G'Day Bklyn

Spring Fling Friday

Looking for some place to shop and sip cocktails this Friday evening?  Check out the Brooklyn Collective Spring Event, showcasing more than 15 homegrown designers, from fashion and jewelry to painting, sculpture and photography.

The collective recently moved a couple of doors down on Columbia Street, to take up the back space in General Nightmare Antiques. The terrific new space is a great place to peruse some Brooklyn design, and mingle with crafty locals. Some of the artisanal work on show at the moment: Tattoo Girl Lingerie, AshiDashi socks, clothing by LJ Lambillotte, sculpture by Jen Kelly and Lisel Ashlock paintings.

Brooklyn Collective was founded in 2004 by Rachel Goldberg and Tessa Phillips, jewelry and fashion designers respectively, as a way to give other artists a place to display and sell their creations. Member artists share the rent, hence the idea of it being a “collective”, and get to keep 100% of profits from any of their creations sold.

Besides complimentary cocktails, there will also be a live performance by musical duo SORD. The Spring event runs this Friday, March 26, from 7pm to midnight at 196 Columbia Street, between Sackett and Degraw Streets in Red Hook.

Eat the Rich

Graffiti Spied En Route to School

I like graffiti; there’s a rawness to good, creative graffiti art that I really admire. Then, of course, there are the random scrawls sprayed across public and private property – many of them infantile and uninspired, like a middle school anatomy lesson some delinquent plastered on the freshly-painted sidewall of  a recently renovated house on Sackett Street.

And somewhere in between, there’s stuff like this scrawling spotted on the Union Street bridge crossing the murky Gowanus Canal, best known these days as a noxious Superfund site in urgent need of a cleanup. I don’t know if the sign is a jab at the much contested Superfund project or just insightful commentary on local property prices, school admissions or the lines outside Blue Marble to get an ice cream  on a warm spring day.

Mostly, it makes we ponder who went to the effort to stop on the bridge, pull out a spray can and leave this note. What was the motivation? It’s too political to be kids – and do kids these days even know what a yuppie is? It seems too self-loathing to be hipsters. So, I’m left wondering.

Either way, it makes me stop, smile and mutter Eat the Rich out of earshot of my children  en route to school and back each day.

Is Your Car Kosher?

This sign perplexed me and made me smile, chuckle even, one sunny afternoon this week, when I pondered what could possibly make a car wash kosher. I have a pretty good working knowledge of things Jewish, being a New Yorker and having many friends from whom to seek guidance, plus both my children went to a Jewish preschool. So, by default, we inherited token Jewish status for the duration.

I did seek guidance on this one. I asked three Jewish friends what could possibly be meant by the sign, planted outside a car wash on Fourth Ave. near 1st Street in Brooklyn. And I came up with nada. Since the place doesn’t sell food, neither enlightened friend could think of any reason a car wash could guarantee a kosher vehicle. One friend suggested perhaps the workers expertly remove any trace of leavened food product from a vehicle in time for Passover, but that was a stab in the dark, to be sure.

I’ve yet to wander inside and ask the Golden Touch folks what the sign means, but I will, and I promise to report back. Meantime, it still gives me a chuckle whenever I pass by.

Mutts on Show at Lyceum

It’s going to be a rainy weekend, too wet for the dog park or long strolls with Rover around the neighborhood, so take shelter and head to the Brooklyn Lyceum for its first Brooklyn Mutt Show.

Proving that even the scraggiest mixed-breed beast can be a winner, there are dog show categories including sloppiest kisser, most indistinct and looks most like owner. It’s $10 per category to enter and you can enter as many of the slots as you like. Of course, your dog doesn’t have to be a mutt to enter, but prizes are for mutts only and purebreds will be left wanting and waiting perhaps for their next shot at the Westminster Kennel Club shows.

Besides the main event, there will be puppy products – from grooming stuff to clothes – for sale, as well as the Lyceum cafe’s coffee and treats. And as if the  chance to hang out with some of the coolest mutts in Brooklyn and beyond isn’t enough, some of the proceeds from the Mutt Show will go to Brooklyn Animal Resource Coalition (BARC), a no-kill shelter in Williamsburg.

The Brooklyn Mutt Show runs Saturday, March 13 and Sunday, March 14 from 11am to 7pm at the Brooklyn Lyceum, 227 Fourth Ave.