North Kingston Ave Cleanup Days - We need your help! July 22 and August 20

Greetings Neighbors,

We are planning two clean-up days this summer to show our love for Kingston Avenue, and we could use your help. 

The Dean & Revere Block Association (Dean between Kingston & Albany) received a small "Neighborhood Grant" from the Citizens Committee for New York City (CCNYC) for our plan for this event.

The dates are:

• July 22 (Saturday), 9-11am
• August 20 (Sunday), 9-11am (NOTE: This is a change from earlier postings.)

The main request is that you show up and help with the cleanup on either or both of those dates. The cleanup effort, focused on the northern stretch of Kingston from St. Marks Ave. to Atlantic Ave., will include mostly sweeping and bagging litter and debris and maybe light weeding, as well as socializing with neighbors and retailers. Grant money will go towards refreshments, limited cleaning supplies (feel free to bring your own broom), and a t-shirt for participants of the August event. (Also, a small stipend for neighborhood youths for a design for the t-shirt; please inquire with me privately, if you know an interested local kid.) 

You can also help us in these ways:

• Get the word out. Tell neighbors. Share on Facebook this FB page and link to this blog post.
• Help put up flyers
• Help solicit refreshment donations from retailers (water, coffee, bagels, etc.)
• Other advance coordination

Please fill out this volunteer form if you can help support us.

Block Party, June 3, St. Marks Avenue between Brooklyn and Kingston Aves.

Brea(d)th of America Open Mic @ Brower Park Shirley Chisholm Circle, Sun., May 21

The Brea(d)th of America Open Mic:

• Is an opportunity for our community to share their personal perspectives, experiences and understandings about the
• "American Dream:" To tell the American Story through the lens of your American story?
• Is an opportunity to experience and explore the rich human diversity, experiences, and perspectives that are the American experience.
• Is an opportunity to share the rich breadth of our dreams.
• Is an opportunity to engage in an open conversation that will help us safeguard the 18th century American Experiment "We the People" and expand its vision into the 21st Century.
• Is an opportunity to add your voice to the local, national, and global discussion.

See further details at Friends of Brower Park website.

Brower Park Library Bake Sale

One more event Saturday to complete your circuit of neighborhood fun, Friends of Brower Park is sponsoring a bake sale for the Brower Park Library, 10:30 to 3pm. Details here on Facebook.

Kingston Ave Festival

So much going on in the neighborhood this Saturday, what with GROW Brooklyn festival and Dance Africa at Weeksville, but not to be missed is the 7th Annual Kingston Ave Festival!

GROW Brooklyn Festival, this Saturday, May 20

For the second annual GROW Brooklyn Festival in Crown Heights, organizations in urban farming, culinary arts, and technology will come together for a fun-filled afternoon to bring greater awareness of Diversity Through Food.

Saturday, May 20th, at 11 AM - 4 PM

1251 Prospect Place, Crown Heights, Brooklyn New York

Text lifted from their Facebook event page:

Immigration changes the community's culinary landscape by contributing different global flavors to what it means to be American. GROW Brooklyn Festival will celebrate New York City's multiculturalism by inviting organizations to showcase activities that highlight their own culture, with the aim to encourage visitors to embrace the garden-to-kitchen movement, and promote cultural diversity through cuisine.

The Garden Row will teach attendees of all ages how to garden within their urban environment. Interactive demonstrations will include basil & lettuce seedlings give away and cultivation, red worm composting, retrofill water systems creation, beekeeping, honey tasting from the Five Boroughs, workshop on raising hens to lay eggs, pepper tasting from all over the world, and making of seed bombs. Participants include New York Restoration Project, Imani Garden, New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, NYC Compost and UN Food Gardens, New York City’s only garden on international soil.

The Culinary Row will showcase the beauty and taste of home-grown food by offering rich, diverse and yet still simple culinary demonstrations. This year’s offerings will include organic baby and toddler food, Middle Eastern recipes, and delicious flavors from Afghanistan and Venezuela as cooked by asylum seekers, as well as onsite enrollment for food stamps and information on maximizing food stamp benefits. Participants include Communities for Healthy Food at NEBHDCo, Food Support Connection - SNAP Enrollment Program and RIF - Support for Asylum Seekers in NYC.

The Technology Row will bring to life how technology and creativity can enhance our appreciation of good food and healthy living. Interactive educational and creative activities will feature sustainability video games with fruits and vegetables connecting to Makey Makey devices, textile decorating with natural plant dyes, a drawing contest and games with the teachers and students of the Computer Resource Center at St. John’s, and the Computer School.

Live Music: Pop and R&B singer Usen Isong

Admission: Free

Website and More Information: www.growbrooklynfestival.org

Dance Africa celebrating its 40th year at Weeksville

Dance Africa is celebrating its 40th year and opening this monumental week with a libation ceremony to the ancestors on Weeksville's sacred grounds. Please join us on Saturday, May 20th at 10am as we pay homage through word and song to those who came before us.

Community Board 8 meeting Tues., March 14, re: new Crown Heights Homeless Shelters

FYI

Nissan Foundation Grants $15K to Crown Heights Oral History Project

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reports:

Brooklyn Historical Society (BHS) announced that it is a 2016 recipient of a Nissan Foundation grant. The grant will help fund “Voices of Crown Heights,” an oral history project that aligns with the Nissan Foundation’s mission of promoting the value of cultural diversity and building inclusive communities.

Modell's takes over Crown Heights Art Deco Gem at Eastern Parkway and Utica

The 127-year-old NYC sporting goods company Modell's is taking over a prime Art Deco architectural gem, 1117 Eastern Parkway, at Utica. Brownstorner reports the building, originally a bank, was most recently a Popular Community Bank.

Live Music on Kingston Avenue!

The Soul Food Kitchen, on the corner of Kingston Avenue and Dean Street, is bringing live music (Saturday evenings). We've heard some great old school and authentically wonderful musicians. While some locals are eating it up, hopefully more will come to appreciate the sound of soul on the block! And will The Kingston Lounge add to the arts and music vibe picking up in the neighborhood...? We hope so!

GROW Brooklyn Festival for family gardening fun, St. John's Center, June 25

Family fun, food and gardening education coming up June 25 at St. John’s Center in Crown Heights. 

Details on a Facebook event page, as well as on this website: GrowBrooklynFestival.org.

Further details from the Facebook page:

Earlier this year, the Friends of Garden Kitchen Lab & Oxfam America decided they wanted to share the philosophy and activities of the Garden Kitchen Lab program with the broader community, so we set about to create a summer festival. 

The Garden Kitchen Lab is backyard-to-table educational/blogging program that teaches children to create, develop and sustain food producing gardens with a culinary and technology component. 

To be held outside NYC Parks St. John’s Center on Saturday, June 25th from 11am to 4pm, the event will showcase organizations who come together to bring greater awareness to the importance of locally grown food, appreciation of healthy cuisine, as well as encourage children to explore technology, sustainability and environmental issues.

Crown Heights North Historic District placed on national registry

Imperial Apartments, Pacific St. and Bedford Ave

The Brooklyn Eagle reports:

U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and U.S. Rep. Yvette D. Clarke announced Wednesday [May 18] that the Crown Heights North Historic District was officially added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Details on the National Parks Service website, Wikipedia and the Crown Heights North Association.

Artist Rusty Zimmerman's Crown Heights portraits now on exhibit at Brooklyn Children's Museum

Photo by Eillie Anzilotti via CityLab

Local  artist, Rusty Zimmerman, is profiled in Brooklyn Reader, CityLab and DNAinfo recently for his portraits project of Crown Heights residents. "I’m just trying to bring Hasids and Haitians and hipsters together to talk some smack about the neighborhood and tell their stories from their unique perspective,” Zimmerman quipped to BKReader.

The results are on exhibit at the Brooklyn Children's Museum through September.

Photo by Eillie Anzilotti via CityLab

PS 316, Elijah Stroud, makes great strides recent years with new leadership

Principal Olga Maluf. Photo by DNAinfo/Rachel Holliday Smith

DNAinfo features a nice profile of PS 316, the Elijah Stroud grade school at Classon Ave. and Sterling Place, describing music lessons (classical and steel drums), Shakespeare performances, coding classes and more. The story tells how school made a significant turnaround academically under a new principal, moving from the bottom 25% percentile a few years back: "Currently, the school has an “A” grade and is ranked in the top 20th percentile for math and English, according to the most recent Department of Education data."

Crown Heights now a destination spot, per Travel & Leisure magazine

Eastern Parkway. Photo by Tukka Koski, Travel & Leisure

Further evidence that Crown Heights has gone mainstream, it's now featured (with Bed Stuy) in a travel advice article in Travel & Leisure magazine.

Crown Heights Lubavitch building has replicas around the world

Photo by Andrea Robbins and Max Becher, Brownstoner

Here's an interesting article about a building in Crown Heights that has inspired replicas all around the world. The article describes how 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, "headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement — one of the world’s largest ultra-orthodox Jewish groups — the building has become a powerful symbol of adherents’ faith and connection to the community."

The article traces "at least 11 replicas of 770’s ornamented brick facade have been built in locales as diverse as Milan, Italy and Sao Paulo, Brazil."

near Montreal, Canada

Milan, Italy

Jerusalem, Israel

Brower Park ceremony on June 8 to dedicate new Shirley Chisolm Commemoration

This coming Wednesday, American politician, educator and writer Shirley Chisolm (the first African-American woman elected to Congress) will be honored in a dedication ceremony at Brower Park. It's not entirely clear from the promotional material what for of dedication is in store -- the NYC Park Department already references that Park Place by Brower Park is already known also as "Shirley Chisolm Place" and that a section of park is already dubbed Shirley Chisolm Circle -- but she was a great American and long-time neighborhood resident and advocate, so she deserves all the dedications she can get.

That last link details Chisolm's long relationship with the neighborhood, including frequent trips to Brower Park where she held class for students she taught.

Festivities begin at 11am. The Friends of Brower Park advise this:

Students from the George V. Brower School PS 289, have planned a special opening and closing performance for the dedication. The Brooklyn Public Library and the Brooklyn Children’s Museum will have books and activities for the younger set. If you would like to volunteer on the day of the dedication let us know: contactus@friendsofbrowerpark.org

UPDATE: here is some coverage of the event after the fact.

Photo: Rachel Holliday Smith via DNAinfo

This Sunday, Brower Park seeking volunteers for paint scraping

This Sunday, The Friends of Brower Park community group is organizing to scrape paint from and repaint the entrances to Brower Park. In an advisory in the group's Facebook Page, they advise:

With enough volunteers we can paint the retaining wall on Kingston Avenue. Park staff will be there to scrape and paint and provide advice. Gloves, paint, scrapers, and clothes will be provided by the Parks Department. There will be bottled water and freshly popped popcorn to keep us smiling.

 

'Arts to End Violence' exhibit opens tonight, from S.O.S.

The Crown Heights Community Mediation Center and its "Save our Streets" (S.O.S.) initiative are sponsoring their sixth annual  "Arts to End Violence" gallery exhibition of local artists -- kids, amateurs, professionals -- "committed to anti-violence, community building, peace, survival, healing, and making gun violence unacceptable in our city."

The exhibit opens tonight and includes a party with music, food and friendly neighbors, not to mention some stirring art.


Opening reception:
May 19 
6:30-8:30 PM 
1160 St Johns Place

The art will be up at the gallery for two weeks after the opening, at the following hours:

Wednesday, May 25: 3-6 PM
Thursday, May 26: 11 AM - 2 PM
Friday, May 27: 11 AM - 2 PM
Tuesday, May 31: 3-6 PM
Wednesday, June 1: 11 AM - 2 PM
Thursday, June 2: 11 AM - 2 PM

More details at the event's Facebook page.