Early Sunday Afternoon in Cobble Hill: Smith Street Fair between Union Street and Bergen Street

(Video courtesy A Random Minute)

Late Sunday Afternoon in Cobble Hill: Christmas Trees at Atlantic Avenue and Clinton Street

(Video courtesy A Random Minute)

Tuesday Evening in Cobble Hill: Jason Saenz at the BackFat Variety Show at 61 Local

(Video courtesy Jason Saenz)

Friday Morning in Cobble Hill: Track Inspection Car at Bergen Street F/G Subway Station

We've been riding the subways for more than a half a century, but not until this morning did we ever see a track inspection car, which stopped at the Bergen Street subway stop around 9:45 a.m. as if it were some futuristic, scary new F or G train.

Thursday Night in Cobble Hill: Nicholas Thompson and "The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War" at Book Court

Tonight, with a fall chill in the air, we took the R train to Court Street and then walked down to Cobble Hill to the great indie bookstore Book Court to hear a fascinating reading and talk by Nicholas Thompson, whose new book, The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War, has gotten glowing reviews and a lot of praise from people we trust.

We were impressed by the passages that Johnson, Nitze's grandson and an editor at Wired Magazine, read from his book and look forward to reading his account of the two friends, who were what one critic called "the Jefferson and Adams of the Cold War," often on opposite sides in foreign and defense policy disputes and whose long lives included over half a century of active engagement in the highest levels of government at the most dangerous time in American and world history.

The Washington Post review had a good overview:

For much of the past half-century, Kennan and Nitze formed a classic odd couple, battling over cold war policy both while in government service and out. Kennan was a learned diplomat and historian who had witnessed Stalin's show trials and purges as a young man stationed at the Moscow embassy. He went on to draft the basis for cold war doctrine by famously warning of Soviet intentions in his 1946 "Long Telegram," only to retreat from his prescriptions, leave government service and devote himself to warning of the perils of an arms race that threatened to obliterate the planet. Nitze was an inveterate hawk who attached great importance to the balance of nuclear firepower between the Russians and Americans. He formulated the foundation for American nuclear strategy in the early 1950s and occupied numerous government posts for presidents from Truman to Reagan, while persistently sounding alarms about Soviet nuclear intentions and capabilities. . .

In his 1947 "Mr. X." article in Foreign Affairs, Kennan laid out the doctrine of Soviet containment -- essentially the intellectual scaffolding of the cold war. Then he spent the next decades disavowing his authorship of it. Thompson observes that Kennan later wrote that he felt like "one who has inadvertently loosened a large boulder from the top of a cliff and now helplessly watches its path of destruction in the valley below, shuddering and wincing at each successive glimpse of disaster."

Nitze would have none of this. According to Thompson, "Nitze was in sync with the times, far more confident than Kennan in his country's ability to do good." In 1950, he presided over the drafting of Document NSC-68, which rejected Kennan's recommendation that America forswear first use of nuclear weapons; the document also called on the United States to fight communism worldwide and to invest in a massive arms buildup. Decades later, Thompson writes, Nitze crossed out a line in a student's master's thesis which argued that in NSC-68 he had advocated military containment over political means. In the late 1950s and in the '70s, Nitze warned that America was in danger of becoming the weaker combatant in the superpower contest and needed to rearm. . .

Towards the end of their lives, however, Nitze and Kennan reconciled their differences as the Cold War's end prompted Nitze to endorse the abolition of the weapons whose existence he had once done so much to promote.

We're particularly interested in the Cold War these days because this term we have the privilege of teaching a course in Cold War Literature at City College of New York - we've already read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and The Quiet American with our students - so it was very interesting to get the perspective of Nicholas Thompson's book, which as the New York Times review noted, "succeeds admirably in blending biography and intellectual history, painting colorful portraits of complicated men who embodied conflicting strains of American thinking about foreign policy."

Thompson began by making note of the presence of his little son, who "knows about six word and one of them is book." He talked about the genesis of the book, when his grandfather Nitze in 1999 had an op-ed in the New York Times saying "I see no compelling reason why we should not unilaterally get rid of our nuclear weapons" and got a letter from his old friend George Kennan, who said he loved the op-ed and was glad they were finally "in complete accord." Thompson had not realized the closeness of the adversaries' friendship - they attended each other's family weddings - and the parallels in their lives made Thompson realized he could tell the story of the American Cold War from a unique vantage point.

As Nitze's grandson, he had access to Nitze's papers, including a trove apparently known only to a janitor at Johns Hopkins' Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, which he founded. Thompson also got access to a lot of Kennan's papers, including the diaries he kept over the years.

Thompson begins his story at the end of World War II, with Kennan in Red Square on V-E Day and Nitze interrogating Albert Speer in Berlin and then going on to Hiroshima to report on the effects of the atom bomb. He was able to get a wonderful start to his narrative, starting from the point of view of Martha Mautner, then a clerk in the American embassy in Moscow eager to go out on a date for the evening, when Kennan comes in asking her to stay late and send what became known, famously, as the Long Telegram.

Thompson read two excerpts from Kennan's diaries, the first from April 1951 when he and Nitze, working together on the Marshall Plan, began to have seriously divergent views on the conduct of the Cold War and defense policy. Kennan's unsparing self-criticism and perhaps even self-hatred in this entry reminded us more of Dostoevsky's Underground Man than the diplomat and scholar we'd known of.

The second excerpt from Kennan's diaries, from 1957, as he pondered a lecture he needed to give on the BBC, toys with being "honest" and suggesting that the U.S. should be merged with Canada and Britain with a new capital in Ottawa as well as banning cars and drastically reducting population, was also eyebrow-raising.

Thompson mentioned that neither man achieved his goal of becoming Secretary of State or Defense. Nitze, in particular, while much more congenial in person than the rather cold Kennan, seemed unable to resist being totally blunt and impatient when he thought the person with whom he was speaking was somewhat dense in not agreeing with Nitze's views - even if that person was the President Kennedy or President-elect Carter.

Thompson's editor is also Jimmy Carter's, and the editor gave Carter the manuscript of The Hawk and the Dove; after reading it, the former president said, "Nitze always was a horse's ass."

Kennan also tended to be self-destructive in his dealings with his superiors, as when, being considered for a top post in the Eisenhower administration and was asked to write a policy paper, Kennan wrote a devastating critique of everything in Eisenhower's foreign policy.

It's a tribute to both men that they endured. Nitze worked for ten presidents and was fired by most of them, but he kept being listened to. People always paid attention to whatever Kennan wrote about foreign policy. While neither of the subjects of Thompson's book sound like a very nice person, Nitze sound like a wonderful grandfather and Kennan probably was, too.

The Book Court audience was small, fifteen to twenty, but were appreciative of Thompson's discussion and digressions. On everything from Nitze challenging JFK's fear of his own generals starting a nuclear war on their own during the Cuban missile crisis and Nitze's trying to manipulate a somewhat befuddled Reagan at Reykjavik to the weirdness of Svetlana Stalin's letters diagnosing what she thought was Kennan's deep unhappiness, Thompson is a compelling storyteller.

So we're really looking forward to reading The Hawk and the Dove.

Friday Night in Cobble Hill: Launch Party for Adam Suerte's "Aprendiz" #4 graphic novel at Rocketship comic shop

Thanks to our friends at Brooklyn Heights Blog, we were alerted to attend tonight's release party for volume 4 of Aprendiz, Brooklyn Tattoo owner and all-around great artist Adam Suerte's graphic memoir of his apprenticeship in the tattoo biz. The party was at the unparalleled Cobble Hill comic book store, Rocketship, where we get all our Justice League of America T-shirts and mo' better stuff too.

We got there via the G train from Dumbo Books HQ in Williamsburg. We were excited to see about the extension of the line starting on Sunday.

This Sunday the G train can take us to Church - Avenue, that is. One seat for us now to Park Slope and Kensington and every place in between.

To get to Rocketship, of course, we take the G to Bergen Street, making sure to stay at the front of the train so we can set out at the north Warren-Smith Streets corner (where's Septimus?)

As we said, Adam is the head honcho at Brooklyn Tattoo at 99 Smith Street.

But he's a total artist, with more than the body as his canvas.

He makes paintings.

Here's Cobble Hill Park:

Adam designed this wonderful Grand Army Plaza arch glass

and this glass with the Williamburgh Savings Bank clock tower.

And he's achieved incredible success, justifiably, as a graphic novelist. Here's a review of Aprendiz #1 at Midnight Fiction:

Aprendiz follows Suerte's artistic journey on his path to becoming a tattoo artist in NYC. The first issue chronicles his early days as a evolving cartoonist, tracing his development from art school in late '80's through a 7-year stint as part of an artist's collective called Urban Folk Art. The group struggled to stay afloat printing T-shirts and indie comics; and painting murals. At times, they supplemented their income working retail or production day jobs to pay the rent. About this time Suerte met a couple of tattoo artists who eventually gave him a shot at an apprenticeship at their shop.

Suerte is a wonderful cartoonist and storyteller. Aprendiz provides a fascinating glimpse into the development of a tattoo artist set in the rich countercultural streets of South Brooklyn.

Here's a short version of his bio:

Adam Suerte grew up in South Brooklyn where the streets were his canvas long before he was putting the streets on his canvas. He went to Music and Art High school where his graffiti flourished, and his love of underground comics psychadelic art and illustration began to bloom. At Rhode Island School of Design, he studied illustration, even though he is more of a painter. Dutch masters, Impressionism, Op Art, Pop Art, Hudson River Valley School , and the art of ancient Mexico were a few things that caught his eye. Upon moving back to Brooklyn he founded the artist cooperative Urban Folk Art© where the group ran a silkscreen studio, published their own comics, curated openings, participated in murals projects, guerrilla art projects, and taught art to kids. As they shut down the Printing aspect of the group 8 years later. Adam apprenticed at a tattoo shop in the late 90's, and opened and operates Brooklyn Tattoo, the first ever tattoo studio gallery in Cobble Hill Brooklyn, where he still resides. He is also continually painting makking comics, murals , and teaching art to kids.

There was a good-sized crowd at Rocketship early in the evening.

Adam was patiently talking to fans and friends and signing books.

He let us take a pic with our crappy cell phone camera,

and then he signed our copy of Aprendiz, book four.

Just a few panels from the latest issue to show you what a terrific graphic artist/writer Adam Suerte is:

The four volumes of Aprendiz deal with Adam's apprenticeship as a tattoo artist. In the last volume he tells of his final years toiling for and learning from the temperamental partners Myke and Jeff.

Badly in need of just a little iced tea, we devoured Adam's new book a couple of blocks north of Rocketship at the Smith Street Starbucks. To give you an idea of critical reception of Adam's work, here's a review of the intial volume at the Comics Journal:

Being a tattoo artist, it is not surprising that Adam Suerte can draw. What is surprising is that Suerte knows his way around a comics page the way your dad knows his way around the liquor store.

The most prominent trend in Aprendiz is the integration of elements typical to tattoo design into Suerte's compositions; Skulls, daggers and 40-ounce beer bottles are recurring images. The most impressive application of such imagery is the use of a flowing banner to display narrative captions. The banner serves dual purposes: Being a tattoo-related image, it strengthens the bond between art and subject. It also fills the more practical role of visual traffic controller. Banners overlap from panel to panel, directing the eye and creating a smooth visual flow. The result is a seamless page. The effect provides for as graceful a visual reading experience as one could ever want.

Hey, we got one of the lucky copies and won a free T-shirt!

At the end of the latest volume, Adam and his former bosses, Jeff Ortega and Myke Maldonado, who until recently were estranged, each discuss his memoir and the real-life events behind it.

It's a nice peek behind the curtain of the themes and plot of the opus. Jeff writes that

the one thing that Adam can claim in this industry is being the master of true Brooklyn tattooing ince there is no one within the borough (or on the planet for that matter) that can lay out a better homage to the County of Kings and New York City on skin than Adam.

It was a great evening, and we wish Adam Suerte ¡Mucha suerte! with the new book. Drop by Rocketship and you can get a copy and see for yourself how good he is.