Gone Soy Fishin'

Flatbush Vegan is on vacation this week in the Outer Banks. We will resume our (ir)regular posting schedule sometime next week.

Filmed in Flatbush: The Groomsmen

I was dreading having to watch "The Groomsmen" just for the Ditmas Park parts. The DVD cover makes it look like some awful Wedding Crashers rip-off. But it actually turned out to be a pretty heartfelt movie. Plus, lots of Ditmas Park scenes and a little Prospect Park South action thrown in there as well.

The film is set in a quiet Long Island neighborhood. But who cares where it's supposed to be. This film is all about the real locations. And from the very first scene Flatbushers will recognize the place Ed Burns and Brittany Murphy's characters call home as 298 Argyle (pictured). Donal Logue's character lives just a few blocks away at 173 Westminster (below) and Matthew Lillard's character is just across the street at 182 Westminster.

It looks like most of the principle actors were on set for the Ditmas Park shoots. Jay Mohr moons his buddies on one of the SWARM streets, John Leguizamo rocks the mic with his bandmates in the driveway and garage of another home. If you like to see the neighborhood in film, this one should not be missed.

As It Turns Out, Kent Theater Does Suck

We've been meaning to see a movie at Kent Theater since we moved to the neighborhood. It's within walking distance, it could have historical value (some say Woody Allen used the theater in "The Purple Rose of Cairo") and movies are $5 on Wednesdays and $7.75 the rest of the week. We'd read complaints about it online and knew there were some drawbacks so we set the bar as low as it could go and ventured to the far off land of Below Avenue H to check it out.

The lower ticket prices mean that Kent has to cut some corners, including having just one person in both roles of ticket-taker and concession-seller. The woman filling these positions snapped at us to "come closer" so she could reach over the snack counter and look at our tickets. Couldn't she tell we were first-timers?

The compromises continued once we were in the actual theater. During some of the most poignant, and quiet, parts of our movie, (Pixar's "Up," not in 3-D) we could hear dialogue and very loud rumblings from the movies showing in the two other theaters. At another point, a woman walked into our theater and yelled her friend's name. Her friend, who was there with her young daughter, yelled back and once they were sitting together they chatted and also rustled a plastic bag throughout the film, apologizing when shushed but not getting any quieter.

The distractions weren't only auditory, though -- the screen had a large tear in it that was visible for the majority of the movie. Patrick had a sneaking suspicion that his chair was wet, but he was too scared to touch it to confirm his hunch. All this combined with the small size and high placement of the screen make it tough for anyone to get lost in the movie. We found ourselves distracted so many times that we completely lost the fun of the movie-going experience. What started out as a hopeful outing quickly turned into "Checked it off. Never doing that again."

Disappointing Lineup At This Year's MLK Concert Series In Flatbush

Every year good ol' Marty Markowitz gives Brooklyn two really great free summer concert series. The one in Asser Levy park in Coney Island usually caters to the older, whiter crowd (last year's highlights included Liza Minelli and Huey Lewis and the News). But the real treat is the Martin Luther King Jr. Concert Series held in Wingate Field every year. It's within biking distance of Ditmas Park and you can stop by Four Seasons on the way for a delicious vegan dinner. A couple years ago the series brought superstars like Lauryn Hill and Slick Rick. Last year the lineup was even better with Jill Scott, Erykah Badu, and John Legend. All FREE.

So I've been eagerly awaiting this year's lineup announcement and have been checking the Brooklyn Concerts website nearly every day because I am obsessed like that. The lineup was finally announced last night and yikes is thing disappointing. Teena Marie? Anita Baker? Who? There doesn't even appear to be a Carribean night like in past years. There's one "TBA" date in there, so maybe Marty will come through and bring someone really great. But right now this thing is just sad. And I know, they are free shows, I really have nothing to complain about. Except I do. Because last year we got John Legend. And this year we get Robin Thicke. Son of Alan.

At least we can hop on the Q and go see Hall and Oates.

Crimes Against (Q)-Manity: People Who Ignore Pregnant Ladies

A pregnant (and agitated) reader sends in the following account:

I'm six months pregnant and quite obviously showing. Every morning I get on the B or Q train at Newkirk Ave. There are rarely any seats available. Almost every day what happens is this: I get on the train and end up standing in front of a group of seated people. Several of these people will look up stare directly at my belly, glance up at my face and promptly go back to reading or "sleeping". Often they will continually keep looking up to rudely stare at my protruding tummy. Only once have I been offered a seat, by a kind lady who said she knew what I was going through.

On Friday I was standing on the train, as usual. I looked around the car and saw that I was not the only pregnant woman on the train. In fact, there were two other pregnant women in the car with me and we were all standing! One of the ladies was much more pregnant than me.

It strikes me as unbelievably rude that in the whole car not one person was willing to give up their seat to one of three obviously pregnant women. I thought it was common knowledge that you should always give up your seat to a pregnant, elderly, or disabled person. Apparently I am wrong.

Frustratedly,
Queenie

Have your own gripe? Send it in!

Victorian Flatbush House Tour '09 Recap

After getting our map for this year's Victorian Flatbush house tour we were a little disappointed that no homeowners from Ditmas Park (proper) or Ditmas Park West would open their homes this year. What kind of tour of Victorian Flatbush leaves out Ditmas Park? But by the end of an exhausting day visiting homes in Prospect Park South, Fiske Terrace, West Midwood, Beverley Square West, and Albemarle and Kenmore Terraces, there was no question that we got our money's worth.

The only other house tour we've been on was last year's one in Fort Greene, so we don't have much experience to draw comparisons on, but the Victorian Flatbush tour was decidly different in personal charm. While the Fort Greene tour encouraged owners to leave their homes while visitors traipsed through, one of the main attractions of the Flatbush tour was the homeowners themselves.

One sassy New Zealander gave us a personal tour of her home on Beverley Road, sharing a heartwarming story about the sentimental value of her china set. Another Flatbusher told us that his Prospect Park South home is the "Christmas house" for his family and friends because of its charm and its many many large rooms, perfect for grandchildren and friends who have moved to apartments that are too small for hosting.

Some homeowners embraced their homes' victorian past, covering every spare inch of wall space with antique wallpaper and laying down lush red carpet. Others embraced the modern with sleek, stainless steel kitchen appliances, remodeled bathrooms, including one enormous jacuzzi, and even (cover your ears, Brownstoner) recessed lighting!

It was a real treat to go inside the two houses on Albemarle and Kenmore Terraces because that section of the neighborhood is so unique and seems miles from the frenzied Church and Flatbush Avenues that are only a block away. After visiting the Albemarle house, we followed the pedestrian alley that runs behind the houses, not quite sure where the next house was. We must have looked lost because a woman leaned out of her back door and told us the house we were looking for was the last one on the right. "I hope you like Sarah's house as much as Andrew's!" she called cheerily.

The backyard pictured was a hoot. There was a stack of papers at the entrance, rules to be followed upon entrance to the garden. We rolled our eyes as we read that visitors were to walk slowly, leaving several feet between them and the person in front of them, and upon encountering a stick or twig on the rock path, visitors were to step around it, not on it. However, once we reached the garden and met the homeowners, we realized they had a strange sense of humor and weren't taking themselves too seriously at all. They encouraged everyone to go, two at a time, down a mysterious, narrow path leading to a small hut tucked into the back corner of their garden. When curious guests asked what was inside the hut, the owners told them they had to see for themselves. On the rules list, the hut was referred to as "that which should not be mentioned." We quickly found out why it should not be mentioned. It was a hut full of strange animal skulls and voodoo masks and cow skins and other odd items. Decidedly not vegan. Also decidedly weird. But definitely an amusing end to a great tour.

Crimes Against (Q)-Manity: The Seat Hog

We've got a special guest post for our latest installment of "Crimes Against (Q)-Manity." Reader Q-Bert encountered an exceptionally rude guy on the B train this morning, snapped a pic of him, and writes:

I boarded a B train at Newkirk Avenue this morning (Friday 6/12) a little after 9 a.m. I got one of the few seats available, a middle seat. In the two-seater perpendicular to my row of three was an African-American man sitting by the window who had put his wet umbrella and a dripping cup of ice water in the seat next to his.

At Church Avenue, one stop in, a Hispanic man boarded the train. The only available seat was the one with the umbrella and cup in it. The Hispanic man stopped next to that seat and asked the African-American man, in Spanish, if he could sit down. No answer. He asked again, this time gesturing to the seat. I don't speak much Spanish, but the gesture made it clear what he wanted. The African-American man turned to face him, stared, but said nothing - and didn't move anything off the seat. The guy repeated himself again. More stares, no moving.

At this point, the tension around our seats among other riders was palpable so I gave up my seat to the Hispanic guy, who promptly fell asleep in it. I got another seat a stop later at Prospect Park.

At 7th Avenue, a young white woman boarded the train, asked the African American man to move his things, and he moved the umbrella but not the cup of ice water. He motioned for her to sit down, so she moved the cup herself and did so.

On a rainy morning in Brooklyn, don't we have enough problems without seat-hoggers? Especially of the wet-umbrella variety? (Perceived) racism is just the icing on the cake.

Yikes! I thought the female man-sitter on my train this morning was annoying, but she was a saint compared to this guy. If you've got an experience you'd like to share, we'd love to hear from you.

Bishop Crook Lights Fixed; Lazy Local Newsteam Relieved They Don't Have To Cover Them

Some good news to report on the new Bishop Crook lights with their oddly placed "No Parking" signs. They've been fixed! Someone working for the city must be an FV reader, because a few weeks after we reported "No Parking" signs were attached too high up on the new poles, predicting there would be many contested parking tickets in the coming months, the signs have been lowered to a normal height. More importantly, they also lowered the Stop sign on the corner of Newkirk and Rugby that was so high up it could easily be missed by an inattentive driver.

Pretty boring story, but it opened our eyes to how lazy the reporting from one of our local news stations is. We were contacted by an "assignment editor" from News 12 Brooklyn, the local news network that only people with cablevision know about, for a piece they wanted to do about the new lights. They sent an email to our tips page, so they had obviously read our entry about the lights, but the e-mail made it sound like they were informing us about the situation. They didn't say anything like "We saw your entry about" or "We read on your page that...". Instead, they said things like "We heard some residents report 'no parking' signs have been installed too high on the bishop crook lights. Therefore, people may not see the signs and may have issues with parking tickets." Yeah, we know. That's exactly what we said in our entry. And they also informed us about "a stop sign high up a light pole at Newkirk and Rugby." Oh really? How'd you find out about that? Oh, you saw it in our post. Right.

So after rephrasing our post they then asked that we track down neighbors who are concerned about the poles, get their contact information, and send it back to News 12 so they could come out and interview them. They also asked that we take more pictures of the signs and send them to News 12. So basically they wanted us to do all of the work. When we kindly suggested that they come out to Newkirk Avenue and find interview subjects themselves, they pretty much killed the story right there. I have a feeling if this story ever happened and they made it out to Ditmas Park they would've asked us to hold the camera and edit the footage at the end of the day. Lazy bones!

Tour de Brooklyn Rolls Through Ditmas Park

Did you catch that slow stampede of cyclists taking over the neighborhood yesterday? That was one tiny leg of Transportation Alternatives' 5th Annual Tour de Brooklyn, a 23-mile ride that started and ended in Coney Island. Skip to 2:26 in the video below to see the Flatbush parts, including some quick glimpses of Cortelyou, Ditmas, and Newkirk.

This Weekend Only: Normal Q Train Service!

Good news for Flatbushers with weekend plans in the city! We spotted this sign on the Newkirk Avenue ticket booth tonight, alerting riders that service on the Q train will finally run normally this weekend. This comes as a huge relief. But it's not too promising that the MTA has professionally printed signs instructing weekend Q train conductors to skip Newkirk Avenue, while normal service is so uncommon that they only scrawl those announcements on scrap paper.

Crimes Against (Q)-Manity: The Guy Who's Never Heard of Headphones

It's been awhile since we've contributed to our series on asshole subway riders. I was beginning to think some strange Lost-like time shift happened and all the morons I used to ride the Q and B with were sent back in time and actually raised right by their parents. HA! Thankfully I came across this douchebag on the Q this morning, who snapped me out of my optimistic fantasy world and brought me back to reality.

This dude got on at Cortelyou and proudly blasted the shitty noise from his PSP all the way into Manhattan. It's annoying enough when people have their iPods turned up so much that you can hear last year's Beyonce song seeping out of their headphones from 20 feet away. But when assholes like this guy get on the train blasting their PSP at full volume with no headphones and pretend like there's nothing wrong with broadcasting garbled techno video game background music that's just not okay.

It's entirely possible that this guy isn't an asshole at all. He might just be dumb. It wasn't like he was playing Brain Age 2 on Nintendo DS. He was playing some awful knock-off version of Street Fighter. So in addition to the annoying music blaring out of his headphones we were treated to random bursts of "Fight him now!" and "Get him down!" Ugh. I guess a lack of intelligence would help explain this guy's nonchalance about the increasingly angered glares thrown his way by his fellow passengers. If he had the slightest bit of common sense he'd realize that muddled rave music is the last thing groggy people want to hear on their morning commute. I've never wanted "Show some manners" guy on my train more.

Do Not Stop At Newkirk Avenue

Some pictures are worth a thousand words. This one is worth a thousand four-letter words.