates
back from the day

the sunstrokes appear on the october fog
the windcharms and sullen despair
the moorgate
left open wide
for the wolf to enter
while peter sits in bethnal green
meditating
and the hunters get themselves lost in the woods
seeking the duck's call
they always loved her better anyways
neither are beyond reproach
yet the distance between both expands
within three beats of the hunter's drums
and the wolf simply slips in
begins to feast
on peter's blood
and the children with their outstretched hands
wishing they could help
hopeless malfunction
waiting for the poor to arrive
while geraldo sits in the spin
and we keep on watching.

Sleepy City - 2001

well i suppose sometimes only a good night's sleep 
is all that's needed in this world 
I mean if only everything i felt and everyday could be made 
blue and twilite 
by sleep, then what orange brightness would affect me to such an 
inhospitable degree? 
And if my non-senseless right now is created by immediate non-verbal 
communication gratification, then, well... 
satisfied at last by some urban nocturne 
song sung loudly by quiet shadowed birds 
traversing a sullen distance between 
the glass and steel towers on which my 
morning rests 
wind sung breezily between 
alleys of cold tar 
blackened as the birds they reflect

Recent Works - In Progress

Some Recent Projects

                                            Father & Son Reunion

                                 Legalized Flip-Flop Impression #1 

                            Last night I gripped your soft pillow goodbye.
                                 

Instructions #1

                                       Paul Smith - Reworked Bag #1

spring cleaning and a rondo or two.

its time to clean it all out
let go of the surreptitious vaccinations
and align the flooding vitriol with
stories of plight
memorized,
tales from my father
from his mother
back from the old country
where everyone was spitting poverty
spit fucking poor
every single day

dirt in the nails was the measure of purity
working the land
equated to all signs of goodness
no desire beyond what we gave
and what they gave
and what had been forever given

time to clean the floorboards
from the years of mice
defecating
and the skin
hardened and peeling
and reconstituted into breathable particles
only to be regurgitated later
while sleeping the desperate sleep of a nomad
caught in the wrong place
the wrong time.

lastly i confided in the diaries, the journals, the hidden writing books
of shame
where i secreted substances
that stay and lay hidden
atrophying and collecting themselves around each other
like pearls

time to clean
and breathe
or else the presence of the long-dead living
will take over
in the tiny manhattan apartment
fighting with the blank
strange walls

Does Canada exist

She wrote to me
All the way from Toronto
Which is actually farther than Detroit
next to itself.
And when I held her letter, crumpled by flight
I smelled her wet breath on my face
Warm
and slightly stale.

She stopped on the train
On the tracks
she said.
Until she couldn't think beyond the hailstorms and pounding collapse of the rail yards.
Like in Chicago
she said.
Like in new York city when new York city failed to exist.
Like that time in Katz's deli
Blazing through two pastrami sandwiches
toxic mustard staining her cheeks
on the Friday after Thanksgiving
when the tourists packed the streets
reminding her
of August in Rome.

looking back in
she was stunted
in proximity of her ancient similarities
between kafka and isolation
so
she fled
quickly
back to the ice
back to the flooding rains and lichen catelogues
back to the ancient diaspora where she soaked herself
in the
Absence of anything
Absence returned.

I don't date north of 72nd st

or really south of canal, unless its TriBeCa, and only then if I like the cross-streets. And forget about Queens, or Bronx or a large percentage of Brooklyn.
I'm not the only one, although everyone around here creates their limited universe of where they will allow a potential romantic interest to live.
Recently I dated someone within a 10 minute walk. That was great, except now I avoid that hood since the BAD THING happened.
Actually, at this point, that wasn't so recent ago. and the bad thing ended up being a good thing I think. At least it wasn't so bad that I can't walk in the neighborhood now.  Really, I can or should be able to go through the hood again.  Actually, I look forward to meeting up with her.  When I walk through the hood, I imagine seeing her and her little doggie and saying all the niceties and then how are you. maybe we get a cup of coffee for old times  - or maybe she is violently bitter with me - but I try not to imagine that scenario.
Maybe this all is a good reason to expand out my dating universe. Right now I'm seeing someone from Williamsburg.  That's definitely not too far away, but definitely not too close either.  It's a good distance - one I prefer and is easier.  Then again, I would like to date someone from the more southern/brownstone end of brooklyn again - although the people in the neighborhoods are awful and boring and smugly self-satisfied, at least there are plentiful trees and prospect park.