TBT: Frank Sinatra, "September Song."

Yes, it's that month of cooling temperatures. We had a couple of days this week that saw thermometers registering in the low 90s, but relief is said to be on the way, after some rain we could use. It's also, for me and I suspect for many, a time of reflection, especially as we grow older and see the progress of the year reflecting our own progress into autumn, with winter to follow.

"September Song" was written by Kurt Weill, with lyrics by Maxwell Anderson, for an unsuccessful 1938 Broadway show, Knickerbocker Holiday. It was first recorded by the show's star, Walter Huston. Despite the show's failure, the song went on to become a standard. Bing Crosby recorded it twice, and Frank Sinatra three times. The third was the lucky one; it was on his 1965 album September of My Years, recorded when he was fifty. The album went to number five on the Billboard pop album chart. The song was later covered by, among others, James Brown, Lou Reed, and Willie Nelson.

Clothes in pop music, part 2, the Sixties.

Just over a year ago, inspired by Moira Redmond's Clothes in Books, I posted "Clothes in pop music, part 1, 1955-63". Since my last post went to 1963, why am I calling this one, which goes into 1972, "the Sixties"? I don't believe "the Sixties" as we Americans understand the term in either cultural or political senses coincides with the decade beginning 12:00 a.m 1960 and ending 11:59 p.m. 1969. Some people, I think, would begin the Sixties with the election of John F. Kennedy (November 8, 1960), others with his assassination (November 22, 1963). Some other arguable starting points are Dwight D. Eisenhower's valedictory "Military-Industrial Complex" speech (January 17, 1961), The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (July 2, 1964) the Gulf of Tonkin incident (August 2, 1964), or--from a musical perspective--the first arrival of the Beatles in America (February 7, 1964). I've decided to go with the date of the assassination. While the election of JFK heralded a change, his assassination was an event that tore the fabric of the culture; one that, I think, would not be rivaled again until the Watergate scandal and resignation of Richard Nixon. As you can see above, several other transformative events came shortly afterward, in 1964.

I'm not sure where to mark the beginning of the Sixties from a fashion perspective. Certainly Jackie Kennedy had an influence on women's couture, one aspect of which is mentioned in one of the songs below. For me, the most noticeable change came in the later Sixties, in the aftermath of the British Invasion, when Mod fashion began to make inroads here. What I remember are bright floral and paisley prints, wider lapels on men's jackets, and wider ties. Thanks to the Beach Boys, there was also a surfing influence, with baggies, Henley collared shirts, and huarache sandals. 

The other question is: When did the Sixties end? My answer is August 9, 1974, the date Richard Nixon resigned. Others, perhaps less politically and more musically oriented than me (though I think of myself as very musically oriented) might argue for the time the Beatles broke up, an agonizing, slow motion affair that may best be dated to April of 1970, when Paul McCartney announced he was leaving. Coincidentally, it was in the spring of 1970 that I experienced what I consider my quintessential Sixties moment. I was walking across the Cambridge, Massachusetts common and encountered five or six girls, about eight or nine years old, playing ring-around-the-rosie. What they were singing, though, was "Christ, you know it ain't easy/ You know how hard it can be/ The way things are going/ They're gonna CRUCIFY [all fall down] me."

Anyway, on to the songs:

In 1964 Frankie Valli and the other Jersey Boys had a number one hit on the Billboard pop chart with "Rag Doll." According to the song's Wiki it was written by group member Bob Gaudio, who "was inspired by a dirty-faced girl who cleaned the windshield of his automobile for change." When Gaudio reached into his wallet for a dollar (a very generous tip in those days), he found he had nothing but twenties (evidently the singer-songwriter thing was working out well), and gave her one, to her amazement. "I'd change her sad rags into glad rags if I could" is for me one of the more memorable lines from the early, pre-British Invasion Sixties.


Also in 1964, bluesman Tommy Tucker released "Hi-Heel Sneakers," which he wrote under his birth name Robert Higginbotham, misspelled "Higgenbotham" on the record label. The song would be covered many times, including by the Beatles and the Stones. Yes, footwear counts.


"Baby's in Black" was recorded in 1964, but released in 1965 as part of the album Beatles for Sale, which was released in the U.S. as Beatles 65. I've long been unsure if the song was about a woman mourning a deceased lover, or dressing in black to signal to an ex that she's available again. It's the former.

  
As I recall, Jackie Kennedy popularized the pillbox hat. Bob Dylan had some fun with it in 1966, on this track from his album Blonde on Blonde.


1966 was a fertile year for songs about millinery and clothes. Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels had a major hit with the pedal-to-the-metal rocker "Devil with a Blue Dress On."


Footwear joins the fray in '66 with Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made For Walking." It was also a good year for tough woman songs (this and the one before).


Tough guy songs, too. According to the song's Wiki the Kinks' "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" was written by Ray Davies after he had gotten into a "terrible brawl" with a fashion designer (and his girlfriend!) following a discussion in which Davies derided the designer's obsession with style and in which

I was just saying you don't have to be anything; you decide what you want to be and you just walk down the street and if you're good the world will change as you walk past. I just wanted it to be the individual who created his own fashion.

A very, I would say, Sixties sort of statement.

 
Does eyewear count? I say, "Yes!" When I first heard "Judy in Disguise (with Glasses)" on Boston's WRKO in 1968, the DJ called the group "John Fred and his Louisiana Playboys." Jello Biafra covers the song on his recently released album of New Orleans R&B, Walk on Jindal's Splinters.


This achingly sweet, autobiographical song topped the country chart in 1971. According to the song's Wiki, Parton wrote it in 1969 while on tour, riding in Porter Wagoner's bus. Wagoner was host of a weekly TV country music show that was the launching pad for Parton's career. A college roommate told me he had gone to a Grand Old Opry road show in Orlando and heard the following during Bobby Bare's set:
BARE: Y'all watch Porter Wagoner?
AUDIENCE: [Lots of cheering, clapping and whistling.]
BARE: Yeah, I like him, too. But you know who his sponsor is?
AUDIENCE: [Lots of chuckling. Wagoner's sponsor was a patent laxative called Black Draught.]
BARE: Yeah, well, I think I could do something like that. It'd go like this: Folks, this is the Bobby Bare Show, brought to you by Ex-Lax. Now we're gonna have some good old country pickin' and singin' and some old-time fiddlin', but first a word from our sponsor. Folks, you ever have one of those nasty old coughs, the kind that just hangs on and hangs on? Next time you get one of those coughs, take Ex-Lax. It won't cure your cough, but it'll make you too SCARED to cough.
AUDIENCE: [Laughter and groans.]


I'll close with a song by the Hollies, made long after Graham Nash left the group to join CSN&Y. The singer is Allan Clarke; unlike other Hollies songs there are no backing vocals because Clarke intended it for a solo album. It charted at number two in the U.S. in September of 1972, shortly before Richard Nixon was elected to his second term. This was followed by the revelation of the Watergate break-in and by the ensuing efforts to cover it up that would lead to Nixon's resignation two years later.

In my previous post I promised that my next one would cover the time from 1963 to the present. I'll confess to having been unable to think of any pop songs after 1972 that are about or refer strongly to clothes. I suspect that this is because I haven't followed "pop" as much as I used to, and "pop" has fissioned into so many branches--disco, metal, punk, rap, reggae, indie, etc.--all of which I've followed to some extent, but none as thoroughly as the pre-seventies "top forty." If anyone can think of any songs from after 1972, or any from the period (1964-1972) covered in this post, that should be noted, please let me know.

Some scenes from Cape Cod

The Bourne Bridge, our entryway to the Cape. There are two other bridges that cross the Cape Cod Canal onto the Cape proper. To the north is the Sagamore Bridge, and to the south is a railroad bridge with a lift span that stays up to let ships pass and is only lowered when a train needs to cross. Rail passenger service to the Cape was restored recently after many years' absence.

Skaket Beach, on the Cape Cod Bay side of the Town of Orleans, at high tide.

Skaket Beach at low tide. Note how far out on the sandbars people go.

Typical Cape marshland. What's that tower?

Aha! It's an osprey nest platform, and an osprey has nested on it.

Here's a close-up of the osprey.

This rabbit was often seen near our friends' driveway.

Provincetown harbor.

Looking back at Provincetown from the MacMillan Pier. The building in the background is the Provincetown Public Library.

On the way back from Provincetown, we made our second visit to Truro Vineyards; a photo of their vineyard is above (compare to photos taken in early June of 2013 in the post linked above). I bought a bottle of their estate grown cabernet franc and one of their estate grown chardonnay. I'll be tasting both and reporting about them here; stay tuned.

Here's a tiger swallowtail butterfly getting nectar from a butterfly bush in our friends' backyard.

Michael Davitt, a forgotten hero. Remember him this Labor Day.

For Labor Day, in celebration of my newly found Irish heritage, I'm posting a song by Patrick Street, with a vocal by Andy Irvine, about Michael Davitt, who organized the Irish tenant farmers in the late nineteenth century.

Self-Absorbed Boomer celebrates a decade of taxing attention spans.

I missed it. Last Sunday, August 30, was the tenth anniversary of the birth of Self-Absorbed Boomer. Much has gone down, and much has changed, since I first posted on August 30, 2005. If you read the linked post, you'll see references to the "Fray." It was an on-line discussion board appended to Slate, first Microsoft's then WaPo's on-line only magazine. The Fray no longer exists, though Slate still does. It was because of a suggestion made on the Fray that we all start blogs that I started mine. Many Fraysters have remained my friends; some only on-line while others also in the flesh, and some are my regular readers.

Over the years I've also gathered some readers through my work on the Brooklyn Heights Blog and through Facebook. Early on, I was posting more frequently, but most of my posts were quite short. Now, I'm putting the short stuff on Facebook, although I also put links to all my S-A B posts there, too. Work on BHB has also cut into the time I could devote to S-A B.

I hope I can keep this going for another decade (if I last that long; both of my parents made it into their nineties, so I may have genetics on my side), and that you'll continue to enjoy it. Thanks to you, my readers.

Candles photo: www.exacttarget.com.

TBT: Chuck Berry, "School Days."

Not only is this week's TBT by the same artist--but what an artist!--as last week's, but it's the same song. Well, at least, the same tune. This is the original; written by Berry, it was recorded and released in 1957, charted at number five on Billboard and number one on the R&B chart. It's been covered many times since, by artists and groups as diverse as Eddie Cochran, the Beach Boys, AC/DC, The Simpsons (with guest vocal by Buster Poindexter and lead guitar by Joe Walsh), the Iron City Houserockers, and Ann Rabson.

Anyway, since it's back to school time, enjoy!

Happy 70th, Van Morrison!

It's been almost exactly 48 years since I sat in Hazen's sandwich shop on Mount Auburn Street in Cambridge, heard "Brown Eyed Girl" on the jukebox, and wondered, "Who is that?"

The following year, 1968, we were both in Cambridge, and you were gigging in some of the local venues. I was busy being a law student, so didn't get to hear you accompanying yourself on acoustic guitar, along with Tom Keilbania on upright bass and John Payne on flute. Later that year you went to New York to cut your first album for Warner, Astral Weeks, with a group of jazz musicians you'd never met before, though you manged to get Payne on to play flute. Below is a clip of the title track:



When I first heard the album I didn't like it. It was too subtle, too restrained, too "jazzy." As my tastes expanded with age and experience, I came to like it very much.

Tomorrow, August 31, 2015 you'll be seventy. I'll reach that milestone next March. As one near septuagenarian to another, I wish you many more years and many more songs.

TBT: Chuck Berry, "No Particular Place to Go."

I'll be riding along in my (rental) automobile soon, so this by, in my opinion, the greatest rocker of all, was on my mind, despite my having a particular place to go. The clip below gives you the music, along with a great photo montage of vintage muscle cars.
The song charted in late 1964, just as I was starting college. Safety belts were a new thing then.

Grammar snobbery is the sort of thing up with which I will not put. Well, not too much.

There's a story, possibly spurious, that Winston Churchill was handed a draft of something he'd written; on it, an editor had written in the margin that he should change a sentence so that it didn't end with a preposition. Churchill's response, written below the marginal note, was, "This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put."

I've never been keen on the rule that one should never end a sentence with a preposition. It's something I'm willing to put up with. Similarly, I'm no fan of the rule against splitting infinitives. "To boldly go" is certainly the best known violation of that rule, and it sounds, and reads, so much better than "To go boldly," My guiding rule on syntax is, if its meaning is clear and it isn't ugly, it's okay.

In general, I have no objection to neologisms, unless they're ugly or replace something that doesn't need replacing. This extends to making verbs out of nouns, including, as I can never resist adding, the verb "to verb." My wife, who is an archivist, hates to see "archive" used as a verb. She's fighting a losing battle; one that, in my opinion, isn't worth fighting. Yes, "archive" is a noun meaning a repository of historically significant materials, but to use "archive" as a verb meaning to add something to an archive (n.) doesn't create any confusion. Also, "I archived X" is shorter than "I added X to the archive." The fact that "archive" is now a button on some software programs probably means the battle is over.

There's one exception to my non-objection to the verbing of nouns. That's the recently popular use of "gift" as a verb, replacing the already available and good "give." I made my argument here, then walked it back a bit, more in the sense of accepting the inevitable than changing my mind.

One thing I won't back down from is my struggle against apostrophe misuse. Using an apostrophe in a plural noun, as in "The Johnson's are coming to dinner," or failing to use one in a possessive noun, as in "That is Jims car," isn't creative or cute, it's just stupid. I've stated my case in full here.

I also get on my high horse about confusion of homonyms, such as rein and reign and throws and throes. My particular peeve now is a confusion of near-homonyms I see frequently on social media, the use of loose for lose.

TBT: Jimmy Dorsey, "So Rare."

"So Rare" was written in 1937 and recorded and released that year by two big bands, Gus Arnheim and his Coconut Grove Orchestra and Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians. There were many subsequent releases, including one by Marian McPartland and George Shearing in 1953. Jimmy Dorsey recorded it in November of 1956, and it rose to number two on the Billboard pop chart in 1957. It has been called the last hit of the big band era, although the song's Wikipedia entry describes Dorsey's version as having "a decidedly rhythm and blues feel unlike the earlier versions."

Party on a tanker? Yes, if it's PortSide NY's Mary A. Whalen.

A week ago PortSide New York, headed by my friend Carolina Salguera, played host to a weekend long festival aboard their historic coastal tanker Mary A. Whalen. I went on Saturday afternoon, when a folk music sing-along was scheduled.

Leading the singing were A. Heather Wood and Jerry Korobow of the Folk Music Society of New York.

Two macaws were among the visitors aboard.

Off in the harbor a fireboat was making a display of spray.

Looking aft, I saw cranes of the Red Hook Container Port and the skyline of lower Manhattan.

We sang some folk music chestnuts like "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" and labor songs like "Solidarity Forever" and "Union Maid." At my suggestion we did a couple of sea shanteys, "New York Girls," as performed below by Steeleye Span, with assistance from Peter Sellars on ukulele and verbal commentary,
 

and "Haul Away Joe," which I'd learned first from the Kingston Trio, then from the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem.
 

Heather and Jerry led us in a version of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" with which I was not familiar:



As I left the party, I took this photo of Mary A. Whalen's wheelhouse and funnel against a sunset sky:

TBT: The Temptations, "I Wish It Would Rain."

Last week, as a nod to my friends in Florida, I TBT'd Creedence's "Who'll Stop the Rain?" This may have started a "rain" meme going in my head; that and the fact that, here in New York, we've been having a dryer than normal summer, and the leaves on the ginkgo trees outside our windows are fringed in brown. Anyway, this soulful hit from the spring of 1968 started playing on the tape loop of my mind. So, as the Pythons were wont to say: "And now, for something completely different...."

Maritime views from an evening walk.

Yesterday evening I took a walk down to Brooklyn Bridge Park's Pier 5. As I walked out onto the pier, the sun had already set, but its rays were still reflected from clouds to the west.

As I reached the end of the pier and looked south, I saw the tug Miriam Moran "on the hip" of a barge loaded with cargo containers, taking them from the Red Hook container port; their probable destination being a railhead in New Jersey. You can find another photo of Miriam, and a link to an explanation of "on the hip," in this post.

The small container ship Nefeli was docked further down at Red Hook. Most ships using this facility bring containers loaded with bananas from Central and South America.

Looking to the west, I saw my old friend the self-unloading bulk carrier Alice Oldendorff coming through the channel between Governors Island and lower Manhattan, heading for her dock at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Like her sister Sophie Oldendorff, seen in this post, she will deliver a load of Canadian crushed stone.

The attractive motor launch Kingston was moored at the north side of the pier, waiting for the next day's work.

TBT: Creedence Clearwater Revival, "Who'll Stop the Rain?"

This is for my friends in Tampa, my old home town, although I'm sure you've heard it many times on local radio over the past few days. The Wikipedia entry for the song corrects what had been for me a mondegreen. The second verse begins, "I went down Virginia, seeking shelter from the storm." This made me hear subsequent lines as "Bobby plans a New Deal, wrapped in golden chains." "Bobby" seemed logical, as Robert Kennedy went to the University of Virginia Law School. Now I know it's "Five Year Plans and New Deals," implying what seems to me, though perhaps not to my more radical friends on both the left and right, an unfortunate parallel between FDR's liberalism and Stalin's totalitarianism.


At least my mondegreen wasn't as bad as someone's who heard "The girl with kaleidoscope eyes" in the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" as "The girl with colitis goes by." I suppose a helpful thing to say to her would be another mondegreen, this one from Creedence's "Bad Moon Rising": "There's a bathroom on the right."

Photo: Skip O'Rourke, Tampa Bay Times.

TBT: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Summer in the City."

It was ninety degrees in the shade yesterday, so this may seem an obvious choice. Maybe too obvious. Still, I like the song. It's worn well.

In the photo at left the band are (from bottom to top): John Sebastian, Zal Yanovsky, Joe Butler, and Steve Boone. Yanovsky left the band in 1967 and Sebastian in '68, both to pursue solo careers. Yanovsky died in 2002. The group disbanded in 1969, but in 1991 Boone and Butler, along with Jerry Yester, who had replaced Yanovsky in '67, re-formed the band. The Lovin' Spoonful continue today with Boone, Butler, Yester, Mike Arturi, and Phil Smith.


Note: when I first posted this, I misidentified the order of the band members in the photo, and misspelled "Yanovsky." My friend and rock maven extraordinaire Michael Simmons set me straight, and I've corrected the post accordingly.

Photo: Wikipedia.

Steeleye Span at B.B. King's, New York, July 23, 2015.

When my wife said Steeleye Span were to appear at B.B. King's I was surprised, thinking the group, an old favorite of mine, had broken up years ago. They did break up in 1978, when lead singer Maddy Prior wanted to pursue a solo career. Nevertheless, Maddy later reconstituted the band, of which she is now the only original member. In the photo above the band members are (from left to right): guitarist and vocalist Julian Littman; fiddler and vocalist Jessie May Smart; Maddy Prior; bassist Nils JerusalemP, who recently joined the band in Seattle as a replacement for Maddy's son, Alex Kemp, who, according to Maddy, had some "paperwork problems" entering the U.S.; and drummer Liam Genockey.

The band opened with "Blackleg Miner," a song about a nineteenth century coal miners' strike. A "blackleg" was a strikebreaker, or scab. The clip above, made some years ago, shows an earlier lineup of musicians. Maddy carries the vocal by herself. At the performance last week, the other band members joined in harmony. Maddy, who will celebrate her 68th birthday on August 14, has a voice that is every bit as strong and in command of its full range as when she was younger, but the harmony vocals gave this song more of the "oomph" it needs.

Their next song came from my favorite of their albums, Commoners Crown. "Long Lankin" is a typical old English ballad, telling of betrayal, child murder, hanging, and burning at the stake. Some of Steeleye Span's songs, lovely as they are to hear, have very dark lyrics. This is because Medieval England, from which place and time these songs originated, was, for many, a place and time where life, to borrow the words of the seventeenth century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, could be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." The clip above is audio only; it starts with an image of the album cover, then goes to solid black. Dark indeed.

"King Henry" starts darkly: the King finds himself in a haunted house in the company of a horrific female ghoul who, in the words of Julian Littman, who introduced the song and took the lead vocal, forces him to "kill his household pets," which she devours, then to join her in bed. It ends on a bright note, though; he wakes up the following morning to find next to him the loveliest woman he's ever seen. It's good to be the King.

The band ended the concert (except for a lovely a cappella encore, the title of which I can't remember) with "Thomas the Rhymer." This song has a theme common to many of its vintage: a man, or sometimes a woman, is captured by an elf or fairy queen or king, goes through some sort of ordeal, and returns changed in some way. In the case of Thomas, it was supposed to be having the gift of prophecy. Another song, "Tam Lin", as done by another great English folk rock group, Fairport Convention, tells a tale of a man saved from the ordeal by the intervention of his lady love.

I didn't know what to expect of this concert, and was prepared to be disappointed. I was very pleasantly surprised. Maddy Prior is still in top form, and the new band members performed admirably. Special mention goes to Jessie May Smart, whose fiddle playing was extraordinary, and to Nils JerusalemP, who obviously has learned the band's repertoire quickly and adeptly.

TBT: The Tams, "What Kind Of Fool Do You Think I Am?"

California in the 1960s had the Beach Boys; the East Coast, from Virginia down through the Carolinas and Georgia, had Beach Music. The Tams, from Atlanta, along with Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs, exemplified this easy rolling, party friendly style of rhythm and blues. Two versions of the Tams survive today.

Perhaps the best remembered of their hits is "What Kind Of Fool Do You Think I Am?" Hear it below:

Tania Grossinger, 1937-2015

Tania Grossinger's autobiography, Memoir of an Independent Woman, begins with the following paragraph:

I was born in Evanston, Illinois on February 17, 1937. My mother, Karla Seifer Grossinger, had, in her seventh month, been hospitalized for observation. The pregnancy, her first, was not going well. My father, Max, had been admitted to a separate wing ten days earlier with a second heart attack. She overheard two nurses speaking outside her door. "Isn't it a shame that Mr. Grossinger is dying." My mother told me this story when I was six years old; it was one of the rare times she ever mentioned my father. She begged the nurses to let her see him but was warned she might lose the baby if she left her bed. Two minutes later they picked her up from the floor. My heartbeat was undetectable, and a caesarean section was performed, ostensibly to bring out a dead fetus.

From this inauspicious beginning came a woman who would, over the course of her life, become friends with Jackie Robinson and Betty Friedan, and have meaningful encounters with John F. Kennedy, Hugh Hefner, Ayn Rand (who played a joke on her), and Johnny Carson, among others. Details are in her book; my review is here.

This morning I was greatly saddened to learn of her death on Sunday, July 19, at the age of 78. I wish I had been given more time to spend with her; not just to hear her stories of the good (and not so good) and great she had known, but to appreciate her own magnificence,

Addendum: my fellow Lion's Head alum Maureen O'Brien has these words:

RIP Tania Grossinger. You were amazing. I will always remember your infectious smile, laugh, sensitivity, smarts, and heart. Thank you so much for being my friend, Village neighbor, Lion's Head pal and non-stop cheerleader. You and your wonderful books will never be forgotten. You were one of the greats. xoxomo

A tour of the historic Brooklyn waterfront, with the Working Harbor Committee.

On June 11 my wife and I went on another of the Working Harbor Committee's "Hidden Harbor" tours. A year ago we took one that left from the west, or Hudson River side of Manhattan and went past lower Manhattan, through the Buttermilk Channel between Brooklyn and Governors Island, then across New York Bay to the Kill Van Kull, which lies between Staten Island and Bayonne, New Jersey. Passing under the Bayonne Bridge, we went into Newark Bay, where we saw the huge complex of piers and cranes and the container ships docked there. See a photologue here.

Last month's tour went from Pier 17, adjacent to the South Street Seaport on the Manhattan side of the East River just south of the Brooklyn Bridge, and focused on the Brooklyn waterfront. After leaving the dock we headed north, passing under the Brooklyn Bridge (John Roebling, 1883; photo above).

Shortly after, we went under the Manhattan Bridge (Leon Moisseiff, 1912).  Behind the bridge is DUMBO ("Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass), once an industrial area but now filled with art galleries and studios, high end retail, tech company offices, and mostly very expensive residences.Near the shoreline is part of Brooklyn Bridge Park; at left is an apartment building under construction, revenue from which will help to fund the park's maintenance.

The self-unloading bulk carrier Sophie Oldendorff was discharging her cargo of crushed stone from Canada at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The Yard opened in 1806, and from then until the mid 1960s built and serviced many U.S. Navy ships, including the battleships Maine, whose sinking in Havana harbor in 1898 helped to lead to the Spanish-American War, and Missouri, on whose deck Japan signed its surrender, bringing World War Two to a close. The Yard is now an industrial park controlled by a Development Corporation. In addition to docks and a ship repair facility, it is home to many industrial operations and to Steiner Studios, one of the largest production studios outside the Los Angeles area.

Proceeding upriver (technically, the East River isn't a river, but a tidal strait connecting Long Island Sound and Upper New York Bay) we passed under the northernmost of the three bridges connecting Brooklyn to Manhattan: the Williamsburg Bridge (Leffert L. Buck/Henry Hornbostel, 1903). When completed, it was considered by many to be an eyesore; later aesthetic judgments have been kinder. Beyond the bridge in the photo above is the former Domino Sugar Refinery, now, like so many former industrial buildings along the Brooklyn waterfront, being converted for residential use.

We went to the entrance of Newtown Creek, which serves as the boundary between Brooklyn and Queens.

Returning to the Navy Yard, we passed a base for FDNY fireboats.

We also saw Kennedy, training ship for the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, in drydock for repairs.

Continuing southward, we went under the Brooklyn Bridge again, then passed Jane's Carousel, in its pavilion designed by French architect Jean Nouvel. The colorful structure in the foreground is Tom Fruin's "Kolonihavehus." These are located in Brooklyn Bridge Park. The tall building in the background is One Main Street, formerly part of a cardboard box manufacturing complex and now residential.

This is Fulton Ferry Landing, the Brooklyn terminus of Robert Fulton's steam powered ferry from Manhattan. The steam ferry began service in 1814, but oar and sail powered ferries had plied the same route since the mid 1600s. The steam ferry led to the development of Brooklyn Heights as America's first suburb. Although the Brooklyn Bridge was completed in 1883, ferries continued to operate until 1908. Their death knell was sounded by the subways. Today, ferry service is back and ferries to and from Manhattan, Governors Island, Queens, and other Brooklyn locations dock at nearby Pier 1 in Brooklyn Bridge Park.

The white building with the tower is a former fireboat house, now occupied by the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory. The red brick building at the right, with fire escapes, has at different times been a railroad headquarters and a toilet bowl factory, and is now apartments. The white vessel with the canopy tied to the pier at right is Bargemusic, a popular venue for chamber music concerts. The taller red building at center is the Eagle Warehouse, completed in 1893 and designed by Frank Freeman, a prominent Brooklyn architect who worked in the Romanesque tradition of Henry Hobson Richardson. The building was named for the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper, edited for a time by Walt Whitman, the headquarters of which had earlier been on the site. Today, like many other commercial and industrial buildings on or near the Brooklyn waterfront, it has been converted to residential use. The tall beige buildings in the background were part of the Squibb pharmaceutical manufacturing complex, are now owned by the Watchtower Tract and Bible Society, better known as Jehovah's Witnesses, and used as part of their administrative and printing operations, As the Witnesses move their operations upstate, they are slated to be sold, no doubt for conversion to residential use.

We passed Brooklyn Bridge Park's landscaped Pier 1 (these were former commercial shipping piers, now converted to parkland) and one of Danish artist Jeppe Hein's "Modified Social Benches," part of his "Please Touch the Art" exhibition.

The Japan Coast Guard training ship Kojima (PL 21) was docked at Pier 7, just south of Brooklyn Bridge Park.

Laura, a small container carrying freighter, was at the Red Hook Container Port. The demise of this small port has been predicted for some years, as it lacks a railhead and vast acres of storage space, but most importantly, it sits on waterfront land desirable for residential development. Plans for expansion of container port operations in Brooklyn may save it.

Here we're entering the Erie Basin, named for the fact that it was where schooners laden with Midwestern grain discharged their cargo into grain elevators which then loaded them onto oceangoing ships that carried it overseas. The schooners got the grain in Albany, transshipped from Erie Canal barges (hence "Erie Basin") and carried it down the Hudson River. The barges had gotten it in Buffalo from ships that carried it eastwards through the Great Lakes.

The Erie Basin area has many nineteenth century warehouse buildings. The one on the left houses a supermarket on the ground floor; the one on the right has been used for art shows, and the trolley car in the foreground is of the PCC type previously used in Brooklyn.

This retired Lehigh Valley Railroad barge is now a waterfront museum.

After passing Erie Basin, we came close to the famous (or should it be infamous?) Gowanus Canal; from there I got this long-lens shot of the elaborate Gothic entrance to Green-Wood Cemetery.

Continuing southward, we saw the docks where barges from New Jersey load and unload freight cars destined to or from Long Island or New England. 

Looking south, we could see the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge (1964), connecting Brooklyn and Staten Island. From here, we returned to our dock in Manhattan.