Friday Afternoon in Williamsburg: Spring Fever in February at East River State Park

We lingered all morning in beautiful Long Beach, and after getting back to Brooklyn and having a late lunch at home, with sunny skies and a temperature of 67, we decided to walk over to the waterfront on this freakishly mild February day. A number of young people with early spring fever also were out there, enjoying East River State Park.










On our way out, we saw a pile of dirty snow, reminding us that tomorrow winter will return and will be here for another five weeks. Sigh.

Friday Morning in Long Beach: Breakfast on the Boardwalk

Early this morning we took the G train to Fulton Street and then, at the LIRR Atlantic Terminal at 7 a.m., we just managed to catch a train to Long Beach so we could have breakfast on the boardwalk on this short sunny and mild respite from a long, hard winter.

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.

Richard Grayson's HOW TO GET A NUN INTO BED now available at Amazon Kindle Store

Richard Grayson's HOW TO GET A NUN INTO BED (And How to Get Her Out When the Time Comes), is now available from its publisher, Art Pants Company, for 99 cents, from the Amazon Kindle Store. It is also available as a $6.99 Canarsie House paperback book at Lulu or as a free download.

From the promotional material for HOW TO GET A NUN INTO BED:

In this short, breezy book of expert advice, Richard Grayson -- a man who knows his way around a bedroom -- gives detailed, fail-free instructions on how to get a nun into bed (and how to get her out when the time comes). Follow Grayson's step-by-step tips and you'll soon be getting nuns into bed with ease -- and getting lots of pleasure and satisfaction out of it! For mature readers over 18 only!

Early Saturday Afternoon in Bushwick: Start of Idiotarod 2011 on Grattan Street

We thought we came across the end of the 2011 Idiotarod around noon today in Bushwick but later learned it was actually the beginning. We were walking down Bogart Street to the L train when we saw what seemed to be a snowball fight between contestants in the shopping cart race on either side of Grattan Street.

People were being told not to go into the gutter (street for non-native New Yorkers), which hadn't at all been plowed.

The south side of Grattan Street seemed to be lobbing most of the snowballs over to the north side.

The race's start and route are always mysterious. We got a better look four years ago, when we were near McCarren Park in Greenpoint.

Last year's race was, according to Carts of Brooklyn, supposed to start at Socrates Sculpture Park, but apparently this year everyone knew it would be in Brooklyn. As our friend Aaron Short wrote in The Brooklyn Paper, the Idiotarod is "the famed third jewel of the hipster Triple Crown (after SantaCon and the No Pants Subway Ride)."

We had business in Fort Greene this morning and when we got home at 11:40 a.m., we read on Gothamist that the race was starting in Maria Hernandez Park.

We took the L train to Montrose Street and moseyed about and had already given up when we heard the noise.

Obviously there are non-crappy actual race pics elsewhere. Por ejemplo, this Yfrog pic by esbcivic of a team psyched up for battle at Maria Hernandez Park

or this great photo by Gemini_Scorpio at Twitpic.

All we could get was a shot of one of the Team Monster Mash team looking lonely in the snow.

And this weird pic looks like a female cosmonaut is about to be menaced by something other than a snowball. We heard someone ask, "How are you?" and another person answer, "Drunk."

Sorry, we're not a real photographer! We teach them at the fabulous School of Visual Arts, but only things like Antigone, The Inferno and Twelfth Night.

And we're sure there'll be more coming from the official Idiotarod 2011 press photographers. Check out the great Anna Fischer.

All we saw was what we first thought the end of the route, with the what we assumed was the after-party at the Pine Box Rock Shop about to begin. We were too cold and too old for this, so we returned to Dumbo Books HQ in Williamsburg. Only later did we realize that we saw in fact not the ending, but the start of the race, which went on to Greenpoint (as we assumed it would -- they were just ten times slower than we would have believed).

So the Pine Box Rock Shop was the first check-in point, and the after-party was at Coco666 around 4 p.m. Still, it was a colorful enough part of the race in disgustingly snow-ridden Brooklyn for us to enjoy.

Like we said, this winter will happily be our last in Brooklyn. Next year, we'll be a sexagenarian enjoying watching the Phoenix Idiotarod (scheduled this year for next Saturday) in 70 degree warmth amidst the palm trees.

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.)

"BREAD LOAF DIARY: The 1977 Writers Conference" by Richard Grayson now available at Amazon Kindle store

Richard Grayson's BREAD LOAF DIARY: The 1977 Writers Conference is now available at Amazon's Kindle Store for 99¢ from its publisher, Art Pants Company.

Here is the promo material for the 41-page $5.99 paperback edition from Superstition Mountain Press:

In 1977, Richard Grayson, an aspiring writer from Brooklyn who had published a few stories in little magazines, got a scholarship to the venerable Bread Loaf Writers Conference in Middlebury, Vermont.

That year's staff included Toni Morrison, who read from her then-forthcoming Song of Solomon; John Irving, who read from his manuscript for the unpublished World According to Garp; John Gardner, celebrated for his philosophical novels and his advocacy of "moral fiction"; the poets Maxine Kumin, William Meredith and Marvin Bell; Geoffrey Wolfe, unveiling his forthcoming Duke of Deception; a young Tim O'Brien; the comic, sardonic novelist Stanley Elkin; the warmly sympathetic Hilma Wolitzer; and others.

Grayson's fellow attendees included a number of writers who would go on to fame, such as Ron Carlson and Leslea Newman, and many who probably published nothing. Somewhere in the middle, Grayson here records his observations and thoughts in the daily diary entries he's been writing for over forty years.

BREAD LOAF DIARY originally appeared online at Edward Champion's Reluctant Habits and was previously collected in Sixteen Attempts to Justify My Existence.

East Flatbush University Press publishes Joseph Conrad's THE NICE GUY OF THE "NARCISSUS" in print edition and as ebook available at Amazon Kindle

East Flatbush University Press is proud to announce the simultaneous publication as a print edition and as an ebook at the Amazon Kindle Store a classroom-friendly version of Joseph Conrad's classic novella THE NICE GUY OF THE "NARCISSUS." The Kindle ebook is available for 99 cents.

Edited by Richard Grayson, who previously produced the acclaimed THE HIPSTER HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain and THE FASHIONISTA MERCHANT OF VENICE by William Shakespeare, this new book is yet another revised and updated text of a venerable work of literature, only without offensive racial and religious slurs.

As the description for the $9.99 print version notes,

At one time, this brilliant novella was one of Joseph Conrad's most frequently read books. However, due to its unfortunate title, it has been unfairly shunned in classrooms for decades. Now, thanks to editor Richard Grayson and East Flatbush University Press, we have a new, non-offensive edition of Conrad's thought-provoking "tale of the sea" that is totally student-friendly. Every instance of the N-word has been scrubbed from the text and replaced with "nice guy" - which is just what West Indian sailor James Wait really is. A classic work of literature is now available for a new generation!

Joseph Conrad's THE NICE GUY OF THE "NARCISSUS" is also available as a free download at Lulu.