I spent much of today on the bike, riding a 30-mile loop along the Brooklyn waterfront. It was a pretty hot day, but not terribly so, and there were some great breezes coming off the water. Plus, the waterfront was full of people enjoying a beautiful Sunday -- swimming, boating, fishing, and bicycling too.

Riding 30 miles felt fine (although I was pretty leisurely about it: an average speed of 11.5 mph, not least because I took so many pictures), so as I suspected I'll have no problem with the 30-mile version of BikeMS. When I got home, however, I wasn't really feeling like doing the whole thing again, so we'll see if I can manage the 60-mile version of the ride.( Details and pictures )

Lots more photos on Flickr.

Tags: bike, brooklyn

I rode down to Fulton Ferry this afternoon to check out the Telectroscope, a truly inspired art project with a whole Victorian-era steampunk back story: a long-lost tunnel to London, started in the 19th century, has finally been completed, and a viewing device installed so you can look through it and see people on the other side, under Tower Bridge alongside the Thames.

Perhaps it sounds silly; an overblown conceit surrounding something you could do with a couple of webcams. But it's not; there's something magical about the story, about the fixed location, about it being public, about looking into the "tunnel" and seeing strangers five thousand miles waving back at you. People make appointments to meet up, or use the handy whiteboards to write messages to each other.

On a Sunday afternoon, the line was too long to wait on, but perhaps I'll stop by on my next morning ride into Manhattan and see what the lunchtime crowds in London look like. (More photos below the cut.)

( Hello, London! )

Tags: brooklyn, photos

Driving down to Red Hook yesterday (for a workshop on fingerpicked blues with Mamie Minch of the Roulette Sisters, at the fabulous Jalopy Theater And School Of Music) I stopped to take some photos of a strange mural on a construction wall along Third Street in Gowanus. Entitled "The Horse's Mouth," it depicts ghosts on horseback, the ghosts of the men who fought battles of the Revolutionary War pretty much right on that spot.

The artist's web site, www.pasqualinaazzarello.com, doesn't give much information about it, and I'm not linking directly to it because it's a somewhat hostile browser-resizing flash site, but she's done another construction-wall mural at an NYU construction site in the Village, as well as work in Brooklyn restaurants and other public spaces.


( More photos )

Tags: brooklyn, photos

I ended up delaying my trip to Toronto for a day, and did some errands downtown this morning on the bike. I did my usual two-bridge trip, taking the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan and coming home over the Manhattan Bridge. A perfect day for a bike ride, and of course I took the camera and broke the law against taking photographs on/of NYC bridges.

( Photos below... )

Tags: brooklyn, nyc, photos

Wednesday and Thursday I had the windows open, and here we are with snow on the ground. There was so much sleet yesterday that the undisturbed snow in the park is hard enough to walk on.

( Prospect Park this morning )

Tags: brooklyn, photos

I took the bike and the guitar to Prospect Park yesterday, where Brooklyn photographer Bill Wadman took my photograph for his project 365 Portraits, for which he's shooting and posting a portrait every day, some taken in the studio and some, as he puts it, "in the wild." You can see my portrait here; the series so far is great (check out the New Year's day portrait) and he's got an RSS feed you can subscribe to.

Tags: brooklyn, photos

I finished a much-needed day at home alone yesterday with a ride around Prospect Park, to photograph Prospect Park In Lights, a set of holiday lighting displays at the various grand entrances to the park. It was a mild evening (aren't they all, nowadays?) and perfect to be out on the bike.


( Photos, going counter-clockwise around the park... )

Tags: brooklyn, photos

Yesterday's New York Times said there was a cherry tree blooming at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. Today was so warm and beautiful that I got the bike out, did a bunch of errands, then rode over to the Gardens. Sure enough, in one corner of the Japanese garden, there's a tree in full bloom, and despite what the article said, it still looks to be going strong. And in fact a second tree, in the northwest corner of the Cherry Esplanade, is also in bloom, but looks pretty weak.

( More photos of the tree, Prospect Park, etc... )

Tags: brooklyn, photos

Another magical night at Sunny's in Red Hook tonight, and some good musical news on top of it. I went down there early to rehearse a couple of songs for the Sheriff Sessions on Friday night. The good musical news is not just that I will be playing rather than just watching, but that I'll be accompanying Kate Giampetruzzi, who with her husband Lou led the Kate and Lou Band until Lou's death in July. Kate will return to performing on Friday night and that's good news for everyone who loves great singing. I'm very honored to be joining her, along with Tone Johansen. We're just going to do a couple of songs, some traditional gospel numbers, but they sound beautiful and I am very happy to be part of it.

The Sheriff Sessions is an American roots music festival featuring some of the best bluegrass, old-time and traditional country bands in the city. It's held at the Baggot Inn in Greenwich Village, Friday and Saturday nights from 7 till midnight (with a jam following). This is the fourth year they've been held, and I played the previous three with the Kate and Lou Band. This year's Sessions are dedicated to Lou's spirit, so they will probably be even more special than usual. (Please note this is not really a gig promo, since I'm only doing a couple of songs. It's just going to be a great night of music.)

( And then... )

Tags: brooklyn, music, photos

We went down to the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition show in Red Hook yesterday afternoon, and the wind was so stiff you could hardly walk. This enormous puddle forms at the foot of Van Brunt Street whenever it rains, and the wind was literally blowing the water up the street.



( BWAC is located in an old Civil War-era warehouse. )

Tags: brooklyn, photos

I got home from a full day of gigging yesterday (and could you ask for a more beautiful day to spend sitting outside playing music???), picked up the Sunday Times, and saw myself in the travel section, which has an article on country music in Brooklyn.¹ The article mentions the Saturday night jams at Sunny's in Red Hook, and a photo of one of those jams illustrates the article. I'm all the way on the right side of that picture, with a harmonica stuck in my face. Also pictured are Ira on accordion, John Simpson on guitar, Fran Leadon on guitar, and Rick Shields' fiddle.

(And if you want to hear what they're talking about, I'll be joining a bunch of great pickers from the Brooklyn scene today at Nolita House, on Houston Street, for a bluegrass brunch from 12.30 - 3.)

¹As much as we laughed about the Times putting a piece about Brooklyn in the travel section ("Come on, people, it's only a bridge!" said one picker), it's actually about things to do for people who come visit NYC, and is written a little tongue-in-cheek, for people who come from places where country music is more common. Thankfully, the writer did grasp the vast difference between the commercial crap that Nashville puts out nowadays, and the traditional music that we play.

Tags: brooklyn, music

We were hungry tonight before the jam at Sunny's, so we went next door to the Fairway.

Oh. My. God.

I have never before had to ask directions to get out of a grocery store.

I was scolded by a manager for taking this photo. (I should have taken a photo of him!) Easy to understand why they're touchy about it; 14 ounces of fish eggs cost more than most of the neighborhood pays every month in rent. Ugh.

Tags: brooklyn, photos, stupidity

I had a rehearsal in Red Hook this evening, and got there early (it's one long downhill ride, so biking there takes about ten minutes), so I rode past the old Revere sugar factory and took some photos.

( Look now, it won't last )

Tags: brooklyn, photos

We got up (well, "we" is not quite the right word, but I finally did see the wisdom of getting up early and getting out into the SNOW!) and walked from Brooklyn Heights to Prospect Park at about 6.30. The snow was falling, the streetlights were still on, and hardly anyone was out yet. You could barely see down the block and the wind was pretty intense, but it was a great walk.

( The photos )

Tags: brooklyn, photos

The show with Frank and Nancy Moccaldi last night was a wonderful free-for-all, with an old-time string band, traditional Irish and Scottish tunes (the latter on electric guitar), and a surfeit of harmonicas and banjos.

The show was part of the Good Coffeehouse series, held at the Ethical Culture Society on Prospect Park West, a a gorgeous mansion built by the inventor of Bon Ami cleansing powder. We arrived early for a run-through, and I spent a little time wandering around the nearly empty building.


( I wish I'd had the real camera )

Tags: brooklyn, gigs, photos

I took a long bike ride Sunday afternoon, down through Bensonhurst and Bay Ridge to the Belt Parkway, around under the Verrazano Bridge to 65th Street, and back through Sunset Park and Bush Terminal. I didn't have the camera, just the cell phone, but I took a few photos anyway. Wrapped up the weekend with The Corpse Bride which was quite fun and like all Tim Burton's work, beautiful to look at.

Update: The modified walk sign in the first photo is apparently the work of ThunderCut, a pair of Brooklyn artists mentioned in New York Magazine recently.

( The pictures... )

Tags: brooklyn, photos

A few years ago, the theater down the block from me, known for years as the Plaza, was bought by the owners of the Pavilion (at the other end of Park Slope) and renamed the Flatbush Pavilion. They showed a sequence of the worst imaginable movies, trying (I guess) to attract a crowd of undiscriminating teenagers. It worked, except for the crowd part, and the theater closed last summer. The marquee continued to display the names of the two dreadful Summer 2004 crap movies that were playing there, until this week, when someone rearranged the letters as shown at right.

Update:
dailyheights.com displays two suggested anagrams:

OH NO INFERNAL GERMANS VANISHING FINE MARVEL

and

MAN OF NINE GROINS MARVELS IF HE HAVIN LAGER

( Your assignment is... )

Tags: anagrams, brooklyn, photos

I got to give my new bicycle a workout over the weekend as bobhowe and I rode out to Fort Tilden, in the Rockaways. I'd never been there before, and I'm rediscovering one of the joys of bicycling -- access to areas of the city you'd never walk to and couldn't drive to. Fort Tilden opened in 1917 and closed in 1974; despite the annoying Geocities promotional crap, this is a good page with history and more photos.

( Photos, including bonus blimp and police car pix )

Tags: brooklyn, photos

On the front page of today's Arts and Leisure section, there's a photo of Sunny's Bar in Red Hook, accompanying an article about new artistic hot spots in New York. Sitting at the bar are three musicians I play with several times a week: Fred Skellenger, a mandolinist who runs the Ponkiesburg Pickin' Party, the jam I play at every week in Park Slope; Fran Leadon, the guitarist and singer who ran that jam before Fred; and Liza who plays mandolin. In the background is Nancy Hunt, and her husband Andrew's shoulder; Andy is a knockout country songwriter and Nancy a great singer. Fred's band Copper Kettle appears at Sunny's regularly, and Fran's band, the Y'all Stars, play there and at the Parkside; last Saturday night I was up till two in the morning playing at Sunny's with Fran and Charles and last night I did a gig with Kate and Lou at Sunny's..

These folks are all part of the Brooklyn trad music scene I wrote about a few days ago; I believe everyone in that picture was at the Parkside for the John Herald tribute, except perhaps for Fred.

The moral of this story is: Spend more time in bars. Especially Sunny's, which is surely the most magical indoor place in Brooklyn.

And speaking of spending time in bars: a reminder that tonight is my show at the Parkside. I've been writing up a storm, so there will be two brand-new songs, and two that have only been played out once (one at the last Orange Bear gig, the other at the infamous typhoon gig on the Upper East Side in November). There's a slight possibility that last one will be dumped in favor of an even newer song but that depends on whether I finish it today.

Tags: brooklyn, gigs, music

Sunday was a nice day, so I walked all the way through the Slope to my usual Sunday afternoon jam at the other end of the neighborhood, and back, picturephone within easy reach.

( See photos... )

Tags: brooklyn, music, photos
Current Music: "Little Noises," Marcia Pelletiere