The Luna Park Gazette

I texted my sister a warning as soon as it began: “Ridley is singing!” We’ve been watching a British detective series on PBS called “Ridely” for two seasons now. It’s a decent show starring Adrian Dunbar as a retired cop who is lured back into service as a consultant. I’ve seen better, frankly, but it’s well done, and Dunbar is backed up by a fine cast and likeable characters. My biggest beef with the program is that our hero is part owner of a jazz bar and every so often—far too often if you ask me—he takes to the stage to sing. The songs, for the most post, are painfully bad, especially one number called “Open Up Your Door,” which had me jumping out my window. In addition, Dunbar singing’s voice is, let’s say…subpar, and what the hell does singing in a jazz club have to do with solving crimes? We all have our hobbies and side hustles, but this plotline seems arbitrary, and it is by the far the weakest aspect of the series. If the writers ever decide to jettison the sin...

“ It is forbidden to despair.”- Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav Thanks, Frank, I owe you one. Frank Sinatra did some heavy lifting at my gym this morning when he showed up to pull me out of a serious funk. I’ve doing been a number on myself over the last few days, lurching into my crackpot hitlist of all the things I don’t like about myself. I’m not sure what triggered this latest bout with the blues, but I suspect that it might be a simple case of The Bungee Effect, where I’m feeling good about life and my Jungian shadow self gets up out the darkest corner of my mind, roars “Oh, hell, no!” and yanks me back into the abyss. I honestly believe I’ve been making progress in my battle with depression, but I’ve been working on my emotional highway to hell for so many years that misery has become the path of least resistance. It started on Saturday when I joined one of my Meetup groups for the annual Gowanus Open Studios event in downtown Brooklyn, where artists and venues open their d...

I staggered through the depths of the Atlantic Avenue subway station Saturday afternoon ready to admit defeat. I had been so looking forward to this day, when my blogging buddy Xris of Flatbush Gardner and his partner would be hosting one of their fabulous get-togethers at their beautiful home. There was no hemming or hawing on this one; no debating if I should or shouldn’t go like I do before just about every other occassion that catches my interest. I happily RSVP’d the second I got the invitation. This was going to great, I thought. And indeed, it was. I had an absolutely wonderful time meeting new people whilst merrily munching away on all sorts of delicious eats. But I had to work my way through several circles of Hell before arriving at my destination, thanks to the MTA. I knew things were going to be rough when I learned that my local subway, the R train, had been shut down for the weekend for several stops in my neighborhood and replaced by a free bus service...

I stood at the corner of 9th Street and Fourth Avenue, checked my phone and made a decision. “I can walk this,” I said aloud. I had been waiting for a bus that would take me from Park Slope down to Red Hook. But there was no sign of one and I didn’t want to be late for an event being held down by docks, so I elected to hoof it. This was on Friday night and I was getting out of my comfort zone routine of Dr. Praeger's veggie burgers and Netflix. I prefer to lay low at the end of the work week, but I’ve been looking to shake things up a little and scrubbing my regularly scheduled hibernation seemed like a good start. I was attending the Scrappy Reading Series , which was being held at Compere Collective on Van Brunt Street, the kickoff for Red Hook Open Studies, where local artists’ studios and workspaces open to visitors for the entire weekend. “Celebrate all that it is to be scrappy with some of the finest locals on the planet,” the event’s organizers said in an onlin...