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!”

Fourteen readers, diverse in race and age, have all come from different parts of Brooklyn (and one from Manhattan) to meet at Ozzie’s coffee shop in Park Slope. This month’s selection is Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood.

Ozzie's Cafe at night. Photo courtesy of Emily Care Boss.

“So, we did not like the book,” says the group’s organizer facetiously after much boisterous criticism. “Let’s get some other thoughts on this. I want to know what people have to say about why Crake decides to kill the human race.”

The five men and nine women are seated around a narrow, low coffee table littered with copies of the book. Most hold cups of coffee. Everyone is well dressed. All four of the younger men wear crisp dress shirts; the collars peek out from underneath V-neck sweaters. There is only one couple among them, an elderly pair who sit together on a couch. “The ending bothered me,” says the older woman, to which her husband nods profusely.

“I know, I know,” says a tall, slim man with glasses and a thick Australian accent. He, it becomes clear, is the group’s most dominant participant.

“She never answers anything,” begins a young Argentine man with a ponytail and goatee. “I think, bad writer. This was just too much, too much crazy stuff going on, it was like those Harry Potter books!”

The Australian man pipes up immediately. “Oi, careful, I love those books.”

“Okay,” says the organizer, restoring order to the discussion. “A lot of you have mentioned immorality. So, wiping out an entire species has got to be one of the most immoral things you can do.”

“I should think so!” says the older woman. Her husband is quick to follow with a joke: “Ehhh….” he says with an exaggerated shrug of his shoulders. She hits his shoulder playfully. The others watch with amusement.

“I didn’t understand why Crake had to wipe out the human race,” says a young woman in a corner who had not spoken yet. The Argentine man begins ranting again. “Yes, well, no motivation, no reasons for anything! And the names of things were so silly! English is my second language and even me, I saw ‘rakunk’ and I’m like, come on! Raccoon and skunk, I get it, you can do better!”

“Right, right,” says the Australian man. “Or how ‘pigoon’ was a cross between pig and baboon. A five-year-old could come up with those names.”

The book discussion soon winds down, but when the Australian man brings out his Kindle it ignites a new conversation. Most hate the idea of an e-reader and they tease the Australian for having one. He defends it to the death. “This is the best invention ever!” he says. “It makes reading so easy.”

The organizer, seemingly weary from having been one of only two people who liked the book, gets the most heated. “What could be easier than this?!” he asks, holding up his copy of the novel. “Why don’t you support a used bookstore, or better yet go get it from the library.”

“But why would I do that when it’s more convenient for me to get it instantly from Amazon?” counters the Australian.

“You’re sounding a lot like Crake,” answers the organizer, and everyone laughs and begins to pack up their things.

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.”

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.”

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.

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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**

A pit bull. Photo courtesy of Matt Whitaker/Flickr Creative Commons

A man stands with his dog outside of Acqua Santa bar, at the corner of Driggs Avenue and North 7th Street, across the street from the Bedford Avenue subway stop in Williamsburg. He’s a young guy. His red hair splays out from under a blue winter beanie. On his hands are fingerless gray gloves. The dog is a chocolate brown pit bull, and a large one at that, masculine and postured.

A modest crowd of three people has gathered, including an old man and two women, one of them much younger than the other. All three are admiring the dog as the young man fields questions—how friendly this pit bull is, the reputation of pit bulls as aggressive and violent, the age of this one, its name. The owner, meanwhile, is trying to chat up the young woman, who is leaning down to pet the dog.

“And what do you do?” he asks her abruptly, as though she had just asked him the same. But she hadn’t.

“Oh, I’m an artist,” she says, reluctantly.

“Oh wow, so am I,” he says, though quickly tempering it a bit. “Well, sort of. I do graphic design, freelance. Web stuff.” She does not ask him to tell more.

The other man and woman both linger, petting and admiring the dog. “Nice day to walk the dog, huh?” says the older man.

“Yup, just a day out with the dog, that’s the afternoon activity when you’re unemployed,” the man answers with surprising cheerfulness. Again the older woman comments about how taken she is by the dog’s friendliness. She had been convinced that pit bulls are menacing. “No, no,” he insists. “People think that but it’s not true. They’re very sweet. Obviously.”

He turns back to the young woman. “So, do you live right around here?” he asks.

She looks down at her feet. “Yeah, nearby. I just moved here recently.” There is a long pause. The young man starts to take out his BlackBerry.

“Well, have a good day, have fun with him,” she says politely, and briskly hurries off. The young man is left with only the company of the older man.

He ties his dog’s leash around a pole and heads into the bar.

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.”

Navy veteran Shawna Lee stuck an American flag into her blazer pocket, accentuating the ribbons she earned on two deployments in the U.S. Navy. Photo: Portlock/Brooklyn Ink

By Sarah Portlock

Navy veterans Milaina Jacques and Shawna Lee knew they wanted to come to the annual Veterans Day Parade along Fifth Avenue — the only question was, what would they wear?

Jacques, 25, and Lee, 24, met aboard the USS Harry S. Truman during their first deployment in 2005 in the Persian Gulf and became fast friends. They soon discovered that they both were from Brooklyn — Jacques lives in Crown Heights, Lee in Flatbush — and loved fashion.

“On the ship, we would be out to sea and plan our future,” Jacques said. “We were both into fashion and we both wanted to go to F.I.T,” the Fashion Institute of Technology. They bonded while admiring the local fashions they saw in Dubai, London, and Paris.

But military uniforms don’t allow for much personal style, and the girls tried their best. Lee said she would paint her nails bright colors or dye her hair, but her supervisors would make her take it off. The parade was their chance to make their uniforms more stylish.

Early Wednesday morning, Lee and Jacques rose and pinned their Good Conduct and National Defense medals and ribbons, among others, to their own navy blue blazers and paired it with tight pants, black boots, and bright handbags. At one point, Jacques considered wearing her “cruise jacket,” the bomber-style jacket with patches for the wearer’s ship, wars fought, ports entered, and years fighting, but there was a catch.

Navy veterans and Brooklynites Milaina Jacques, left, and Shawna Lee joined thousands of vets who marched up Fifth Avenue on Wednesday in the annual New York City Veterans Day Parade. Photo: Portlock/Brooklyn Ink

“Mine is red and I didn’t have anything to match it,” she said.

It was the first parade for both girls, who were always deployed on past Veterans Days. In September, they enrolled in Kingsborough Community College in Manhattan Beach — “to get all the general requirements out of the way,” Lee explained, before applying to F.I.T. ­— and were invited to ride in the City University of New York-wide float along the parade route up Fifth Avenue, from 25th to 56th streets.

Jacques and Lee arrived at the CUNY meeting point at West 29th Street at 10 am, and, by noon, nearly 100 students and staffers were milling about, catching up with fellow soldiers and taking pictures with the bright blue and white CUNY flatbed truck. Jacques was missing art class, sociology, English and history to attend the parade, but secured an official letter from CUNY excusing her for the day. There are at least 250 veterans who attend Kingsborough, according to the school’s veterans affairs coordinator, Peaches Diamond.

“I’m very excited to be here,” Jacques said, tightening her leopard-print scarf against the brisk November wind. “It’s to celebrate what we’ve done, and it’s reminiscing to see all the vets who know what we did. When you come home, friends don’t really know what you did.”

Lee said the day was her way of supporting friends who are still on active duty, but wasn’t sure if she would come until she watched on TV the funerals for 13 soldiers killed in the mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas last week.

“I may not have known them personally, but it’s still sad when a life is lost,” she said, acknowledging that Jacques gave her a push, too.

At 12:45, the truck hauling the CUNY float revved its engine and turned the corner to Fifth Avenue. Jacques and Lee were on a top level and beamed as they saw the spectators lined up, clapping as they passed and holding signs that said simply, “Thank you.” The girls cheered and waved their flags fanatically.

When the float passed the New York Public Library, a parade emcee barked into a bullhorn, “And here’s CUNY!” Jacques and Lee threw their heads back and cheered even louder when he mentioned Kingsborough.

By 1:50, the truck arrived at 56th Street, the official end of the parade. Jacques and Lee were beaming.

“I want to do it again!,” Jacques said twice. “It felt like when we man the rails,” she added, referring to the Navy tradition of sailors lining up along a ship’s railings when it enters a port.

“It makes you feel proud that you served your country,” she added. “I didn’t expect a lot of people to be clapping and cheering for us, and to see old veterans gathering and all the kids cheering us on.”

Lee looked expectantly at Jacques.

“I’m definitely glad I came,” she said. “Thanks for convincing me.”

***

Meanwhile, in Brooklyn Heights…

Photo: Roberts/Brooklyn Ink

At Cadman Plaza Park, a young man stood staring up at the 24-foot tall memorial wall that honors those from Brooklyn who served in World War II. The wall is flanked on each side by a giant stone sculpture—one is a male warrior bearing a sword, the other a woman holding a child. The figures are meant to represent victory and family.

The man stood with his two young daughters at his side. One gripped his hand as he read aloud part of the engraved inscription on the monument wall:

TO THE HEROIC MEN AND WOMEN OF THE BOROUGH OF BROOKLYN WHO FOUGHT FOR LIBERTY IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR

“That’s my grandpa,” he told his daughters proudly. “Do you understand? Daddy’s dad’s dad.”

-Daniel Roberts

A campaign sign for defeated mayoral candidate Bill Thompson hangs at the intersection of Lewis Avenue and MacDonough Street. Photo: Roberts/Brooklyn Ink

This morning, in Bill Thompson’s home base of Bedford-Stuyvesant, people admitted to feeling frustrated. ‘Thompson for Mayor’ signs still hang from traffic light poles. “Endorsed by President Barack Obama,” they say.

For many, the fact that Thompson challenged Bloomberg to such an extent—he lost by a mere 4.6% and won the Brooklyn vote—only heightened the impact of his loss. “I’m very, very disappointed that he didn’t win,” said Ban Leow, who is originally from Malaysia and now runs CasaBAN, a modern & antique furniture store in Bed-Stuy. Leow, unlike many in the area who had hoped for a win but had their doubts, fully believed that Thompson would pull through and win. “Thompson came out very strong,” he said. “I really wanted him to win; I wanted somebody who is able to challenge a billionaire.”

Leow also commented from his perspective as a businessman. “If you ask me, as a small business owner, what Bloomberg has done for me? The answer is big fat zero. It’s a little bit of justification that he only won by five percent. Thank God for that, at least.”

Bill Thompson was born and raised in Bed-Stuy, though he attended Midwood High School. He has also, in his adulthood, lived in Park Slope and Prospect Heights; truly he is one of Brooklyn’s own. In September 2008, after his recent marriage, Thompson moved to Harlem, which is closer to the city Comptroller’s office in downtown Manhattan.

Beresford Crowder, who works at Common Ground coffee house on Tompkins Avenue, took away a similar lesson about campaign financing. Crowder said of Bloomberg’s win, “That just shows you how much 100 million dollars can buy you. Although it also shows me it didn’t buy him much, because he still only won by like five percent.”

Meanwhile, a community government leader, who could not supply a name due to office policy, told the Brooklyn Ink that just by coming so close Thompson made a statement. “Thompson kept saying the margin was very small, but the Mayor was telling everyone it was going to be huge. He was wrong,” she said. “What it means is that Thompson can be our next mayor. He’ll definitely run again.”

A colleague in the office joined the conversation: “I woke up and thought, ‘Hey, what a beautiful day! People got no excuse not to go to the polls.’”

Yesterday morning, experts were still projecting an extremely low turnout, with many sources attributing it to a generally uninterested electorate. The official turnout numbers for Brooklyn are still unavailable. New York City Board of Elections spokeswoman Valerie Vasquez-Rivera explained that citywide turnout percentages, not to mention Brooklyn and Bed-Stuy turnout specifically, will not be ready until city officials open up the voting machines.

Wesley Darey caught up with the Brooklyn Ink while waiting for the bus. “A lot of people just didn’t vote,” she said. “I voted. But if everybody had actually voted, this guy Thompson would have won, he really would have.” Whether a higher voter turnout would have helped or hurt Thompson is not altogether clear. The only certainty is that the narrow margin of victory came as a shock to most New Yorkers.

Bill Thompson will continue to serve as Comptroller until John Liu replaces him in January 2010.

Daniel Roberts

Jerusalem Fruit Market on a weekday. Photo: Emilio Guerra/Flickr Creative Commons

On the north side of 86^th Street, Bensonhurst’s main commercial shopping drag, some stores have taken advantage of the generous sidewalk to display their products well out into the walking space. This has created something of a turf battle, and all parties are heated. Both merchants and pedestrians wonder: Whose sidewalk is it, anyway?

The cramped area begins right by the D-line Bay Parkway subway stop, at the intersection of 86^th Street and Bay Parkway. Fruit and vegetable markets line 86^th Street from here all the way down to 23^rd Avenue. Pedestrians can feel immediately that they are entering a defined zone; boxes of fruit line the sidewalk and blue tarps stretch overhead, tied to lampposts-a city violation, according to Marnee Elias-Pavia, District Manager of Community Board 11.

Following requests from Community Board 11, agents from the Department of Consumer Affairs, Department of Health, and the Department of Sanitation conducted a walkthrough this past July. The groups issued 112, 29, and 12 tickets, respectively. “But within 24 hours, it was business as usual,” said Elias-Pavia.

During the week, most of these shops adhere to the rule of a fourteen-foot extension limit. It is on the weekends that stores suddenly bulge at the seams, and rules are forgotten. When walking down 86^th Street, after crossing Bay Parkway, the first business in the problem area is Jerusalem Fruit Market. Plastic crates of produce extend far past the market’s actual door, leaving only five feet or so of sidewalk open to pedestrians.

Frankie, a young Hispanic employee of Home Tex, a convenience store located next to Jerusalem Market, said that as he understands it, “Fourteen feet is the rule. I get my line and I arrange the stuff every day and it doesn’t cross. Other places,” he says while glancing next door at fruit boxes that spill messily into the street, “they break the rule.”

Indeed, Mohammed G., who runs the store Everything 99¢, made this clear. “Sure, I get the tickets, but I don’t really care.” He went on to explain that he, and other merchants on his block, simply pay the tickets and go on with their business, because the fines are not large enough to hurt their profits or merit pulling their wares in from the sidewalk.

Thus the perceived need for a two-day educational seminar, which city agents offered on October 12 and 13 at the Brooklyn Studio School on nearby 83^rd Street. Before the start of the first evening, officials were out on 86^th Street encouraging merchants to attend the seminar. Approximately twenty people showed up, a turnout that Elias-Pavia said she was “pleasantly surprised to see.”

Inna Zaslavskaya, Director of the Neighborhood Naturally Occurring Retirement Community’s Good Neighbors program at the Jewish Community Center, said that the 86^th Street shopping situation is one of the center’s biggest focuses right now. Harvey Greenberg, who spends time at the center, said on behalf of his fellow senior citizens: “It’s very tough for the old folks. Very cramped.”

It was Zaslavskaya, along with the Senior Advisory Committee, who first drafted a letter to Elias-Pavia detailing the problem. “Our community has been upset for a while. Another problem of the markets is that items fall down into the street and people slip on them,” she said.

Eve Jonas is another senior who has lived in the neighborhood since childhood, and she believes the 86^th Street clash comes out of the racial and socioeconomic changes that have come to Bensonhurst in the past decade. She and many of the seniors place much of the blame on the recent influx of Chinese immigrants. About half of the stores in the crowded area seem to be staffed by Chinese, most of whom speak limited English and therefore were not accessible for comment. “I do feel that the Oriental people have invaded Bensonhurst,” said Jonas hesitantly. “Some of them are lovely people. But some of them act like they don’t know nothing.”

Greenberg echoed her sentiments: “The neighborhood has become crowded with Chinese, and they do whatever they want, it seems like. There’s got to be a stop, because sooner or later they’re going to take over the whole sidewalk and everyone will be walking in the gutter.”

Yet Elias-Pavia expressed sympathy for those who run businesses on 86^th Street. “Merchants are facing tough times as well. There are many business managers that are in compliance. And it’s unfortunate that because of a few who aren’t, the whole street gets labeled,” she said.

One idea raised at the seminar was the possibility of merchants forming some sort of union. Brooklyn Councilman Domenic Recchia, Jr. attended the event and encouraged the merchants to get organized. “There are certain grants available that he’s willing to give to help them if they start a merchants’ association,” said Elias-Pavia. “I think there was a show of interest. They all agree that they can’t survive continuing to be ticketed.”

Whether a merchants’ association would help the businesses of 86^th Street thrive better is unclear. Although Elias-Pavia is excited by both the seminar’s high turnout and the possibilities raised there, she still admits some skepticism as to whether the area will improve. “There are some merchants that really don’t care, and they won’t change. But many of them really want to clean it up. So we’ll see.”