Suleiman Osman on authenticity and gentrification: The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn

Suleiman Osman's The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn, has as its ponderous subtitle, Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity in Postwar New York. "Authenticity" is a word that's long grated against my mind like steel wool on a rusty pot. What does it mean to be "authentic"? Osman doesn't give us a concise definition, but implies that, with respect to neighborhoods, it means having originated and evolved organically, in accordance with the desires and needs of its inhabitants, instead of as a result of some private or governmental developer's plan that seeks to impose a rational scheme.

Osman states that the "Brownstone Brooklyn" neighborhoods to which (mostly) young professionals and artists began to move in the late 1950s and after, as an "authentic" alternative to modernizing neighborhoods in Manhattan or to the alienating conformity of suburbia were, in their origin, the creations of speculative real estate developers of the nineteenth century. With the exception of a few purpose built for wealthy owners, the brownstone houses themselves were cookie-cutter creations for which the "artistic" details were mass-produced offsite. They were, in Osman's words, "in original design and intention no more or less authentic than a Levittown Cape Cod." (P.27)

Just as the physical neighborhoods were not the products of some bygone era of artisinal integrity, according to Osman the communities of people inhabiting them were not, on the whole, stable, traditional societies.

Brownstone Brooklyn before gentrification was not a premodern gemeinschaft with aging Brahmins and Old World ethnics shielded from mass consumer culture. No authentic communities or traditional neighborhoods sat ready to be discovered -- or, alternatively, destroyed -- by young urban professionals. Brownstone Brooklyn offered a rich sense of place and history. But it was a landscape that was perpetually changing, fluid, polycentric, and hybrid. (P.21)

This isn't to say that the newcomers were always welcomed, or that they were able to fit in easily. Nor did the lack of "authentic communities or traditional neighborhoods" mean that there were no territorial conflicts. As Osman also observes:

[I]n drawing borders around enclaves such as Boerum Hill, new middle-class residents also transgressed other indigenous places. In an industrial cityscape with a large working class, an assortment of machine politicians, unions, organized crime syndicates, and street gangs divided the area into fiercely defended "turfs" and "corners." Many of the later conflicts between the new middle-class and poorer residents over gentrification was rooted in these conflicting conceptions of urban place. (P.47)

"Gentrification" is another troublesome word. The earliest I can remember seeing it was in the early 1980s, when I saw a banner stretched across the front of a tenement building in Manhattan Valley with the words "GENTRIFICATION IS AMERICA'S APARTHEID." Critics of gentrification see it that way: the displacement of poor, mostly non-white people from housing they can afford by affluent, mostly white usurpers. Others, including the Brooklyn "brownstoners", saw it as the revitalization of historic neighborhoods that had been allowed to deteriorate to the point where they became targets for government-sponsored slum clearance programs. According to Osman:

The relationship between young college-educated landlords and older tenants -- often poor or elderly -- was filled with ambiguous feelings of guilt and displeasure. Often the same settlers who evicted residents from their individual townhouse also celebrated the diversity of the neighborhood as a whole. But the desire both to remove the poor and to celebrate their authentic folkways was an inherent tension in the ideal of historic diversity. (P.124)

Osman does not cite a primary source for this statement, though he does, in respect of an earlier passage in which he quotes a brownstoner as worrying if her or his "home improvements" as well as "civic activities" and "walking tours" are making the neighborhood uniformly "middle class" and even "suburban" in nature (p.5), cite as a source for this statement an article titled "Responsible Approach to Saving Abandoned Brownstones: Save Social 'Mix' in Your Neighborhood", Today's Brooklyn, April 2, 1969. (For Hollywood's take on this conundrum, see Hal Ashby's 1970 movie The Landlord, starring Beau Bridges.)

In the event, Osman does not take a stand for or against gentrification. As he confesses in the introduction:

This book has tried to avoid the Scylla of lionizing a creative class and the Charybdis of yuppie-bashing. But in exploring the complexities of the question, this history of gentrification may seem to be a frustrating example of fence-sitting. (P.15)

The "complexities" to which he refers include the politics of the brownstoners as well as of the people who were living in the area before the brownstoners arrived.

Brownstone Brooklyn residents together in these decades [the 1960s and '70s] espoused a "new localism" that was anti-statist but neither exclusively right or left. African Americans calling for community control of schools, white ethnics resisting scattered-site housing and busing, middle-class whites fighting the demolition of townhouses, and mixed-race coalitions fighting hospital expansion and expressways all shared a deep distrust of mega-institutions, expertise, planning, executive power, and private-public consensus....All described Brooklyn as a diverse mosaic of independent neighborhoods rather than an integrated modern system. (P.238)

Here I think Osman's "all" over-generalizes. The various groups he mentions were not, I suspect, averse to invoking "executive power" or "expertise", or calling on "mega-institutions", when they believed it could advance their interests. Still, I think he is right in noting that, in general, their politics represented a break from the New Deal paradigm of central planning and rationalization, "championing instead voluntary service, self-determination, and do-it-yourself, bootstrap neighborhood rehabilitation." (Id.)

If Osman, by his own admission, doesn't reach any comprehensive conclusions about the desirability of the political, social, or economic effects of the brownstoners' project, his book still tells a fascinating story about the transformation of a storied place. One fact I learned was that there was once an attempt, perhaps inspired by the 1969 Norman Mailer/Jimmy Breslin campaign to have New York City secede from New York State, to make my own neighborhood, Brooklyn Heights, a self-governing entity.

In 1972, about 150 Brooklyn heights activists belonging to the area's multiple block associations [and] civic groups...met for the first Brooklyn Heights Town Meeting....The participants hoped to form a "Brooklyn Heights Township" with a permanent neighborhood assembly free of city control, made up of local citizens, and dedicated to "democratic self-government." (P.253)

Needless to say, this was no more successful than Mailer's and Breslin's effort.

As for the "romantic" desire for authenticity:

In the 1960s, the new middle class looked to food cooperatives, farmers' markets, balcony gardens, independent bookshops, ethnic restaurants, and renovated brownstones as sites of authenticity in an increasingly technocratic society. In the 1980s, as former counter-cultural pottery shops and antique stores became high-end boutiques and ethnic restaurants became loci of gourmet cuisine, the same accoutrements had seemingly become symbols of a materialistic yuppie culture. Rather than subverting class privilege, Brownstone Brooklyn to some disappointed critics had simply reworked the standards of taste for a new white urban bourgeoisie. (P.279)

Did brownstone Brooklyn thus become inauthentic? Osman concludes, "perhaps the romantic question itself needed to be questioned." (P.280) Perhaps the pursuit of authenticity is, of necessity, the pursuit of a will-o-the-wisp.

Edith Piaf, Non, je ne regrette rien.

Joyeux Bastille Day.

Hot and hotter: Lovin' Spoonful and Arthur Brown

With the temperature and humidity making it feel like 91 degrees, I couldn't help but think of this Lovin' Spoonful classic.

If your answer to "Hot enough for you?" is "Hell, no!", here's Arthur Brown:

This Mets fan salutes Derek Jeter's 3,000th hit.

Lisa Swan, a true blue Yankees fan, has expressed her reservations about the hoopla, and, were I a Yankee fan, I might well feel the same. Nevertheless, I'm delighted to see a great player achieve this distinction, even if he had to do it by getting a home run against my favorite, old home town, Designated Hitter League team. After all, I owe Jeter a debt of gratitude for his house having driven more traffic to my blog than any topic except Grace Slick or Pierre Bonnard. (Photo taken at the bar of the Heights Cafe.)

How to make an egg cream.

Kenny shows you how to make the classic Brooklyn refresher. Note that it contains neither egg nor cream. He doesn't mention it, but you do need to use whole milk; otherwise, you won't get that good, foamy head. You can also use different flavors of Fox's syrup, including coffee and vanilla.

Cat in a glass bowl.

Attila surveys his domain.

The Littlest Dinosaur: Ashdown Maniraptoran

Matt Martyniuk/University of Portsmouth

Being the smallest dinosaur is like being the biggest Chihuahua: it goes against the point of the thing. Of course, "smallest dinosaur" is always a qualified designation; "of which we know" is the unstated qualifier. The present holder of the title is the "Ashdown Maniraptoran," from the early Cretaceous of southern England, thought to have been about thirteen to sixteen inches in length and, according to the restoration shown above, to have looked something like a partridge in search of a pear tree. This restoration is based on one fossil cervical vertebra found by amateur fossil hunter Dave Brockhurst, who kept it in a drawer for about two years before sending it to University of Portsmouth paleontologists Darren Naish and Steve Sweetman, who identified it as coming from a very small adult dinosaur of the clade Maniraptora (also the title of a friend's excellent website).

You may quite reasonably wonder how this restoration could be made based on a single vertebra. Matt Martyniuk, the artist who made it, owns that it is "entirely speculative" but explains his methodology in this post and defends it in the discussion thread following.

Goodbye, Clarence Clemons.

Once again, I must bid farewell to a beloved musician. While his memory is inextricably bound to that of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, my friend Petra, AKA "The Changeling" of Bed-Stuy Blog, provided the video above of him performing with Jackson Browne. On it, along with his oh-so-sweet sax, we hear his oh-so-winsome voice.

Your correspondent celebrates Bloomsday with a reading.

Yesterday, June 16, was Bloomsday, the annual remembrance of the day in 1904 that James Joyce chose, probably because it was the day of his first date with Nora Barnacle, his future wife, to chronicle the quotidian occurrences in the lives of Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly, and Stephen Dedalus in his massive and seminal novel Ulysses. At the invitation of Larry Kirwan, I went to a Bloomsday event, at Ulysses' Folk House in lower Manhattan, that featured readings from the novel. I chose to read a review of a Blarney Stone restaurant and bar from Jim Quinn's 1973 restaurant guidebook Word of Mouth, which book I described in this post, and which review includes a lengthy quotation from Ulysses. My reading is preserved in the above YouTube clip, thanks to Larry's wife, June, who shot it with my camera.

There were many excellent readings, prominent among them being Larry's rendition of the "Nausicaa" chapter of Ulysses; Larry styles himself "the foremost male interpreter of Gerty McDowell", and I can't gainsay that claim. The climax (literally and figuratively) was Aedin Moloney's reading of a portion of Molly Bloom's soliloquy, which closes the novel. I tried to video her performance, and unfortunately ran out of memory card capacity. I found a clip of her reaading the entire soliloquy, which is 22 minutes long but, in my estimation, well worth it, below:



Addendum: Erik Brogger posted this comment on Brooklyn Heights Blog:

As a member of the Amateur Astronomers Association, I attended an event down on Pier One last night where the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy and SYFY provided us with telescopes. Since it was Bloomsday (eve) I wanted to show people a particular double star – Mu Bootis – which, according to the Norton Star Atlas, is 107 Light Years distant from us. This double star is oddly appropriate to the famous paired relationship between Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom in Joyce’s Ulysses, the-greatest-novel-ever-written that-I-never-quite-finished. I wanted to make the romantic claim that anyone looking at this double star was looking back in time to “June 16th, 1904.” Then I’d conclude with an appreciation of Joyce’s words from chapter 17: “The heaventree of stars hung with humid night-blue fruit.” Alas, it was cloudy. The only stars I could show anyone were the Stars and Stripes flying from a flag pole atop the Brooklyn Bridge.

Maybe next Bloomsday I’ll be looking for find another star, this time 108 Lights Years away.

Subway to another galaxy? To the future? To the past? Dr. Michio Kaku says it may be possible.

When I was seven, living in rural Hertfordshire, England, I would take walks in the countryside near our cottage. I had a persistent fantasy that, around some bend in the path or past some hedgerow, I would discover a magic shortcut that would take me immediately to someplace far away where I'd rather be, perhaps the bustling streets and shops of London, or the docks at Southampton where I could see the great ocean liners coming and going. (No, I hadn't read the Narnia books.) According to the clip above, it may be possible to create such shortcuts, called wormholes. While it leaves some questions, like how we get the "negative matter" needed to keep a wormhole open, unanswered, it does make for pleasant speculation.

Particularly fascinating, I think, is the effect of gravity on time, which means that wormhole travel would, of necessity, be time travel. Indeed, as Alex Fillipenko of the University of California at Berkeley says, any travel away from earth's surface is time travel, if only in a micro sense. It's interesting to know that, if a correction wasn't made for the difference in the rate of time passage between the satellite that transmits positioning information and your GPS device on the surface, using that device to guide a trip from L.A. to New York would result in your ending up somewhere in Massachusetts.

Thanks to FB friend Georgene Z. Russell for the above

[i]mage of a traversable wormhole which connects the place in front of the physical institutes of Tübingen university with the sand dunes near Boulogne sur Mer in the north of France. The image is calculated with 4D raytracing in a Morris-Thorne wormhole metric, but the gravitational effects on the wavelength of light have not been simulated.

See here.

Am I a language pedant; in Stephen Fry's word, a "loser"?

Some friends -- she was a high school classmate, he's a retired teacher and published poet -- sent me the above clip. I don't think they sent it in reaction to anything I wrote here or to them, or said, but just because they thought I'd enjoy it. It is a clever piece, and the moving, nay dancing. typography is a joy. I agree with about ninety percent of what Fry says. Where he made me wince was his reference to those who decry the misuse of apostrophes, whom he specifically singled out as "losers." For a moment, I had the horrid feeling he might have seen this post.

I'd like to think that I'm not some fusty language pedant. I'll confess to having weighed in on the "fewer/less" imbroglio, which I now regret. It's not only a losing battle, but one not worth fighting. I try to keep my own writing free of split infinitives and sentence-ending prepositions (unless, in the latter instance, it results in a clumsy construction; see Winston Churchill's rejoinder to someone who tried to correct his grammar). Nevertheless, I don't fault others for these things, and am glad to allow Enterprise and her crew "to boldly go". I have no problem with the verbing of nouns, including the verb "to verb". My wife, an archivist, takes umbrage at "archive" as a verb. Again, I think it's a losing battle, especially in the age of computers, when one can "archive" with a click or a keystroke.

There are some things up with which (nodding to Sir Winston) I will not put. One is the misuse of apostrophes. I disagree with Fry if he thinks this is an example of something fresh or invigorating, like a clever neologism or the use of a word in a new context. It's just wrong, and it does harm to clarity. Perhaps it's "elitist" to call someone for not knowing the rules, but so be it. Fry seems to contradict himself. At first he says those who object to the creative use of language do so on the grounds that such usage is elitist, in which instance he allies himself with the elitists. Then, without using the e-word, he implies that those who object to incorrect apostrophe usage are guilty of snobbery. I plead guilty.

It pains me to admit this, but...

...if you do a web search for "Weiner" (yes, that Weiner) and "class act," the first thing you'll find is a link to this blog.

Sol LeWitt, "Structures," at City Hall Park, New York City

Sol LeWitt (1928-2007) was an influential, though self-effacing, American artist of the past half-century. His work is considered to fall within two artistic traditions that arose in the late twentieth century: conceptualism, which sought to relate art directly to the domain of ideas, or concepts; and minimalism, which stripped art of of any sense of personal expression. His sculptures are the subject of a show in New York's City Hall Park, "Sol LeWitt: Structures, 1965-2006," which will be in place until December 2 of this year. The work that is positioned nearest the main, southern entrance to the park, Splotch 15 (2005) (photo above), is one of his later works, made after he broke from strict minimalism and allowed his art to be more expressive.

Three X Four X Three (1984) is typical of LeWitt's earlier work: strictly geometrical and monochromatic; form reduced to its essence.

Large Modular Cube (1969) is even more minimalist: a simple cube in outline.

Complex Form 6 (1987): the title says it all. By the late 1980s, LeWitt began creating more visually stimulating works, breaking from the simple geometry of cubes and designing multifaceted, asymmetrical forms.

Seeing Pyramid (Münster) (1987) in this light brought to mind Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem Pied Beauty, which begins:
Glory be to God for dappled things-
For skies of couple-colour as a brindled cow... .

Another of LeWitt's "architectural" works (early in his career, he worked as a graphic designer in the office of I.M. Pei), and the largest in this show, is Tower (Columbus) (1990), which stands outside the park, on the plaza facing the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge. The structure suggests the "wedding cake" or "ziggurat" style of architecture that characterized New York City skyscrapers before the zoning law was changed to encourage tall, slender buildings set back on plazas instead of bulky buildings with progressive setbacks.

The Brooklyn Bridge cactus survives, and thrives.

There's a cactus at the apex of the small triangular garden on the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge, where the bike and pedestrian paths converge. I must have walked past it a hundred times before a friend, who has a degree in botany, pointed it out to me a couple of years ago. Whenever I walk past it I steeple my palms, bow my head slightly, and say "Namaste". The photo above shows the cactus on August 24, 2010.

Here it is last December 17, after some freezing weather.

On New Year's Day it was buried in snow.

On January 29, the snow was even deeper.

By March 19, the snow had melted, but the cactus showed little life.

By April 25, the cactus was showing signs of recovery.

On May 30 it was looking downright perky.

Yesterday, June 4, the cactus had blossomed.

Mets 9, Pirates 8

Yesterday, with some trepidation, I went with a friend to see the Mets' final game of their four-game series with the Pirates. Trepidation, because I have come to believe that my presence in the stands jinxes the team. The Mets need luck now. They had just lost their last two games after taking an early lead and then collapsing in the late innings. Seen above is the rotunda at the entrance to Citi Field.

Here is the view looking back from the escalator. Note the English sunrises.

Mike Pelfrey, the Mets' starter, warms up. After a good season in 2010, Pelfrey is off to a rocky start, with a 3-3 record and four no decisions, and a 5.56 ERA, including yesterday's game. My jinx fears seemed justified as Pelfrey yielded seven earned runs through the top of the third inning. Perhaps, I was thinking, he needs to re-acquaint himself with Mies van der Rohe. My friend joked that the Mets were trying a new strategy: let the other team get ahead first. His humor proved prophetic, as the Mets' batters came alive in the bottom of the third, scoring three runs.

Pelfrey settled down to pitch a scoreless fourth and fifth, though with some excitement along the way. In the bottom of the fifth, he was pulled for a pinch hitter. Things got very exciting in the sixth, as the Mets scored four more times (the scoreboard photo above was taken before the fourth run came in) to tie the game.

Now it was the Pirates' turn to worry. Their starter, Paul Maholm, was pulled during the sixth. The Mets were then able to take advantage of the Pirates' bullpen, scoring again twice in the eighth to go ahead. The Mets bullpen held fast through the sixth, seventh, and eighth.

As the Mets rallied, Mr. Met cavorted for the crowd. Francisco Rodriguez, the Mets' closer, came in at the top of the ninth and promptly allowed a leadoff single, which later became a run. He then settled down and got his sixteenth save of the season. My friend said, "He usually gets the job done, but seldom without drama." Sounds like the job description for a Mets closer.

Update: unfortunately, the Mets returned to form last night, taking a 3-1 lead into the eighth then losing to the Braves 6-3.

Memorial Day

While he suggests no historical connection between the events in Charleston, South Carolina on May 1, 1865 and later Memorial Day (or Decoration Day) celebrations that came to be established at the end of May, David W. Blight's op-ed piece in today's New York Times tells a compelling story and provides the basis for an argument that the concept of Memorial Day originated with African-American recently freed slaves.

This item also appeared in today's Times. Mr. Wiedorfer's explanation of his action is characteristic of the heroic: “Something had to be done and someone had to do it. And I just did it. I can’t tell you why.”

Harmon Killebrew

A friend, whose discernment I respect, posted to me on Facebook: "Are you going to have anything about Harmon Killebrew?" I noted the news of his death several days ago, and mentally doffed my hat. I knew he was a great baseball player, one of the best power hitters of all time. Unfortunately for my appreciation of him, the acme of his career happened at a time when I wasn't paying much attention to baseball. I first became aware of him when the Twins won the AL in 1965, when I was a freshman in college, and went on to play the Dodgers in the World Series. To the extent I took any rooting interest, I was for the Twins, following my default of rooting for the underdog. They lost. After that, Killebrew dropped off my radar.

Marian's query made me do some research. I learned here that, along with being a great player, he was a good guy; a salt-of-the-earth sort. Taking the obligatory look at his stats, I saw that he began his major league career in 1954, when I was eight years old and in third grade. This was the first year that I took any notice of baseball; we had just returned from three years in England. I have mostly vague memories of the '54 Cleveland Indians versus New York Giants series, which I followed without any rooting interest. My only clear memory is of the great catch in game 1 by Willie Mays. At that time, Killebrew was a rookie with the Washington Senators, the perennial butt of the joke: "Who is Washington? First in war, first in peace, last in the American League." He stayed with Washington (this was when the reserve clause reigned supreme) through their move west to the Twin Cities, and was still there, as I've noted, when I started college. His best year was 1969, which straddled my second and third years of law school, and he hung up his spikes in 1975, after 21 years in the majors. Farewell to a great player and a good man.

Mets 2, Yankees 1

I now know exactly this much: the Mets will not be swept in their season series with the Yanks. Oh, yes, and one more thing: their result will be displayed as prominently as that of the Yanks on the sports pages tomorrow,

Tom Paxton sings "Comedians and Angels", a song about the Lion's Head.

In the wake of Paul Schiffman's death, a lot of us Lion's Head veterans gathered to remember him at the Kettle of Fish, which now occupies the Lion's Head space. This inspired Dermot McEvoy to start an on-line discussion, via e-mail, about our recollections of the Head, which he means to use as the basis for a history of the place. One contributor to the discussion has been singer and songwriter Tom Paxton, who posted a link to the YouTube clip above, in which he sings "Comedians and Angels," a song he wrote about his old friends at the Head. As Tom admitted in the e-mail that included the link, he was mistaken in saying the Head never had a jukebox. It was installed sometime around the end of the 1970s, much to the consternation of many of the regulars, and no doubt of Paul, who objected to the mounting of TVs over the bar.


To round things off, here's Tom with another Head regular, Liam Clancy, who died a year and a half ago, doing one of my favorite of Tom's songs, "The Last Thing On My Mind."

Steam Action on the Pennsylvania Railroad

Today is National Train Day. As I've mentioned here before, I'm a train enthusiast. During my childhood, I spent many hours watching traffic on what was then the four track main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which passed my mother's home town, Tyrone, Pennsylvania. The 1950s were the era when U.S. railroads were replacing steam power with diesels, and I witnessed the last of steam power on the Pennsy. The clip above, courtesy of dcoursey82 and taken from Pentrex's "Pennsylvania Railroad Collection", gives a comprehensive overview of types of steam locos used by the "Standard Railroad of the World" in its heyday. I can remember seeing I-1s, J-1s, K-4s, L-1s, M-1s, and, on one occasion, a T-1.

Phoebe Snow and Poly Styrene

In an earlier post, I asked, rhetorically, why I had to post so often about people who had just died. I answered my own question by noting that I was now at an age where those artists and writers born ten to twenty or so years before me, and who therefore were at their creative peak and involved in shaping pop culture when I was in my teens and twenties, were now dying with some frequency. Last week saw the deaths of two women singers both younger than me, Phoebe Snow, 60, who died of complications of a stroke, and Marianne Elliot-Said, better known as Poly Styrene, 53, who succumbed to breast cancer.

Phoebe Snow had one hit, "Poetry Man" (see clip above, courtesy of jassblue), which never really grabbed me. I never listened to her albums, and consequently didn't realize what a gifted interpreter she was of blues and soul. I also didn't know of her dedication to her only child, Valerie, who was born with severe brain damage, and for whom Snow cared until her death in 2007, at the age of 31. One thing I appreciated about her was her choice of professional name. As a railfan, when I first heard of her I realized she had taken the name of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western's (the road later merged with the Erie to form the Erie Lackawanna, most of which is now part of CSX) premier passenger train, and later learned she, born Phoebe Laub, had chosen it because she saw "Route of the Phoebe Snow" emblazoned on freight cars rumbling through her hometown of Teaneck, New Jersey.

"Phoebe Snow" was the fictional brainchild of adman Earnest Elmo Calkins, who decided to play on the Lackawanna's advantage in luring passengers on the competitive New York City to Buffalo run: its steam engines were fueled by clean-burning anthracite coal from the eastern Pennsylvania mines along its route; hence, a lady in a white dress needn't fear its being soiled by the soot generated from burning bituminous coal used on rival roads.



In 1977 I bought a copy of Geef Voor New Wave, a Dutch anthology of British and American punk. About halfway through, I heard a woman say "Some people think litt-ul girls should be seen and not heard, but I think, OH, BONDAGE, UP YOURS! ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!" This was followed by a keening alto sax, unusual for a punk band (and played, I later learned, by another woman, called Lora Logic) and then by the vocalist, Poly Styrene, bellowing the song's lyrics. This was the group X-Ray Spex, which, over its brief career, released five singles (including "Oh Bondage Up Yours!" and "Identity", which the band performs in the clip above, courtesy of goldenhinde), and one album, Germfree Adolescents. An early British punk band featuring women was unusual; the only other examples I can readily think of are Dolly Mixture, an all-woman group that took its name from a kind of candy that is evidently the rage in British ecclesiastical circles, and the Mo-Dettes, who may have been a touch too arty to be considered true punks.

When I first heard Poly Styrene, I envisioned her as a blonde, perhaps an English Debbie Harry. I now know she was the dark haired, tan skinned daughter of a mother of Scots-Irish ancestry and a Somali father.

Beef on weck at a Montreal style Jewish deli in Brooklyn?

Beef on weck (pronounced "wick") is a sandwich I got to know early in my career, when I was making frequent trips to Buffalo to visit a client there. It's sliced roast beef au jus with horseradish served on a kummelweck roll. I loved the way the intense flavors of the caraway ("kummel") seeds and coarse-grained salt on the roll, and the touch of horseradish, complemented the richness of the rare beef. At the time (early 1970s) I was also introduced to the spicy chicken wing, accompanied by celery and bleu cheese dressing. While I found the wings delightful, if I'd been asked which Buffalo specialty would take the nation by storm, I'd have bet on beef on weck, which also seems to be the sentimental favorite of many Buffalonians.

Until a few days ago, I'd never had beef on weck more than seventy or so miles from Buffalo, so I was surprised to see it listed on the menu of Mile End, a Montreal style Jewish delicatessen not far from where I live in Brooklyn which has been quite a hit with local foodies (at least those of the non-vegan sort). I had to give it a try.

The sandwich, as presented (see photo) was much as I knew it. It could've been from the place near the intersection of Main Street and Transit Road, about a quarter mile from our friends' house, where I usually get my beef on weck fix these days. One bite, though, told me I was far from the Niagara Frontier. A tipoff was on the menu. Mile End's version uses something definitely non-Buffalonian: wagyū beef. I'd never had this much-hyped Japanese style (I presume Mile End's wagyū comes from domestic cattle, probably cross-bred wagyū and angus) beef. It was as tender as its reputation has it, but, to me, the texture was a little too soft and smooth. It seemed a bit wan and short on flavor. The jus, however, was very tasty, and made up for the flavor deficiency. The other ingredients were superb. The roll was softer than usual (like the beef), but not unpleasantly so. It had a rich, slightly sweet taste, and the caraway and sea salt were delightful flavor bombs. This being a Jewish deli, horseradish was not an option in a dainty cup on the side. It was served in the sandwich, in just the right dosage.

All in all, a good sandwich, and evidently popular, as I heard two other customers order it in the short time I was at the deli. My only suggestion is to forget the wagyū and go to a purebred angus beef with more flavor and a more toothsome texture. Wagyū seems an attempt to yuppify a quintessentially blue-collar treat; a (dare I say?) inauthentic touch.

As to how a Buffalo specialty got on the menu of a Montreal deli in Brooklyn I can only guess. Buffalo's well known economic troubles have made it lose population for many years, creating a Buffalonian diaspora that has resulted in beef on weck being offered in places like Wilmington, North Carolina. (Update: thanks to Dan Williams, I now know that it's available in my old home town, Tampa.) Perhaps some expat Buffalonians made it to Montreal and started a beef on weck craze there. More likely, I think, is that many western New Yorkers favor the Adirondack region of New York, a little to the south of Montreal, as a vacation spot. This may have spurred a demand for beef on weck there, and Montrealais visiting the area may have tried and liked it. My quick web search for beef on weck in that part of the state didn't yield any results, but it did resolve one question: why it is that hot dogs with chili, which in western New York are called Texas hots, are called Michigans in the north country. As the linked Wikipedia entry states, the popularity of these in northern New York spread northward to Quebec, so it's possible the same thing happened with beef on weck.

If you want to try making your own beef on weck almost from scratch (you don't have to bake your own rolls), Bobby Flay has a recipe.

e.e. cummings on the unimaginable.

i thank You God for most this amazing

day; for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes.

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth

day of life and love and wings and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing

breathing any—lifted from the no

of all nothing—human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

--e.e. cummings

Thanks to The Rev. Stephen D. Muncie, Rector of Grace Church, Brooklyn, for printing this in today's Easter Sunday Bulletin.

J.S. Bach, "O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden" ("O Sacred Head Sore Wounded") from the St. Matthew Passion

This performance is by the Holland Boys' Choir and sung in Dutch. Thanks to Ikje86 for the clip. (For a modern, secular song to this tune by Paul Simon, see here.)

I came to you as the least of your brothers and sisters; I was hungry and you gave me no food. I was thirsty and you gave me no drink. I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.

--from the Reproaches

Kris Kristofferson, "Sunday Morning Coming Down"

Kris doing one of my favorite songs of his at Paradiso in 2008. Thanks to Jacques van de Wal for the clip.

An important fossil discovery: Liaoconodon hui, a Mesozoic mammal with a transitional middle ear.

In the clip above, Jin Meng, curator of fossil mammals at the American Museum of Natural History, describes how the well-preserved fossil of Liaoconodon hui, a mammal that lived in the Mesozoic era -- the age of dinosaurs -- shows the development of middle ear structure that characterizes later mammals, including ourselves.

Heather Quinlan surveys the New York accent.

Here's the trailer for friend and Brooklyn Heights Blog colleague Heather Quinlan's forthcoming (and you can play a part in bringing it to the big screen: see here) documentary If These Knishes Could Talk: the Story of the New York Accent. For those with sensitive ears, caveat: you get hit with an F-bomb at the beginning.

Egyptian Blogger Gets Three Year Sentence for Criticizing Military

Just before Hosni Mubarak's capitulation, I wondered what kind of government might succeed his. This story from today's New York Times (thanks to Andy Bachman for bringing it to my attention) is, to say the least, not an encouraging portent. Maikel Nabil Sanad, a 25 year old blogger, has been given a three year prison sentence by a military tribunal for posting material, often quoting established human rights groups like Amnesty International, exposing abuses by the military against protesters.

I'm glad Mubarak is gone, but I hope the Egyptian people will find the strength to bring their military under civilian control, where it belongs in any decent society.

East-West IPA Smackdown: Brooklyn "East India" vs. Sierra Nevada "Torpedo"

I've had Brooklyn Brewery's East India Pale Ale before, and published my tasting notes on it here. Seeing it on the shelf at Key Food near the Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra IPA made me want to do a comparison tasting, though -- New York versus California, the storied rivalry, and all that. Here are my notes:

Brooklyn East India Pale Ale:

Color: rich golden amber.

Head: ample and long-lasting.

Aroma: I detected the same herbes de provence as before, but this time also a hint of vanilla along with yeasty undertones.

Flavor: hoppy, as an IPA should be, but the hops don't overpower the malt. My earlier notes had malt dominant at the finish, but this time hops prevailed, though not overwhelmingly. Kind of like a tart rhubarb pie, with malt playing the part of crust.

Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra IPA

Color: orange-amber.

Head: medium; collapsed quickly.

Aroma: evergreen and citrus, with malt undertones.

Flavor: citrus and pine rosin, with a strong malt base. Grapefruity finish.

The envelope, please.

And the winner is, for all-around drinkability, Brooklyn's East India. As I noted the last time I tried it, this is a well-balanced IPA with the assertive hoppiness characteristic of the type but with the malt not utterly overpowered by hop bitterness. It could be enjoyed with many kinds of flavorful food (though, as with all IPAs, not with anything with too delicate a flavor that would be overpowered by the hops' bitterness) or by itself.

Sierra Neavada's Torpedo reminded me of wine pooh-bah Robert Parker's description of what he likes: a "hedonistic fruit bomb." On the whole, I prefer the Alice Feiring kind of wine; subtle and complex. Like a Parker-favored wine, the Torpedo packs a punch: 7.2% alcohol by volume compared to Brooklyn East India's 6.9%. All this isn't to say I didn't like drinking it. I think it would make a great companion to very spicy dishes, like vindaloo curries, as well as being enjoyable on its own from time to time.

Sidney Lumet

 

So, why do I have to keep posting about people who have just died? Easy. I'm at that age where the people who made my world, i.e. those about a decade or two older, are dying. The latest is Sidney Lumet, who fits in the two decade category. Like many show biz veterans of his age cohort, he got his start, through his parents, in the Yiddish theater. From there, he made his way to Hollywood, first as an actor, then as a director, where he had his success. I don't agree with his assertion, made in an interview, that art can't change the world. I do think that it's less likely to be effective the more the artist self-consciously strives to make it so.

I'm ashamed to admit that I've only seen two of his movies: Twelve Angry Men (clip above) and Network. How I could have missed Dog Day Afternoon and Serpico, two classics about my city, is beyond me. I'll have to rectify this soon.