The Luna Park Gazette

We sold off a bit our family history the other week, but there was plenty left over at the end of the day. My sister and I held a part of a garage sale outside our house in an attempt to clear out the closets and raise some money for some home improvement. I’ve walked by scores of these things in my life: someone takes all their stuff from the attic or basement and hopes for the best. But this is the first time I ever sat on the other side of the table. And I hope it’s the last. I mean, it wasn’t so terrible; we actually met some very nice people. But we gave up a Saturday and wound up with a grand total of $53. Still, as my late father used to say, that’s $53 dollars we didn’t have before. We sat there, surrounded by old clothes, knick-knacks, and other such stuff that we’ve found in the course of our clean-up. Earlier in the week we had gone around the neighborhood putting up fliers announcing the sale and I posted a notice on Craigslist, complete with an image of a treasure chest bu...

Friday night, 7 p.m. I was doing a stake out at a Thai restaurant on 28th Street and Third Avenue. With all that rain washing over the asphalt, I was glad to be inside. From where I was sitting, I had a perfect view of the apartment building across the street. Now all I could do was sit, eat, and wait for the subject to show up. This wasn't the original plan for my evening. I was thinking of going to Barnes & Noble at Union Square and catch a reading by Paul Krugman. I read that guy's column all the time and I figured it would be fun to hang out with like-minded people. But my aunt was coming back to New York after spending the summer in the Berkshires and her bus was due in at 3:45 p.m. I expected her to call me at my office when she arrived at her apartment and then I'd suggest that we have dinner together. Only I never got the call. So I headed up to her apartment and asked the doorman to announce me. No soap. She wasn't in. It was past 6 p.m. Her bus should have...

I just want to thank the compact but hearty group that turned out for today's blogade on my home turf (toif?) of Bay Ridge. This was the first time I ever hosted such an event and I'm proud to say I didn't lose a single blogger. I was so nervous in the days leading up to this event that I didn't realize that I was having a great time until late in the day. We met at Omonia Cafe on Third Avenue and the upstairs all to ourselves, where we talked, ate, and kibbutezed. Of course, I realize now that I didn't say all the things I wanted to say about the history of Bay Ridge, but I hope you guys got the general idea. The guest list included: Bed-Stuy Blog Brooklyn Junction Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn Flatbush Gardener I'm Seeing Green Self-Absorbed Boomer Also joining us was David Scheffler of Swell Designs. Thanks one and all for coming out!

I figure if I'm going to live in the five-borough insane asylum that is New York City, I should get out there and enjoy all the cultural stuff that this town has to offer. I've done the Mayberry routine for a decade, living in small towns and wondering why. I met some great people, but it wasn't for me, at least not at this stage of my life. Everybody grew up together and everybody is pretty much married to everybody else--several times over. A single guy from out of town doesn't have too much to do on the weekends in these places. All right, so here I am, back in the New York groove for 10 years now, and I often find myself crashing in front of the DVD player instead of going out on the town. The other night I ordered myself to go to the Barnes & Noble at Union Square and see Richard Russo, who was reading from his latest novel, Bridge of Sighs . It was cultural, something that I couldn't do in the sticks and it was happening early enough that I could go out on...

Ego alert! My article and video about Coney Island are finally ready for your reading and viewing pleasure at TheStreet.com. I sent the link to the story to just about everyone I know, but in case you somehow escaped my desperate need for praise, you can find the story here . In the looking at the video, I think I speak just a little too quickly and I don't make enough eye contact with the camera. You're supposed to treat that lens as another person, so I'm sorry if it looks like I'm giving you the cold shoulder, but I'm new at this stuff. The lede on the print version of the story got trimmed in a way that I did not like, but that is the nature of journalism, I suppose. I'm trying to put that behind me, though, and focus on the good stuff. Linda, the tour guide who showed me around Coney Island, wrote such a lovely e-mail to me that it nearly brought tears to my eyes. At the time this video was shot, Linda's mother was literally at death's door and, in ...

All right, all you Kings County bloggers, it's time to come out from behind the keyboard and face the world. Or at least one part of it. On Sunday, Oct. 21, I will be hosting Blogade, a monthly meeting of Brooklyn bloggers in beautiful downtown Bay Ridge. (I don't if it's really downtown, but I like how that sounds.) This is my first time hosting one of these events, so naturally I'm a nervous wreck. The bloggers group has its own web page, but we want to reach out to all bloggers in Brooklyn. The Who : You. That is, you, if you blog in Brooklyn. The Where : Omonia Cafe, 7612 Third Avenue, Brooklyn, NY. For about 8 bucks you get a delicious pastry and a damn good cup of coffee. The When : 1 p.m. to about 4 p.m. The Why : Meet, greet, mingle, schmooze, kibbutz, and sound off about your blog or anything else that might be bugging you. This is a great group of people and it is diverse as hell. I've traveled to parts of my borough that I never would have dreamed of goin...

"Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams, I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands." ---Walt Whitman I could have sworn I saw an old girlfriend of mine on the subway the other day. She got on the train at Dekalb Avenue and sat directly across from me in the two-person seat. Those are my favorite seats on the subway, especially the one against the conductor's booth. I can rest or sleep and dream I'm on a beautiful beach instead of riding the damn subway. But I wasn't dreaming on this particular morning; this was real. I'm just not sure who it was. I'll call her Kate, though that wasn't her name. I went out with her nearly 30 years ago and I haven't seen her for at least 25 years and probably more. I studied this woman's face--as much as I could without being called a stalker. It looked like Kate, though a few pounds lighter. The hairdo, h...

( This post originated with an exercise from my Solo Performer 2 class that I’m currently taking at the People’s Improv Theater. We were asked to write directly to someone and the instant Jen, our instructor, gave us the assignment, I knew to whom I would be writing. I can’t believe I didn’t think of this on my own, but I guess I was too close to my subject. Anyway, here goes... ) Dear Mom, It’s been five years since you left us and I miss you very much. I’m still in the house; it’s just me now since Dad died in January and I get pretty lonely sometimes. The place is much too big for me and it holds so many memories. It seems like every day I find something that reminds me of you. Joan and I have been cleaning up, slowly, of course, but we’re getting there. We found your wedding dress a few weeks ago. That was a shock, I can tell you. I always think of that photo of you on your wedding day and how beautiful--and how frightened--you looked. It’s a bit faded, of course...

I watched the Italian woman and her daughter approach the ticket window at the Long Beach train station. The women had about five words of English between them, and the ticket clerk, a heavyset man in a state of permanent exasperation was trying to explain the concept of "off-peak" to them. "When are you coming back?" he asked. The mother struggled with the question. A woman standing behind her looked up at the clock and back to the ticket clerk, anxious to buy her ticket. "Ah...tonight...maybe 8...or later." I looked away from the scene to check on the status of my train, the 3:10, heading back to the Flatbush Avenue LIRR station. It was on-time and waiting for me out on Track 4A. I had about 20 minutes to wait so I looked around at the faces that made up the waiting room's cast of characters. In addition to the Italian women, there was the obese man two chairs away from me, whose bloated body spread over the seat as if he were a perman...

It's amazing how certain images can get into head and makes themselves at home. The other night I was walking along Third Avenue when I happened to look up at the health club on 71st Street and saw a man on the Stairmaster. There was something about this guy that just stuck in my mind. He was alone, framed in the window, little more than a silhouette. The gym, of which I am a member, seemed to be empty, except for this man, who methodically pumped his legs up and down like a wind-up toy. It was pretty late, close to 11 p.m., and it was Wednesday, Hump Day, so people were out celebrating the work week's downward slide. I was one of them, having just left the Salty Dog after a night with my Bay Ridge Meet-Up group. But the Stairmaster man was above it all, looking down on the avenue while strenuously going nowhere. It seemed like such a lonely forlorn image that it made me think of an Edward Hopper painting. I'm sure if I knew the guy's story all the drama I saw in that w...