You'd Think It Was Summer: Franklin Hopping Today

It's a perfect St. Patrick's Day on the Avenue, but the foot traffic up and down would make you think it was June. At About Time Boutique, their blowout, everything-must-go sale is offering t-shirts for $10, hoodies for $15, and jackets for $35 until 9pm tonight (ILFA scored some limited-edition Franklin Avenue tees for friends and family). A few doors down, Stork is all decked out for the holiday, and across the street, the Built in Brooklyn Craft Fair is rocking for at least another hour, featuring perennial favorites from Planet Ert, Servus Cookies, and We've Got You Covered, as well as some new vendors. Perhaps the most surprising and fascinating of the new arrivals are the folks from Loomi, who've created an assemble-it-yourself paper light that looks like something that should cost about $300 at a design store, but can be bought for a fraction of that at the fair or from their website. For those who can't make it out today, the fine folks at Owl & Thistle have begun stocking many of these locally-made crafts in their shop. 

The St. Patrick's Weekend: Built in Brooklyn, HERStory, Keith Haring

It's a little dreary today, but Saturday and Sunday are supposed to be gorgeous again, which should make this feel like the first truly spring weekend on Franklin. If you're not planning to go nuts for St. Patrick's Day (a perfectly good use of a sunny spring weekend, I should say - does anyone know if there are shamrock-y events at any of the local bars?) there's a lot to do in and around the neighborhood:

- Built in Brooklyn returns to LaunchPad on Saturday for their first Craft Fair of 2012, offering local goodies of all sorts from 12-6pm.

- The late, great, Keith Haring is the subject of a big retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum, opening today (more photos of Haring's iconic work here).

- The Brooklyn Children's Museum has a whole lot of events planned for Saturday for kids and adults, some with an Irish theme, some with a Women's History Month bent. From their press team:

Events for this Saturday March 17, featuring a variety programs for all: As we continue our Women’s HERstory month celebrations and explore literacy with WORD UP!, a meet and greet and fashion transformation with Jennifer Crane, United States Army Veteran http://www.fatiguestofabulous.com/ and a reading by renowned fashion designers Shane & Shawn http://shaneandshawn.com/press_sub.html and their new SHOE REVEAL (ssssomething in honor of our slithery BCM diva and our 113^th birthday).

- Reader Ben reports that the new 3D's space looks fantastic - the folks working on it let him peek in, and they've expanded the dining space, exposed brick walls, and generally seem to be designing a great corner spot. They also confirmed that the location will remain 3D's. Glad to see a longtime anchor persevering on the Avenue. A Slice of Brooklyn, however, has officially closed, but the owners say they're already in talks with someone who'd like to re-open the space as a pizza joint again sometime soon.

-

Tonight: Prospect Heights Democrats For Reform Host Candidates Forum on Sterling and Underhill

It's easy to feel both overloaded with election-year information and a very long way from November, but in Brooklyn, Democratic Primaries ARE the election, and they're being held early this year (as early as June in some cases). It's short notice, but if you're around tonight, Prospect Heights Democrats for Reform are hosting a candidates forum to see what some of those vying for local office have to offer our communities

Join Prospect Heights Democrats for Reform

For A

CANDIDATES FORUM

 Thursday March 15th

7-9pm

 Duryea Baptist Church

362 Sterling Place

Brooklyn, NY 11238

Candidates will be given the opportunity to speak and then eligible club members will vote on endorsements. Also get more information about how to run for County Committee; it’s fun and a great way to get involved with your community.  RSVP HERE.

INVITED GUESTS:

10th Congressional District:

Hakeem Jeffries

Charles Barron

Edolphus Towns

57th Assembly District:

Olanike Alabai

Walter Mosley

Martine Guerrier

57th AD District Leader

Walter Mosley

Olanike Alabai

Renee Collymore

18^th Senate District:

Velmanette  Montgomery

20^th Senate District:

Eric Adams

52nd Assembly District

Joan Millman

52nd AD District Leader

Chris Owens

JoAnne Simone

Debra Scotto

Secondary Sound Jam Night TONIGHT at BCH

Apologies for the last-minute update, but if you're around and looking for people to jam with, head over to Breukelen Coffee House tonight. From the Secondary Sound folks:

Tonight, 9pm at Breukelen Coffee House (764 Franklin Ave - 2, 3, 4, 5, to Franklin stop) is yet another Secondary Sound Jam.  We will have a drumset (Fernanda, the Ludwig 3 piece), amps and DI boxes to plug in electric guitars, bass, violin, keyboard and the like, as well as mics for vocalists to do their thing, all brought to you by the boys and girls at Five Block Sound.  So bring your friends, bring your instruments, byob, and meet the creative folks of Crown Heights.  We'll have some laughs, have some drinks and make some music.  See you tonight and every 2nd and 4th Tuesday! 

Celebrate Three Fantastic Years with the Franklin Park Reading Series Tonight

It's been three whole years since journalist, author, and local literary booster extraordinaire Penina Roth first hosted the Franklin Park Reading Series, and what an impressive run it's been. The series has grown from a local event to a white-hot-must-see-mentioned-in-all-the-right-places literary salon that's hosted winners of every prize from the O. Henry to the Pulitzer, but it still holds its Crown Heights roots dear, showcasing local authors every month. Tonight's event promises to be a great show, complete with hilarious readings of prose and poetry, screenings of illustrated stories and comics, candy donated by The Candy Rush, and of course, the always popular $4 pints. See you there!

The complete invite, via FB:

Hope you can join us on March 12, when we celebrate three great years of prose and poetry in Crown Heights -- NYC's hottest literary community! The event features comic novelists SHALOM AUSLANDER, described in the NY Times as "an absurdist with a deep sense of gravitas" and ADAM WILSON, whose debut novel FLATSCREEN was praised by Time Out NY as "depressingly hilarious and undeniably real." At this multigenre event, poet MELISSA BRODER (Meat Heart) will share her incendiary work, and acclaimed graphic novelist JOHN DERMOT WOODS (The Complete Collection of People, Places and Things) will screen his illustrated stories and comics. We'll also be showcasing up-and-coming Crown Heights author BEN TOWNSEND (Stonecutter Journal).

Featuring:

SHALOM AUSLANDER (Hope: A Tragedy)
ADAM WILSON (Flatscreen)
MELISSA BRODER (Meat Heart)
JOHN DERMOT WOODS (The Complete Collection of People, Places & Things)
BEN TOWNSEND (Stonecutter Journal)

SHALOM AUSLANDER was raised in Monsey, New York. He is the author of the novel Hope: A Tragedy, as well as the short story collection Beware of God and the internationally bestselling memoir Foreskin’s Lament, which was named a New York Times Notable Book and a Best Book of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle and Slate. Nominated for the Koret Jewish Book Award for writers under thirty-five, he has published articles in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, GQ, and Tablet and has had stories aired on NPR’s This American Life. He lives in upstate New York.

ADAM WILSON is the author of the novel Flatscreen. His fiction has appeared in many publications, including The Paris Review,Washington Square Review, New York Tyrant, Cousin Corinne’s Reminder, The Coffin Factory, and elimae, as well as the anthology Promised Lands: New Jewish American Fiction on Longing and Belonging. A founding editor of the The Faster Times and former culture critic for Blackbook, he is currently a regular contributor to Bookforum and The Paris Review Daily. His essays, journalism and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, The New York Observer, The Forward, The Rumpus, and the anthologies Dirty Words: A Literary Encyclopedia of Sex and A Friday Night Lights Companion: Love, Loss, and Football in Dillon, Texas. He holds an MFA from Columbia University, where he received a fellowship, and teaches creative writing at NYU and the Sackett Street Writer’s Workshop. He lives in Brooklyn with his cat.

MELISSA BRODER is the author of two poetry collections, Meat Heart and When You Say One Thing But Mean Your Mother. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Guernica, Redivider, Court Green, The Missouri Review online, Barrelhouse, The Awl, Drunken Boat, and other places. She edits La Petite Zine and curates the Polestar Poetry Series at Cakeshop in New York. By day, she is a publicity manager at Penguin.

JOHN DERMOT WOODS draws comics and writes stories in Brooklyn, New York. He is the author of The Complete Collection of People, Places & Things. The image-text novel he wrote with J.A. Tyler, No One Told Me I Was Going to Disappear, has recently been published by Jaded Ibis Press. A collection of his comics will be released by Publishing Genius Press later this spring, and a collection of his illustrated stories, The Baltimore Atrocities, is forthcoming. His work has appeared in numerous journals, including The Fairytale Review, The Collagist, Hobart, Caketrain, Opium, The Salt Hill Review, The Indiana Review, and 3rd Bed. A professor of English at Nassau Community College, he is also the editor of the arts quarterly Action, Yes and co-curator of the Soda Series readings in Brooklyn.

BEN TOWNSEND grew up in a brown house on a small hill overlooking a very large cornfield. He has since lived in a few different places and still owes library fines in Ann Arbor, MI, Lexington, VA, and New York City, where he currently resides. He holds a Comparative Literature degree from the University of Michigan, and has published fiction in Stonecutter Journal. He now calls Crown Heights, Brooklyn home.

The Museum Museum, Tonight at LaunchPad

Tonight (Friday) at LaunchPad - complete press release below:

CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN: New York City has a world-class set of cultural institutions, but it is widely understood that to take it all in would be a superhuman endeavor. Therefore, The Levys’ Unique New York! is offering, for one night only, the chance to absorb the highest quality exhibits on art, history, science and car service, including a spectacularly unqualified docent-led tour.

LaunchPad will be hosting The Museum Museum, a one-night only curated experience where visitors can explore the microscopic world of amoebas through 2D viewing platforms; where guests will be thrown into the past by the City Reliquary’s traveling suitcase of antiquity; where modern-day curiosity seekers can experience the world-renowned Museum of Car Service, from the inside to the out. The Museum Museum’s main exhibit will be a documentary, The Quest for Cameltoe, featuring Rev Jen, the zany, wry and irreverent Lower East Side Art-Star who may be one of NYC’s last living eccentrics. The Quest for Cameltoe shows Reverend Jen creating mystifying works of art, traveling to exotic European cities, getting sloshed on wine and creating the only Troll Doll Museum in the world.

Doors open at 8pm. The Quest for Cameltoe runs sixty-four minutes and will begin promptly at 9:30pm. Works by TJ Hospodar, Wendy Chan, Jason Thompson, 0h10 M1ke and The City Reliquary. Wine and cheese will be served. Admission is free. Donations are appreciated. LaunchPad is located at 721 Franklin Avenue and is accessible via the 2,3,4,5,A,C trains at Franklin Avenue and the Shuttle train at Park Place.

*****

The Levys’ Unique New York! New York’s First Family of Tour Guides hosts fun and unique New York themed events, including Freeze Tag on Wall Street, the Panorama Channel at the Queens Museum of Art and the Official V Train Funeral Party, “We Hardly Knew V.”

*****

LaunchPad is a creative gathering place focused on the arts, community programs, technology and anything else that captures the imagination.

*****

The City Reliquary Museum & Civic Organization, located at 370 Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburgh, Brooklyn, provides a wide array of services to the community. As a certified 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization, we are committed to serving the people of New York City – natives, newcomers, and passersby. The City Reliquary’s hours are: Saturday and Sunday: 12pm – 6pm. Admission to the museum is by suggested donation. For general information, please visit the Museum’s website www.cityreliquary.org or call 718. R U CIVIC.

Two events exploring our changing neighborhood tonight

As mentioned in the post below, Safe in This Place is putting on a public performance for community members tonight at 7:30pm at St. Teresa's, where they'll tackle questions of safety and security in the changing area along Franklin Ave. ILFA will be there, but I also wanted to pass along another event that's tackling similar questions tonight in Bed-Stuy, a Pratt Area Community Council Happy Hour discussion with the theme of "Neighborhood in Flux" at The Outpost (whose name alone suggests a certain vision of urban pioneering that's worth unpacking). Read on for more info (copied from their blog):

Neighborhood in Flux A Happy Hour Discussion at Outpost Lounge Thursday, March 8, 2012 (7pm-9pm) click here to see all upcoming events

Come join us for happy hour and an informal panel discussion around the changing character of Clinton Hill, Fort Greene, Bed Stuy and surrounding neighborhoods. Panelists include writer Naima Coster, whose writing on gentrification in Fort Greene was published in the New York Times; visual artist and photographerValerie Caesar, whose work was shown in MOCADA's "The Gentrification of Brooklyn;" and Deb Howard, PACC's Executive Director and neighborhood resident for 38 years; moderated by Lincoln Restler, Committeeman for Brooklyn's 50th Assembly District. Enjoy happy hour beer/wine specials and hors d'oeuvres from Outpost. This event is free and open to the public. Friends of PACC Presents Neighborhood in Flux: A Happy Hour Discussion at Outpost Lounge Thursday March 8, 2012 (7-9pm) Outpost Lounge - 1014 Fulton Street between Classon and Downing Clinton Hill, Brooklyn RSVP by email or on our Facebook Event

Friends of PACC is a group of residents, community members and community activists that support PACC's programs through volunteering, organizing and attending outreach events, and promoting awareness of PACC's mission and work throughout the community. Friends of PACC have the opportunity to volunteer their time and expertise, meet like-minded people, build relationships in the neighborhood and become knowledgeable about issues in the community. To join Friends of PACC email Annie Raife.