Thursday Night in Williamsburg: Summer Starz movie "Babe" with Grand Street Community Band at East River State Park

We headed over to East River State Park this evening to get a last whiff of summer. As a college teacher at various schools, we've already gone back to work, so our idyllic summer off is finally, abruptly over. We brought with us to the park a book which we needed to read for work, and we did get some work done, but to the music of the very professional Grand Street Community Band and the crooning of Assemblyman Joseph Lentol before tonight's kid-friendly SummerStarz feature, Babe.

The community band, founded just last year, was tuning up when we got to the park around 6:30 p.m. Few people had arrived at that point.

There were more people on the grass by the river, enjoying the end of one of the last days of August.

It was no longer so hot and humid. We were in t-shirt and shorts, as were others, but it was nicely comfortable and nobody was sweating.

We found two benches behind the movie screen. One had a picnicking family; we sat on the other one and read.

The Grand Street Community Band skillfully played (you can hear their music here) a series of marches and then John Williams' familiar themes from the Star Wars trilogy.

Then, Susan from Town Square introduced Assemblymember Joseph Lentol, who's represented this district in Albany for ages. The legislator, she said, was going to sing a song.

Joe Lentol thanked the community band and praised their work but noted that they didn't know any of the songs in his repetoire. So he sang "Some Enchanted Evening" from South Pacific a capella.

"Now do 'No Sleep Till Brooklyn'!" cried a hipster on the right side of thirty. The assemblymember demurred or, more probably, didn't hear this constituent's plea. It was getting dark (which is why our cell phone takes these blurry pics). The last selection from the band was the John Philip Sousa march that we always associate with "for a duck may be somebody's mother." The little kids went wild.

While they got the movie ready, we found the one open porta-potty amid about two dozen locked ones. Actually, a bicyclist had found it before us. When we walked back, two blondish boys about 5 or 6, started interrogating us about why we were there. We said we were inspecting the concrete.

One boy asked if we knew who he was. No, we said. "Conrad!" he shouted. Then his littler friend, or brother, named Monroe we think, began hitting us, and Conrad joined in. Their mommies were not far away but paid no notice, so we grabbed their hands and said, "No hitting."

Then we found a seat on one of the little concrete stubs on the side and watched Babe, which was very sweet without being saccharin. There were a bunch of Orthodox Jewish guys who came in with Joe Lentol, and they looked like big machers, but they left before the film began. We don't think it was because its star was a pig.

Anyway, it was a nice, relaxing evening, and as we walked through the still-summerlike bustle of people on Bedford Avenue - at 7th Street a street preacher was asking people loudly if they ever thought about God - we were grateful for this respite in a kind of stressful week. That's what kids' movies and parks and community bands and singing assemblymen are for, isn't it? That'll do, Pig. That'll do.

Thursday Night in Williamsburg: Summer Starz movie "Wall-E" at East River State Park with music by The Backroad

On a hot and humid night, we stayed in the neighborhood and are happy about that after seeing (for the first time) Wall-E at the kid-friendly SummerStarz Thursday evening film series at East River State Park.

We arrived a little after 7 p.m. and got to hear The Backroad, or anyway two the members of this Pennsylvania experimental/folk rock/jam band. Their set was a really pleasant way to watch the sun set over Manhattan and try to catch any breeze. We're predisposed to like anyone from the Harrisburg area (in Autumn in Brooklyn, our forthcoming book that takes place in 1978, there's a lot of back-and-forth between Brooklyn and Harrisburg) but The Backroad were really good.

It's not the high-profile, cutting edge of the Pool Parties, but at SummerStarz, the park becomes an intimate space by virtue of the much sparser, more-spread-out crowds and the family-oriented atmosphere. We actually spotted more elderly people at last Sunday's pool party, but there were a good number of young single couples here for a free date night. On the way out we walked with some twentysomething bikers from the Southside who apparently discovered the movie and the park while riding by, and actually heard one tell the other (all dialogue guaranteed verbatim), "Dude, this place is fantastic."

Little kids were running around a lot, oblivious to the sultry weather, and families spread down blankets, as did some young couples. Evidently they loosen the rules about bringing bottles into the park that are present during the pool parties because we saw families with water and soda bottles as well as picnic food.

The Backroad duo reminded us a little of Simon & Garfunkel and one song was clearly a tribute to Paul and Art. We've been thinking a lot of the summer of 1969 this summer - the 40th anniversaries of Stonewall, the moon landing, Woodstock - and we vividly recall from August 1969 driving up the old West Side Highway in the West Village and Chelsea four years before it collapsed. We were in the Mustang of a new umfriend from Marine Park we met from the East Village Other personals as he took us to the Cloisters for the first time (he'd later become a Catholic priest).

When "Scarborough Fair" came on the radio, he said, "I have a Simon and Garfunkel obsession." Then, when "Lay Lady Lay" came on, he said, "I have a Dylan obsession." We were only 18 then and liked obsessives. Anyway, some of The Backroad's songs - we particularly liked "Gone to Ohio" - made us feel 18 again for a little while. There were faint old-school Dylan echoes in some of The Backroad's songs, and a little Leonard Cohen too.

We think the two members of The Backroad whose music we got to hear tonight were Kyle Morgan and Alex B. Smith. Anyway, we're grateful they came. When their set ended and we were encouraged to give them a big Brooklyn sendoff, we watched them load the Alex's drums and other equipment into their van with a couple of friends, take some pics of the skyline, and start the drive back to PA.

Neil Diamond singing at a July 4 celebration on CBS was used as a sound check for the new sound system, we were told, and this sound was a big improvement over the old one, as we heard everything very clearly. (Admittedly, Wall-E goes for a long time without any dialogue. . .)

Susan Alexander of Town Square came on briefly to tell something about the series, about Town Square, to thank The Edge and the other sponsors of SummerStarz, etc. Tonight would have been the last night, but the first two weeks were rained out, so next Thursday, August 27, they'll show Babe and the following Thursday, September 3, Nim's Island. Sounds good to us.

There's not much we can add to what other people have said about Wall-E,
which won last year's Oscar for best animated feature and should have been nominated in the best film category (it would have been, too, if the Academy had gone to the new ten-nominees rule in 2008).

Hey, as one of at least three boys at Meyer Levin Junior High in the early 1960s who sat listening to Jerry Herman musicals in their parents' "finished" basements - our favorite's still Milk and Honey, which we saw on Broadway with Molly Picon in '62 - we're really easy to please.

We enjoyed the evening a lot and are thankful for SummerStarz. As we end our long vacation, it was a really pleasant interlude and as it cooled off slightly with nighttime East River breezes (thankfully, no storms), a nice respite from the current dog days. A few people stopped for ice cream on the way home.

Thursday Night in Williamsburg: SummerStarz movie "The Incredibles" at East River State Park

Tonight we stayed in Williamsburg and walked over to East River State Park for the Summer Starz free movie, The Incredibles.

There was a surprisingly small audience of families with kids, young couples, a few hipsters (including mommies and daddies) and a few of us oldsters. But as the sun set and the river breezes cooled us off, it was a really nice, intimate, pleasant way to while away a midsummer night.

The movies that they're showing at Summer Starz are all kid-friendly, from animated ones like tonight's The Incredibles or Babe or Wall-E. Next Thursday is Bend It Like Beckham. According to the postcard we picked up one morning at the Greenpoint Starbucks, the Thursday events start with a children's hour at 6 p.m. (tonight, for example, Rock City Theatrics, a Williamsburg kids' theater workshop, was scheduled) and then live music at 7 p.m. (tonight a Staten Island band Fenix Down, which we've seen described as red-state hard rock with a video game feel) but we didn't get to the park until after 8 p.m., just a few minutes before the movie started.

There were some families at picnic tables, and the kids near us came back to the table with hot dogs, telling their parents, "They're free!" There was free popcorn as well. We moved around a little but mostly sat on one of those little concrete parts, maybe 18 inches high around the perimeter of the concrete. Some families were watching from picnic blankets on the grass to the side.

SummerStarz 2009 is sponsored by Town Square, which says on its website that it's

a volunteer community-based 501(c)(3) organization in Greenpoint and Williamsburg, Brooklyn, two neighborhoods experiencing dynamic changes. Founded in 2005, our mission is to build a vibrant community and enrich the quality of our lives through activities that inspire creativity and imagination, teach respect and cooperation, and celebrate the joy around us.

This is the fifth year of SummerStarz, which was previously held in McCarren Park. The big sponsor is The Edge, and the woman introducing the evening's film gestured to the towers looming over the south side of the park. Before the movie, we got to see this ad for the condo on Kent Avenue:

We first saw The Incredibles soon after it opened, on the weekend after the 2004 election when John Kerry lost to President Bush and we lost our race against Florida Republican Congressman Ander Crenshaw. We were living in Davie, Broward County, Florida, and we saw it near our apartment at the AMC Ridge Plaza 8 on State Road 84 off I-595. It made us feel better than and we enjoyed it tonight. A.O. Scott, putting it on his ten best list for 2004, called it "[a]n almost-great movie about the dangers of mediocrity, and a drama of midlife frustration cleverly dressed up as kid-pleasing action fantasy."

The generator on the truck to the side made some noise, but we could hear the action (whenever there were words or subtitles - from a French-speaking villain in the movie, there were Spanish subtitles). The film stopped dead once - "a small glitch, also known as an 'oops,'" said one of the presenters - but it started up where it left off after about seven minutes. (Still, a bunch of families with sleepy kids took that time to leave.)

It was a pleasant evening, and the view of the river, the skyline, the planes and boast going by, made for a nice atmosphere.

Back when we lived in Florida, we went to the movies nearly once every weekend for a matinee back when it cost us six dollars. There were some great theaters in Broward County, mostly the Gateway in Fort Lauderdale and the Sunrise 11 closer to where we lived in West Broward, that then played lots of art, indie, foreign and gay-themed films.

Here in New York the last three years, because of the high prices and our more limited income, we have only gone to regular movies twice. We miss it, but New York offers us other pleasures, and we get to go to a bunch of free screenings from the wonderful School of Visual Arts, where we teach writing and literature to photography and animation major.

We miss going to first-run movies.

(Painting by Mikayla Butchart)

On Monday evening at the amazingly excellent McNally Jackson bookstore in Soho, we'll be reading our piece "The Forgotten Movie Screens of Broward County" from the recently-published anthology Life As We Show It: Writing on Film, co-edited by Brian Pera and Masha Tupitsyn.

Joining us will be Masha and Donal Mosher, the talented Portland-based writer/filmmaker/photographer, who will read from his essay on the making of October Country, which he co-directed with Michael Palmieri and which just had its international premiere at the Locarno Film Festival.

October Country, which documents the multi-generational story of Donal's working-class family - won the SILVERDOCS Sterling Award for best US Feature last month. “We have chosen a film that has resonated with us long after we viewed it,” the Sterling Award Jury said of October in a statement. “It is a film that is subtle and intuitively creative while presenting important social issues in a surprising way.”

We hope you can come to hear us read at McNally Jackson on Monday at 7 p.m.