If you’re still hoping to have one in the ‘hood, now’s the time to step up and show your support. Jessica Stockton Bagnulo (a.k.a. The Written Nerd) is inviting you to a party in support of her effort to open a top-flight general-interest bookstore in Fort Greene/Clinton Hill.
Augusta Palmer, co-director of If You Succeed, which I discussed here, is screening the film at Embora on May 30 at 8pm, and May 31, June 6, and June 7 at 10pm. Catch it while you can.
Also, the Written Nerd has kicked off Stimulating Reading as a way to raise funds for a possible Fort Greene bookstore. Show some support if you’re able.
Bookstores are my temples. From Mugwumps, a funky, early-80s-era shop in Little Rock, to Foyles in London (where, before its renovation and retrofitting, browsing the aisles meant risking burial by a tower of books, precariously crammed from any available surface to the ceiling), I enter and immediately feel more at peace and unable to leave with my hands empty. Which is why it’s deeply odd for me to live in a highly literate New York neighborhood without a local large general-interest bookstore.
Jessica Stockton Bagnulo may be set to finally change that. The keen mind behind The Written Nerd, one of the best blogs on books and bookselling you’ll read, Jessica has also just won the Brooklyn Public Library’s PowerUp! business plan competition. Local residents immediately began lobbying Jessica to open up shop here, so Fort Greene/Clinton Hill isn’t about to lose out to Windsor Terrace or Prospect Heights without a fight. Still, $15K is just the start of the funding that Jessica will need to pull it off, and there’s still the pesky matter of securing a suitable space at a reasonable price.
I have no doubt, though, that Jessica will realize her dream: Not only is her enthusiasm infectious, but she also has worked methodically for the better part of a decade to learn the ins and outs of the business. Find out why she’s bullish on independent bookselling and hear her ideas about the bookstore that could soon be on a Fort Greene/Clinton Hill corner after the jump.
(more…)
The Fort Greene Association Retail Survey results have been tallied by our man Jon Zeitlin, and the findings will be distributed soon via your friendly neighborhood media outlets such as The Brooklyn Paper. While the press release and report are coming together, however, I’ll tease you with a few tidbits:
As for my beloved bowling alley, it seems that mostly black respondents wanted one — it was number 12 of 20 when the data was cut by race. Someone pointed out that there is a bowling alley in the basement of Cadman Church on Lafayette and Clinton; wonder if it could be refurbished and find a new life?
The Fort Greene Retail Survey results aren’t all in yet, but it seems safe to say that grocery stores are likely to rank high as a community want. Yet already the times when your best hope for a quick and inexpensive bite to eat once you arrived back home in Fort Greene were take-out from Cambodian Cuisine or a slice from Mario’s are well and truly gone. Besides all of the restaurants that have opened up in the ‘hood in the past decade, the past three months have seen the introduction of lots of small market options. The latest, Provisions (753 Fulton St.), has been open for four hours and is serving free coffee as I type.
According to Jason, one of the store’s partners, fresh fish and meat will be available on Tuesday; the rest, including cheeses and charcuterie, will show up over the course of the next month. There have been murmurs of concern about the number of groceries in close proximity — including R&J’s, Fresh Garden, Greene Farm, Union Market, and whatever the Brooklyn Heights-based prepared food company that snapped up the former Seven Corners hardware space is going to open — but Jason didn’t seem particularly worried. Speaking of Fresh Garden specifically, he said, “I think we’ll complement each other.”
Now, will all of this stop me from ordering from Fresh Direct? Let’s face it, probably not; the convenience of being able to order online and have it show up at my door is too good to pass up (maybe if I didn’t have a toddler to wrangle and my local Met wasn’t so crummy…). But I’m finding already that I prefer to go to Fresh Garden for good fruit (Fresh Direct’s is generally crap; I used to go all the way to Citarella in Manhattan) and La Mediterranee yogurt, and I may find myself stepping into Provisions for other extras and treats (such as the freeze-dried peaches and Rao’s tomato sauce I picked up today). The prepared foods place could also be a boon (other than pizza, Fresh Direct doesn’t do that well, either). My homelier end of Fulton in Clinton Hill appears to be gaining an organic food shop, which if it’s really worth a damn will be fantastic to have; I’m also looking forward to Choice Market II, whenever they get their landmarks situation sorted and the doors open. Nothing here is really a one-stop solution (though a possible food co-op is promising); still, it’s nice to finally have some worthwhile options.
As a member of a Fort Greene Association subcommittee on commercial development in the area, I suggested the inclusion of a food co-op as an option on the residents’ survey that’s currently circulating. So I was thrilled to read that DK Holland and Kathryn Zarczynski are already on top of the idea and working to bring it to fruition. If you’re also keen to have an affordable, healthy, community-minded grocery co-op closer than Park Slope, check out the Fort Greene Food Co-op blog here.
Update: The first organizing meeting for the Fort Greene/Clinton Hill Food Co-op will be on Wednesday, January 23 at the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church at 85 South Oxford (btw Lafayette and Greene aves.) from 7 to 8:30pm. On the agenda for discussion: Why do we need/want a co-op? What it will take to start it? What support do we have now? What will the structure of the co-op be? What’s on our wish list? How can other co-ops help us?
They say if you don’t ask, you won’t receive. Or the squeakiest wheel gets the grease. Or something like that.
Anyway, we bloggy types like pontificating on commercial closings and openings, and — from the file of Full Disclosure — I’ve gotten myself mixed up with a gang throwing retail signs. Help us out, yo:
The Fort Greene Association wants your opinion on the stores and services you want to see in the neighborhood.
Take the Fort Greene retail survey here.
There’s something incredibly sweet about this storefront at 741 Fulton Street, which used to house the high-end children’s clothing shop Hot Toddie.
Perhaps it’s the dreamy blue exterior or the exposed brick wall inside, but I almost want to pull together a business plan and find the funding to open something myself here. Can’t you just imagine a yarn/fabric shop or a chocolate shop? Maybe even another kids’ shop, like Area or the Green Onion in Cobble Hill?
Another space that I hope is snapped up soon by a retailer in touch with the Fort Greene community’s needs and desires is the former (useless to most) Chase Home Loans center (at 57-59 Lafayette Avenue), which famously lacked an ATM, like the Washington Mutual further up Fulton Avenue in Clinton Hill:
This is a pretty big space apparently (3,800 square feet), and I’ve heard it’s dividable, but it’s a great opportunity for a business that needs a lot of room to set up shop in the heart of Fort Greene. Maybe a general-interest bookstore or a place like Grey Dog or Tea Lounge? Or something like Willy Bee’s (now no longer) — the neighborhood could use a truly child-friendly (and even child-oriented) cafe-ish space….
Everywhere you look in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, old shops are closing and new ones are opening up with a quickness. But one little trend seems to be emerging: With the imminent opening of EN of Africa, a new Nigerian restaurant at the corner of Lafayette and Cumberland, the area has a growing selection of African cuisine. There’s Keur N’ Deye, Joloff, and Le Grand Dakar (all Senegalese), Madiba (South African), Kush (West African), and abistro (West African/French fusion)….How excellent it would be if an Ethiopian place joined the ranks. (The Hub and I had our first date at an Ethiopian joint that no longer exists in SoHo [Abyssinia on Broome Street, IIRC]; clearly I was charmed by his attempt to choke down a plate of spicy raw meat without batting an eyelash while flirting.) I’m An African In New York takes issue with service in some African restaurants; however, Madiba met with his approval.
During my afternoon constitutional with The Scamp today, I discovered that Prospect Drugs has made a cosmetic improvement:
I was reminded of Gothamist’s interview with Adrian Tomine, in which he proposed that businesses be screened for aesthetic appeal. “It kills me the way so many of these new restaurants and shops go for the cheapest, ugliest kind of exterior design…especially in Brooklyn.” To that I would add (while we’re playing “If I ruled the world…”) a requirement for older businesses to upgrade the unattractive, cluttered, and/or misspelled signage they may have started with and never replaced.
The new look at Prospect isn’t fully integrated with their existing aesthetic, but you gotta appreciate the initial effort to distinguish it from the pack of neighborhood pharmacies. I wonder if one of the community councils could recruit some graphic and industrial design students from Pratt to generate new ideas for existing signage and storefronts around the neighborhood?
Forgotten NY tracks old-school signage, including the beloved “French Garment Cleaners” sign on Lafayette Avenue (the space now hosts Stuart & Wright). Interesting article on road sign design here.
I know anything can go down in New York City at any time anywhere, and usually I can cope with that, even on the days when you can feel the sidewalks vibrating with collective mental unrest. However, the news of this random shooting on Clifton Place — which may have been another one of those “disrespect” homicides that are increasingly common these days — has really unsettled me today. (Not least because the unhinged suspect is still at large.)
The Hub is grown — New York-born and bred, in fact — so I try not to worry about him, though, y’know, stuff happens to native New Yorkers all the time. But I do wonder about teaching The Scamp street smarts when there’s a special type of alertness and wariness you need in most American urban environments, especially New York. From the regular reports of pedestrians and bicyclists (often young children) hit by cars to unstable, desperate people, it’s sometimes overwhelming to think of how The Hub and I are supposed to help him stay out of danger. Luckily, The Scamp is naturally reserved with strangers, and while it often makes people huffy (”Why won’t he smile?”), it’s a lot easier to encourage him to follow his instincts and await proof of trustworthiness in someone he’s just met than it is to dissuade a super-friendly child from chatting up and taking the hand of just anyone.
I walked Clifton Place frequently with The Scamp this summer, having been impressed by the way its intersection with Grand Avenue seemed to clean up with the opening of Le Grand Dakar, Choice Market, and Still Hip. But I also noticed signs of the old drug trade hanging around, obviously having missed the gentrification memo. It’s a lovely stretch, and it’ll soon be home to the Brooklyn School. I hope for the sake of the children — hell, for the sake of us all — the 88th Precinct and the community can turn it around. But it’s just one block of many in this city that has witnessed cruel horrors, and the concepts of protection and safety sometimes seem like a distant shore.
[ETA: The Fort Greene-Clinton Hill Courier reported on October 12 that “Psycho,” as he is apparently known, was caught.]
According to a recent Myrtle Minutes blast, Walgreens is opening in the neighborhood — welcome news to some, it seems. We’re mostly well-sorted for pharmacies ’round here, to the point that we may even be getting an Elephant Pharm-style spot soon, so I’m less than enthusiastic anyway, but beyond that, I just can’t get excited when a major chain opens in Brooklyn.
Let me clarify: Though I champion the well-done independents, I’m not opposed to chain stores across the board. Boots the Chemists, Borders Books, Buy Buy Baby, Trader Joe’s — love. They get it right. Would spasm with joy to have one of each in spitting distance. But what is it about a Brooklyn address that prompts some chains to bring their Z-game? The facilities look run down as soon as they open (I’m looking at you, Applebee’s and Target), the customer service is indifferent to lousy (Target again), and worst of all — since this is supposedly the chain’s biggest advantage — they’re poorly stocked (Barnes & Noble, Target for the win!). I can think of one exception: Hale & Hearty Soups in Brooklyn Heights, which has borderline friendly employees (if they recognize you after you’ve been there a couple of times) and is always neat. But otherwise, the contrast between a Home Depot in Bed-Stuy and a Home Depot in Orlando (or lower Manhattan, even) is so striking — clean(ish) surfaces! stock staff who know where stuff is! cashiers that actually acknowledge your existence with a hello! — that they don’t even seem to be the same corporation.
Let’s state one obvious factor at play here: Chain stores have avoided predominantly black neighborhoods, and those that do finally come around often offer goods that are not of the same quality or quantity as in other locations. Grocery store chains are one of the most discussed offenders, but it applies to all kinds of services (otherwise, Magic Johnson wouldn’t have stepped in so successfully in Harlem and Los Angeles). Walgreens itself is at the center of an EEOC lawsuit now, in part for allegedly referring to certain branches as “ethnic stores” and treating them as substandard stands for stymieing black employees and managers. If the first front in the battle was to bring some of these stores to places like Clinton Hill in the first place, then the next step seems to be pressing them to bring their facilities and services up to the standards they’ve set elsewhere. And maybe, just maybe, the mom-and-pops will also step it up to keep their formerly captive customer base from deserting them. It would be nice to see that fabled New York competitiveness help all boats to rise.
The recent report that the long-shuttered Liquors is finally set to morph into a new business reminded me of how much I miss that joint. It was a funky, loose-limbed place with casual, refreshingly reasonably priced good food, characteristics that aren’t in evidence as much as they should be by now in this neighborhood’s restaurants. When Bodegas opened, I expected more of the same but was surprised to find it hit-or-miss, with an increasingly obviously disgruntled staff in the last months it was operating. The restaurants (along with their Bed-Stuy sister Lewis & Ruby’s) shuttered abruptly last year, rumors flew, Dana Rubinstein investigated, and the spaces were rented. Just another small business down in flames — next, right?
But these are also people’s dreams we’re talking about. It’s easy for those of us who’ve never established our own businesses to play armchair quarterbacks, but the challenges and risks — financial, emotional, mental — involved in opening and running a store or restaurant are not for the faint of heart. The fortitude it requires is on full display in If You Succeed, an hour-long documentary about Christian Dennery and Dolores Lagdameo’s effort to build on the promise of Liquors by opening Bodegas — as well as their effort to hold their family together. A tantalizing preview of the film is on view here; Fort Greene-based filmmakers Augusta Palmer and Chris Arnold screened it at the Little Rock Film Festival in May and will present it again at the San Francisco Documentary Festival in October. Augusta and Chris are investigating distribution channels, and I certainly hope that at least one local venue — anyone at BAMcinématek out there? — will make it possible for the FG/CH community to see it.
Little Rock native Augusta very kindly took the time to answer a few questions about the documentary, the aftermath of the restaurants’ failures, and Cultural Animal, her company with co-director and husband Chris. Get the scoop after the jump.
