by Daniel Roberts

On a cold, rainy Tuesday afternoon in Bensonhurst, nine adults and seven kids are warm and dry inside the Edith & Carl Marks Jewish Community House, where they’re cooking up a storm.

“Those potatoes are gonna be black by the time they’re finished and ready to cook,” yells Rifki Berger across the clamor of slicing and dicing. Berger is a graduate student in social work who comes each Tuesday to help out with this program. Today, the children, with the help of some neighborhood seniors, are cooking latkes.

“Well, we’re going to throw ‘em in water to slow the process,” answers Ari Wasserman, the program director, with an authoritative grin. Wasserman runs this program, which joins senior citizens and young children every Tuesday at 3:30pm for an hour and a half of cooking and eating.

“We get good kids,” says Wasserman. “They like helping, and they like learning. It’s been so fun to see these two generations interact with each other, and to see certain seniors emerging as leaders each time.” Intergenerational is the term that Lilia Turevsky, a program coordinator at the JCH, likes to use when she speaks fondly of this “cooking club” idea. “Today is a really quiet group,” she says. “The last time, I couldn’t even hear my voice. When boys are here, you can imagine, so much louder.”

Regularly the group gets a turnout of ten or eleven seniors, with fifteen kids. On this Tuesday, perhaps due to the rain, just six seniors and seven children showed up for the group. Curiously, they are also all women, leaving Wasserman rather outnumbered. “Next time, we’re going to have boys,” he says with excitement. Then, as if it’s just dawning on him: “And they’re going to be really hungry and loud.”

Still, the room is far from quiet. At three different tables, little girls, all nine-year-olds in the third grade, shred carrots and potatoes on a grating board as adult women look on. Meanwhile, atop a modest gas camping stove, Wasserman has set a single black cooking pan. Inside, first, goes some oil. “Canola oil, not olive oil,” he explains. “A little bit healthier.” Occasionally, he yells instructions to the girls from his table, like, “Laura, Claire, don’t forget the eggs and the matzoh meal!”

“We are a team. We work together to make the meal, and afterwards we eat together,” says Turevsky. “Everyone is so cute and happy. And really, it’s one of the funniest things I’ve seen in my life.” She adds this last comment while pointing out that one of the girls, Nicole, has potato mush in her long hair and on the side of her face.

The kids that come are different every week, but some of the seniors are second-timers. One such woman is Diana Krystal, who fondly recalls making a turkey in the first week: “We took a bosque pear, cut it in half, and put that on the tray for the body, then we took orange slices for the feet and head, used a cashew for the neck-hanging thing, and sliced up apples for wings. The kids had the best time putting icing all over it. But this time, latkes, this takes a lot more effort and real cooking.”

Kids prepared makeshift, multi-ingredient "Turkeys" in the first week of the cooking group. Photo courtesy of the Bensonhurst JCH.

As Krystal cracks an egg and brags, “Look at that, one hand,” a little girl named Laura says, “That’s no fair, you have so much practice.” Once they’ve filled two measuring cups with a mixture of shredded potatoes, carrots, and onions, Krystal announces, “Okay, who’s going to bring these over to Ari?” All of the hands go up. The group chants, Me, me, me. “All right, Gracie was first. When you bring it to Ari, you tell him these are the vegetable latkes.”

“Everyone knows I’m turning on the gas now,” Wasserman shouts, “so everyone stay away from the table.” Meanwhile, sitting with Laura is her friend Klare. “I do this at home all the time,” she says. “The carrots aren’t really part of the recipe but I bet they’ll taste good anyway.” Laura suddenly nudges Klare in the ribs and says, “Look, our hands are orange.”

Once the mixture goes in the pan, latkes fry up in only three or four minutes. Wasserman begins dishing them out to the kids and adults, and everyone sits down and falls quiet. “After we eat, Ari asks the kids questions or teaches them Hebrew words,” explains Turevsky. The kids all look excited for trivia. “I want the million-dollar question,” one girl whispers slyly to her neighbor.

“Okay girls, here’s my million-dollar question today. Why do we use oil in the pain with the latkes?” One girl is quick to answer: “Because they used it in the menorah,” she yells.

Meanwhile, when an adult mentions ketchup, Klare declares, “I hate ketchup.” But what about on French fries, someone asks. “I hate French fries,” she continues. But latkes are similar, both made of potatoes, right? “That’s not the same,” Klare insists. “French fries have fat. So do latkes, but it’s the good kind.”

As the latkes disappear and clean-up begins, the adults grow nostalgic already for this little club. “I have had a ball doing this, I really loved it,” says Diana Krystal. Today is the fourth and final meeting, though. Turevsky says the group was a success and will continue as soon as possible. The money to start the group came from a grant given by the UJA Federation of New York, and, as Rifki Berger explains, the donors want to see a final cookbook at the end. “We’re going to put in the recipes we used, as well as lots of pictures of the kids,” says Berger. “Hopefully we can continue the program.”

Dinner, or perhaps it was a pre-dinner snack, is over. But before the kids can hurry off, Berger asks them: “So girls, which did you like better, the plain potato pancakes or the vegetable?” Three children answer in unison: “Both!”

At the Brooklyn Bowl in Williamsburg Sunday, amidst an eleven-hour marathon performance of every original Beatles song with ukulele accompaniment, it was hard not to wonder: What would John Lennon have thought about this?

Entering the Bowl at any time on Sunday, customers could hear the lyrics of John, Paul, George and Ringo blasting from the restaurant section, before they could even turn left and see the giant stage. Ukulele-strumming and folksy vocals drowned out the sound of bowling pins crashing down.

A band performs at the Brooklyn Bowl Sunday, accompanied by event organizer Roger Greenawalt on the ukulele (far right). Photo courtesy of Justin Li.

One hundred eighty five Beatles songs were performed in one day by a collection of 60 different singers and over 80 musicians—each performance infused with ukulele. The idea came from Roger Greenawalt, a music producer and ukulele enthusiast whose discovery of the musician Ben Kweller was profiled in The New Yorker in 1997. Greenawalt planned the concert with his partner David Barratt.

The proceeds, meanwhile, are going to Yoko Ono. The event’s leaders were hazy on what exactly she might do with the money, or if she even knew about the event. “One thing we want to make clear is we’re not making fun of her,” said Art Bonanno, a producer who worked with Roger Greenawalt to organize the day. “It’s all very tongue-in-cheek.”

Still, Bonanno was quick to defend the legitimacy of this event as something more than a quirky entertainment. He was aware that many people came thinking, as he imitated it, “Beatles on ukulele, oh, ha ha.” Yet, he countered, “Then you hear some of the songs and realize this is very serious, beautiful music.”

Photographer Phillippe Noisette agreed. “It’s no joke,” he said. “The ukulele is like a perfect starting point for all the rest of the accompaniment.”

The event began officially at 11 a.m., though almost 80 performers showed up before that for an open ukulele group lesson on the stage with Greenawalt. As the day went on, Greenawalt often sat on stage with his favorite instrument, joining groups that typically do not use it in their music. In many cases, however, Greenawalt was not needed and could take a break as another ukulele player stepped in.

Ukers crowd the stage during the early morning group lesson that took place before the concert officially began. Photo courtesy of Dave Cirilli, Giant Noise.

The tone of the concert oscillated between sedated and exuberant. With audience members sitting on the floor, lovingly clutching ukuleles or drinks from the bar, it felt like a Woodstock reunion—and for many of the participants, it may have been. “This is what we call 60s psychadelia,” announced the MC after one of the early song sets ended. “Robby Shampoo? Robby Shampoo, if that is your name, we need you at the front, you are next up.”

Many of the day’s musicians and audience members were local to Brooklyn, but some had made long journeys. Barbara Mansfield, for one, drove down from the Catskills. Her son, Killian Mansfield, was 16 when he died this past August of cancer. Killian was a ukulele fanatic and managed to release an album, Somewhere Else, just before he died. His mother brought her son’s best friend, Kira DiBetta, with her to the Bowl, and they sat together enjoying the atmosphere.

Mansfield said she knew about the event months in advance and wanted to come in honor of her son, who was “completely in love” with the ukulele. “If you’re a uker,” she said, “you hear about these things.” Mansfield explained that for Killian, the appeal of the ukulele “wasn’t about a cult of untouchable rock stars. It’s just an instrument that makes people happy to be playing music. People don’t get into many fights over the ukulele.” They also, it seems, do not smash them on the stage. Many of the musicians carried theirs in special cases, or showed them off proudly, holding them up from the audience to show their approval after certain songs.

The event attracted a fair share of small-time celebrities as well. Natt Wolff and Alex Wolff, who have a show on Nickelodeon called “The Naked Brothers Band,” showed up halfway through the day in matching suits and ties. “They’re like Hannah Montana to the tenth power,” noted Noisette before heading over to photograph them. “It’s a big deal that they’re here.”

The most obvious achievement of the day was of how the catalogue cut across genres. Between each of the different solo singers, large groups, and ukulele trios, audiences were given a taste of indie, funk, rock, soul, and folk. Between a singer who crooned with a more laid back tone, a la Jack Johnson, and A.L.X., a New York singer who performed “Back in the U.S.S.R” wearing a red leather jacket and tight pants, shaking his hips like Rod Stewart, the bands and singers were certainly eclectic.

Brooklyn was well represented. Anna Rose, who fronts a local band by the same name, was elated to be participating. She and her four band members were perfectly happy to stand and wait nearly six hours just to take the stage for two songs. “Its one of those things,” said Rose, “you don’t want to touch The Beatles with a ten-foot pole, but the uke is a very cool, underused instrument in pop music today. We don’t always use the uke, but we’re happy to mix it up, and getting an assignment like this, trying out a new arrangement, that’s a big appeal for us.”

Just after finishing a punchy cover of “Rocky Raccoon,” Tamar Kamin, of the band Van Allen Belt, grabbed the microphone. “You know,” she told the crowd, “of all the bowling alleys I’ve played today, this one is by far the most attentive.”

Kyung Dong Oh stands in front of a charred door with his hands in his pockets. Every now and then he walks from one side of the building to the other. But mostly he looks at the boarded-up windows and the soot-covered entrance and the bright blue tarp covering most of the sunny yellow cement structure.

Kyung Dong Oh paces in front of his building, which was badly damaged in a fire last week. Photo: Singh/Brooklyn Ink

This had been home for Oh, and his wife Kyung Ja, but now it is just remains. A fire destroyed the Cobble Hill building last Tuesday morning, while the Ohs were on a morning walk. Everything that the Ohs had amassed in 20 years of living at 178 Smith St. burned to ashes in just 20 minutes, according to Antonio Gonzalez, who saw the blaze unfold.

“It was business as usual but then I saw smoke so I went outside and saw the store on fire,” Gonzalez, who owns Tony’s Hardware and Plumbing Supplies across the street from the Ohs’ building, said. He said that the fire began downstairs, in a shoe repair shop, and then flames shot up and burned everything, including the scaffolding next door.

Gonzalez has been in the neighborhood for 53 years, and has owned Tony’s for 14 years. He said he knows the Ohs well. Everyone in the neighborhood does. Carmen Rivera, who works at the Felmingo Corp. deli a half block down from the site said that she was sad to hear about the fire. “They’re nice people,” Rivera said. “Been in the neighborhood a long time.”

The Ohs, who are known in the neighborhood as Joseph and Anna, owned a dry cleaning business in the area for many years. They decorated the walls of their shop with postcards from patrons on vacation and baby pictures of frequent customers, but rent hikes in Cobble Hill forced Trusting Cleaners to close last year.

“They were a beloved couple in the area, with the dry cleaners. They were well, well known in the community,” Reverend Robert Powers, administrator of St. Paul & St. Agnes Parish, said.

Though they no longer owned the store, the Ohs remained in their apartment above the shoe repair shop. They had gone out for a walk the morning of the fire, and returned to find their building ablaze. The building itself was insured, but all of the couple’s furniture and belongings are gone.

“We’ve lost everything,” Kyung Dong Oh said.

Oh and his wife are staying with their daughter Theresa, but it is a one-bedroom apartment so Oh wants to find a small place of his own to stay in.

“We have all these friends asking, ‘stay here, stay here,’ but we don’t know how long it will be,” Oh said. “It’s not a quick turnaround—it might be 1, 2, 3 years—but we’re looking to get back home.”

His neighbors are trying to help. Powers and members of his parish created a fund to help ease the many costs the Ohs face in the coming weeks and months. Because of the couple’s relationship with the neighborhood, “we thought it was natural to have a fund for them to draw on,” Powers said. Linda Blyer, a longtime neighbor who has been deeply involved in helping the Ohs after the fire, estimated that in the week since the fire, the parish has already collected $1,000. Blyer said that the church is also hoping to hold a potluck fundraising event in January to collect donations.

“They’re from another country so they don’t have a lot of relatives here, just their children.” Blyer said. “So they’ve become our family and we’ll try to do anything we can to help them.”

Oh has been grateful for all the help, he said. “There’s so many people asking, ‘what do you need?’ They want to help us put our life back in order.”

Rick Moody spoke exclusively to the Ink on Monday night about the process that his story, “Some Contemporary Characters,” has undergone and how the idea came about. The Ink has been re-posting this story since it began, and you can continue to follow it with us or on Electric Literature’s Twitter feed.

Moody in 2001. Photo courtesy of Associated Press (Jeff Geissler).

Moody said that he does not actually use Twitter very often, or hasn’t in the past. “I don’t tweet my own life narrative, but the character clock is what’s really interesting to me,” he said. Twitter, as any user of the platform knows, only allows 140 characters per “tweet,” including spaces. “I became obsessed with the idea of creating for that character clock,” said Moody.

Writing a story for Twitter was Moody’s own idea. The people from Electric Literature, a new multi-media publication that publishes fiction both in print and to iPhones and Kindles, just happened to call him at the right time. “They had published work by [fellow New York writers] Jim Shepard and Lydia Davis, who are both friends of mine, and they wanted me to write something for their second issue,” Moody explained. “I said, ‘Well hey, if you guys are going to be all electric, I’ve been doing this thing for Twitter…’ and they really liked the idea.”

Moody said that writing the story in a tweet-by-tweet format was quite difficult and took him about five months to do. The author also mentioned his interest in the way that the tweets load backwards, with the most recent missive at the top of a feed, so that a person could actually read the story either way. Moody did just that—after doing a “practice run” tweeting the whole story to one friend, he tried to read it from finish to start.

Electric Literature began tweeting the story on Monday, November 30 at 10 a.m. When the story concludes tonight, it will have taken 153 tweets in all. The story, as it has unfolded since Monday, is about a romance, set in Brooklyn, between an old man and a much younger girl. Both are cautious, and each tweet switches from the thoughts of one character to the other. “The story actually, due to the way it alternates perspectives,” said Moody, “has this pre-masticated sort of quality.”

There is a question of how Twitterers are choosing to consume the story. Many tweets and subsequent articles have wondered as to whether people are viewing the story on Electric Lit’s direct timeline, seeing only the story, or if they are staying in their main feed, reading the story mixed in with tweets by all of the other users they follow. This latter option would conceivably create a whole new kind of publishing, in which the narrative is even more spliced than it already might be in its divided tweet form.

After only the first day of the story’s publication on Twitter, some outlets observed a problem: Electric Literature had invited anyone and everyone to “re-tweet” the story, but doing so caused many Twitter users to see Moody’s story repeatedly in their Twitter feed, which annoyed many people. When asked about this, Moody observed playfully, “That’s sort of horrible but also really postmodern.”

Yet some sources were less kind with their commentary on this problem, such as Melville House, a small publishing house located in DUMBO. “Innovative publisher develops new way to make Rick Moody annoying,” they wrote, calling the multiple re-tweets a “fiasco.”

Andy Hunter, editor and co-publisher of Electric Literature, believes most of the negative reactions come from a “very small, but vocal percentage of the whole.” Hunter said over the phone: “The people that experience the overlap are people in media, or people that work in the field, like book bloggers. So they don’t use Twitter the way most people do, they use it for business purposes to try and track what’s going on in the literature world. I guess we just didn’t expect it would be that annoying to people. We thought that people in book media would be more interested in the content of the story, and less concerned with clutter in their Twitter feeds.”

Still, Hunter and his colleague Scott Lindenbaum have taken the criticism to heart at least partially, because they’ve modified their plan for the next time they try this: “We’re definitely going to do more Twitter fiction,” Hunter said. “But probably not in the co-publishing manner. If we did do it again, we’d try to get partners that really wouldn’t have so much overlap.”

As for embracing new technology, “I’m kind of still dragged kicking and screaming into this,” Moody said with a laugh. “This is what’s happening and you can’t just blind your eyes to it, you know, so I figure ‘Hey, get to know your enemy, try it all out.’” Other writers that have attracted large followings on Twitter include Colson Whitehead, who also lives in Brooklyn, Chuck Palahniuk and Susan Orlean.

Minor grievances aside, Moody and the team at Electric Literature believe this has been a success. “We got over 10,000 extra followers of the story,” said Hunter. “The ratio of positive to negative comments is about 7 to 1. So it’s been very successful as far as using Twitter as a tool to expand literature and get people involved. And that’s what literature is all about.”

Whether there is a future for “Twitter fiction,” Moody is the first to admit: “It’s a gimmick. Even my own! Whether it’s a good story, we’ll have to see in the days to come, but the one clear lesson is that literature is very hard to do in 140 characters.”

Diego Sucuzhanay has a choice to make. He can try to go back to life as it was last year, when he would wake up every morning, drive to his real estate office in Bushwick, spend his day selling apartments and return home to his wife and his new-born child. Sucuzhanay can try to be the man he was until one year ago. Or he can continue being the witness for his brother Jose, killed in a hate crime on December, 7, 2008.

Attack

That day, at 3 in the morning, Jose, 31, was coming home to Kossuth Place, Bushwick. He was walking, arm in arm, with another one of his brothers, Romel. It was cold and they were tired. Two men emerged from a car, shouting slurs against gays and Hispanics. Then, they attacked. Jose was hit over the head with a bottle, kicked and beaten into unconsciousness with a baseball bat. He died five days later at Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens, one day before his mother, Julia, who was flying in from Ecuador, could reach him.

Diego Sucuzhanay, four years younger than Jose, lost his brother, his business partner, and the person he trusted the most. From the very beginning he felt that that crime wasn’t just against his brother, or his family. Rather, it was a crime against an entire community. “I understood immediately,” he says.

A few weeks before Jose’s death, Sucuzhanay had read about the attack against Marcelo Lucero, a 37-year-old Ecuadorian, who was stabbed to death, in Patchogue, Long Island, by a group of teenagers who were looking for a Latino to beat up.  “I told my brother that it was unacceptable,” he said. They spoke about the violence against Hispanics. They considered attending some rallies against hate crimes; they thought it was necessary to act. But they never followed through; they had their busy lives, and their business to take care. “I couldn’t believe it was something that could happen to my family,” said Sucuzhanay.

From Ecuador to New York

The Sucuzhanay brothers were born in the region of Canar, a rural area of Southern Ecuador. Their father, Florentino Hidalgo, and their mother, Julia, were farmers. The land didn’t feed all their 13 children. In the Nineties, Florentino moved to New York in the 1990s. His sons would soon join him. Diego left his hometown on 2001. “I came looking for a better life,” he said.

For six months he worked as a bartender while also attending the Borough of Manhattan Community College’s Degree Program in Computer Science. “Time goes fast and sometimes you can’t accomplish all the things you wanted to do,” he said. “Education has been one of my priorities. It has always been in my family. But I didn’t have the opportunity to finish. I dropped out of college because I had to work and this is how I ended in real estate.”

He was then living in Bushwick with his brother Jose, who was working as a waiter also. They saw other immigrants struggling with salaries as low as $12,000 a year, sometimes even less. They wanted something more.

Jose Sucuzhanay. Photo courtesy of the family

Sucuzhanay replied to an announcement for a real estate agent agent at Kings County Reality in Bushwick. He was hired. It was the period when everyone wanted to buy and the bank credit seemed unlimited. “It was just a matter of finding the right houses,” he said. And he was good. He quickly doubled his income. He enjoyed the flexibility of the new job. He also had the opportunity to study again. He attended courses in order to understand the market.

The younger brother’s example inspired the elder who decided to follow in his foot step. Jose Sucuzhanay was hired at Kings County Realty too. The clients and the money started to roll in quickly. He specialized in the Brooklyn market, while the younger brother worked in Queens.

Jose had even much more ambitious plans than Diego. In 2007, they opened their own company, Open Passport Realty. Jose decided to bet on Bushwick; Diego however, didn’t like it. “I lived in Bushwick for the first three years with Jose and I didn’t feel safe,” he said. “But Jose strongly believed in this area.”

“Danger,” Jose would say, “is an opportunity.”

At the beginning, it was just the two of them, in the basement of Jose’s house. Both 2007 and 2008 were good years for the Sucuzhanay brothers. New investors arrived, and Bushwick was considered a hot market. In August 2008 they were able to open a real office. Furnished in white and green, it was new and it was theirs. It was located at 320 Linden St., near Myrtle and Knickerbocker Avenue, two of the busiest streets of the neighborhoods. It was face to face with the Kings County Realty where Jose had started his real estate career only a few years before. The Ecuadorian farmers’s sons had become businessmen. Other brothers, Pedro, Marcelo and Romel, joined them.

Diego’s wife gave birth to their first child that August. He had everything he had worked for.

The grief

Diego was at home with his family, in the early morning of December  when the phone rang in the early morning of December,7, 2008. Their brothers had been attacked. He ran to Kossuth Place at 5 in the morning. Romel was there, speaking with the police. Jose was already at the hospital. Diego went to work, as usual. He reassured the employees. He was sure that Jose would survive. “We tried to be optimistic about him getting better,” he said. “He was a fighter, he could always overcome all the problems.”

When the doctors spoke to his family about brain injuries, he didn’t want to listen. It was impossible. He had always thought that Jose was able to do everything. Sucuzhanay remembered when the owner of a six family home in Bushwick asked them to manage his property, because he wasn’t able to collect any rents. “As soon as Jose covered it, he collected 100 per cent of the rents,” Diego said. “He was persuasive, able to speak and to provide the service. Jose was able to fix fast things that weren’t working.”

Diego Sucuzhanay in his office. Photo: Pirolo/Brooklyn Ink

On Tuesday 9, Jose was declared brain death. The family had to face the decision of whether to take him off life support. That day, Sucuzhanay spoke publicly on a press conference outside the hospital, saying that was necessary to act on behalf of victims of hate crime. “Today my brother is the victim,” he said. “But tomorrow it could be your brother, your mother, your father.”

Two days later, Jose died. City Council members, civil rights groups and state officials condemned the assault and expressed condolences. His family brought Jose back to Ecuador, where he was buried in a funeral attended by hundreds of people.

Meanwhile in Bushwick, Sucuzhanay tried to make the business work even without Jose. At the beginning he and his other brothers, tried to work with his clients. In February they closed temporarily the office of Linden Street. “I didn’t have the strength to work,” admitted Diego. “And even if I would had wanted, I couldn’t. In those moments you just can’t focus on work.” Before December 2008, business was Sucuzhanay’s priority. Then, he had to deal with his brother’s legacy, to take care of his investments. He had to think about Jose’s children. Brian, 10 years old, and Joanna, 5, live in Ecuador with their grandmother, Julia, an energetic 53 year-old woman who had raised 13 children alone, after her husband had left to the U.S. But now they needed all the family’s help.

Hate crimes

At the beginning Sucuzhanay spent himself completely in taking care of the family’s business. “I was out, I didn’t have time to work, I couldn’t focus on anything,” he said.

At the end of last winter he finally had time for himself, he surfed the Internet where he discovered expressions of solidarity: posts remembering his brother, organizations speaking about hate crimes and Jose’s murder. He felt that he could not forget. He remembered all the times he had seen Latinos discriminated against in the job hunt. All the people he knew who were suffering discrimination and were just too scared to talk.

“I wanted to understand why this happened.” He said “Latino didn’t even exist before. Latino is a multicultural and multiethnical expression. I educated myself about the problem, started to think about possible solutions.”

On February the police arrested two Bronx men, Hakim Scott and Keith Phoenix, in connection with Jose’s murder. Their trial is set to begin on January 19. “Of course I want the killers of my brother TO spend the rest of their life in jail, but we also have to do something so it doesn’t repeat again and again.” Sucuzhanay said.

During the last year he has met other families, and shared his experience when attending rallies against hate crimes. “If you don’t get through you don’t understand. You think that this is only happening to one family, it is just another death,” he said.

Last fall, another attack was reported in Bushwick. On September 23, Mario Vera, a 37-year-old Mexican immigrant, was riding his bicycle near Broadway and Lafayette Avenue, one block away from Kossuth Place. Three men stopped him. They shouted anti-Hispanic insults. They hit him on the head, the police said. Vera survived. He was able to reach his home, but was later brought to the hospital with traumatic brain injuries. His wife Ana Maria Gallardo only reported the attack to the police on October 9. Vera has still not completely recovered from the assault and the police have offered a $12,000 reward for anyone with information that could lead to the arrest and conviction of his attackers.

Sucuzhanay met Gallardo. “She was confused, and this is exactly how you feel. I advised her to stick with a person she trusted and with just one organization that could help her.”

Sucuzhanay is sure that these attacks are not isolated cases. “The problem is that most of the victims are new comers and don’t have legal status. Therefore they are afraid. So we don’t really know how many victims there are.”

Last November 23, the FBI released its 2008 reporting on hate crimes. In New York 570 hate crimes were reported through the year, while just 493 were reported in 2007. Nationally 792 attacks against Hispanics were reported, while they were 775 the previous year. But Sucuzhanay is sure that the numbers are much higher.

“It is like a disease. The only way to solve it would be by offering the victims a chance to legalize their status if they have been victim of hate crimes. It would be a motivation to denounce” such violence, he said.

Last month, Sucuzhanay was among the 500 people who gathered at Saint Francis de Sales Church, in Patchogue, to remember Marcelo Lucero, on the anniversary of his death. He listened to many speeches, but he thought that speaking isn’t enough anymore. “I don’t see a big change. There has not been a big change in the legislation that could have an impact. It needs a long-term solution, to prevent the crimes. Now there is an attack, they put someone in jail and then the next thing you know it is that there has been another attack.”

The choice

The office on Linden Street reopened last August. As it is for everyone in real estate, business is much slower, but Diego Sucuzhanay is always busy. His phone rings constantly. Every other call is related to his brother. He donates his experience to a long list of local-based organizations: Make the Road, International Ecuadorian Alliance, Latinos Americanos Unitos, New Immigrant Community Empowerment. He meets other victims, and he is planning for the anniversary of his brother’s death. Saturday 12, at 11 in the morning, a gathering for Jose’s death anniversary will be held in the office of Make the Road, at 301 Grove St., Bushwick. For Sucuzhanay it won’t be just a moment to remember Jose, but also to reconsider the choices in his own life.

“I understand clearly that I have to make a decision,” he said. “A decision whether I have to be more involved, showing my ideas, working to solve the problems, coming up with solutions. Or being something else, as a witness for the families that have suffered the same.”

He has a third option, “I could forget about this and go back to work as I did before.” He silenced just a moment. Then he spoke again, “But I already know that to forget is impossible.”

A ladder shakes precariously in the early December breeze. Its extension rattles against the side of Borough Hall, almost 20 feet in the air.

Two men stand in front of the main entrance, glancing at its top and then glancing at the ground. They wear heavy Timberland construction boots and graying black sweaters. Their hands, the same size as the sheets of paper that fill the offices inside, are stuffed deep within the pockets of their thick blue jeans. An evergreen wreath rests on one man’s leg, so large it reaches his waist. It is covered in painted red, gold and silver glass balls, and lights that shine faintly in the morning sun. A large red bow hangs in the center, its velvet soft and smooth and shiny. Its ends flutter lifelessly on the sidewalk as the two men stand and stare, first up, then down, then up then down. Two smaller wreaths have already found their homes in the windows next to Borough Hall’s main doors; the men have only to place the large wreath above the doors before they can leave.

But the rattling sound is ominous and the mantle above the entrance far from the ground.

Finally, the man picks up the wreath by his feet. He notices the dirty ends of the velvet ribbon, and calls his partner over. His partner takes out a box cutter and slices the ribbon perfectly at an angle. “Byoo-ti-ful,” he says in a thick Brooklyn accent, admiring his own handiwork.

Two workers hung a wreath outside Borough Hall this morning. Photo: Singh/Brooklyn Ink

The other man nods and grabs the wreath. It is too big, even for his mammoth hands, so he hangs it in the crook of his elbow and grips the ladder tightly, knuckles white against the orange steel. One timid step after another, he climbs, boots hanging over each narrow rung, eyes peeled on the rungs in front of him. His partner stands at the foot of the ladder, looking up at the mantle and encouraging the man as he makes his way up. Finally, with one booming step and then another, the man arrives on safe ground. He has reached the mantle.

The wreath jingles as he rests it against a window. The man pulls thick green wire through the wreath and hangs it over the main entrance. He lowers the wreath by allowing a large amount of wire slacken, so that the wreath falls. “Slowly!” the man below shouts, as a woman runs into the building to avoid the oncoming wreath.

“My bad,” the man at the top yells, as he pulls back much of the wire. He then releases the wire, little by little. “There ya go,” his partner says, nodding his head. The man places the wreath just over the main entrance, and ties the wire into a knot.

“It’s f—ing gorgeous,” his partner shouts.

The man peers over the edge and catches a glance of the wreath. He steps back, far away from the edge, and finally, he smiles.

The L stop at Bedford Avenue. Photo courtesy of Tom Giebel/Atomische.com

Because the city is doing away with a major bike path in Williamsburg (check out our Daily Roundup for more), local cyclists might have to hop aboard the subway today instead.

Using its Twitter handle @ElectricLit the literary outlet announced the coming of “Rick Moody’s Microserialized Twitter Fiction Project,” which is titled ‘Some Contemporary Characters,’ and called it “an experiment in participatory ePublishing,” encouraging Twitter users to re-tweet the story in its entirety. The story will include 153 tweets, sent out over three days, beginning today around 10am.

The Ink is interested in Electric Literature’s innovative union of social media and literature. We will be re-posting the tweets here on our site. In addition, stick with us for a follow-up story in the days to come, for which we will speak to Twitter users, and those involved in this process, about the experiment’s inception and success.

Remember that you can follow @ElectricLit directly to see the story unfold on Twitter.

———————————————————————————————————————

1. “Some Contemporary Characters” by Rick Moody

2. There are things in this taxable and careworn world that can only be said in a restrictive interface with a minimum of characters:

3. Saw him on OKCupid. Agreed to meet. In his bio he said he had a “different conception of time.” And guess what? He didn’t show.

4. I waited for her three days. On and off. True, they were the wrong three days. Went back a week later—to that coffee shop of longing.

5. Bunch more online dates. All candidates underemployed with big plans. One guy worked in sewage treatment. One guy played sax on the IRT.

6. The waitress at the establishment used the word “honey” repeatedly. Each time it was a kindness in that lonely urban setting.

7. No lie: I walk by the place where I was supposed to meet that man, two weeks later, he’s sitting there reading a book.

8. Certain questions relating to human conduct require earnest reflection. The rest of the world is absent for a time. How to explain?

9. A man more than twice your age who’s always late. Rule him out right away, or at least let him attempt to explain himself?

10. I said, “Old enough to remember that feminine beauty is nowhere apparent in a point-of-purchase glossy containing the word cellulite.”

11. I said, “Young enough to assert a right to text an account, warts and all, from the diner bathroom in case you’re a serial rapist.”

12. Willing to play along, if playing along involves a certain idea of language, because we are how we use the tongue now.

13. The thinning hair and the extra fifteen pounds, sure, but I could tell that from the photo online. He wasn’t a total schlump.

14. A jeans-with-skirt-over-them-type, sort of busty, with three different hair colors, none of them found in nature.

15. I think he wore an earring at some point, you could see the little divot in his earlobe—how long ago and why?

16. If she had an ass-to-die-for what did that mean with regard to gender politics, and was I willing to die for an ass to die for?

17. What did he actually do? Did he actually do anything? Is it only me who stumbles on these guys whose occupation is daydreamer?

18. Proposed another sit-down, four days hence, then drove to Vermont to have my colon cleansed by a harpie with dreadlocks.

19. I said yes to the date, then hooked up with a co-worker, b/c I could. For the record: the dude with last shift at the Carmine St. bar.

20. Next I suggested a film by Tarkovsky because I felt that if she could sit through it there might be hope. Instead, the film caused typing.

21. Dullest movie I have ever seen: made confessional poetry and folk music night at the Student Union sound like big fun, that’s how dull.

22. The suppression of the semi-colon; the inability to avoid the use of LIKE; the overreliance on the simple sentence—ills of the age.

23. Why agree to a third date? Because I already had plenty of people to go with me when I needed eyebrow piercing.

24. Sooner or later love is about death, no matter the lover—desire coughs up the rank fumes of death. And so I proposed bowling.

25. He said, “The shoes are sublime. The shoes recall a semiotics of freight-train-hopping. And, yes, the pins connect us to American folklore.”

26. She said, “The shoes are funky, and they make me want to dance on one of those light up dance floor video game things. Give me a ten.”

27. He said, “I’d say you were the worst bowler ever, but that would be dialectical-style analysis, and, well, Hegel is so eighties.”

28. She said, “If I bowl a strike now you have to tell me if you’re impotent or if you take Viagra or have benign enlarged prostate.”

29. Maybe he’s a life coach, and it’d be just my luck since everyone says I make dumb decisions about things. But I can bowl.

30. An ungodly strike, an indisputable strike, one pin teetering at the rightmost margin like chastity itself toppling with a dramatic sigh.

31. Not that anyone’s keeping track but now comes the part when the rules of engagement permit a discussion of human sexuality.

32. I determined not to gab, and thereby I would be young again, by instead using my lips for what lips are designed for, which is not gabbing.

33. Kissing a guy with gray hair on the street in front a pizzeria by a bowling alley and shoving my tongue way in, inadvisable?

34. Contraindicated. Against the code. Breaking most conceivable taboos. Pedophiliac. Bringing waves of guilt. Still, she was ardent.

35. That was it, nothing else, and people kiss every day, and the only difference nowadays is that people try to text while kissing.

36. Her eyes drifted off. I could see her preparing something witty: “I can’t quxhyte reeeaad keybrd cuz my yongue is in somnody’s mout.”

37. Actually, I did text on the way home and mainly because I knew my roommate was going to get up in my face: Did he kiss old?

38. Up around 4AM sorting and recycling back issues of The Nation. A bit more age appropriate than smooching some barmaid?

39. He called me because, he said, phoning after a date was required. Land lines—so Tracy & Hepburn. I thought: letting me down easy.

40. She IM’d me on FB to tell me that her mother had summoned her home for the weekend, she had to go. I thought: met a kid her own age.

41. My mother is two years older than he is, same age practically. She’s already telling me which jewelry is mine when she dies.

42. Note to self at dawn: S. Spielrein recognized the destructive essence of longing, an idea she passed on, like an STD, to Freud and Jung.

43. He’s assuming that I get all my information from the iPhone or from the Interwebs. But I also get my info from bar patrons.

44. Enough! Enough blather! Enough neurotic vacillation! Enough middle-aged hand-wringing! For whatever reason she seems to like you! Enough!

45. Coney Island was open one more weekend, and it was getting cooler, and I had this halter top I really liked. Cream-colored.

46. I’d never been to Coney Island, because I dislike crowds, though I had been writing notes about the Russian mob, existentialism thereof.

47. “Some Contemporary Characters” by Rick Moody (day 2 of 3).

48. On the train he told me that his dad, who’d disliked him and called him ne’er do well, left him enough money to survive precariously.

49. On the train she indicated that she’d been assaulted by a friend of her older brother’s when in her middle teens. Details murky and sad.

50. On the train he said that his partner of decades, estranged, worked with deaf kids. He saw the loss of her as a “great, enduring fuckup.”

51. On the train she coiled her necklace, some trinket from St. Mark’s Place, around her fingers, like a proposition she couldn’t resolve.

52. On the train he said that he hadn’t slept with anyone for years. Said his one successful relationship had been with solitariness itself.

53. On the train she asked what I liked to do with my body, and I winced because there was nothing at all that I liked to do with it.

54. On the train I asked what he liked to do with his body and he answered that he wasn’t certain—how could he be?—that he inhabited a body.

55. On the train she hooked a thumb in her jeans, and looked away. One sandal and then the other traversed the summit of a knee. I watched.

56. On the train I tried to flirt, who knows why, because what did I think I wanted? I don’t know. Sometimes you just do things.

57. On the train she could not flirt much because there was no phone service and as a result her affect was much constrained.

58. On the train I said that the sand was warm at Coney and there were hypodermic needles and if you lay down you could see stars.

59. On the train I said that I had lower back pain and needed a lot of support under my knees. In fact, I needed support generally.

60. On the train I looked at his gray pullover, his thriftstore suit pants, his whitish hair. This man will be my lover? And then? After that?

61. On the train, when the riders thinned out, she circled around the metal pole, mocking and engaging the pole dance.

62. On the train, when everyone got off, I let him know that I knew what was expected, which was an idea of a young woman.

63. On the train, when the riders thinned out, she circled around the metal pole, mocking and engaging the pole dance.

64. On the train, when everyone got off, I let him know that I knew what was expected, which was an idea of a young woman.

65. On the train I asked her why she did these things, didn’t she have any better way of meeting people? If people were what she was after?

66. On the train I said why were you on OKCupid in the first place, trolling for co-eds, if you’re against the way that people have fun now?

67. Into an awkwardness of human relations mercy can sometimes felicitously intrude, or, contrawise, we came to the end of the line.

68. You can see the Cyclone from just about anywhere and my heart thundered at the screams as we ambled off the train.

69. “You’ve got to be kidding,” said I, “I am no longer young, I am no longer at the point where I can remember my youth, and I’m panicky.”

70. He said: spinning things made him puke, and rollercoasters reminded him of military service, even though he never served.

71. She said that we were going on the coaster no matter what, even when I observed that the freak show was rumored to be of high caliber.

72. What’s a rollercoaster but a spot where you make out with someone you just mashed yourself against? Is there another purpose?

73. Entire phenomenon is really about the first great plummet, because every hill after the first is slightly less persuasive.

74. You have to be willing to do the first hill and to feel the wooden beams of the frame all shuddery beneath you. The rest is gravy.

75. A price break is offered the second time around, which is the way life is: you pay to be nauseated, then you get a volume discount on more.

76. We rode three times and by the third time the scary parts got all routine, and he was green, so we went to play Skee-Ball.

77. Coney Island is a demolition site, a future overdevelopment shrine, and the only thing that salves the wound is the ubiquity of Skee-Ball.

78. Roll this old wooden ball up a ramp and try to get it in this ball-sized hole, then you get some tickets which are worth nada.

79. The tickets are actual tickets, because they say “ticket” on them. If you win ten thousand you can redeem these for a Chinese squirt gun.

80. I’m good at bowling, and I’m good at Skee-Ball, and so I won a stuffed rabbit, and we took the rabbit and walked out to the boardwalk.

81. Out there: the same Atlantic Ocean that laps the Outer Banks and pools in Casco Bay. It shimmers in the moonglow, unused.

82. Every beachfront should have a boardwalk. Every boardwalk should have Orthodox couples. Always there should be gang activity.

83. I said I was writing about the Russian mob and Dostoevsky for Contemporary Psychoanalysis. Wasn’t trying to boast. Just talking.

84. He said he’d like it if we went to have dinner in Brighton Beach because the amusement park was just “too adolescent.”

85. She said I needed to take my “inner adolescent” out and show him a really really really really really really really nasty time.

86. And then we were on the beach, pretty ugly beach with all the trash and everything, but next to the Atlantic. In twilight.

87. I come from a landlocked state (PA) and I live part-time in a landlocked state (VT) and so I am awed by an oceanic expanse.

88. I don’t want to say that something happened on the beach that wouldn’t have happened catalytic. It should have happened on the Cyclone.

89. I don’t want to say that something happened on the beach, that the ocean was somehow responsible, but she did put away her iPhone.

90. I was supposed to text or e-mail my friend Ariel every twenty minutes or it meant that he was hacking me into pieces and eating me.

91. Putting the phone in her pocket was somehow the most revealing thing, like when myopics put their glasses on the bedside table.

92. There was the light from the boardwalk, sound of the ocean, some Latino troublemakers cackling nearby, and we fell into each other’s arms.

93. In the sand. In the sand. I can’t even stand up most days, what with the bad back, but I fell into the sand and, oh, her arms!

94. We twisted around some way so I was on top. For a while. He couldn’t crush me. I could feel his complications in the dim light.

95. She was like some sprite, and there was that incredible feeling, known to all persons, when your cares become insubstantial.

96. He tasted like Listerine, Mylanta, roast beef, mesclun salad, decaf from one of those old coffee pots from a tag sale, salt water taffy.

97. She tasted like chai latte, lite beer, nicotine gum, Tic Tacs, grapefruit, cider vinegar, chocolate chip cookies, and the middle class.

98. He kept trying to say something, but then he couldn’t say it. He couldn’t say anything. I thought this was amusing.

99. Low light helps. A distracting milieu. Tens of hundreds of tourists. Calliope sounds. Rollercoasters. The moon.

100. It’d be interesting to see how many languages, world over, offer some version of the phrase “Get a hotel room!”

101. They say “Get a hotel room!” in Spanish, they can say it in Russian, and they can say it in Black Vernacular Dialect too.

102. I like saying “Suck my dick” to any asshole who gets on my nerves, but when you’re lying on the sand embracing someone you don’t bother.

103. At some point there were limitations which were the limitations of conscience and propriety in a public place, no matter how honky-tonk.

104. “Some Contemporary Characters” by Rick Moody (day 3 of 3)

105. You always think that love or sex or whatever are like totally liberated or totally liberating but there are things you just don’t do.

106. De Sade’s only limit was his imagination, you know, but he was in a prison cell when he scribbled down his provocations.

107. There were a few hotels there, I guess, but we’d have to pay up and he had no credit cards because he didn’t believe in usury.

108. There are certain hygiene regimens—scalp-related—that I really don’t like to do without unless it’s absolutely unavoidable.

109. My parents’ names are all over my one Amex, didn’t want him to see that, and then I realized I didn’t have any extra underwear.

110. So we found ourselves walking back toward the train, upbeat, at least till we realized we’d misplaced the rabbit.

111. On the train, I thought: some feelings you only realize later how important they are. Do you know where your toy rabbit is?

112. On the train, I asked myself, “Am I ready to step out from the wings onto the stage of romantic activity? Did I somehow slay the rabbit?”

113. On the train, he got shy even shyer, though I’d just felt him up against me, I’d felt his heartbeat and some other parts of him too.

114. On the train, she knew what I knew, that I was a retiring person trying not to be, and I was embarrassed in her knowing.

115. On the train, it started to feel hopeless and awkward where on the way out it had been hopeful and there’d been an adrenalin of possibility.

116. On the train, running out of things to say, I figured I’d discuss politics. Must have been desperate, as this is such a bad topic.

117. On the train, he brought up politics, which to him probably meant like Al Gore or something. I was 13 when Al Gore ran.

118. On the train, I stammered about campaign financing being the third rail of the American political establishment and she said: “Huh?”

119. On the train I told him that I was pierced, I was tattooed, I was tribal, I loved whatever way I wanted to, and that was my revolution.

120. On the train I said you don’t understand, politics isn’t the kind of thing you can just ignore, even if voting is a big buzzkill, and—

121. On the train I said, “The other thing you’re overlooking, if you don’t mind me saying, is tech stuff, and that is so political.”

122. On the train, I said, “There’s a reason that I have failed at all of this sort of thing for years, and I don’t want you to have to—”

123. On the train, I said, “Doesn’t it occur to you to give a person a chance? Does it occur to you that a person could be different?!!”

124. On the train, I said, “I can tell you are going to use multiple exclamation points when you write this down, and while I admire excess in—”

125. On the train, I said, “This is really stupid, we were having a nice time, and now it’s all . . . I really think it’s you.”

126. “Of course you think it’s me,” I said on the train, “because when does someone your age take on the responsibility for her—”

127. “You were just waiting to condescend,” I said on the train, and I got up and moved to the other side of the car.

128. On the train, I thought: I just held this woman, this china vase, this wolverine, and now I’m no better than the vagrant in the two-seater.

129. There’s a point when you can start repairing all the awful shit you said, but then you kind of dig in and say more awful shit.

130. I was a social worker at a halfway house back when and I used to say to clients: when you are becoming angry you are becoming reverent.

131. Sometimes I think that when I am flipping off some asshole, hating him, belittling him, maybe I’m honoring too.

132. What if I’m just not in a place anymore when I can go through with it? What if the use-by date is used and bygone?

133. On the train, I said, “I figure you are trying to be nice and you just don’t know how, because all you really know about me is my bio.”

134. She was rather vehement about my non-awareness of her unique properties, from across the car, and I was nodding in agreement.

135. All this had happened, and we still had like, I don’t know, eight stops or something. I just had to sit there with him staring at me.

136. We fitted in the whole of a May to December romance—from unwarranted optimism to contempt—between Surf Ave and Union Square.

137. I couldn’t believe he was willing to write the whole thing off so easy, and now he was going back to his hovel to pick his scabs.

138. I couldn’t believe she wasn’t mature enough to realize that this is what happens when you’re involved with other people: rollercoastering.

139. I couldn’t believe I rode the train all the way to Coney Island and back with this geezer just because he could quote from philosophers.

140. We got off the train together, and that was a heavy labor. Another Saturday night in which I was to lay myself down beside insomnia.

141. We got out, climbed the stairs, he was going south, I was going east. We were alike: both guilty of thinking more than we were admitting.

142. All I could formulate was the perception that I hadn’t really kissed anyone like that in so long. Did I not deserve it just a little?

143. He said, “We could just start the conversation over as though we haven’t met. You could even play my part. It’s a small effort.”

144. But then we were kissing good night, and I didn’t know why except that this is the custom. Like Judas summoning the Roman guard.

145. I kissed him good night because I was kissing goodbye to all the old guys and their nostalgia and shaky confidence and felt tip pens.

146. “I’ll call you,” I said, which meant, I think, that I devoutly wished to call, but that something was likely to prevent me.

147. “I’ll call you,” he said, which meant, I guess that he wouldn’t call at all, but he thought he should say something.

148. Ninth Street, it was, when she turned east toward the park, and I could see her receding, an actual person receding.

149. No one would have thought I ever knew him, except that maybe I walked his dog for him or something, or typed his correspondence.

150. No one would have ever thought I knew her, except from Casual Encounters on Craigslist or because I needed help with my affairs.

151. I watched him head into the crosswalk and almost get run over by a bicyclist, and then I called Ariel and told her that I was in one piece.

152. I watched as some fellow accosted her on the sidewalk—for loose change, I suppose. In that moment I seethed with jealousy.

153. Ariel said I needed to get right back on the horse, the dead horse, so first thing I did was sign on OkCupid. Any activity?

154. I knew she was going to post about it. I decided it wouldn’t be the actual mutual-assured-destruction account unless I posted too.

155. Started following his status updates, because I needed to vet them, you know, but also because I was curious. I mean, they were about me.

156. I’d already friended her, and I confess I felt sad when reading her posts, though can you really be sad about a bunch of ones and zeroes?

157. Like a week later I saw him through the window in that coffee shop. Looking at his watch, contemplating his different conception of time.

158. **END**

New medical evidence has surfaced that suggests a direct link between playing football and brain damage later in life. Autopsies of a number of former NFL linesmen showed signs of Alzheimer’s and other problems caused by years of hard tackles. High school players, of course, are not immune. It’s enough to terrify a mother.

So, as they stood watching their sons slip around in the rain, parents at Saturday’s PSAL City Championship division quarterfinal game between Fort Hamilton and Lincoln voiced a number of qualms. “I worry very much about head injuries,” said Catherine Scott as she watched her grandson, an offensive center for Lincoln, run onto the field. Linda Scott, his aunt, remembered seeing a particularly scary moment on TV recently in a college game. “Did you see that guy in the Florida game last week? He took a bad hit to the head and you could tell right away, the way he was posturing, it didn’t look good. Those moments, they’re scary.”

A parent watches the action at Sunday's Fort Hamilton game vs. Lincoln High. Photo: Roberts/Brooklyn Ink

“I’ve read all the recent stuff and I do worry about it,” said James Sullivan, a Bay Ridge native who was watching the game. “But I’m not sure high schools can do very much except hope for the best and try to be ready if there is a head injury, God forbid.”

Dr. Ellen Panzer, a chiropractor who treats sideline injuries at Canarsie High School football games on the weekends, said that head injuries are “definitely a big problem.” Panzer specifically mentioned the case of Ryne Dougherty, from New Jersey, as a story that raised concern for her. Dougherty, a junior linebacker at Montclair High School, had sustained a concussion during a Sept. 18 practice this year. After three weeks out, doctors cleared him to play. But in only his second game back, Oct. 11, Dougherty suffered a brain hemorrhage after making a hard tackle. He died two days later.

Some Brooklyn football programs are constrained by budget limitations, as Canarsie High School Head Coach Mike Camardese will tell you. “There’s a new helmet out that conforms to the head, called, I think, ‘Ultra.’ It’s like $300 a pop,” said Camardese. “I’d love to have each kid wearing that helmet, but I could afford to buy my team one. Or say somehow I get even ten of those great helmets, who do I give them to? All the parents would be angry. It comes down to safety and what you can and can’t afford.”

In addition to fancy helmets, some coaches wish for more comprehensive physicals. “I think there should be tests given before the season, neurological exams,” said New Utrecht’s head coach, Alan Balkin. “Then you give all the players the same test again when the season ends. But who has the resources for that. The basic physicals really can’t go that deep.”

One of the main problems, both at the NFL and high school level, seems to be that players repeatedly get hit and go right back in on the next play, figuring it to be just another part of the game. But experts say each of these could be a minor concussion that damages the brain. In the previous month alone, the potential risks of brain damage in football were reported in three major magazine pieces, one congressional hearing, and a number of highly prominent news outlets. A number of parents at the game mentioned being troubled by a story they had heard on National Public Radio, for example.

The congressional hearing was called for after doctors found, in ten deceased NFL players, the type of brain damage typically associated with boxers. Experts pointed to repeated concussions as the direct cause of dementia and other forms of mental illness in these former players. Meanwhile, doctors have estimated that every year, 1 in 10 high school football players suffers a concussion.

Players from Brooklyn Tech, which was defeated by Lincoln in the previous round, showed up at Fort Hamilton High on Sunday to watch the cheerleaders and the game. Photo: Roberts/Brooklyn Ink

Some coaches say they are beginning to watch out for this more than ever. “If a kid suffers a concussion,” said Fort Hamilton’s Coach Vince Laino, “I think the heightened awareness would make me think twice before putting him back into action.” Laino finds himself in an interesting position this season as both coach and parent; his son Frank is the team’s star quarterback.

Not all coaches are as careful about pulling kids if they appear to be dizzy. “I had a kid during the playoffs recently, in a soccer game actually, who had signs of a concussion,” said Sal Aprea of One on One physical therapy, a group that supplies trainers to New York City schools. “And the coach wanted to put him right back in the game in the worst way, but I told him they just had to wait. That tends to be the problem with football, is that kids get hit hard and want to just go right back in the game without stopping.”

Dr. Panzer pointed to the same issue. “Do I think that playing football is inherent to brain damage? No,” she said. “Do I think that there are coaches and players who take the game to a level they shouldn’t? Yes, at times.”

Still, awareness of the danger of concussions seems to be on the rise at the high school level. “At our meeting in June,” said Laino, “the PSAL did a big new thing on concussions. They gave a whole talk to us on what to look for. I found that to be very helpful.”

“We hold the kids out if we think there’s a concussion,” said Coach Camardese. “Not worth the kid’s health. We have that luxury though, because we’re not the NFL.”

Syms with his wife Lynn at an AFIPO benefit reception hosted by Mona Ackerman at her residence, 3/17/09. Photo courtesy of the Syms Company, photo by Chris Lee.

Rabinoff and Syms were both students at Midwood High School in the 1940s, back when Syms was still known by his birth name, Seymour Merinsky. After he graduated in 1943, Syms left Brooklyn to join the US Army and pursue his dream of being a radio broadcaster. After stints as a sports announcer in Maryland and West Virginia, though, Syms returned to New York where his father and older brother George had changed their surnames to Merns and opened up a clothing shop on Vesey Street in Lower Manhattan.

For six years, Syms saved up so that he could buy his own stake in the family business. But when he finally came up with the $6,000 needed for a 20 percent share of the company, his brother refused, claiming that it was now worth much more. In 1959, Syms left the family company and started his own store around the corner: a 2,000-square-foot building on Cortlandt St. he named “Sy Merns.” A lawsuit from his brother forced him to change the store’s name to SYMS, a combination of his first and last names, but he continued to expand his brand.  Today, there are 30 SYMS stores across 13 states.

“My father was a really passionate person and someone who was a bit of a visionary,” said his daughter Marcy Syms in a statement. “Once he believed something could happen, he pulled out all the stops to make it so.” SYMS became one of the first off-price clothing stores in the country that targeted shoppers who were both price-conscious and brand-savvy. Syms’s motto was “An educated consumer is our best customer” – a phrase he often delivered himself in his commercials in the distinctive radio voice he had cultivated many years earlier in Brooklyn.

In 1985, Forbes claimed that SYMS Corp. had among the highest profit margins in the entire retailing industry. Syms donated his fortune to a variety of causes, including the American Heart Foundation, Boys Town of Jerusalem, Public Broadcasting and the Fashion Institute of Technology, but also never forgot to give back to his Midwood roots. “Whenever we called on him, he was always ready, willing and able to help,” said Rabinoff. The school honored him with a Lifetime Achievement award in 1999.

Syms had four children with his first wife, Ruth Glickman Merns, before the marriage ended in divorce. He is survived by his second wife of 25 years, Lynn Tamarkin Syms. He was predeceased by his son, Stephen and his daughter, Adrienne. He is survived by his children Marcy, Robert, Richard, and Laura, two stepchildren, ten grandchildren and three sisters.

-by Miranda Lin