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A very helpful reader (my mom) sent this back in September and I'm just now getting around to putting it up. Whoops. Anyway, the artist, Walt Taylor, is from my hometown of Norfolk, Virginia and apparently visits Brooklyn every now and then. After his trip this past summer he published some of his sketches in our paper, The Virginian Pilot. He doesn't mention Ditmas Park specifically, but he says his base of operations is "a Victorian neighborhood just south of Prospect Park" that is "a popular place among movie scouts." Add to that the drawings of John's Bakery on Cortelyou and the beautiful scenery of Albemarle Road and we've got sufficient evidence that this man walked amongst us this past summer. For God's sake, the man was probably at Vox Pop and we didn't even know it. I love his take on Brooklyn at the end: "People are pretty much the same everywhere. They just use more languages here."
Fox News is reporting that a school bus full of children crashed through the gate of a home at 32nd St. and Avenue L in Midwood. No injuries. No cause of crash at this time.
Rugby Road between Foster and Glenwood
It still breaks my heart to pass by the Veggie Castle on Church Ave between Flatbush and Bedford and see it fenced up, tagged with uncreative graffiti, the lot covered in weeds and litter. It was just a year ago this month that the creative Caribbean soul food restaurant with a completely vegan menu closed up shop after 10 strong years in business.
I'd be lying if I didn't say Veggie Castle was one of the reasons I moved into Flatbush. It was far and beyond the best vegetarian restaurant I've ever been to. The menu was constantly changing, the reggae was always pumping, and the community came out in droves to support it. It was a rare occasion that I didn't have to wait in a line for food, hoping the guy in front of me didn't ask for the last scoop of mac and cheese or oxtail chunks. It defied all odds. In the middle of fried chicken and fast food joints stood this mecca of healthy living, a converted White Castle restaurant that shared with its previous tenant only the castle decor and McDonald's style seating.
Even after a creepy nightime incident where a young guy stood at the window outside, directly behind Katie, staring at me for 5 or 10 minutes straight (I didn't tell Katie), I still went back week after week. It didn't surprise me to see people biking in from Park Slope, Fort Greene, and Williamsburg just to get their hands on some drumsticks and black-eyed peas. Aside from Uptown Juice Bar in Harlem, which had about half the selection of Veggie Castle, there was just nothing that compared to this place in all the boroughs.
Veggie Castle closed in January of last year because their landlord wanted more money. Now the place is still boarded up, the lot abandoned. So instead of taking in another year's worth of rent, their greedy landlord has let the space sit empty and has deprived an entire community of a vegetarian treasure.
What a shame.
A quick update to a previous post that identified Salud's Tropic-O-Lada as the "best smoothie I have ever had." I have since branched out, tried different smoothies, and can now report that not only is Salud's "Tolum Breeze" the best smoothie I have ever had, it is The Best Smoothie In The World. Bold statement, I know. And I wouldn't say it if I didn't absolutely mean it. The combination of mango, strawberries, coconut flakes, agave nectar and soy milk gives it a thick, strawberry milkshake taste. So yum.
Also came across two new vegan soups: Lentil and Vegetarian Chili. Both really good.
Thanks to a handy new application making it's way around the interwebs, Flatbush residents can now rest assured that in the event of a nuclear attack on Manhattan, we'll survive.
Simply plug New York, NY into this Google Maps mashup and pick your nuclear weapon of choice to find out how your neighborhood will hold up. Google Maps identifies the center of New York City as Times Square, so Flatbush skates by 6 of 7 nuclear bomb explosion scenarios with no thermal damage. Williamsburg, (unfortunately?), doesn't fare well for most of those attacks. And even Park Slope gets caught in the danger zone if a B28 touches down. Finally this living south of the Park thing is paying off.
Ditmas Parkers won't be so lucky if we get hit with a Tsar Bomba. And of course an asteroid impact will leave Flatbush looking like the shelves of the Atlantic Center Target.
So in the event of an actual Palin 2012 or 2016 campaign, don't worry about moving to Canada, just consider Victorian Flatbush.
Since it's never too late to highlight Ditmas Park's supporting roles in film and television, and since no proper post has been done on our neighborhood's connection to "The Squid and the Whale", I'll pick up the slack here and do the honors.
"The Squid and the Whale" (2005) is a critically-acclaimed, Oscar nominated dramedy loosely based on director Noah Bambauch's childhood experiences in 1980s Brooklyn. When Bernard (Jeff Daniels) and Joan Berkman (Laura Linney) split up, Bernard leaves their Park Slope brownstone for "the other side of the park", a neighborhood that apparently didn't even have a name in the 80s, as evidenced in this scene from Bernard's son Walt and his lady interest Sophie.
Walt: I'm also gonna live on the other side of the park.
Sophie: Prospect Heights?
Walt: I'm not sure what the neighborhood is called actually. The street is Stratford Road, my dad is moving there. I hear it's the filet of the neighborhood.
The actual house filmmakers used is a couple blocks east of Stratford at 415 Rugby Road. Maybe they called it Stratford in the movie because that was where Baumbach lived? Maybe Stratford just sounds more Brooklyn than Rugby.
If you walk by the house today you'll notice that it hasn't changed at all since the movie was filmed there in 2004. It still looks like the fixer-upper it played in the movie, complete with dirty siding, an uncared for lawn, and an oddly placed picket fence that looks like it would fall over if someone sneezed near it.
The Newkirk Ave subway station also has a brief cameo in the film, and apparently the talent show was filmed in the Midwood High School auditorium.
The film is definitely worth checking out, even if just to see the action that went down between Jeff Daniels and Anna Paquin in 415 Rugby. Just don't pair it up with "Fly Away Home" unless you want the creepiest double feature ever.
