Early Wednesday Morning in Williamsburg: Conor Lamb Victory Party on Conselyea Street

Williamsburg 30-Second Mystery Theatre: Mystery of the Missing Sternberg Park B-Boys 6/6 Conclusion

Acting on a hunch, Conselyea Street's ace sleuth Claudia Cardinale finds the answer to the mystery of the Sternberg Park B-Boys, Wyler and Tyler Twinkletoes at Williamsburg's 27th new Dunkin' Donuts.

Early Friday Evening in Williamsburg: Harvest Festival at P.S. 132 The Conselyea School

With Halloween just around the corner, we walked down Conselyea Street to the corner of Manhattan Avenue for the annual P.S. 132 Harvest Festival.

Our wonderful neighborhood elementary school featured festive decor, good food, lots of activities, costumed children (and parents), and lots of fun among the boos and ghouls.

Pumpkins and ghosts were a major motif.

There was face painting, of course, for those Williamsburg kids too young to get tattoos.

We patiently waited on line to get in to the school.

A skeleton greeted us as we walked in the building. (That used to happen to us every day at P.S. 203 back in the 1950s!)

We saw spiders but not Spidey.

And we saw lots of people, young and not so young, enjoying themselves on this very chilly late October evening -- with possible snow (yikes!) tomorrow.

You could get as many $1 tickets as you wanted, good for admission, food,

various activities, and the haunted house on the third floor, which we were too scared to visit.

Although we had to leave early to have dinner with some neighbors,

we're very grateful we got to attend this evening's Harvest Festival at P.S. 132.

Thanks to everyone who must have worked really hard to make it a success.

Monday Afternoon in Williamsburg: Italian Flags on Columbus Day on Lorimer and Conselyea Streets

It's been a gorgeous Indian summer holiday weekend in Brooklyn. Unfortunately, we've been disabled with tendinitis tibialis posterior for the past four days, and from Friday to Sunday we only were able to walk as far as our porch, where we did sit outside and watch the passing scene, pretending it was early June or maybe late August.

Today we had off for Columbus Day, and of course the holiday is controversial, as it should be, given the genocide of the indigenous population of the Americas (having used "Indian summer" in this post and in a book title, we're hoping people aren't offended).

But here, on our block and around the corner -- about as far as we could travel on our poor feet today -- Columbus Day is largely a celebration of all things Italian, as it is right here, home of the Giglio Boys:

So Italian flags and the red, white and green colors were evident, even if there were used to be more of them in this part of Williamsburg back in the day.


We watched the parade on channel 7 and especially enjoyed the rendition of "Al Di La."

If we'd been more mobile, we'd have been at a lower Manhattan location honoring one of many great Italian-Americans: Zuccotti Park, where many people took advantage of the holiday and wonderful weather to join Occupation Wall Street. Including kids off from school.

So Columbus Day can't be all that bad.

Saturday Morning in Williamsburg: Awaiting Hurricane Irene on Conselyea Street

A car ready to greet Hurricane Irene.

A story from Richard Grayson's Eating at Arby's: The South Florida Stories (Grinning Idiot Press, 1982)

A scary warning

“Oh, oh,” said Manny one afternoon.

“What’s wrong, Manny?” asked his wife Zelda, who was in the Florida room sweeping away little salamanders.

“They just said on NewsWatch 10 that there’s a hurricane warning.”

“Oh, no,” said Zelda. “What does that mean?”

“That means a hurricane is probably going to strike South Florida. We must get ready for the hurricane, Zelda.”

“How do we do that?”

“First, we have to make sure we have food in the house. If there is a hurricane, we cannot go to buy food at Publix or to eat out at Arby’s. Then we have to board up our windows. After that we need to buy batteries for our flashlight. And then we should fill up our station wagon with gas.”

“I’m scared of hurricanes, Manny.”

“The important thing is to be prepared. If you are prepared, Zelda, there is no reason to get scared.”

“I suppose hurricanes are just a fact of life for us here in South Florida,” said Zelda.

“Yes, but hurricanes are not always so bad. Besides, our weather is almost always beautiful.”

“Yes, Manny, our weather is almost always beautiful. I guess hurricanes aren’t that scary. I feel better now.”

“Good for you, Zelda,” said Manny. “Now we can get out our map and track that hurricane!”

Sunday Morning in Williamsburg: Easter Mass at St. Francis of Paola

We attended Easter Mass this morning at St. Francis of Paola Roman Catholic Church.

Until a few months ago, St. Francis of Paola was its own parish -- which it had been since World War I -- but in the wave of recent consolidations in the Diocese of Brooklyn, it's been merged with St. Cecilia on Herbert Street in Greenpoint and and St. Nicholas on Olive Street to form the Parish of Divine Mercy.

It had been a while -- okay, years -- since we'd last been to Mass. But a certain persistent young person who can sometimes be petulant if we pretend to be hard of hearing asked us to attend.

Additionally, we were told to wear a suit and tie, which made us about as happy about as Bart Simpson usually is on Sunday mornings.

Okay, we got presentable enough to pass muster.

Walking fast for several blocks down Conselyea Street, we arrived for a packed 10:30 a.m. Mass with just a few minutes to spare. We were glad to see people were still going in when we got there because a certain person assumed we wouldn't make it on time.

When berated for coming in too late to get a seat up closer, we told a certain someone, the Holy Spirit is everywhere.

Including if you manage to sit on the aisle

although this was left over from the earlier bilingual Mass in Italian and English and wasn't all that useful to us now.

Ah, this was better.

We actually did enjoy the service a great deal

and had to admit it was sort of nice to be in church on Easter.

And we're glad we went to Mass today.

As we left church, someone said, "I told you so."

Happy Easter!

Monday Afternoon in Williamsburg: Fire in Two Houses on Conselyea Street between Lorimer and Union

"Marone, it's always something," said one of our Conselyea Street neighbors this afternoon as we watched firefighters put out a blaze at two houses on the north side of the street a couple of houses down from Union Avenue. We were reading after 1 p.m. when we heard a lot of helicopters, but we didn't go outside for more than half an hour. There were lots of fire trucks down our block at the corner of Lorimer. Our 90yo neighbor asked us if we'd heard what was going on. We hadn't but after we walked to the next block, we saw the big fire.

There were firetrucks and firefighters everywhere. On Fox News it says that more than 100 firefighters have been sent to a three-alarm fire. Another neighbor told us one of the houses was 15 Conselyea.

By the time we got there, it appeared to be under control. We heard over a fire official's communication device that a wall in one of the buildings had collapsed, but nobody seemed panicked.

We heard people say, "Thank God no one was hurt," but at the corner of Union and Metropolitan we saw them load an injured firefighter from a gurney into one of the ambulances there. The intersection and basically all of Union Avenue were blocked with firetrucks, ambulances, police cars and other emergency vehicles.

"I feel sorry for the poor people in those houses," our old neighbor said. Marone, it's always something. In the last year this stretch of Conselyea Street has also seen part of the facade of our neighbors' house dangerously falling off (not so serious, it didn't stop them from selling the house for $1.15 million), and more tragically, a building collapse on another Monday afternoon and now this big fire.

Friday Morning in Williamsburg: Conselyea Street After the Latest Snowstorm

This will be our last winter in New York. The last five winters have been hard for someone who spent the previous twenty-six winters in Miami/Fort Lauderdale, Gainesville (go Gators), Phoenix or Silicon Valley -- but last one was really hard and this one has been worse. Here's Conselyea Street after our latest snowstorm. We're posting these pics mainly as a reminder to ourselves that we will not be missing Brooklyn come next January when we're living in a warm, snow-free place -- like our wonderful former neighbors two houses down.


No more shoveling for us after March! (Unless April is really, really weird.)

Monday Afternoon in Williamsburg: Building Collapse on Conselyea Street

We were coming out of the subway at Lorimer and Metropolitan at 2 p.m. when we saw fire trucks everywhere. A building had collapsed on Conselyea Street on our side of the street and across Lorimer. We didn't know if anyone was trapped in there. Some people said two people were, but we also heard a firefighter tell a man that nobody was in there. A man coming from as far away as Manhattan Avenue said he heard a loud bang. (UPDATE, 4 p.m.: Apparently four construction workers were injured in the collapse of 34 Conselyea and taken to the hospital. Here is the New York Times City Room blog post.)