The Palestinian bid for U.N. membership was put off by the Security Council, announced today the council president, Portugal’s U.N. ambassador Jose Filipe Moraes Cabral. The Palestinian authority will now have to decide whether to press for a vote it is widely suspected to loose.

 

Children at Beginning With Children Charter School (Gloria Dawson / The Brooklyn Ink)

The quest for statehood began on September 23 after Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian authority, appeared before the General Assembly.

Palestinian hopes were high last month, as Israel agreed to exchange more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for Staff Sgt. Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held for five years. On October 31, Unesco added Palestine to its members, a move that has cost the organization $60 million of its yearly American funding. However, with the United States expected to veto a Palestinian full U.N. membership, and other countries such as France and Britain saying they would abstain from voting, Palestine’s chances for statehood continue to appear slim.

Whatever happens, it is a historic moment in the Middle East. We wondered how the younger generation thinks about it. After decades of fighting, the Middle Eastern conflict is part of contemporary history and has been added to many school curriculums around the world. But in a multi-cultural and multi-faith borough, like Brooklyn, conversation about it is likely to reflect widely varying and passionate points of view. Rather than ask the teachers, we wanted the children’s thoughts.

We decided to ask sixth graders at schools from different faiths to take part in a candid conversation about the conflict. Unfortunately, due to security reasons, we weren’t given access to any 6^th grade class of the 4 Islamic schools we contacted in Brooklyn. We spoke to a Jewish day school, a Christian school, a secular school, and to Muslim students from Brooklyn College. What do they know? How do they know it? And how do they relate to it? Here are four audio slide shows that address some of our questions.

Slide shows produced by Omar Bilal Akhtar, Gloria Dawson, Tracy Jarrett, Emily Judem, Andrew Katz, Ravi Kumar, Xin Hui Lim, Joey Maestas and Hannah Olivennes.

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Tattoo artist Annie Lloyd describes the birth of a tattoo. Lloyd, 32, has worked at Three Kings Tattoo in Greenpoint for three years.

Leo De Le Cruz repairs watches in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He learned the skill from his father.

Every day people wake up and decide to get married. For some, that means a trip to Brooklyn’s City Clerk at Borough Hall.

By Amanda Massa and Mustafa Mehdi Vural

Marriage can bring a smile to many people’s faces, but sometimes it brings tears.  In the Turkish culture, the traditional henna night — which is performed just days before the wedding— does just that.

The henna night, or kina gecesi , is for women only. Friends and family surround the bride during the ceremony and sing the traditional henna song, high high mountain tops, or yuksek yuksek tepelere.

They shouldn’t build homes high up on the mountain tops

They shouldn’t give girls to faraway lands

They shouldn’t neglect the mother’s one and only

May the birds carry the message

I miss my mother

Both my mother and father

I miss my village

On henna night, women weep together as henna is placed in the bride’s palms and gold gifts are presented to her from her future mother-in-law as an invitation to join her family.

Take a look as The Brooklyn Ink documents this emotional day for Selda Altagul and her family.

It is only in a neighborhood like Williamsburg, in a borough like Brooklyn, that a group of creative young folks can open an Elvis-themed hair salon-cum-tattoo parlor without raising many eyebrows.

Graceland is housed in a renovated former three-car garage at the corner of Lorimer and Withers streets. Embedded in the smooth cement floor are a pair of styling scissors and a horseshoe, while a tuned guitar and upright piano, the latter covered in candles, rest in the center of the room. A portrait of Elvis hangs on the dark wood paneling to greet customers, and Elvis-themed books rest on open surfaces, including a bar-like front desk complete with red barstools bolted to the floor. On the right side of the room are vintage and antique barber chairs, benefitting from the natural sunlight of garage door-shaped windows, and on the left side are workstations and florescent lamps where Graceland’s tattoo artists work.

But more than a kitschy homage to the King, Graceland is a sort-of homecoming for this hodgepodge group of urban fringe kids—it’s the idealized workspace that they dreamt about back when they were still paying their dues and sharpening their styling skills.

Bethany Paul, a Graceland stylist and co-owner, arrived from Dallas seven years ago with a talent for hair and love of music and tattoos. Her first job in the city was at Mudhoney, a legendary downtown salon with no rules, an edgy, punk-inspired aesthetic and cutting-edge styling. Mudhoney brought together the talented folks that would eventually create Graceland. Paul’s upper body is covered in brightly colored references to music (including a massive Elvis visage on her back) and fauna of various kinds. “Just a couple of days after landing in New York,” Paul said, “I met a girl from Mudhoney, who gave me one look and told me I have to work there.”

A decade ago, Mudhoney owner Michael Matula and his partner, Alicia Trani, were well-known figures in New York’s mixed mega club and gay nightlife scenes of the ‘90s because of their uniquely fringe business with inspired, underground aesthetics. The popularity of Mudhoney landed them a New York Times profile in 1999, and now they boast three locations. Corvette Hunt, another Graceland stylist and a retired drag queen, also landed at Mudhoney approximately seven years ago. “I was shampoo girl,” he says, grinning and flexing a pair of scissors in his right hand.

Standing at around six foot two and sporting a thin beard and tattoos on his arms, Hunt’s entrance into hairstyling came from working his own wigs into sculpture, for himself and at the Pat Fields boutique (a talent that once got him a whirlwind job styling mohawks for Madonna dancers on a national tour). Upon his return to New York, Hunt went to styling school with one goal in mind.

“Mudhoney was the only I ever thought to work,” he said, remarking about its reputation among the clubgoers. Around the same time Graceland stylist Josh DeMatteo also arrived at the salon via the same nightlife scene as Hunt. All of three of Graceland’s stylists attribute their expert skills with hair to the guidance they received from Matula and Trani.

After work, DeMatteo, Hunt and Paul would grab drinks down the street at the Dove Parlour, a West Village bar. They befriended the owners, Henrietta Paris and Jennifer Armstrong, and became regulars alongside tattoo artists and future Graceland co-owners Josh Lord and Yadira Mendez-Firvida, who also own the East Side Ink, a well-known tattoo parlor. United by a love of aesthetics and visual culture, these downtown characters began getting together post-work at Mudhoney to drink, listen to music and “have these amazingly creative styling sessions,” said Hunt, emphatically. They often fantasized about the ideal space where they all could hang out, work and continue listening to music at the same time.

They found it. While scouting locations for a new Williamsburg restaurant, Paris and Armstrong found the space at Lorimer and Withers, and a lease that included an attached car garage with a leaky roof and a busted floor. Suddenly their collective dream of working shoulder-to-shoulder became a reality—tattoo artists and hairstylists decided that sharing a large room would be the best way to maximize the space.

Lord and Mendez-Firvida—who had business experience with East Side Ink—led the way. Along with Paul and Hunt, the four retrofitted the space to their liking, with every visual detail lovingly taken into account, from the garage-door windows to the bathroom sink. “At this point we’re more than just friends,” said Hunt. “It’s a family.” Graceland opened January 22.

Alex Stoler, a 21 year-old NYU student and resident of the Lower East Side, with a thick head of hair and a Burberry scarf, traveled to Williamsburg specifically for an appointment with DeMatteo, “Yeah, some of my friends were laughing at me for coming to Brooklyn just for a haircut,” he said, his chic outfit looking out of place in a neighborhood that worships vintage clothing. “But once I find someone I like, I stick with them. I don’t mess around with my hair.”

Gershow Recycling has owned the scrap yard on Pitkin Avenue in East New York for the past 10 years with more than 200-300 customers a day. Senior Facility Manager Eric Kugler took us on a tour of the facility.

Bob Diamond leads a tour of the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel. (Photo: TheBrooklynInk/Kumar)

By Jehangir Irani and K. S. Nikhil Kumar

During the early 1800s, trains coming in from Long Island would emerge from the woods into the streets of Brooklyn and run over people, horse carriages and anything else that stood in their way. Then the people of Brooklyn persuaded the Long Island Railroad (LIRR) to put the tracks below the streets. And in 1844, the world’s first subway tunnel was built using a 2000 year old Roman technique called ‘cut and cover.’ It took seven months to construct and was part of the route between New York and Boston.

But tunnel was used only until 1861. The LIRR went bankrupt due to trade between New York and Boston shifting to the coast of Conneticut. And the tunnel was soon forgotten.

Then in 1979, a 19-year-old engineering student at the Pratt Institute called Bob Diamond, stumbled upon evidence of its existence. He then feverishly pursued it, even after being told by the “experts” not to do so.

By Amanda Massa and Mustafa Mehdi Vural

You bring the sketchpad; they’ll supply the beer. Or at least that’s what happens at Drink’n'Draw, a weekly event hosted by the Williamsburg art studio, 3RDWARD.

For $15 each Wednesday night, people can come ready with art supplies and draw live nude models, who pose on stage for ten-minute stretches before switching poses. Pair that with some ice cold Colt45s, and you have yourself a night.

“It is fun to see the first time figure drawers show off their work and it is good for artists to get out of their studios and remember what it was like to just draw,” said Arielle Fenton, facility manager and graphic designer at 3RDWARD.

3RDWARD opened in May 2006 and has since attracted anywhere between 40 to 60 people to its Drink’n'Draw events.

Susan Gardner isn’t just pushing back against a gentrification, she’s bringing art to the public… all without ever leaving home.